'Now you. Hang by your hands. I'll catch you. Oh, there's no
time for jaw. Drop, I say.'
Jane dropped.
Robert tried to catch her, and even before they had finished the
breathless roll among the piles of clothes, which was what his
catching ended in, he whispered--
'We'll hide--behind those fenders and things; they'll think we've
gone along the roofs. Then, when all is calm, we'll creep down the
stairs and take our chance.'
They hastily hid. A corner of an iron bedstead stuck into Robert's
side, and Jane had only standing room for one foot--but they bore
it--and when the lady came back, not with Septimus, but with
another lady, they held their breath and their hearts beat thickly.
'Gone!' said the first lady; 'poor little things--quite mad, my
dear--and at large! We must lock this room and send for the
police.'
'Let me look out,' said the second lady, who was, if possible,
older and thinner and primmer than the first. So the two ladies
dragged a box under the trap-door and put another box on the top of
it, and then they both climbed up very carefully and put their two
trim, tidy heads out of the trap-door to look for the 'mad
children'.
'Now,' whispered Robert, getting the bedstead leg out of his side.
They managed to creep out from their hiding-place and out through
the door before the two ladies had done looking out of the
trap-door on to the empty leads.
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