Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/432

 a violent draught in town, and warning him against taking cold; and evidently he had taken cold. Then there was another thing—Moozeby's right hand, which was Mownde's, would keep taking out his watch and holding it up to be looked at, which convinced Moozeby that Mownde had some important engagement that morning; and Moozeby's misery was increased by the uncertainty whether Mownde was really complete in himself, or whether he was waiting for the missing parts before he could keep his appointment.

Poor Moozeby was fearfully perplexed how to act for the best. Several times he was tempted to elementalise himself, with a view to precipitating himself at Mownde's residence: but he was so upset by the muddle he had already made, that all sorts of vague apprehensions held him back, one of them being that he might lose Mownde's pieces irrecoverably on the way, thus doing irreparable harm.

The worst of it was, Moozeby's fox-terrier would spend his whole time in walking round and round Moozeby on the tips of his paws, and with his legs rigid like those of an automaton, and growling; and the possibility of his deciding on a bite was increased by Mownde's intense aversion to dogs, which caused Moozeby's right hand (in the intervals of taking out the watch) to seize all sorts of objects with the purpose of flinging them at the dog. As this would be absolutely certain to precipitate the threatened attack, Moozeby was forced to keep incessantly on the watch for the vagaries of that hand, which would occasionally (being very quick) seize a lump of coal or something while Moozeby's eye was turned away, and all but succeed in hurling it. Then that hand of Mownde's had a nasty twitch in it—some sort of paralysis—and would, every now and then, pinch Moozeby's ear, or pull his whiskers, causing him to grunt with pain. At length he settled matters for the time by sitting on that hand; and presently the dog went to sleep.

Several weeks passed before poor Moozeby could pluck up courage to attempt to set things right by a further experiment in elementalising himself; but, what with the pressure put upon him by Mrs. Moozeby, who declared her determination to go and live with her mother if he intended to continue going about that guy, and the general unsatisfactory state of the case, he at length braced up his nerves to the attempt. That dog resented the operations from the commencement, and Pinniger had to hold him back; and Mrs. Moozeby had insisted on having Dr. Coddles present in case of accidents.

The poor fellow could not concentrate his mind on the operation, a most essential condition of success. His thoughts would wander to the objects he saw; and at the first try he re-precipitated himself fairly all right, with the exception of the right leg, which was the leg of a table—a facsimile of those supporting the dining table in front of him. Then, while he was trying to concentrate his thoughts on that leg, the rest of him grew nebulous, and faded right away; and we feared the worst. But his voice, apparently from the centre of the earth, murmured: "All right, you fellows, I'm all here in the form of air; only I wish you would put a newspaper or something in front of the fire to prevent some of me being drawn up the chimney by the draught."

We waited breathlessly for a quarter of an hour, then we heard Moozeby's voice