"Paper," he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with the
springs; "string," and behold his mouth was a string box, from which he
drew an unending thread, which when he had tied his parcel he bit off--
and, it seemed to me, swallowed the ball of string. And then he lit a
candle at the nose of one of the ventriloquist's dummies, stuck one of his
fingers (which had become sealing-wax red) into the flame, and so sealed
the parcel. "Then there was the Disappearing Egg," he remarked, and
produced one from within my coat-breast and packed it, and also The Crying
Baby, Very Human. I handed each parcel to Gip as it was ready, and he
clasped them to his chest.
He said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms
was eloquent. He was the playground of unspeakable emotions. These, you
know, were _real_ Magics.
Then, with a start, I discovered something moving about in my hat--
something soft and jumpy. I whipped it off, and a ruffled pigeon--no doubt
a confederate--dropped out and ran on the counter, and went, I fancy, into
a cardboard box behind the _papier-mache_ tiger.
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