We felt this was the time to begin. We skipped between her and the
door. We held our hat in front of us, cocked our head on one side,
and said: "Don't go! don't go!"

The girl seemed alarmed. We began to get a little nervous ourselves,
but we had begun it and we meant to go through with it.

We said, "Do you know, Jane" (her name wasn't Jane, but that wasn't
our fault), "do you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice
girl," and we said "click," and dug her in the ribs with our elbow,
and then chucked her under the chin. The whole thing seemed to fall
flat. There was nobody there to laugh or applaud. We wished we
hadn't done it. It seemed stupid when you came to think of it. We
began to feel frightened. The business wasn't going as we expected;
but we screwed up our courage and went on.

We put on the customary expression of comic imbecility and beckoned
the girl to us. We have never seen this fail on the stage.

But this girl seemed made wrong. She got behind the sofa and screamed
"Help!"

We have never known them to do this on the stage, and it threw us out
in our plans. We did not know exactly what to do. We regretted that
we had ever begun this job and heartily wished ourselves out of it.
But it appeared foolish to pause then, when we were more than half-way
through, and we made a rush to get it over.

We chivvied the girl round the sofa and caught her near the door and