"Not a very long delay." Mr. Thirkell put up his hands to pat the air. "How long?" "Only a week." "A week!" "Yes. You can stay here at the Restorium for seven more days, can't you? A little delay won't matter, will it, in the end? You've waited a lifetime. Only a few more days." _At twenty dollars a day_, thought Mrs. Bellowes, coldly. "What's the trouble?" a woman cried. "A legal difficulty," said Mr. Thirkell. "We've a rocket, haven't we?" "Well, ye-ess." "But I've been here a whole month, waiting," said one old lady. "Delays, delays!" "That's right," said everyone. "Ladies, ladies," murmured Mr. Thirkell, smiling serenely. "We want to see the rocket!" It was Mrs. Bellowes forging ahead, alone, brandishing her fist like a toy hammer. Mr. Thirkell looked into the old ladies' eyes, a missionary among albino cannibals. "Well, now," he said. "Yes, _now_!" cried Mrs. Bellowes. "I'm afraid--" he began. "So am I!" she said. "That's why we want to see the ship!" "No, no, now, Mrs.--" He snapped his fingers for her name. "Bellowes!" she cried. She was a small container, but now all the seething pressures that had been built up over long years came steaming through the delicate vents of her body. Her cheeks became incandescent. With a wail that was like a melancholy factory whistle, Mrs. Bellowes ran forward and hung to him, almost by her teeth, like a summer-maddened Spitz. She would not and never could let go, until he died, and the other women followed, jumping and yapping like a pound let loose on its trainer, the same one who had petted them and to whom they had squirmed and whined joyfully an hour before, now milling about him, creasing his sleeves and frightening the Egyptian serenity from his gaze. "This way!" cried Mrs. Bellowes, feeling like Madame Lafarge. "Through the back! We've waited long enough to see the ship. Every day he's put us off, every day we've waited, now let's see." "No, no, ladies!" cried Mr. Thirkell, leaping about. They burst through the back of the stage and out a door, like a flood, bearing the poor man with them into a shed, and then out, quite suddenly, into an abandoned gymnasium. "There it is!" said someone. "The rocket." And then a silence fell that was terrible to entertain. There was the rocket. Mrs. Bellowes looked at it and her hands sagged away from Mr. Thirkell's collar. The rocket was something like a battered copper pot. There were a thousand bulges and rents and rusty pipes and dirty vents on and in it. The ports were clouded over with dust, resembling the eyes of a blind hog. Everyone wailed a little sighing wail. "Is that the rocket ship _Glory Be to the Highest_?" cried Mrs. Bellowes, appalled. Mr. Thirkell nodded and looked at his feet. "For which we paid out our one thousand dollars apiece and came all the way to Mars to get on board with you and go off to find Him?" asked Mrs. Bellowes. "Why, that isn't worth a sack of dried peas," said Mrs. Bellowes.