It was long after dark before Dipper and Mabel worked up the courage to leave the gift shop and head back into the main part of the house.

"Fare thee well, noble handyman!" Mabel called after Soos as he locked up for the night.

Then she blinked, a little confused. She didn't think she'd been planning to say that; she'd just meant to say, "Bye, Soos!"

Right?

On the other hand, she didn't always think about her words before they left her mouth. And neither the handyman nor her brother seemed surprised by hearing her say something like that. So maybe she was just overthinking things.

It was with great trepidation that the twins crept into the main part of the house; none of the lights were on downstairs, and even though she knew their uncles wouldn't do anything to actually hurt them, one of Mabel's hands inadvertently stole into Dipper's.

"By my troth," Dipper whispered, "perchance our agéd yet crafty grunkles wait in the shadows for our approach, the better to surprise us by a sudden flash of lamplight like a bolt of Zeus's wrath, as hast oft been done in films with adults confronting wayward children-" Then he finally seemed to process what he had been saying, and both hands clamped over his mouth.

Mabel snorted with laughter.

"Dipper, hast thy body been possessed by the spirit of our friend of old, the waxen figure William Shakespeare? If not, I fear he has at the least greatly possessed thy tongue."

Wait, what?!

Through the shadows she could make out the rising alarm in her twin's eyes that matched her own.

And then, even though Dipper had predicted it, both of them jumped and screamed when the light flicked on to reveal both their grunkles, sitting and waiting for them, stone-faced.

For a few seconds all the pairs of twins did was stare at each other.

Finally, though, Dipper opened his mouth.

"Thou knaves, thou rogues, thou withered fiends who but cling with fingertips to the remnants of life, what devilry is borne upon us from thy crafty, weathered hands?!"

At that Stan couldn't hold up his stoic expression any longer, and burst into hearty, cackling guffaws.

"It worked!"

Ford, fighting to keep a straight face himself, finally said, "Don't worry, it's not permanent. Just a temporary lingua Shakespearea spell."

"We wanted to see how you like not being able to control what comes out of your mouth!" Stan said, wiping his eyes under his glasses and still snickering.

"We'll take it off, eventually. But first, you have some cleaning up to do."

The cleaning up turned out to be the two huge puddles of melted purple wax now covering a large section of the floor in the kids' bedroom.

Mabel winced; she had not realized how big of a mess those were going to make before they finally went out.

"Truly, 'tis a dark day this night," she lamented, accepting the spoon and the scrubbing brush Stan handed her, as Dipper took a washcloth and a bucket of warm soapy water from Ford. "Woe that I did not procure some handy bowl or earthen basin, the better to hold these friendly flame-bearers and thus not despoil our sturdy help-meet, the floor!"

Huh. Speaking like this was actually kind of fun, even though it took you twice as long to say what you wanted to.

"You're also lucky you didn't accidentally set the floor on fire," Grunkle Stan pointed out. "If you had you'd be in a lot more trouble, believe me."

Dipper got to work using the spoon to push up the wax, which at least was hard-yet-crumbly enough that it wasn't too impossible to work free. Then Mabel would come in with the scrub brush and water in case there was anything he'd missed, before rubbing down the whole spot with the washcloth.

Their grunkles settled on the beds, and Stan retrieved his fez from Dipper's pillow.

"We also decided that we're gonna entertain you kids while you work. With this!" And he produced…

"Nay!" Dipper wailed, suddenly lunging forwards and clinging to Stan's leg. "Honored uncles, kill us, shoot us, leave us to be a feast for bears and crows, send us to the Antipodes ne'ermore to see the faces of kith and kin, but please, torment us not with yon book of quips and puns!"

Stan rolled his eyes, and set down his jokebook so he could more easily pry his nephew off. "Hot Belgian waffles, kid, this spell is making you even more of a drama queen than usual. Besides, you laughed at a few of these when we went fishing, don't deny it."

Ford looked up at him with interest. "You took them fishing?"

"Yeah, earlier this summer." Stan finally succeeded in freeing his leg, and Dipper sulkily went back to work. "We managed to get through the first few pages, but we didn't get to the really good ones yet."

"Bravo, sister mine," Dipper grumbled at Mabel as he savagely chipped off a large clump of wax that went flying under her bed. "Twas well played indeed, thy clever scheme which has profited us so well."

Mabel sighed, and used the brush to drag the wax back out so she could drop it in the trash can.

"Peace, brother. Methinks the outcome well worth whatever afflictions we may suffer for our subterfuges."

Dipper said nothing; but, as Ford laughed loudly at Stan's latest terrible punchline and Stan tossed his twin the book so he could tell the next one, she saw her brother's mouth curve up at the edges.

So she knew that he privately agreed.

Ta-dah!

I'm actually rather pleased with how this turned out.

Hopefully my faithful readers are too; it was a lot of fun to write, and getting all the feedback just made it better.

P.S. Congratulations to Miss Mystery, for figuring out the reference in chapter 2.