elfish. I knew a boy who was selfish once, and he got into
all sorts of trouble. Nobody liked him, and once when he gave a big dinner
to a lot of other boys not one of them would come, and he had to eat all
the dinner himself. The result was that he overate himself, ruined his
digestion, and all the rest of his life had to do without pies and cake
and other good things. It served him right, too. Do you think we are going
to let you be like that, Mr. Bellows?"

"I suppose not," said the Bellows, "but stories about selfish boys don't
frighten me. I'm a bellows, not a boy. I don't give dinners and I don't
eat pie and cake. Plain air is good enough for me, and I wouldn't give a
cent for all the other good eatables in the world except doughnuts. I like
doughnuts because, after all, they are only bellows cakes. But come, let's
hurry up with the cloud. I want to get back to my desk. I have a poem to
finish before breakfast."

This statement interested Tom hugely. He had read many a book, but never
before had he met a real author, and even if the Bellows had been a man,
so long as he was a writer, Tom would have looked upon him with awe.

"Excuse me," he said hesitatingly, as the Bellows began to wheeze away at
the cloud, "do you really write?"

[Illustration: "I blow a story or two, now and then."]

"Well, no," said the Bellows. "No, I don't write, but I blow a story or
two now and then. You see, I can't write because I haven't any hands, but
I can wheeze out a tale to a stenographer once in a while which any
magazine would be glad to publish if it could get hold of it. One of my
stories called Sparks blew into a powder magazine once and it made a
tremendous noise in the world when it came out."

"I wish you would tell me one," said Tom.

"Are you a stenographer?" asked the Bellows.

"No," said Tom, "but I like stories just the same."

"Well," said the Bellows, "I'll tell you one about Jimmie Tompkins and the
red apple."

"Hurrah!" cried Tom. "I love red apples."

"So did Jimmie Tompkins," said the Bellows, "and that's why he died. He
ate a red apple while it was green and it killed him."

There was a pause for an instant, and the Bellows redoubled his efforts to
move the cloud, which for some reason or other did not stir easily.

"Go ahead," said Tom, when he thought he had waited long enough for the
Bellows to resume.

"What on?" asked the Bellows.

"On your story about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple," To