s, some with tails in
their ears, others with too many legs. My own efforts were adjudged the
best, which led Bill to express surprise that a man who couldn't draw
anything at all with his eyes open should be able to draw a pig
blindfold. Tired of this, Mac put on a pair of castanets and danced a
Spanish fandango. He hung up a sheet in front of his studio lamp and
performed an amazing series of shadow-pictures representing the "Hunting
of the Snark." When our small visitors saw the Tub-Tub, "that terrible
bird," flapping horribly about with his three-cornered eyes glaring at
them, they grasped our hands and shouted with the most exquisite
mingling of horror and delight. They were consoled with a wrestling
match to which my versatile friend challenged himself. Having shaken
hands with himself, he then grasped himself in the most approved
catch-as-catch-can manner, struggled desperately to throw himself and
finally triumphed by flinging himself in the air, turning a somersault
and coming down on the carpet with a bump. Getting up and falling
exhausted into a chair, he was greeted with loud cries to "do it again."

"No, indeed, you won't," said Bill emphatically. "You must be crazy to
do it at all after walking I don't know how many miles. Children, do you
want to kill my husband?"

They shook their heads solemnly. At that moment they evidently thought
him quite the most wonderful person in the world. I often think so
myself and I know his wife holds that view always. So I at once
inaugurated a story-telling competition. I told them of an extraordinary
affair that had once happened in England, where I was eking out a
wretched existence as a hunter of buried treasure. I had received
information about a tomato-can full of diamonds hidden in a beef-steak
pie which would be served at a certain old inn on the shores of a lake
far away towards the North Sea, and I was just packing up my patent
can-opener, a box of candy and a packet of gum for refreshment on the
way, and a pair of silver-mounted pistols like those in the studio
upstairs, when an old woman with bright red hair tapped at the door ...
tap-tap! Ben and Beppo both looked at the door, and Bill said in a low
voice, "Don't frighten them; you'll make them dream." But they were
watching me once more with their round, expectant eyes, and I was
racking my brains to discover the purport of the old woman with the
bright red hair--for I am always inventing fascinating charact