really shut up in that little drawer so that you couldn't
get out?" asked Jimmieboy, beginning to feel very glad that fortune had
led him that way, and so enabled him to help the little old man out of
his trouble.

"Yes," answered the other. "I've been locked up in that drawer there for
nearly fifty years."

"Fifty years!" ejaculated Jimmieboy. "Why, that's longer than I have
lived."

"No, not quite," said the little old man. "They were dream years, and a
dream year isn't much longer than a day of your time; but they have
seemed real years to me, and I am just as grateful to you for unlocking
the drawer and letting me out as I should have been had the years been
three hundred and sixty-five days long each."

"Why should any one want to lock you up in a drawer?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Were you naughty?"

"No," said the old man. "I never did a naughty thing in all my life, but
they locked me up just the same--just as if I had been a poor little
canary-bird."

"Who did it?" queried Jimmieboy. "They must have been very wicked people
to treat you that way."

"They were. Awfully wicked," said the little old man. "They were
wickeder than they seem, because really, you know, they intended that I
should stay locked up there forever and ever."

"But how did they come to do it?" asked Jimmieboy.

"It's a long story," answered the little old man. "But if you want me
to, I'll tell it."

"Do," said Jimmieboy.

"Very well, then, I will," said the little old man. "But not here. It is
too wet here. We'll go inside the drawer ourselves, where we can be dry
and comfortable, and we'll take the key in with us and lock ourselves in
so that nobody can interfere with us. Will you come?"

"I don't see how I can," said Jimmieboy, looking down at his own body
and then pointing to the drawer. "Don't you see I am two or three dozen
times too big to get in there?"

"That doesn't make any difference," said the little old man with a
laugh. "For I am a wizard, and I can make you large or small, just as I
please. If you will say the word I'll make you so small you couldn't see
yourself with a magnifying-glass."

Jimmieboy thought a moment, and concluded very wisely, I think, that he
would rather not be so small as that.

"I don't like to lose sight of myself," he said.

"Very well, then," said the other. "Suppose I make you just about my
size? How would that do?"

"I'd like that very much," replied Jimmieboy, kindly. "I think you are