book and gazing soberly at me.

"Well," I said, "it's very kind of Wag's father to send me a message,
but I must say I can't make much of it."

Slim nodded. "So he said, and he said you'd see when the time came; of
course I don't know, myself; I've never seen a bat-ball. Wag says he
has, but you never know with Wag."

"Well, I must do the best I can, I suppose; but look here, Slim, I wish
you could tell me one or two things. What _are_ you? What do they call
you?"

"They call me Slim: and the whole of us they call the Right People,"
said Slim; "but it's no good asking us much, because we don't know, and
besides, it isn't good for us."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, you see, our job is to keep the little things right, and if we do
more than that, or if we try to find out much more, then we burst."

"And is that the end of you?"

"Oh, no!" he said cheerfully, "but that's one of the things it's no good
asking."

"And if you don't do your job, what then?"

"Oh, then they get smaller and have no sense." (He said _they_, not
_we_, I noticed.)

"I see. Well now, you go to school, don't you?" He nodded. "What for?
Isn't that likely to be bad for you?" (I hardly liked to say "make you
burst.")

"No," he said; "you see, it's to learn our job. We have to be told what
used to go on, so as we can put things right, or keep them right. And
the owls, you see, they remember a long way back, but they don't know
any more than we do about the swell things."

I was very shy about putting the next question I had in mind, but I felt
I must. "Now do you know how old you are, or how long it takes you to
grow up, or how--how long you go on when you _are_ grown up!"

He pressed his hands to his head, and I was dreadfully afraid for the
moment that it might be swelling and would burst; but it was not so bad
as that. After a few seconds he looked up and said:

"I think it's seven times seven moons since I went to school and seven
times seven times seven moons before I grow up; and the rest is no good
asking. But it's all right"; upon which he smiled.

And this, I may say, was the most part of what I ventured to ask any of
them about themselves. But at other times I gathered that as long as
they "did their job" nothing could injure them; and they were regularly
measured--all of them--to see if they were getting smaller, and a
careful record kept. But if anyone lost as much as a quarter of his
height, he was doomed, and he crept off