“Have you ever been yourself, Bruno?”

“They invited me once last year,” Bruno said, very gravely.  “It was to wash up the soup-plates—­no, the cheese-plates I mean—­that was g’and enough.  But the g’andest thing of all was, I fetched the Duke of Dandelion a glass of cider!”

“That was grand!” I said, biting my lip to keep myself from laughing.

“Wasn’t it!” said Bruno, very earnestly.  “You know it isn’t every one that’s had such an honor as that!”

This set me thinking of the various queer things we call “an honor” in this world, which, after all, haven’t a bit more honor in them than what the dear little Bruno enjoyed (by the way, I hope you’re beginning to like him a little, naughty as he was?) when he took the Duke of Dandelion a glass of cider.

I don’t know how long I might have dreamed on in this way if Bruno hadn’t suddenly roused me.

“Oh, come here quick!” he cried, in a state of the wildest excitement.  “Catch hold of his other horn!  I can’t hold him more than a minute!”

He was struggling desperately with a great snail, clinging to one of its horns, and nearly breaking his poor little back in his efforts to drag it over a blade of grass.

I saw we should have no more gardening if I let this sort of thing go on, so I quietly took the snail away, and put it on a bank where he couldn’t reach it.  “We’ll hunt it afterward, Bruno,” I said, “if you really want to catch it.  But what’s the use of it when you’ve got it?”

“What’s the use of a fox when you’ve got it?” said Bruno.  “I know you big things hunt foxes.”

I tried to think of some good reason why “big things” should hunt foxes, and he shouldn’t hunt snails, but none came into my head:  so I said at last, “Well, I suppose one’s as good as the other.  I’ll go snail-hunting myself, some day.”

“I should think you wouldn’t be so silly,” said Bruno, “as to go snail-hunting all by yourself.  Why, you’d never get the snail along, if you hadn’t somebody to hold on to his other horn!”

“Of course I sha’n’t go alone,” I said, quite gravely.  “By the way, is that the best kind to hunt, or do you recommend the ones without shells?”

“Oh no!  We never hunt the ones without shells,” Bruno said, with a little shudder at the thought of it.  “They’re always so c’oss about it; and then, if you tumble over them, they’re ever so sticky!”

By this time we had nearly finished the garden.  I had fetched some violets, and Bruno was just helping me to put in the last, when he suddenly stopped and said, “I’m tired.”

“Rest, then,” I said; “I can go on without you.”

Bruno needed no second invitation:  he at once began arranging the mouse as a kind of sofa.  “And I’ll sing you a little song,” he said as he rolled it about.

“Do,” said I:  “there’s nothing I should like better.”

“Which song will you choose?” Bruno said, as he dragged the mouse into a place where he could get a good view of me. “‘Ting, ting, ting,’ is the nicest.”