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 characters about which I know nothing!--when the brass Canterbury Pilgrim was lifted twice and we heard a real knock on a real door ... tap-tap!