"Excuse me," he said hesitatingly, as the Bellows began to wheeze away at the cloud, "do you really write?" [Illustration: "I blow a story or two, now and then."] "Well, no," said the Bellows. "No, I don't write, but I blow a story or two now and then. You see, I can't write because I haven't any hands, but I can wheeze out a tale to a stenographer once in a while which any magazine would be glad to publish if it could get hold of it. One of my stories called Sparks blew into a powder magazine once and it made a tremendous noise in the world when it came out." "I wish you would tell me one," said Tom. "Are you a stenographer?" asked the Bellows. "No," said Tom, "but I like stories just the same." "Well," said the Bellows, "I'll tell you one about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple." "Hurrah!" cried Tom. "I love red apples." "So did Jimmie Tompkins," said the Bellows, "and that's why he died. He ate a red apple while it was green and it killed him." There was a pause for an instant, and the Bellows redoubled his efforts to move the cloud, which for some reason or other did not stir easily. "Go ahead," said Tom, when he thought he had waited long enough for the Bellows to resume. "What on?" asked the Bellows. "On your story about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple," Tom answered. "Why, I've told you that story," retorted the Bellows. "Jimmie ate the red apple and died. What more do you want? That's all there is to it." "It isn't a very long story," suggested Tom, ruefully, for he was much disappointed. "Well, why should it be?" demanded the Bellows. "A story doesn't have to be long to be good, and as long as it is all there--" "I know," said Tom; "but in most stories there's a lot of things put in that help to make it interesting." "All padding!" sneered the Bellows, "and that I will never do. If a story can be told in five words what's the use of padding it out to five thousand?" "None," said Tom, "except that you can't make a book out of a story of five words." "Oh, yes, you can," said the Bellows, airily. "It isn't any trouble at all if you only know how, and in the end you have a much more useful book than if you made it a million words long. You can print the five words on the first page and leave the other five hundred pages blank, so that after you get through with the volume as a story book you can use it for a blank book or a diary. Most books nowadays are so full of story that when you get through with them there isn't anything else you can do with the book." "It's a new idea," said Tom, with a laugh. "And all my own invention, too," said the Bellows proudly. "He's the most inventive Bellows that ever was," put in the Poker, "that is, in a literary way. How many copies of your book of 'Unwritten Poems' did you sell, Wheezy?" he added. "Eight million," returned the Bellows. "That was probably my greatest literary achievement." "'Unwritten Poems,' eh?" said Tom, to whom the title seemed curious.