replied the Dude Brownie, and Jimmieboy, rubbing his eyes as if he couldn't believe it, looked about him and discovered that even as the Dude Brownie had said, he had without knowing it already accepted the invitation and stood in the hall of the Brownie mansion. And O! such a mansion! It was just such a house as you would expect Brownies to have. There were no stairs in it, though it was three stories high. On the walls were all sorts of funny pictures, pictures of the most remarkable animals in the world or out of it, in fact most of the pictures were of animals that Jimmieboy had never heard of before, or even imagined. There was the Brownie Elephant, for instance, the cunningest little animal you ever saw, with forty pairs of spectacles running all the way down its trunk; and a Brownie Pug-dog with its tail curled so tightly that it lifted the little creature's hind legs off the floor; and most interesting of all, a Brownie Bear that could take its fur off in hot weather and put on a light flannel robe instead. Jimmieboy gazed with eyes and mouth wide open at these pictures. "What queer animals," he said. "Do you really have such animals as those?" "Excuse me," said the Dude Brownie anxiously, "but before I answer, must I answer in poetry or in prose? I'll do whichever you wish me to, but I'm a little tired this afternoon, and poetry is such an effort!" "I'm very fond of poetry," said Jimmieboy, "especially your kind, but if you are tired and would rather speak the other way, you can." The Dude Brownie smiled gratefully. "You're a very kind little man," he said. "This time I'll talk the other way, but some day when I get it written I'll send you my book of poetry to make up for it. You like our animals, do you?" "Very much," said Jimmieboy. "I'd like to see a Brownie zoo some time." "I'll attend to that," said the Dude Brownie. "I'll make a note of it on the wall so that we won't forget it." Here he seized a huge pencil, almost as big as himself, and wrote something on the wall which Jimmieboy could not read, but which he supposed was the Brownie's memorandum. "Won't you spoil your wall doing that?" queried the little visitor.