"Yes, sirree!" roared the dwarf. "I did, and, what is more, it was I who chewed up your best shoes and bit your plush dog's head off; it was I who ate up your luncheon one day last March; it was I who pawed up all the geraniums in your flower-bed; and it was I who nipped your friend the postman in the leg on St. Valentine's day so that he lost your valentine." "I've caught you there," said Jimmieboy. "It wasn't you that did those things at all. It was a horrid little brown dog that used to play around our house did all that." "You think you are smart," laughed the dwarf. "But you aren't. I was the little brown dog." "I don't see how you can have any friends if that is the way you behave," said Jimmieboy, after a minute or two of silence. "You don't deserve any." "No," said the dwarf, his voice trembling a little--for as Jimmieboy peered up into the tree at him he could see that he was crying just a bit--"I haven't any, and I never had. I never had anybody to set me a good example. My father and my mother were unfairies before me, and I just grew to be one like them. I didn't want to be one, but I had to be; and really it wasn't until I saw you pat a hand-organ monkey on the head, instead of giving him a piece of cake with red pepper on it, as I would have done, that I ever even dreamed that there were kind people in the world. After I'd watched you for a while and had seen how happy you were, and how many friends you had, I began to see how it was that I was so miserable. I was miserable because I was mean, but nobody has ever told me how not to be mean, and I'm just real upset over it." "Poor fellow!" said Jimmieboy, sympathetically. "I am really very, very sorry for you." "So am I," sobbed the dwarf. "I wish you could help me." "Perhaps I can," said Jimmieboy. "Well, wait a minute," said the dwarf, drying his eyes and peering intently down the road. "Wait a minute. There is a sheep down the road there tangled up in the brambles. Wait until I change myself into a big black dog and scare her half to death." "But that will be mean," returned Jimmieboy; "and if you want to change, and be good, and kind, why don't you begin now and help the sheep out?" "H'm!" said the dwarf. "Now that is an idea, isn't it! Do you know, I'd never have thought of that if you hadn't suggested it to me. I think I will. I'll change myself into a good-hearted shepherd's boy, and free that poor animal at once!" The dwarf was as good as his word, and in a moment he came back, smiling as happily as though he had made a great fortune. "Why, it's lovely to do a thing like that. Beautiful!" he said. "Do you know, Jimmieboy, I've half a mind to turn mean again for just a minute, and go back and frighten that sheep back into the bushes just for the bliss of helping her out once more."