"There's trouble on hand," said the colonel, climbing up on to a footstool so as to be nearer Jimmieboy's ear, for he did not wish to alarm everybody by shouting out the dreadful news he had to impart. Jimmieboy's mamma, for instance, was a timid little woman, and she would have been very much frightened if she had known what had happened. "There's a great deal of trouble on hand," the colonel repeated. "The Noah in your ark fell asleep last night before the animals had gone to bed, and while he was napping, the Parallelopipedon got loose, ate up the gingerbread monkey and four peppermint elephants, and escaped out of the back window to the woods. Noah didn't find it out until an hour ago, when he went to feed the elephants, and immediately he made the discovery word came from the Pannikins, who live around the turn there in the woods, that the Parallelopipedon had eaten the roof off their house, and was at the time the letter was written engaged in whittling down the fences with a jackknife, and rolling all the pumpkins down the mountainside into Tiddledywinkland, and ruining the whole country. We have got to capture that animal before breakfast. If we don't, there's no telling what may happen. He might even go so far as to come back, and that would be horrible." "I don't think I remember the Parawelopipedon," said Jimmieboy, pronouncing the animal's name with some difficulty. "What kind of an animal was that?" "Oh, he's an awful animal," returned the colonel. "I don't blame you for not remembering him, though, because he is a hard animal to remember. He is the only animal they had like him in the ark. They couldn't find two of his sort, and I rather guess they are glad they couldn't, because his appetite is simply dreadful, and the things he eats are most embarrassing. He's the one your papa was telling you about last night before you went to bed. Don't you remember the rhyme he told you--beginning this way: 'The Parallelopipedon I do not like, because He has so many, many sides, And ninety-seven claws'?" "Oh, yes," replied Jimmieboy. "He is the same animal that---- 'Hasn't got a bit of sense, Or feather to his name; No eye, no ear with which to hear, But gets there just the same.'" "That's it! that's it!" cried the colonel. "And don't you remember, 'There's not a thing he will not eat, From pie to sealing-wax, Although he shows a preference for Red bricks and carpet tacks'?" "Yes, I remember that very well now," said Jimmieboy. "Wasn't there a verse about his color, too? Didn't it say: 'His color is a fearful one-- A combination hue Of yellow, green, and purple, mixed With solferino blue'?" "No; that was the Parallelogram," replied the colonel. "A Parallelopipedon is six times as bad as a Parallelogram. His color has a verse about it, though, that says: