He put his thumb against the side of his nose and pushed it until most of his nose lay flat against his left cheek; then he put his thumb on the other side of his nose and pushed until his nose lay flat against his right cheek. We all tried it, but we couldn’t do it. Wampus was the worst at it, because his nose is a pug and sticks up. “You don’t exercise your noses, that’s why,” Jibby said. “I don’t blame you. It is no business of mine what you do with your noses. But I exercise mine and keep it limber and flexible. I get up every morning and push my nose all around my face, to keep it keen and lively. It would be mighty dangerous for me if I ever let my nose get stiff and hard.” “Why would it?” Skippy wanted to know. “Because it’s my jib sail,” Jibby said, as solemn as an owl. “If I got out in a big wind sometime, say near the edge of a big precipice, and the wind caught my nose, it might blow me over and dash me to pieces on the rocks below. I’ve got to watch out for that, with a nose like mine. I’ve got to keep my nose limber, so that if a big wind comes up I can furl my jib, or jibe it to port or starboard, to steer me away from the precipice.” We didn’t say anything. We just looked at one another. “I might be out in Arizona, or somewhere else, where the wind blows hard for months at a time,” Jibby went on, just as solemn as before, “and a nose like mine would be a nuisance. The wind would catch it on one side and whirl me around one way, and then it would catch it on the other side and whirl me around the other way, and I’d never be able to get anywhere if I didn’t keep my nose soft and flexible, so I could lay it back against my face and fasten it there with a strip of adhesive plaster.” “Oh, boy!” Skippy said then, because that was almost too much. “But,” Jibby went on, “you fellows don’t need to exercise your noses that way because they don’t amount to much as jibs, anyway.” “I’ll say mine don’t,” said Wampus, touching his pug. “No,” said Jibby seriously. “I’ve often felt sorry for you, Wampus; having a stub like that. But it’s a good nose for smelling with, if you train it right. It ought to be a quick smeller--a lot quicker than mine--because it is so short. Smells ought to get in quicker. The only trouble is that you don’t any of you know how to smell.” “You don’t have to know how to smell things,” said Tad. “You just smell them, and that’s all there is to it; you can’t help smelling them.” “Did you ever read James Latimer’s book called ‘Odors and How to Improve the Sense of Smell’?” Jibby asked. “No,” we all said. “Neither did I,” said Jibby. “I never even heard of it, because there isn’t any such book, but there might be. Maybe I’ll write one myself, sometime. The trouble with you fellows is that you don’t think about your noses. I do think about mine; I think a lot about it. I can’t help thinking about it, there’s such a lot of it.” That was true, anyway.