By this time he was sitting quietly on the mouse, with his arms folded, and the weeding wasn't getting on a bit. So I was obliged to say: "Work first and pleasure afterward; no more talking till that bed's finished." After that we had a few minutes of silence, while I sorted out the pebbles, and amused myself with watching Bruno's plan of gardening. It was quite a new plan to me: he always measured each bed before he weeded it, as if he was afraid the weeding would make it shrink; and once, when it came out longer than he wished, he set to work to thump the mouse with his tiny fist, crying out, "There now! It's all 'ong again! Why don't you keep your tail st'aight when I tell you!" "I'll tell you what I'll do," Bruno said in a half-whisper, as we worked: "I'll get you an invitation to the king's dinner-party. I know one of the head-waiters." I couldn't help laughing at this idea. "Do the waiters invite the guests?" I asked. "Oh, not _to sit down_!" Bruno hastily replied. "But to help, you know. You'd like that, wouldn't you? To hand about plates, and so on." "Well, but that's not so nice as sitting at the table, is it?" "Of course it isn't," Bruno said, in a tone as if he rather pitied my ignorance; "but if you're not even Sir Anything, you can't expect to be allowed to sit at the table, you know." I said, as meekly as I could, that I didn't expect it, but it was the only way of going to a dinner-party that I really enjoyed. And Bruno tossed his head, and said, in a rather offended tone, that I might do as I pleased--there were many he knew that would give their ears to go. "Have you ever been yourself, Bruno?" "They invited me once last year," Bruno said, very gravely. "It was to wash up the soup-plates--no, the cheese-plates I mean--that was g'and enough. But the g'andest thing of all was, _I_ fetched the Duke of Dandelion a glass of cider!" "That _was_ grand!" I said, biting my lip to keep myself from laughing. "Wasn't it!" said Bruno, very earnestly. "You know it isn't every one that's had such an honor as _that_!" This set me thinking of the various queer things we call "an honor" in this world, which, after all, haven't a bit more honor in them than what the dear little Bruno enjoyed (by the way, I hope you're beginning to like him a little, naughty as he was?) when he took the Duke of Dandelion a glass of cider. I don't know how long I might have dreamed on in this way if Bruno hadn't suddenly roused me. "Oh, come here quick!" he cried, in a state of the wildest excitement. "Catch hold of his other horn! I can't hold him more than a minute!" He was struggling desperately with a great snail, clinging to one of its horns, and nearly breaking his poor little back in his efforts to drag it over a blade of grass.