I tried to calculate what this would come to, but it was too hard for me. Please make it out for me, dear Child who reads this! “But you didn’t leave the poor thing so short as that, did you?” “Well, no. Sylvie and me took it back again and we got it stretched to—to—how much was it, Sylvie?” “Two times and a half, and a little bit more,” said Sylvie. “It wouldn’t like that better than the other way, I’m afraid?” “Oh, but it did though!” Bruno put in eagerly. “It _were_ proud of its new tail! Oo never saw a Crocodile so proud! Why, it could go round and walk on the top of its tail, and along its back, all the way to its head!” [Illustration: A CHANGED CROCODILE] “Not _quite_ all the way,” said Sylvie. “It couldn’t, you know.” “Ah, but it _did_, once!” Bruno cried triumphantly. “Oo weren’t looking—but _I_ watched it. And it walked on tipplety-toe, so as it wouldn’t wake itself, ’cause it thought it were asleep. And it got both its paws on its tail. And it walked and it walked all the way along its back. And it walked and it walked on its forehead. And it walked a tiny little way down its nose! There now!” This was a good deal worse than the last puzzle. Please, dear Child, help again! “I don’t believe no Crocodile never walked along its own forehead!” Sylvie cried, too much excited by the controversy to limit the number of her negatives. “Oo don’t know the _reason_ why it did it!” Bruno scornfully retorted. “It had a welly good reason. I _heerd_ it say ‘Why _shouldn’t_ I walk on my own forehead?’ So a course it _did_, oo know!” “If _that’s_ a good reason, Bruno,” I said, “why shouldn’t _you_ get up that tree?” “_Shall_, in a minute,” said Bruno: “soon as we’ve done talking. Only two peoples _ca’n’t_ talk comfably togevver, when one’s getting up a tree, and the other isn’t!” It appeared to me that a conversation would scarcely be ‘comfable’ while trees were being climbed, even if _both_ the ‘peoples’ were doing it: but it was evidently dangerous to oppose any theory of Bruno’s; so I thought it best to let the question drop, and to ask for an account of the machine that made things _longer_. This time Bruno was at a loss, and left it to Sylvie. “It’s like a mangle,” she said: “if things are put in, they get squoze——” “Squeezeled!” Bruno interrupted. “Yes.” Sylvie accepted the correction, but did not attempt to pronounce the word, which was evidently new to her. “They get—like that—and they come out, oh, ever so long!” “Once,” Bruno began again, “Sylvie and me writed——” “Wrote!” Sylvie whispered. “Well, we _wroted_ a Nursery-Song, and the Professor mangled it longer for us. It were ‘_There was a little Man, And he had a little gun, And the bullets——_’” “I know the rest,” I interrupted. “But would you say it _long_—I mean the way that it came _out_ of the mangle?” “We’ll get the Professor to _sing_ it for you,” said Sylvie. “It would spoil it to _say_ it.”