Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/413

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
XXIII]
THE PIG-TALE.
375

The Other Professor caught the word. "And I hope you're enjoying yourself, little Man?" he enquired.

Bruno's look of horror quite startled him. "No, indeed I aren't!" he said.

The Other Professor looked thoroughly puzzled. "Well, well!" he said. "Try some cowslip wine!" And he filled a glass and handed it to Bruno. "Drink this, my dear, and you'll be quite another man!"

"Who shall I be?" said Bruno, pausing in the act of putting it to his lips.

"Don't ask so many questions!" Sylvie interposed, anxious to save the poor old man from further bewilderment. "Suppose we get the Professor to tell us a story."

Bruno adopted the idea with enthusiasm. "Please do!" he cried eagerly. "Sumfin about tigers——and bumble-bees——and robin-redbreasts, oo knows!"

"Why should you always have live things in stories?" said the Professor. "Why don't you have events, or circumstances?"

"Oh, please invent a story like that!" cried Bruno.