Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno.djvu/255

XVI] "But there's more of a dog, isn't there, Mister Sir?" Bruno appealed to me. "You wouldn't like to have a dog if it hadn't got nuffin but a head and a tail?"

I admitted that a dog of that kind would be uninteresting.

"There isn't such a dog as that," Sylvie thoughtfully remarked.

"But there would be," cried Bruno, "if the Professor shortened it up for us!"

"Shortened it up?" I said. "That's something new. How does he do it?"

"He's got a curious machine——" Sylvie was beginning to explain.

"A welly curious machine," Bruno broke in, not at all willing to have the story thus taken out of his mouth, "and if oo puts in——somefinoruvver——at one end, oo know——and he turns the handle——and it comes out at the uvver end, oh, ever so short!"

"As short as short!" Sylvie echoed.

"And one day——when we was in Outland, oo know——before we came to Fairyland——me and Sylvie took him a big Crocodile. And he shortened it up for us. And it did look so

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