Simon now found himself not more than half as large as he was before. He went in with the Garuly, who had also grown smaller. Inside there was the daintiest chamber, all full of beautiful shells wrought into tiny articles of furniture. The floor was paved with shining pebbles, and the room was lit up by three fire-flies and two glow-worms.
"How could you make the place so beautiful?" cried Simon.
"The Garulies work together," said the old man, sharply.
The little man told Simon to go in through another door, but Simon was still too large for that, and so the Garuly again pounded him, crying,
"Smaller! smaller! smaller!"
Once in, Simon saw indeed the treasures of the Garuly's household. There were easy-chairs, made of the hulls of hickory-nuts; hammocks, made of the inside bark of the paw-paw; wash-bowls, curiously carved from the hulls of beech-nuts; and beautiful curtains, of the leaves of the silver poplar. The floor was paved with the seeds of the wild grape, and beautifully carpeted with the lichens from the beech and maple trees. The beds were made of a great variety of mosses, woven together with the utmost delicacy of workmanship. There was a bath-tub made of a mussel-shell, cut into beautiful cameo figures.
"How wonderful!" cried Simon, clapping his hands.
"The Garulies work together!" said the old man, more decidedly than before.
Simon noticed that his own voice was beginning to squeak like that of the old Garuly himself. But after seeing the interior of his dwelling, he would not have minded being changed into a Garuly.
The old man was now leading him out through a different entrance. Then along a path they went until they came to a fence, the rails of which seemed to Simon to be larger than logs. They crawled through the fence, and found themselves in a farm-yard. The chickens seemed to be larger than those great creatures that geologists say once lived on the earth, and that were as high as a house. Presently they came to a bee-stand. The bees seemed to Simon to be of immense size, and he was greatly afraid; but the old Garuly spoke to the fierce-looking sentinel bee that stood by the door and shook one of his antennæ in a friendly way.