"Of course I'll tell you," said the Dude Brownie. "It's just this way. You go to bed, pull the covers up over you, shut your eyes, fall asleep, and then—"
Alas! The sentence was never finished, for as the Brownie spoke a gong in the hallway below began to clang fearfully, and in an instant the whole Brownie troupe sprang to the banisters, slid down into the hall and rushed out into the yard. Their play time had come, and their manager had summoned them back to it. Jimmieboy followed, but he slid so fast that it made him dizzy. He thought he would never stop. Down the banisters he slid, out through the hall to the yard, over the heads of the Brownies he whizzed and landed with a thud in the soft embrace of the armchair once more, and just in time too, for hardly had he realized where he was when in walked his father and mother, and following in their train were his two baby brothers, their mouths and hands full of sweetmeats.
"Hullo," said Jimmieboy's father. "Where have you been, Jimmieboy?"
"In the Brown——" began the boy, but he stopped short. It seemed to him as if the Dude Brownie in the book tipped him a wink to be silent, and he returned the wink.
"I've been here, looking at my Brownie book," he said.
"Indeed?" said his father. "And do you never get tired of it?"
"No," said Jimmieboy quietly, "it seems to me I see something new in it every time I open it," and then in spite of the Brownie's wink he climbed out of the chair into his papa's lap and told him all that occurred, and his papa said it was truly wonderful, especially that part which told about how much could be done by an intelligent creature when fast asleep.