"How can I dream when I awake am?" he said. "Py jolly, it seems real like!"
"What's real like, you old chunk?" demanded Roger.
"Seeing you and Jimmy Blazes," was the answer. "Of a dream I know it iss! Yet I am not asleep! Of a queerness it is!"
"Of course it isn't a dream! We're as real as yourself!" laughed Jimmy. "Come out of the gas and tell us where Bob is!"
It took some little time to convince Iggy that it was not all a dream, but when he had shaken hands with them and they had clapped him most heartily on the back, he exclaimed:
"Oh, of such gladness am I! If only Bob was here now—and Franz, too, then would be the five Brudders ag'in!"
"What! isn't Bob here?" cried Jimmy.
Iggy shook his head.
"I see him not when we a big fight had," he explained. "Dot was after you two go away. First we was of a five, den it was of a fourness we was. You go and it was of a twoness—Bob and me. And den of Bob, he go away some place I know not. I am of a oneness, and what you call—er—by myselfness——"
"You mean lonesomeness," suggested Roger.