“But I do know everything I know!” persisted the little fellow. “I know ever so many things! Everything, ’cept the things I don’t know. And Sylvie knows all the rest.”
The Professor sighed, and gave it up. “Do you know what a Boojum is?”
“I know!” cried Bruno. “It’s the thing what wrenches people out of their boots!”
“He means ‘bootjack,’” Sylvie explained in a whisper.
“You ca’n’t wrench people out of boots,” the Professor mildly observed.
Bruno laughed saucily. “Oo can, though! Unless they’re welly tight in.”
“Once upon a time there was a Boojum——” the Professor began, but stopped suddenly. “I forget the rest of the Fable,” he said. “And there was a lesson to be learned from it. I’m afraid I forget that, too.”
“I’ll tell oo a Fable!” Bruno began in a great hurry. “Once there were a Locust, and a Magpie, and a Engine-driver. And the Lesson is, to learn to get up early——”
“It isn’t a bit interesting!” Sylvie said contemptuously. “You shouldn’t put the Lesson so soon.”
“When did you invent that Fable?” said the Professor. “Last week?”