“Oh, then they get smaller and have no sense.” (He said they, not we, I noticed.)
“I see. Well now, you go to school, don't you?” He nodded. “What for? Isn't that likely to be bad for you?” (I hardly liked to say “make you burst.”)
“No,” he said; “you see, it's to learn our job. We have to be told what used to go on, so as we can put things right, or keep them right. And the owls, you see, they remember a long way back, but they don't know any more than we do about the swell things.”
I was very shy about putting the next question I had in mind, but I felt I must. “Now do you know how old you are, or how long it takes you to grow up, or how—how long you go on when you are grown up!”
He pressed his hands to his head, and I was dreadfully afraid for the moment that it might be swelling and would burst; but it was not so bad as that. After a few seconds he looked up and said:
“I think it's seven times seven moons since I went to school and seven times seven times seven moons before I grow up; and the rest is no good asking. But it's all right”; upon which he smiled.
And this, I may say, was the most part of what I ventured to ask any of them about themselves. But at other times I gathered that as long as they “did their job” nothing could injure them; and they were regularly measured—all of them—to see if they were getting smaller, and a careful record kept. But if anyone lost as much as a quarter of his height, he was doomed, and he crept off out of the settlement. Whether such a one ever came back I could not be sure; most of the failures (and they were not common) went and lived in hollow trees or by brooks, and were happy enough, but in a feeble way, not remembering much, nor able to make anything; and it was supposed that very slowly they shrunk to the size of a pin's point, and probably to nothing. All the same, it was believed that they could recover. Many other things that you would have asked, I did not, being anxious to avoid giving trouble.
But this time, anyhow, I felt I had catechized Slim long enough, so I broke off and said:
“What can Wag be doing all this while?”
“There's no knowing,” said Slim. “But he's very quiet for him; either he's doing something awful, or he's asleep.”