“You have to when you don't have anybody but yourself to play with, or it isn't real,” replied the child with unconscious pathos. “Now I'm going to eat this all up!”
“Don't swallow it,” he warned. “You just chew it. It's gum.”
“Um-m-m!” mumbled the Tiger appreciatively. “I like it. I like you. When do you have to go back to your cloud?” She looked up apprehensively at that fleecy domicile which was moving rapidly away.
“Oh, any time. No, I'll tell you,” he added confidentially; “I didn't really come from the cloud. I came from that roof up there.”
“How?”
“Down a rope.”
“Did you? I like that almost as well. Where did you get the rope?”
“It was over the fire escape. I live on the top floor there.”
“S'posen you'd fall right down between the two houses,” surmised the little Tiger.
“Then I'd be killed.” This, as a matter of fact, was highly probable. But Carlo, like most of the highland Italians, was strong, supple, and daring; ingenious, too, for he had made loops in his rope to help him climb up again.