"Thank you, sir."
"You are very welcome," murmured Jimmieboy, "but I don't know what for. I didn't know that I had done anything for you to thank me for."
"Yes, indeed, you have," returned the little old man, letting go of Jimmieboy's hand, and dancing a lively jig upon the broad marble top of the bureau. "You have done two things. You have released me from a long imprisonment, for one thing, and for another you have looked at me in a manner which proves that you think me a most interesting person. I like freedom better than anything in the world, and next to that I like being an interesting person."
"And were you really shut up in that little drawer so that you couldn't get out?" asked Jimmieboy, beginning to feel very glad that fortune had led him that way, and so enabled him to help the little old man out of his trouble.
"Yes," answered the other. "I've been locked up in that drawer there for nearly fifty years."
"Fifty years!" ejaculated Jimmieboy. "Why, that's longer than I have lived."
"No, not quite," said the little old man. "They were dream years, and a dream year isn't much longer than a day of your time; but they have seemed real years to me, and I am just as grateful to you for unlocking the drawer and letting me out as I should have been had the years been three hundred and sixty-five days long each."
"Why should any one want to lock you up in a drawer?" asked Jimmieboy. "Were you naughty?"
"No," said the old man. "I never did a naughty thing in all my life, but they locked me up just the same—just as if I had been a poor little canary-bird."
"Who did it?" queried Jimmieboy. "They must have been very wicked people to treat you that way."