We put away the "Handbook" and made the room dark again and were
arguing over all the exciting places in the Bottle Man's story, when
Greg spoke up suddenly from the corner where we'd almost forgotten
him.

"If _I_ found a thing like those mer-persons," he said drowsily, "I
wouldn't let it bite me. I'd keep it in the bath-tub and teach it
how to do things."

"Like your precious toad, I suppose," said Jerry. "Don't be
idiotic."

So we all went to bed, and I, for one, dreamed about all kinds of
glittering treasures and heaps of jewels each as big as your hat,
and of our nice old Bottle Man, with his long white beard flowing in
the wind.

* * * * *

And now comes the perfectly awful part.




CHAPTER VII


I must say at the beginning that it was all my fault. Jerry says
that it was just as much his, but it wasn't, because I'm the oldest