led Tiki-pu in. And outside the little candle-end sat and guttered by itself,
till the wick fell overboard, and the flame kicked itself out, leaving the
studio in darkness and solitude to wait for the growings of another dawn.

It was full day before Tiki-pu re- appeared; he came running down the green
path in great haste, jumped out of the frame on to the studio floor, and began
tidying up his own messes of the night and the apprentices' of the previous
day. Only just in time did he have things ready by the hour when his master
and the others returned to their work.

All that day they kept scratching their left ears, and could not think why;
but Tiki-pu knew, for he was saying over to himself all the things that
Wio-wani, the great painter, had been saying about them and their precious
productions. And as he ground their colours for them and washed their brushes,
and filled his famished little body with the breadcrumbs they threw away,
little they guessed from what an immeasurable distance he looked down upon
them all, and had Wio-wani's word for it tickling his right ear all the day
long.

Now before long Tiki-pu's master noticed a change in him; and though he
bullied him, and thrashed him, and did all that a careful master should do, he
could not get the change out of him. So in a short while he grew suspicious.
"What is the boy up to?" he wondered. "I have my eye on him all day: it must
be at night that he gets into mischief."

It did not take Tiki-pu's master a night's watching to find that something
surreptitious was certainly going on. When it was dark he took up his post
outside the studio, to see whether by any chance Tiki-pu had some way of
getting out; and before long he saw a faint light showing through the window.
So he came and thrust his finger softly through one of the panes, and put his