was dreadfully tiny and--"

"Why, please, did it get wetter and wetter?"

"THAT," continued the man who earned his living in His Majesty's
Stationery Office by day, and by night justified his existence
offering the raw material of epics unto little children, "that was the
extraordinary part of it. For no one could discover. The man stroked
his beard and looked about him, the squirrel shook its bushy tail, the
rabbit lifted its upper lip and thrust its teeth out, and the mouse
jerked its head from side to side until its whiskers grew longer and
sharper than ever--but none of them could discover why the island got
wetter and wetter and wetter--"

"Perhaps it just rained like here."

"For the sky was always blue, it never rained, and there was so little
dew at night that no one even mentioned it. Yet the tiny island got
wetter every day, till it finally got so wet that the very floor of
the man's hut turned spongy and splashed every time the man went to
look out of the window at the view. And at last he got so frightened
that he stayed indoors altogether, put on both his coats at once, and
told stories to the mouse and squirrel about a country that was always
dry--"

"Didn't the rabbit know anything?"

"For all this time the rabbit was too terrified to come out of its
hole at all. The increasing size of its front teeth added to its
uneasiness, for they thrust out so far that they hid the view and made