This time Bruno was at a loss, and left it to Sylvie.
"It's like a mangle," she said: "if things are put in, they get squoze--"
"Squeezeled!" Bruno interrupted.
"Yes." Sylvie accepted the correction, but did not attempt to pronounce
the word, which was evidently new to her. "They get--like that--and
they come out, oh, ever so long!"
"Once," Bruno began again, "Sylvie and me writed--"
"Wrote!" Sylvie whispered.
"Well, we wroted a Nursery-Song, and the Professor mangled it longer
for us. It were 'There was a little Man, And he had a little gun,
And the bullets--'"
"I know the rest," I interrupted. "But would you say it long I mean
the way that it came out of the mangle?"
"We'll get the Professor to sing it for you," said Sylvie.
"It would spoil it to say it."
"I would like to meet the Professor," I said. "And I would like to
take you all with me, to see some friends of mine, that live near here.
Would you like to come?"
"I don't think the Professor would like to come," said Sylvie.
"He's very shy. But we'd like it very much. Only we'd better not come
this size, you know."
The difficulty had occurred to me already: and I had felt that perhaps
there would be a slight awkwardness in introducing two such tiny
friends into Society. "What size will you be?" I enquired.
"We'd better come as--common children," Sylvie thoughtfully replied.
"That's the easiest size to manage."
"Could you come to-day?" I said, thinking "then we could have you at
the picnic!"
Sylvie considered a little.
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