re that this time he was right.

"Very much like that," Jimmieboy replied, smothering his mirth for fear
of offending the Quill, though if you will refer to the drawing you will
see that the Quill was quite as inaccurate in his picture of the monkey
as he was with his zebras.

"I thought I'd get you to admit that that was a good monkey," observed
the Quill, regarding his work with pride. "I've seen a good many keys,
and, of course, when you said the creature had two legs, two arms, a
tail, and a head, I knew that he was nothing but a key to whom had been
given those precious gifts of nature. To draw a key is easy, and to
provide it with the other features was not hard."

Jimmieboy was silent. He was too full of laughter even to open his
mouth, and so he kept it tightly closed.

"What'll I draw next?" asked the Quill, after a minute or two of
silence.

"Can you do mountains?" queried Jimmieboy.

"What are they?" asked the Quill.

"They're great big rocks that go up in the air and have trees on 'em,"
explained Jimmieboy.

The Quill looked puzzled, and then he glanced reproachfully at
Jimmieboy.

"I think you are making fun of me," he said, solemnly.

"No, I'm not," said Jimmieboy. "Why should you think such a thing as
that?"

"Well, I know some things, and what I know makes me believe what I
think. I think you are making fun of me when you talk of big rocks going
up in the air with trees on 'em. Rocks are too heavy to go up in the air
even when they haven't trees on 'em, and I don't think it's very nice of
you to try to fool me the way you have."

"I don't mean like a balloon," Jimmieboy hastened to explain. "It's a
big rock that sits on the ground and reaches up into the air and has
trees on it."

"I don't believe there ever was such a thing," returned the offended
Quill. "Here's what one would look like if it could ever be," he added,
sketching the following:

[Illustration: MOUNTAIN.]

"What on earth!" ejaculated Jimmieboy.

"What? Why, a mountain--that's what!" retorted the Quill. "Don't you
see, my dear boy, you've just proved you were trying to fool me. I've
put down the thing you said a mountain was, and you as much as say
yourself that it can't be."

"But--how do you make it out? That's what I can't see," remonstrated
Jimmieboy.

"It's perfectly simple," said the Quill. "You said a mountain was a
rock; there's the rock in the picture. You said it had trees on it;
those two things that loo