Now you are puzzled. Nobody had been to your bed and pulled out your arms or your legs as you lay asleep. Nobody had pieced a bit on at the elbow or the knee, as people slip in a new leaf to a table when there is going to be a larger party than usual at dinner. How was it, then, that the sleeves no longer came down to your wrists, or that the body only reached your knees? Nothing grows larger without being added to, any more than anything gets smaller without having lost something; you may lay that down as a rule, once for all. If, therefore, nothing was added to you from without, something must have been added to you from within. Some sly goblin, as it were, must have been cramming into your frame whatever increase it has made in arms, legs, or anything else. And who, do you think, this sly goblin is?

Why, my dear, it is _yourself!_

Ay! Bethink you, now, of all the bread-and-butter, and bonbons, and gingerbread, and cakes, and sweetmeats, and even soup and plain food (the soup and plain food being the most useful of all) which you have been sending, day by day, for some time past, down what we used to call "the red lane," into the little gulf below. What do you think became of them when they got there? Well, they set to work at once, without asking your leave, to transform themselves into something else; and gliding cunningly into all the holes and corners of your body, became there, each as best he might, bones, flesh, blood, etc., etc. Touch yourself where you will, it is upon these things you lay your hand, though, of course, without recognizing them, for the transformation is perfect and complete. And it is the same with everybody.

Look at your little pink nails, which push out further and further every morning; examine the tips of your beautiful fair hair, which gets longer and longer by degrees; coming out from your head as grass springs up from the earth; feel the firm corners of your second teeth, which are gradually succeeding those which came to you in infancy; you have _eaten_ all these things, and that no long time ago.

Nor are you children the only creatures who are busy in this way. There is your kitten, for instance, who a few months ago was only a tiny bit of fur, but is now turning gradually into a grown-up cat. It is her daily food which is daily becoming a cat inside her--her saucers of milk now, and very soon her mice, all serve to the same end.

The large ox, too, of whom you are so much afraid, because you cannot as yet be persuaded what a good-natured beast he really is, and how unlikely to do any harm to children who do none to him--that large ox began life as a small calf, and it is the grass which he has been eating for some time past which has transformed him into the huge mass of flesh you now see, and which by-and-by will be eaten by man, to become man's flesh in the same manner.