"Jeppo was woeful. For on this very night King Zooks was to give a grand dinner—not a simple dinner such as you have at home with Annie passing dishes and rattling the pie around the pantry—but a dinner for a hundred persons, generals and ambassadors, all dressed in lace and eating from gold plates. And of course everyone would look to Jeppo for something funny—maybe a new song with twenty verses and a rol-de-rol-rol chorus, which everyone could sing even if he didn't know the words. And Jeppo didn't know a single new thing. He had tried to write something, but had stuck while trying to think of a rhyme for zithern. So of course he was woeful. And King Muffin knew it.
"All this while King Muffin was thinking hard, although he didn't scowl once, for some persons can think without scowling. He wished so much to see the Princess, and yet he knew that if he climbed the tallest tree he couldn't reach her window. And even if he found a ladder long enough, as likely as not he would lean it up against the cook's window, not noticing the stockings on the curtain cord. King Muffin should have looked glum. But presently he smiled.
"'Jeppo,' he said, 'what would you say if I offered to change places with you? Here you are fretting about that song of yours and the dinner only a few hours off. You will be flogged tomorrow, sure, for being so dull tonight. Just change clothes with me and go off and enjoy yourself. Sit in a tavern! Spend these kywatskies!' Here King Muffin rattled his pocket. 'I'll take your place. I know a dozen songs, and they will tickle your king until, goodness me! he will cry into his soup.' King Muffin really didn't give King Zooks credit for ordinary manners, but then he was his mortal enemy, and prej'iced.
"Well, Jeppo was terribly woeful and that word zithern was bothering him. There was pithern and dithern and mithern. He had tried them all, but none of them seemed to mean anything. So he looked at King Muffin, who sat very straight on his horse, for he wasn't at all afraid of him, although he was a tall horse and had nostrils that got bigger and littler all the time; and back legs that twitched. Meanwhile King Muffin twirled a gold chain in his fingers. Then Jeppo looked at King Muffin's clothes and saw that they were fashionable. Then he looked at his hat and there was a yellow feather in it. And those kywatskies. King Muffin, just to tease him, twirled his moustache, as kings will.
"So the bargain was made. There was a thicket near, so dense that it would have done for taking off your clothes when you go swimming. In this thicket King Muffin and Jeppo exchanged clothes. Of course Jeppo had trouble with the buttons for he had never dressed in such fine clothes before, and many of a king's buttons are behind.
"And now, when the exchange was made, Jeppo inquired where he would find an expensive tavern with brass pull-handles on the lemonade vat, and he rode off, licking his lips and jingling his kywatskies. But King Muffin, dressed as a jester, vaulted on his horse and trotted in the direction of King Zooks's castle, which had indentings around the top like a row of teeth if every other one were pulled.
"And after a little while it became night. It is my private opinion, my dear, which I shall whisper in the middle of your ear—the outer flap being merely ornamental and for 'spection purposes—that the sun is afraid of the dark, because you never see him around after nightfall. Bless you, he goes off to bed before twilight and tucks himself to the chin before you or I would even think of lighting a candle. And, on my word, he prefers to sleep in the basement. He goes down the back stairs and cuddles behind the furnace. And he has the bad habit, mercy! of reading in bed. A good half hour after he should be sound asleep, you can see the reflection of his candle on the evening clouds."
At this point the old man paused a bit, to see if the children were still awake. Then he wiped their noses all around, not forgetting the youngest with the fat legs, and began again.
"During all this time King Zooks had been getting ready for the party, trying on shiny coats, and getting his silk stockings so that the seams at the back went straight up and didn't wind around, which is the way they naturally do unless you are particular. And he put a clean handkerchief into every pocket, in case he sneezed in a hurry—for King Zooks was a lavish dresser.
"His wife was dressing in another room, keeping three maids busy with safety pins and powder-puffs, and getting all of the snarls out of her hair. And, in still another room of the castle, his daughter was dressing. Now his wife was a nice-looking woman, like nurse, except that she wore stiff brocade and didn't jounce. But his daughter was beautiful and didn't need a powder-puff.