For a moment there was deep silence. Then spoke Caliph, patriarch of the hippopotami, in his rumbling roar, resembling that of the cataracts of the Upper Nile, within the sound of which his youth had been spent:
"Lo, Fatimah, my beloved mate, hath an infant daughter. Mother and child are doing well; therefore, rejoice."
Whereat there was such general and hearty rejoicing that all the houses of the Menial People rocked on their foundations. But when the sound of it had died away, the aged hyena could be heard snarling:
"Pooh! only one? Though my mate brought me four daughters and a son one morning as I was gnawing the leg bone of a sheep, yet I made no uproar about it."
"That is because you are a selfish, thieving, carrion-eating old hypocrite," thundered back Caliph.
Zuelma, with her bill wide open, as is her custom while listening, stood with her long neck craned over the head of the little Limping Boy, in whose hand that of the Princess—somewhat frightened by the uproar among the animals—was tightly clasped. Suddenly, Pwit-Pwit, the Sparrow gossip and news-gatherer for all the Menial People, fluttered down at her feet.
"I have been expecting you for an hour," said the ostrich. "Now, thank goodness, we shall know the truth, after all this roaring and trumpeting. How is it, Pwit-Pwit, that so much fuss is made over a single baby? Were the other eggs eaten by the crocodiles?"
"As soon as I heard the call for rejoicing," said the sparrow, "I flew at once to the Hippopotamus House; but the door was shut and no one came to let me in. But it sticks in my mind, Zuelma, that the young of the Hippopotamus are not hatched from eggs."