“Paper for your impressions,” drawled the Clerk. “I suppose you have come to report this meeting, haven’t you?”
“No, indeed I haven’t!” said Boy in alarm.
“Dear me! What have you come for then?” asked the old Clerk in an amazed voice.
“Hush! hush!” called out some one, “His Importance is about to speak,” and the old Clerk hobbled back to his seat, looking more worried than ever, while the gentleman seated at the head of the table, and who Boy found was called The Lord High Adjudicator, arose and made the following speech:—
“Gentlemen, we are met for the purpose of discussing the grave situation caused by the extraordinary absence of His Serene Importance the Crown Prince of Zum——”
“Hereditary Grand Duke of Grumbleberry Plumbhop, Knight of the Order of——” began the King’s Exaggerator, when he was interrupted by the Public Persecutor, who inquired,—
“What’s the use of all that, when there is no one but us to hear you?”
“I must perform my official duties,” remarked the King’s Exaggerator.
“You can have no official duties now that there is no King and the Prince has disappeared,” objected the Public Persecutor.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, pray don’t argue,” interrupted the Lord High Adjudicator, “or we shall waste all day in discussion. If the King’s Exaggerator wishes to do a little exaggerating on his own account, I am sure no one will object, but he must do it outside and not here; and now, in order that you may understand it all more clearly, I will call upon His Insignificance the Court Poet to read us ‘The Cause of Dismay.’”