"Give me that letter, Doctor. We'll show him."
Then going outside, he called for Quip the Carrier.
"Quip," said Speedy, "take this letter to the Azores as fast as you can. There you'll just catch the White Tailed Carolina Warblers about to make their summer crossing to the United States. Give it to them and tell them to get the answer back here, as quick as they know how."
In a flash Quip was gone, seaward.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the King brought that letter to the Doctor. And when His Majesty woke up in the morning and came down to breakfast there was the answer to it lying beside his plate!
PART II
[CHAPTER I]
A MOST UNUSUAL POST OFFICE
Nobody thought, not even John Dolittle himself, when the Swallow Mail was first started, what a tremendous system it would finally grow into and what a lot of happenings and ideas would come about through it.