"Then tell this young man's ear, sirrah, how it comes that we get pleasure out of a garden in which nothing grows."
"If I must—I suppose I must," growled the laureate; and then he recited:
"The plan is thus, O little wit,
You'll see it in a minute;
We get our pleasures out of it,
Because there's none within it."
"That is very poor poetry, Laury!" snapped the king.
"If you don't like it, don't take it," retorted the laureate. "I'm tired of this business, anyhow."
"And what, pray," cried the king, striding angrily forward to the mutinous poet, "what are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to get up a revolution," retorted the laureate, shaking his quill pen fiercely at the king. "If I go to the people to-morrow, and promise not to write any more poetry, they'll all be so grateful they'll make me king, and set you to work wheeling coal in the mines for the mortals."
The king's face grew so dark with anger as the laureate spoke that Jimmieboy's eye could hardly see two inches before itself, and in haste the little fellow withdrew it from the scene. What happened next he never knew, but that missiles were thrown by the quarreling king and poet he was certain, for there was a tremendous shout, and something just tipped the end of his ear and went whizzing by, and rubbing his eyes, the boy looked about him, and discovered that he was still lying face downward upon the flat rock, but it was no longer transparent.
Off in the bushes directly back of him was his father, looking for a tennis ball. This, some people say, is the object that whizzed past Jimmieboy's ear, but to this day the little fellow believes that it was nothing less than the king's crown, which that worthy monarch had hurled at the laureate, that did this.