'Menin!' said the Foreign Doggerel.
'Atub!' said the First Lord of the Seesaw.
'Gyp is my nickname,' remarked the Prime Maniac, 'because the verse had not feet enough to go all round. Did you ever hear anything like this before?'
'I fancied at one moment that I had; but now I don't know,' Yellow-cap answered.
'There is only one inconvenience about it,' observed Ruba.
'We must always speak in order,' added Dubb.
'On pain of spoiling our metre,' put in Dubsix.
'And our rhyme,' continued Menin.
'Except Gyp,' added Atub, 'who can talk when he likes, and that is his chief advantage.'
'It is an advantage in more ways than one,' Gyp remarked. 'Not only can I talk when I like, but none of the others can say anything unless all the rest are willing; because his speaking makes it necessary that all the rest should have something to say, and that Ruba should begin. The only laws that we recognise are metrical laws, and they, as you know, are the strictest in the world.'