"And poetry?" squeaked the Quotient, fiercely, "Don't poets have to count their feet to write poems?"
But at that juncture they were all electrified to see Avrillia stepping forward, looking so beautiful and so queenly and so transfigured by righteous indignation that even the invaders merely blinked. "Not modern poets," she said, with an icy authority that sent a hostile shiver up and down the multiplication tables. "They do not count anything—not even the cost."
It was not so much what Avrillia said, as the way she said it, and the way she looked, that cowed even the all-powerful invaders for a moment. Pirlaps, at her side, said, "Good for you, Avrillia!" under his breath; and Schlorge glared at the Fractions with triumphant scorn and continued,
"Like leaves of the forest when summer is green
Our beautiful Garden at sunset was seen;
Like leaves of the forest when autumn is flown,
You see it this morning all withered and strown."
As he finished this stanza Schlorge seemed to rise to twice his full height (indeed, he seemed to Sara for a moment almost half as tall as her waist) in his eloquent fury, as he continued:
"But we will lambast you, you straight-waisted pigs,
As sure as black's yellow and thistles is figs!
Yea, surer than squashes our vengeance we'll wreak;
If it isn't today, why, we'll do it next week!"
Sara had a distressed feeling that this was rather a weak ending, but nobody else seemed to notice it; indeed, several of the Fractions were so incensed at the bold threat that two or three of them called out, "Shoot him at sunrise!" The Greatest Common Divisor, however, merely gave him a savage and contemptuous glance over his tear-mug, as much as to say that he would annihilate him when it was quite convenient.
In a few moments they were again entirely absorbed in their drinking and carousing, and then Pirlaps cautiously touched Schlorge on the arm. "Let's have a council of war," he said, in a very low voice, drawing him a little to one side. "I have an idea. Where shall we go?"
"Better come down to the Smithy," said Schlorge. "They haven't discovered it yet."
Very quietly then, while the Fractions were busy drinking, Schlorge and Pirlaps and Avrillia and Sara and the Snimmy and the Snimmy's wife slipped out of the Garden and down the path to the Dimplesmithy. They didn't think it necessary to tell the Plynck, who was too much crushed to be of use, or the Teacup, for whom they dreaded the slightest shock. The Echo of the Plynck might have been useful, only she was still frozen into the pool.