For his part, Percy Vere always was happy and, beaming back at the king, he shook his long locks out of his eye and laughed merrily at old Peer. Percy Vere always felt that his patron enjoyed his breakfast particularly if Percy opened the proceedings with a verse, so he sang, as breakfast was served, this ditty:
“Oh, muffins mellow light and clear,
Fit diet for a mountaineer;
Oh, muffins pale and yellow!
Oh, muffins sweet to sniff and eat,
How you refresh a—a—”
The poet’s merry blue eyes grew round and puzzled, as they always did when he forgot a word.
“Fellow!” chuckled the Peer, taking a sip of coffee. “Percy, my child, you are ridiculish!”
“I am ridiculish, I know it;
A young, a poor forgetful—er”
“Poet!” spluttered Peer Haps, with another chuckle.
“Thanks old Nutmeg!” sighed Percy, helping himself to another muffin. “You always know what I mean.”
“Nut Meg!” roared Peer Haps. He never got over being amused at Percy’s informal way of addressing him. “Nut Meg! Well, I’ll be grated!” And immediately he was, for at that very moment, the folding doors flew open and in rushed Abrog the prophet.
“Greater than all other Rulers in Oz, great of the greatest!” began the old man, salaaming before Peer Haps, “a great misfortune threatens, approaches, is about to take place.”
“What?” cried the Peer, choking on the last bit of his muffin. It was strange enough to have Abrog speak at all when it was not the day for prophecy, but to have him speak in this foreboding fashion was simply too terrible.