“Pretty often,” admitted Percy Vere apologetically. “You see, I am a poet. And I know who you are now. You’re Princess Dorothy herself!” He smiled so charmingly as he said this that Dorothy could not help smiling back.
“I’ve read all about you in Peer Haps’ history books,” confided Percy triumphantly. “Shall I address you as Princess?” As he asked this question the troubled expression returned to his eyes. “You haven’t seen a Princess anywhere around here have you?” he added anxiously. Dorothy shook her head and Toto began sniffing under all the bushes as if he expected to find a Princess in any one of them.
“A little Princess,
Passing fair,
With rosy cheeks
And yellow—yellow—”
“Hair,” put in Dorothy quickly. “Who is she? Who are you and how did she get lost? Let’s sit down and then you can tell me all about it.”
“He’s exactly like a puzzle,” thought Dorothy, with an amused little sniff. So Percy Vere sat down beside her under a spreading jelly tree and as quickly as he could he told of the strange happenings in Perhaps City, of the prophecy about the monster, of the strange conduct of old Abrog, the Prophet, and finally of the disappearance of both the Princess and the Prophet.
Percy himself had fallen down the steep craggy sides of Maybe Mountain, arriving in a scratched and bruised heap at the bottom. All morning he had been wandering through the fields and lanes of the Winkle land and Dorothy was the first person he had encountered.
“Well, I think you were just splendid,” breathed the little girl, as the Forgetful Poet finished his story. Percy had tried to gloss over the young men’s refusal to go in search of the Princess, but Dorothy had guessed quite correctly what had happened.
“I’ll bet that old prophet carried her off himself,” she declared positively.
“I think so two,
I think so three,
I think so four,
Where can they—?”