“Don’t go,” begged the Prince between gulps, “I shall want two—three—several!”
Kabumpo laughed good naturedly. “This is the pleasantest thing that has happened to us. Here! Have another!”
Then both Pompa and the Elegant Elephant gasped, for out of the bubbling waves arose the most curious figure that they had ever seen—the most curious and the jolliest. He was made entirely of soup bones, and his head was a monster cabbage, with a soup bowl set jauntily on the side for a cap. For a cabbage head he sang very well and this was the song to which he kept time by waving a silver ladle:
“Ho! I am the King of the Soup Sea,
Yes, I am the King of the Deep;
My crown is a bowl and my sceptre a ladle,
I fell in the soup when I fell from the cradle,
And find it exceedingly cheap!
I stir it up nightly, and pepper it rightly—
A liquid perfection you’ll find.