"Your Excellency sent for me?" asked Panapee bowing deeply.
"Yes," shrilled Mustafa, pushing back his turban and pointing a trembling finger at Tazzywaller. "He says there are no more lions in Mudge and I, Mustafa, must have another lion."
"Your Highness knows best," murmured Panapee, rolling up his eyes and putting his finger tips together.
"You know as well as I that there are no more lions in Mudge," cried Tazzywaller, springing to his feet and shaking his fist under Panapee's nose.
"There are other countries besides Mudge," said Panapee loftily. "Now I presume your Highness was thinking of an odd, unusual sort of lion; something bigger and better than the kind now fighting amiably in the royal reservation?"
"How well you understand me," sighed Mustafa, sinking back among his cushions. "That's just what I do want, Panny—a strange, rare, royal sort of lion; one who will keep the rest in order and add to the honor and dignity of our court."
"I have a book," confided Panapee, placing his finger mysteriously beside his nose, "a book of lions, and if your Highness will but excuse me I will fetch it from my tent."
"Are you going to get a lion out of a book?" asked Mixtuppa sleepily. "How stupid of Tazzywaller not to have thought of that."
Now, while Panapee goes for his book, I must tell you that Mudge is a blue and barbarous country in the southwestern part of the Munchkin country of Oz. It is a hot, dry, desert land and the Mudgers themselves are a short-tempered, long-legged tribe of troublemakers. They live in blue, striped tents and, if it were not for their bright blue whiskers, you would take them for Arabs, as they wear sweeping white robes and turbans to protect themselves from the heat and desert sands.
In olden Oz times the Mudgers used to descend upon the helpless little countries that surrounded them and carry off everything of value. But Glinda, the good sorceress of Oz, put a stop to that. One night, flying over Mudge in her swan chariot, she had dropped a blue book and it had fallen on the oldest Mudger in the kingdom, hitting him a terrible blow on the nose. It had been a blow to them all, for in gold letters on the first page of the book stood this sentence: