Very soon they were having a delightful talk about all the great personages Miss Muffet had always admired at a distance, but the Dervish had known them intimately and could tell all their weak points, which were not in the books. Indeed, Miss Muffet was surprised to find how many mistakes the books had in them, all because the persons who made them hadn't taken the trouble to talk with the Dervish. Almost all the numbers were wrong.
"There weren't forty thieves, there were only thirty-nine. I counted them myself."
"But didn't everything else happen as I was told?" asked Miss Muffet; "and didn't it come out as it is in the book?"
The Dervish admitted this, but said that that wasn't the important part: the important part was to count straight.
A remarkable discovery was that all the famous people had brothers, and the brothers were always the ones who ought to have been famous, but every one forgot about them.
"There is Aladdin, he's a greatly overrated man. I could tell you some curious things I learned about him. I know they are true, for they were told to me in confidence. People admire him because they think he is so lucky. Now if it had been his brother! He came over from China and used to sit by the day under my palm-tree talking about the chances he had just missed. They were truly marvelous. He missed more chances than Aladdin ever dreamed of, but nobody ever writes about him."
"Perhaps they don't know about him," said Miss Muffet.
"That's the injustice of it."
"Speaking of brothers, did you ever find out why it is that the third one is always the wisest? I asked one of the North Country princes about it just now, and he bowed and said he thanked me for the compliment, but he was no philosopher. It doesn't matter where it is, in the Red Fairy Book or the Green Fairy Book or any color, the third is always the charm, and it seems very much the same way in your country. The oldest brother is always vain and selfish, and when he goes into the forest, always does the very thing he was told not to. And the second brother is selfish, and stupider, for he ought to know better when his brother doesn't come back and there are so many witches around. Then it comes to the third brother, and I never expect anything of him because he is so little and his stepmother has kept him back, but he turns out splendid. Did you ever meditate on that, Mr. Dervish?"
The Dervish said that he had meditated on it for a great many years, and had at last come to the conclusion that it was a law of nature.