“Many thanks,” replied the vizier bowing. “If I may be permitted to say so, you are almost better looking as a stork than a Caliph. But come, let us join our companions and find out if we really can understand stork language.”
In the meantime the other stork, which had just alighted, was pluming its feathers as it approached the first stork, so the two newly-made birds hastened to come up to them, and to their astonishment overheard the following extraordinary conversation.
“Good-morning, Mrs. Long-legs, how early you are up.”
“Ah, my dear Clapperbill! I just came out to get a snack; anything I can offer you, my dear, in the shape of a bit of lizard or a tit-bit of frog?”
“Thanks all the same, but I’ve really no appetite—I came here for quite a different reason—I have to dance to-day before my father’s guests, and I came here to practise a little by myself.”
With these words the young stork began to twist and turn about in the most ridiculous attitudes imaginable. The Caliph and Mansor stared at her in surprise, but when she stood on one foot, stretched out her wings and struck an attitude of supposed grace, she looked so absurd that they could no longer contain themselves, but burst out into hearty and prolonged laughter. It was some time before they could control themselves, but at length the Caliph stopped laughing, and said: “Oh! what a joke that was—I would not have missed it for any money. What a pity our laughter frightened the silly things away; they might otherwise have sung to us also.”
But suddenly the vizier remembered that they had been forbidden to laugh during the time of their transformation. He at once reminded the Caliph of this. “Mecca and Medina,” cried he, “it would be a bad joke indeed if we had to remain storks for the rest of our lives. See if you can remember the magic word, for upon my soul, I seem to have forgotten it.”
“We must bow three times towards the east and say ‘Mu-Mu-Mu—’”
No further could they get. They bowed and bowed until their beaks touched the ground, but try as they would they could not remember the magic word, and the unfortunate Caliph and his vizier were doomed to remain two storks.