no favorite of
the Boolooroo, either, so please stay quietly in this room until my
return."

The Majordomo found the Boolooroo in a bad temper. He had finished his
dinner, where his six daughters had bitterly denounced Trot all through
the meal and implored their father to invent some new and terrible
punishment for her. Also, his wife, the Queen, had made him angry by
begging for gold to buy ribbons with. Then, when he had retired to his
own private room, he decided to send for the umbrella he had stolen
from Button-Bright and test its magic powers. But the umbrella, in his
hands, proved just as common as any other umbrella might be. He opened
it and closed it, and turned it this way and that, commanding it to do
all sorts of things, but of course the Magic Umbrella would obey no one
but a member of the family that rightfully owned it. At last the
Boolooroo threw it down and stamped upon it and then kicked it into a
corner, where it rolled underneath a cabinet. Then he sent for
Ghip-Ghisizzle.

"Do you know how to work that Magic Umbrella?" he asked the Majordomo.

"No, your Majesty, I do not," was the reply.

"Well, find out. Make the Whiteskins tell you so that I can use it for
my own amusement."

"I'll do my best, your Majesty," said Ghip-Ghisizzle.

"You'll do more than that, or I'll have you patched!" roared the angry
Boolooroo. "And don't waste any time, either, for as soon as we find
out the secret of the umbrella I'm going to have the three strangers
marched through the Arch of Phinis, and that will be the end of them."

"You can't do that, your Majesty," said the Majordomo.

"Why can't I?"

"They haven't lived six hundred years yet, and only those who have
lived that length of time are allowed to march through the Arch of
Phinis into the Great Blue Grotto."

The King looked at him with a sneer. "Has anyone ever come out of that
Arch alive?" he asked.

"No," said Ghip-ghisizzle, "but no one has ever gone into the Blue
Grotto until his allotted time was up."

"Well, I'm going to try the experiment," declared the Boolooroo. "I
shall march these three strangers through the Arch, and if by chance
they come out alive, I'll do a new sort of patching--I'll chop off
their heads and mix 'em up, putting the wrong head on each of 'em. Ha,
ha! Won't it be funny to see the old Moonface's head on the little
girl? Ho, ho! I really hope they'll come out of the Great Blue Grotto
alive!"

"I also hope they will