dwindling sect which favors
putting up with what babies you may find in the cabbage patch, but all
really self-respecting people when in need of offspring arrange to be
visited by the stork."

"It is certainly a remarkable custom, but it sounds convenient if you
can manage it," said Niafer. "What I want is the baby, though, and of
course we must try to get the baby in the manner of the Philistines, if
you know that manner, for I am sure I have no wish to offend anybody."

So Manuel prepared to get a baby in the manner preferred by the
Philistines. He performed the suitable incantation, putting this and
that together in the manner formerly employed by the Thessalian witches
and sorcerers, and he cried aloud a very ancient if indecent charm from
the old Latin, saying, as Queen Stultitia had told him to say, without
any mock-modest mincing of words:

Dictum est antiqua sandalio mulier habitavit,
Quae multos pueros habuit tum ut potuit nullum
Quod faciundum erat cognoscere. Sic Domina Anser._

Then Manuel took from his breast-pocket a piece of blue chalk and five
curious objects something like small black stars. With the chalk he drew
upon the floor two parallel straight lines. Manuel walked on one of
these chalk lines very carefully, then beckoned Niafer to him. Standing
there, he put his arms about her and kissed her. Then he placed the five
black stars in a row,--

* * * * *

--and went over to the next line.

The stork having been thus properly summoned, Manuel recalled to the
bird the three wishes which had been promised when Manuel saved the
stork's life: and Manuel said that for each wish he would take a son
fetched to him by the stork in the manner of the Philistines.

The stork thought it could be arranged. "Not this morning, though, as
you suggest, for, indebted as I am to you, Dom Manuel, I am also a very
busy bird. No, I have any number of orders that were put in months
before yours, and I must follow system in my business, for you have no
notion what elaborate and exact accounts are frequently required by the
married men that receive invoices from me."

"Come now," says Manuel, "do you be accommodating, remembering how I
once saved your life from the eagle, and my wife and I will order all
our babies now, and spare you the trouble of keeping any accounts
whatever, so far as we are concerned."

"Oh, if you care to deal with such wholesale irregularity, and have