Sehlorge!"
Schlorge, overcome with pride and embarrassment, rose from his seat.
He started around the pool with much dignity; then his composure
suddenly gave way. "Where's the stump?" he began to shout wildly.
"Where's the--where's the--"
"There, there, Schlorge, you're walking right to it," said Pirlaps,
soothingly, hastening after him and laying a hand upon his arm. Then,
as Schlorge scrambled upon it, Pirlaps raised his hand to command
attention.
"Schlorge wishes me to state," he said, in his pleasant, clear voice,
"that the gesture he will now make goes with the first line of his
address. He cannot make it at that point because his hands will be
already arranged. But I will request that you all observe it carefully,
and hold it in mind until it is needed."
Thereupon Schlorge made a large, deliberate, comprehensive gesture. It
included the pool, the Gugollaph-tree, the prose-bush--not only the
whole Garden, in fact, but the lovely amphitheatre beyond it. Moreover,
it seemed to Sara to include even more distant things; the Rainbow
Vale and the Butterfly Country, and the colony where lived the
relations of Pirlaps, and the Laughter Mountain and Avrillia's house
and the magic toy City of Zinariola.
At last, having concluded his gesture, Schlorge arranged his hands and
began in a loud voice:
"A little girl's mind is a place like this--
At least, that of one little dear girl is:
Full of quaint little thoughts made of sugar and spice,
And queer little notions like little white mice.
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