Strange Happenings in Perhaps City
On the same bright morning that Grampa and Tatters started from Ragbad,
the Peer of Perhaps City sat cozily breakfasting with Percy Vere. Percy
was a poet and attended to all the guess work in Perhaps City. True he
was a terribly forgetful poet, but he did the best he could and was a
prime favorite with the old mountain monarch. Perhaps City itself is a
tall, towered city of gold set high in the Maybe Mountains of Oz. So
steep and craggy are its peaks that none of the dwellers in the city
ever descend into the valleys below. Indeed there is little need of it,
for life in Perhaps City, owing to the jolly nature and good management
of old Peer Haps, is so delightfully entertaining that the people have
no desire to leave. The Happsies themselves are of the light-hearted and
old-fashioned race of Winkies, who in olden Oz times, settled all the
countries of the East. The only one who ever left the city at all was
Abrog, the High Sky prophet of the realm, and to his goings and comings
no one paid much attention, for he was a queer, silent old man, who
spoke but once a year and only then to prophesy as to the weather, crops
and important events that would take place in the town.
So far these events had all been happy and fortunate ones, and on this
sunshiny morning, old Peer Haps, buttering his muffins in his cozy
breakfast room, felt so well pleased and content with his lot that he
fairly beamed upon Percy Vere.
For his part, Percy Vere always was happy and, beaming back at the king,
he shook his long locks out of his eye and laughed merrily at old Peer.
Percy Vere always felt that his patron enjoyed his breakfast
particularly if Percy opened the proceedings with a verse, so he sang,
as breakfast was served, this ditty:
“Oh, muffins mellow light and clear,
Fit diet for a mountaineer;
Oh, muffins pale and yellow!
Oh, muffins sweet to sniff and eat,
How you refresh a—a—”
The poet’s merry blue eyes grew round and puzzled, as they always did
when he forgot a word.
“Fellow!” chuckled the Peer, taking a sip of coffee. “Percy, my child,
you are ridiculish!”
“I am ridiculish, I know it;
A young, a poor forgetful—er”
“Poet!” spluttered Peer Haps, with another chuckle.
“Thanks old Nutmeg!” sighed Percy, helping himself to another muffin.
“You always know what I mean.”
“_Nut_ Meg!” roared Peer Haps. He never got over being amused at
Percy’s informal way of addressing him. “_Nut_ Meg! Well, I’ll be
grated!” And immediately he was, for at that very moment, the folding
doors flew open and in rushed Abrog the prophet.
“Greater than all other Rulers in Oz, great of the greatest!” began the
old man, salaaming before Peer Haps, “a great misfortune threatens,
approaches, is about to take place.”
“What?” cried the Peer, choking on the last bit of his muffin. It was
strange enough to have Abrog speak at all when it was not the day for
prophecy, but to have him speak in this foreboding fashion was simply
too terrible.
“Speak out! Speak up!” cried the Forgetful Poet, leaping to his feet:
“Speak out, speak up
And then get hence,
We cannot stand this dire—
this dire, this dire—”
“Suspense,” finished Peer Haps automatically. “Yes, speak up, fellow!”
he cried anxiously.
“In four days, a monster will marry the Princess!” wailed Abrog,
pulling his peaked cap down over his eyes. “In four days, four days,
four days!” And having said this, he began to gallop ’round the
breakfast table, Peer Haps and the Forgetful Poet right after him. You,
yourself, can imagine the effect of such a message on the merry old Peer
of Perhaps City. Why, he prized the little Princess above all his
possessions, yes, even above his yellow hen who was a brick layer and
laid gold bricks instead of eggs. Indeed, she had done more than anyone
else to lay the foundation of his fortune.
“What kind of a m-monster?” stuttered the Forgetful Poet, waving his
muffin.
“Where is my daughter now?” demanded Peer Haps, seizing Abrog by the
whiskers, for there seemed no other way of stopping him. Abrog waved
feebly toward the window and, rushing across the room, the Peer and the
poet stared out into the garden where the sweetest little Princess in
all the countries of the East was gathering roses. She waved gaily to
the two in the window, and, with a shudder, Peer Haps turned back to
Abrog.
“Let me see the prophecy,” he demanded, holding out his hand. Abrog
produced a crumpled parchment and after one glance the old Peer covered
his face and sank groaning into his enormous arm chair. The Forgetful
Poet had read over his shoulder and instantly burst into all the
melancholy poems he knew. “Oh, hush!” begged the old monarch at last,
“and you,” he waved wildly at the prophet, “can you do nothing but run
’round that table like a merry-go-round goat?”
“I could marry the Princess myself,” rasped Abrog, coming to a sudden
standstill before the Peer. “If she were already married to me, a
monster could not marry her,” he leered triumphantly.
“To _you_!” shrieked Percy Vere, crushing his muffin to a pulp.
“You weazened, wild, old, whiskered dunce,
Be off! Be gone! Get out, at—at—at—at—”
Percy began hopping about on one foot groaning, “What’s the word, what’s
the word?”
“Once!” finished Peer Haps, mopping his forehead and glaring at Abrog,
for he was stunned at the old man’s suggestion. “It wouldn’t do at all,”
he muttered gloomily. “Why, you’re a thousand years old if you’re a day,
and she’s the only daughter I’ve got.”
“Well, you won’t have her long,” sneered Abrog, gathering his robe about
him. His black eyes gleamed wickedly from beneath their bushy brows. He
was furiously angry, but quickly hiding his feelings he began to move
slowly toward the door. Halfway there he paused. “Since you refuse my
first solution of the difficulty, I will endeavor to think of another
one. I used to know a little magic,” he wheezed craftily. “I will retire
to my tower to think.”
Peer Haps nodded absently. He was too dazed to think himself and could
only mutter over and over, “A monster! A monster! My daughter! A
monster!”
“The fellow’s a fool!” choked Percy Vere. “He’s as full of ideas as a
dish pan. Why he’s a monster himself!”
“But there’s something in what he says,” groaned the old Peer unhappily.
“If my daughter were already married when this monster came, he could
not carry her off. I have it! Percy, we’ll marry the Princess at once,
to the likeliest lad in Perhaps City.”
“To me!” cried the Forgetful Poet, tossing back his long locks and
sticking out his chest complacently.
“Well—er,” the old monarch looked a trifle embarrassed, “you’re hardly
the man to marry and settle down to a humdrum royal existence. I was
thinking of young Perix.”
“You’re right,” agreed Percy, mollified at once. “Marriage would
interfere with my career, O Peer. Shall I fetch our pretty little
Princess?”
“Yes, call her at once,” begged Peer Haps, clasping and unclasping his
hands, “but don’t frighten her, Percy my boy, no talk of marriage or
monsters!” Percy felt that the only thing he could do, under the
circumstances, was to lapse into verse.
“I go, I go, on heel and toe
To fetch the sweetest girl I know,
The Princess of Perhaps City,
As sweet as sugar full of tea!”
caroled the Forgetful Poet, bounding through the door into the garden.
Peer Haps smiled faintly, then remembering the monster, frowned and
began drumming nervously on the arm of his chair. He did not even look
up when the yellow hen hopped into the room, and, with a self-conscious
cluck, laid a gold brick on the mantel.
“What’s the matter?” asked the hen sulkily.
“Everything!” groaned Peer Haps, straining his eyes for the first sign
of Percy and the Princess. “Everything!” At that instant Percy rushed
back.
“The Princess is lost, gone, mislaid!” cried the Forgetful Poet,
crossing his eyes in his extreme agitation.
“You speak as if she were an egg,” clucked the yellow hen, but no one
paid any attention to her and in a huff the spoiled creature flew out
the window and dropped a gold brick on the head of the chief gardener.
But no one, except the chief gardener, paid any attention to this
either, for Peer Haps had raised such a clamor over the disappearance of
his daughter that the whole castle was in an uproar. Indeed in five
minutes more every woman, man and child in Perhaps City had joined in
the search for the missing Princess. After they had searched high and
low, and everywhere else for that matter, Percy suddenly bethought
himself of the prophet and, rushing up the fifty steps to his tower,
thumped hard upon the door. There was no answer. Percy flung the door
open and there was no prophet. Abrog was gone too!
In the face of this new calamity the dreadful prophecy about the monster
was almost forgotten. Peer Haps sank down upon his throne and in spite
of his sixty years and three hundred pounds wept like a baby.
“He’s perfectly perfidious!” exclaimed Percy Vere, who was entirely out
of breath from the steps. All the courtiers solemnly shook their heads.
“A villain old and hideous,
And perfectly perfidious,
Has run off with our daughter.
What shall be done to him, O Peer,
This prophesighing profiteer
Deserves both death and—and—”
“Slaughter,” sobbed Peer Haps convulsively. Then mopping his face he sat
up. “Someone must follow him at once and bring her back!” thundered the
old monarch. “A thousand gold bricks to the man who brings her back. A
thousand gold bricks and the Princess’ hand in marriage!” At this there
was a great shuffling of feet and the young men of Perhaps City began to
exchange uneasy glances.
“Down the mountain?” asked Perix faintly.
“Where else?” demanded Peer Haps, glaring angrily at the young nobleman
whom he had intended for his daughter.
“But we might be dashed to pieces. It is terribly unsafe,” stuttered
Perix unhappily. All the other Happsies began to shake their heads and
murmur sadly, “Unsafe, very unsafe!”
“Well, how about my daughter?” roared the poor monarch, puffing out his
cheeks. “Will no one go after my daughter?” There was more shuffling of
feet, but not a voice was raised. We must not be too hard on these young
Happsies, remembering that in all their lives and in the lives of their
fathers and grandfathers no one had ever descended Maybe Mountain
excepting Abrog the old prophet.
“I’ll go myself!” spluttered Peer Haps explosively. But as he arose
with a great groan, the Forgetful Poet rushed forward and embraced as
much of the Peer as his arms would circle.
“You’d be broken to bits!” cried Percy distractedly. “Suppose you
stumbled. I, I will go and find the Princess and this meddling,
miserable prophet.”
“You! Why you’ll forget what you’re after before you start,” sneered
Perix disagreeably.
“As to that,” said Percy, snapping his fingers under the young fellow’s
nose, “I may forget a word now and then, but I don’t forget how to act
when my King is in trouble!”
“Hurrah!” shouted the gardener, throwing up his hat. He had recovered
from the shock of the gold brick. “Hurrah for Percy Vere; he’s the
bravest of the lot!”
“But how will you go?” quavered Peer Haps. He was torn between relief at
Percy’s brave offer and sorrow at the thought of losing his prime and
favorite companion.
“Here’s how,” cried the valiant Poet. Rushing down the golden steps of
the palace, Percy leaped over the gate and plunged recklessly down the
steep mountain side. Percy was well accustomed to hill-climbing and met
with no mishap as he plunged downward.