“And Peer Haps thinks I’m rescuing his daughter,” groaned Percy Vere, letting the Queen’s red table cloth slip back into his tub and staring mournfully down Monday Mountain. Then seeing that Dorothy was actually near to tears, he tilted his cap over one eye and whispered this verse into her right ear: “It’s wash, splosh, rub And hang ’em up for dryin’, If sumpin doesn’t happen soon I’ll simply bust out—?” “Cryin’!” Dorothy smiled and dashed the tears out of her eyes. “Here comes the old lady!” she finished hurriedly. “Isn’t she simply sinoobious,” sniffed Percy, dousing the red table cloth up and down in the water. “What did you say?” roared the Queen of the Tubbies. “I said,” grinned Percy mischievously: “Her Highness is so beautiful Her brightness dims the eye, I’ll work here and be dutiful Until the day I, I—?” “Die!” spluttered Dorothy, and the clumsy Queen lumbered on with a pleased smirk. “Better make up your mind to marry Pearl,” she called over her shoulder and Pearl Borax blew Percy a wet kiss over her tub of clothes. Toto, who was tied to Dorothy’s tub, growled fiercely—for he loathed the whole tribe of sloppy, messy wash women. “We must think of a way out,” gasped the poor poet unhappily, for life on Monday Mountain, where every day is wash-day, and every dinner is of potatoes and cabbage, was not to be endured. They had been over the matter a hundred times before and there really seemed no chance of escape at all. The tubs of the tribe were ranged in a circle around the mountain top, so that Dorothy and the Forgetful Poet were always under guard. A white fence ran around the mountain, a few feet below. You may have heard of a fence running around before, but this was the first fence Dorothy ever had seen that actually did run. It was tall and spiked and flashed ’round and ’round, till just watching it gave one the headache. It was too high to jump and the gate only came opposite Dorothy and the Forgetful Poet once a day. When they had been dragged up the mountain, the Queen had addressed a low word to the fence. Immediately it had stopped and they had all come through the gate. But what _was_ the word? Ever since his capture Percy Vere had been trying to puzzle it out and now, leaning his elbows on his wash board, he began trying again. Indeed he thought until he had twelve wrinkles in his forehead and all at once, like a flash of lightning, it came to him—such a short, sensible word that he gave a triumphant skip. Next instant he was splashing the clothes in his tub so vigorously that none of the wild wash women heard him give Dorothy a few quick instructions. In five minutes the gate would be opposite and one minute before the five were up, the three prisoners dashed down the mountain.