"Confound his dullness!" muttered the laureate. "I'm rapidly wearing out, poetizing about this boy." Then he added, aloud: "Certainly, your majesty. Here it is: "He is the very dullest lad I've seen in all my life; For dullness he is quite as bad As any oyster-knife." "Is that all?" asked the king, with a frown. "I'm afraid four lines is as many as I can squeeze into a quatrain," said the laureate, returning the frown with interest. "Then tell this young man's ear, sirrah, how it comes that we get pleasure out of a garden in which nothing grows." "If I must--I suppose I must," growled the laureate; and then he recited: "The plan is thus, O little wit, You'll see it in a minute; We get our pleasures out of it, Because there's none within it." "That is very poor poetry, Laury!" snapped the king. "If you don't like it, don't take it," retorted the laureate. "I'm tired of this business, anyhow." "And what, pray," cried the king, striding angrily forward to the mutinous poet, "what are you going to do about it?" "I'm going to get up a revolution," retorted the laureate, shaking his quill pen fiercely at the king. "If I go to the people to-morrow, and promise not to write any more poetry, they'll all be so grateful they'll make me king, and set you to work wheeling coal in the mines for the mortals." The king's face grew so dark with anger as the laureate spoke that Jimmieboy's eye could hardly see two inches before itself, and in haste the little fellow withdrew it from the scene. What happened next he never knew, but that missiles were thrown by the quarreling king and poet he was certain, for there was a tremendous shout, and something just tipped the end of his ear and went whizzing by, and rubbing his eyes, the boy looked about him, and discovered that he was still lying face downward upon the flat rock, but it was no longer transparent. Off in the bushes directly back of him was his father, looking for a tennis ball. This, some people say, is the object that whizzed past Jimmieboy's ear, but to this day the little fellow believes that it was nothing less than the king's crown, which that worthy monarch had hurled at the laureate, that did this. For my part I take sides with neither, for, as a matter of fact, I know nothing about it. V. JIMMIEBOY IN THE LIBRARY. "I'm going to sit in this comfor'ble arm-chair by the fire," said Jimmieboy, climbing up into the capacious easy-chair in his father's library, and settling down upon its soft cushioned seat. "I've had my supper, and it was all of cold things, and I think I ought to get 'em warmed up before I go to bed." "Very well," said his papa. "Only be careful, and keep your feet awake. It wouldn't be comfortable if your feet should go to sleep just about the time your mamma wanted you to go to bed. I'd have to carry you up stairs, if that should happen, and the doctor says if I carry you much longer I'll have a back like a dromedary."