"I can't imagine a bootblue becoming a royal favorite," grumbled Button-Bright. "Or a necktie mixer," added Cap'n Bill. "You don't mix neckties; you're a nectar mixer," said Ghip-Ghisizzle, correcting the sailor. "I'll not be gone long, for I'm no favorite of the Boolooroo, either, so please stay quietly in this room until my return." The Majordomo found the Boolooroo in a bad temper. He had finished his dinner, where his six daughters had bitterly denounced Trot all through the meal and implored their father to invent some new and terrible punishment for her. Also his wife, the Queen, had made him angry by begging for gold to buy ribbons with. Then, when he had retired to his own private room, he decided to send for the umbrella he had stolen from Button-Bright, and test its magic powers. But the umbrella, in his hands, proved just as common as any other umbrella might. He opened it and closed it, and turned it this way and that, commanding it to do all sorts of things; but of course the Magic Umbrella would obey no one but a member of the family that rightfully owned it. At last the Boolooroo threw it down and stamped upon it and then kicked it into a corner, where it rolled underneath a cabinet. Then he sent for Ghip-Ghisizzle. "Do you know how to work that Magic Umbrella?" he asked the Majordomo. "No, your Majesty; I do not," was the reply. "Well, find out. Make the Whiteskins tell you, so that I can use it for my own amusement." "I'll do my best, your Majesty," said Ghip-Ghisizzle. "You'll do more than that, or I'll have you patched!" roared the angry Boolooroo. "And don't waste any time, either, for as soon as we find out the secret of the umbrella I'm going to have the three strangers marched through the Arch of Phinis--and that will be the end of them." "You can't do that, your Majesty," said the Majordomo. "Why can't I?" "They haven't lived six hundred years yet, and only those who have lived that length of time are allowed to march through the Arch of Phinis into the Great Blue Grotto." The King looked at him with a sneer. "Has anyone ever come out of that Arch alive?" he asked. "No," said Ghip-Ghisizzle. "But no one has ever gone into the Blue Grotto until his allotted time was up." "Well, I'm going to try the experiment," declared the Boolooroo. "I shall march these three strangers through the Arch, and if by any chance they come out alive I'll do a new sort of patching--I'll chop off their heads and mix 'em up, putting the wrong head on each of 'em. Ha, ha! Won't it be funny to see the old Moonface's head on the little girl? Ho, Ho! I really hope they'll come out of the Great Blue Grotto alive!" "I also hope they will," replied Ghip-Ghisizzle. "Then I'll bet you four button-holes they don't. I've a suspicion that once they enter the Great Blue Grotto that's the last of them."