Land of Unreason Read Online Free

lamely. Over
behind his interlocutor the playful hobgoblins were slowing down like a weary
phonograph record. She held up two little hands with jewels flashing on the
fingers.
     
                "Oh, la, Sir Babe, you
to question the desire of a crowned king? Why, put it if you must that it's a
thing natural, like being born or having two legs. You have no election in the
matter. Nay,-more—no mortal ever but gained by doing the King's will of
Fairyland."
     
                Once more Barber experienced
the operation of that curious sixth sense. There was something definitely
untrue about that last statement. But this was his game; this was the kind of
verbal fencing he had been trained in, and if this whole crazy business were an
illusion, so much the better, he could argue himself out of it.
     
                "No doubt," he
said evenly, "I shall benefit. But why pick on me? Certainly there must be
dozens of people willing to be—pet poodles for King Oberon. You say it's a
natural thing. Well, after all, nature has laws, and I'd like to know under
what one I was kidnaped. And I'm not a babe."
     
                Once more there was the
paroxysm of laughter from the crowd, and the ensuing antics. The winged lady
looked bewildered and seemed about to burst into tears, but the brownie
philosopher struggled from the grip of a dwarf who had been holding a hand over
his mouth, and stepped forward, bowing.
     
                "Nay, Lady
Violanta," he said. "By y'r leave, I'll speak, for I perceive by my
arts that this is a most sapient babe, so well versed in precepts logical that
he'll crush your feather spirit like a bull a butterfly. Let me but have him;
I'll play matador to his manners." He bowed, addressing himself to Barber.
     
                "Masterful babe, in all
you say, you are wrong but once; that is, at every point and all simultaneous,
like fly-blown carrion. Item: you do protest your age, which is a thing
comparative, and with relation to your present company, you're but a bud, an
unhatched embryo. Hence we dispose of your fundamental premise, that you have
years and wisdom to criticize the way the world is made to wag; which is an
enterprise for sound, mature philosophical judgment.
     
                "Item: 'tis evident
advantage to everyone, man or moppet, when the world wags smooth. Indeed,
whatever tranquility exists in individual doings is but show and false seeming,
like the bark on a rotten apple tree, till those matters that concern the
general be at rest. How says Cicero? 'Obedience to reason, which is the law of
the universe controlling high and low alike, is the effort by which man
realizes his own reason.' Now since there lies a coil between our king and
queen that can only be dispersed by the presentation of a changeling from Her
Resplendency to His Radiance, the said changeling should take great heart and
good cheer at having introduced into the world some portion of harmony that
cannot but reflect or exhibit itself in what concerns him more nearly.
Now—"
     
                "Yes, but—"
     
                "I crave your
grace." He bowed. "Item the third: it is good natural law and
justice, too, that you should be chosen. For by old established custom it is
demanded of those mortals who have commerce with us that they offer the geld or
set out a bowl of milk on St. John's Eve. Now, since your parents failed of
this duty, worshipful babe, when snoring Sneckett yonder came he was clearly
possessed of the right of leaving an imp or changeling in your room."
     
                "Marry," broke in
the winged fairy, "an' that's not all he was possessed of, to bring such a
great, ugly hulking creature!"
     
                Scholastic logic, Barber
told himself; if this whole queer business were hallucination, this part just
might be something his mind had dredged out of the subconscious memory left by
college