“May your arguments be as thick as fireflies, O Doge!” Jack answered, “everyone bearing a torch to illumine the outer darkness of ignorance!  May every happy thought I have for Little Rivers spring up in a date-tree wonderful!  Then, before the year is out, you will have a forest of date-trees stretching from foothills to foothills, across the whole valley.”

“And one more about the giant with the little voice and the dwarf with the big voice and the cat with the stripes down her back!” cried Belvy Smith, spokeswoman for the children.  “Are they just going on forever having adventures and us never knowing about them?”

“No.  I have been holding back the last story,” Jack said.  “Both the giant and the dwarf were getting old, as you all know, and they were pretty badly battered up from their continual warfare.  Why, the scar which the giant got on his forehead in their last battle was so big that if the dwarf had had it there would have been no top left to his head.  After the cat had lost that precious black tip to her tail she became more and more thoughtful.  She made up her mind to retire and reform and have a permanent home.  And you know what a gift she had for planning out things and how clever she was about getting her own way.  Now she sat in a hedge corner thinking and thinking and looking at the stubby end of her tail, and suddenly she cried, ‘Eureka!’ And what do you think she did?  She went to a paint shop and had her left ear painted yellow and her right ear painted green.  So, now you can see her any day sunning herself on the steps of the cottage where the giant and the dwarf live in peace.  Whenever they have an inclination to quarrel she jumps between them and wiggles the yellow ear at the giant and the green ear at the dwarf, which fusses them both so that they promise to be good and rush off to get her a saucer of milk.”

“A green ear and a yellow ear!  What a funny looking cat she must be!” exclaimed Belvy.

“So she says to herself between purrs,” concluded Jack.  “But she is a philosopher and knows that she would look still funnier if she had lost her ears as Jag Ear has.  Good-by, children!  Good-by, everybody!  Good-by, Little Rivers!”

Jack gave P.D. a signal and the crowd broke into a cheer, which was punctuated by the music of Jag Ear’s bells as his burrohood got in motion.  The Doge, who had brought his horse, mounted.

“I will ride a little distance with you,” he said.

He appeared like a man who had a great deal on his mind and yet was at a loss for words.  There was the unprecedented situation of silence between the two exponents of persiflage in Little Rivers.

“I—­” he began, and paused as if the subject were too big for him and it were better not to begin at all.  Then he drew rein.

“Luck, Jack!” he said, simply, and there was something like pity in his tone.

“And Mary—­you will say good-by to her and thank her!” said Jack.