"Silence, impudent clown!" roared the fat, fierce-looking
Multiplicand. "Ignoramus! nothing of music! Why, you don't know Common
Time!"

Sara quaked; only yesterday she had got all tangled up trying to tell
the difference between three-four time and two-four time; and she knew
Schlorge was wrong and the dreadful creature was right. But Schlorge
was beside himself with fury and beyond the reach of fear or reason.

"Oh, go on!" he shouted fiercely. "You don't know nothing about the
insides of music--that's only the outsides! Besides, what time does a
bird sing by? That's music, ain't it?"

But before the Multiplicand could answer, his henchman, the Multiplier,
called out, "And what do you know of art, Oaf? Don't you know that
modern art is colored geometry?"

"And poetry?" squeaked the Quotient, fiercely, "Don't poets have to
count their feet to write poems?"

But at that juncture they were all electrified to see Avrillia
stepping forward, looking so beautiful and so queenly and so
transfigured by righteous indignation that even the invaders merely
blinked. "Not modern poets," she said, with an icy authority that sent
a hostile shiver up and down the multiplication tables. "They do not
count anything--not even the cost."

It was not so much what Avrillia said, as the way she said it, and the
way she looked, that cowed even the all-powerful invaders for a
moment. Pirlaps, at her side, said, "Good for you, Avrillia!" under