caliph. But come, if you please, let us listen to
our comrades yonder, and try whether we really do understand
Storkish."

In the mean time the other stork had alighted on the ground. He
arranged his feathers with his bill, put himself to rights, and
walked up to the first stork.

The two new storks made haste to approach them, and overheard, to
their astonishment, the following conversation.

"Good morning, Mrs. Longlegs; you are early on the meadow."

"Thank you, dear blatterbeak! I have been getting a little
breakfast. Will you take a bit of lizard, or a frog's leg?"

"Much obliged, but I have no appetite this morning. I came on to the
meadow for quite a different purpose. I am to dance before the
guests at my father's to-day, and I thought I would exercise a
little in private beforehand."

At the same time the young storkess marched about the field making
the oddest gesticulations. The caliph and Mansor looked on with
wonder. But at last, when she put herself into a picturesque
attitude on one foot, and gracefully waved her wings, they could
stand it no longer; an inextinguishable laugh burst from their
bills, from which they did not recover for some time. The caliph
composed himself first. "What a capital joke!" cried he; "I never
saw any thing better in my life; it is a pity that the stupid birds
were frightened away by our laughter, else she would certainly have
sung!"

But it now occurred to the grand vizier that they had been forbidden
to laugh during their transformation. He communicated his anxiety to
the caliph.

"By Mecca and Medina!" cried the caliph, "it would be a pretty piece
of business if I had to remain a stork all my life! Try think of the
stupid word; I can't remember it."

"We must bow three times towards the East, and say, Mu--Mu--Mu--."
They turned to the East, and bowed away till their beaks touched the
ground. But, alas! The magic word had vanished, and with all the
caliph's bowing, and his vizier's crying Mu--Mu--, all recollections
of it had disappeared from their memories, and the poor Chasid and
his vizier still remained storks as before.

The caliph and the grand vizier walked in a melancholy mood through
the fields, not knowing what to do in their sad plight. They could
not get out of their stork-skins, and it would not do for them to go
back to the town to tell any one of their condition, for who would
believe a stork if he said that he was the caliph? And even if they
h