Jubilate!

Alas, I am returned! No sooner had that dear and scarcely clad Jouncey pelted me with strange tales of the Enthoovian and the circumstances of his unfortunate rumpling than did that wonderfully behatted gnawer point to me and exclaim a glorius number.

“One Thousand!” he cried and I saw at once that he was not mistaken.

Thus did we begin a grand celebration in honor of that illustrious numeral. How grand it is and how satisfying to count to. But ere I could complete even a single counting of One Thousand did a familiar and moultering shape darken my sight. It was none other than that weighty denizen of long ago who had so thoroughly related the dire tale of Nine Nuts. His approach could mean but one thing--further news of Nine Nuts and his terrible plight.

“Speak on!” I cried to the weighty man. “And quickly must you to it, for I have another nine-hundred and eighty-three left to count ere the moon may rise! Speak on, I say!”

And quickly did he oblige.

“One hundred trains were coming right at Nine Nuts. The other nuts crackled and screamed! The nuts cracked! Inside there were noodles. The noodles were polka-dotted with stripes of red, yellow, and green. The one hundred trains got damaged. A policeman came to fix the damage, but then it crashed into a tar wagon with chocolate inside. Nine nuts was nervous.”

And then, having received this nervous news, did we pluck the weighty Moultriman from the door step and desposit him surely in Jouncey’s tidy home. I bid him come and join us in our celebratory counting and enticed him thereafter to jubilate raucously beneath a bloated moon. He did so gladly and thus in jubilant fervor did we count, even unto that gloriously satisifying number, One Thousand.

For nearly a month did our joysome exultations stretch. Until, at length, we three of counting mirth collapsed in a heap and there did sleep until dawn.

Now however, having squeezed from within me all that was happy and glad, I am left with my task at hand and the troubling knowledge that my wicked progeny is yet abroad. I can tarry here no longer, and lo, indeed does the road call to me now. I step upon it and though I cannot see its end, I know that the Enthoovian, all arumpled and bescroached, awaits me whence it leads.