were troubled as one man—though he not yet wholly a man.
“O king,” they said, twenty at a time, “blue velvet and silver buckles are meet for the streets of cities and to call men to feasting and to honour the king. But as for the highways and the loneliest outposts—that is another matter.”
“But what of the message?” the king asked sadly, and this none of the heralds knew how to answer; and presently the king sent them away, for he would never have unwilling service in his palace or in his kingdom. And as they went, little Peter looked after them, and he saw, and the king saw, that for all their blue velvet and silver buckles, the hundred heralds, marching away twenty abreast, were not yet all men, but partly they were apes in manner and swine at heart. And little Peter wondered if he fashioned them as he did his bits of mould, whether they would burst from a sheath, all men, as burst his little plants.
“Summon me my thousand trumpeters!” the king bade his servants next.
The thousand trumpeters hurried into their purple velvet and their lace collars and seized their silver trumpets, and came marching fifty
