THE BOY WHO KNEW WHAT THE BIRDS SAID
"And what is your advice?" asked the King.
"My advice to you is that you send away all these you have around you—your captains and your guards—and that you turn them into dog-boys or horse-boys or anything else in which they would give useful service, for as they are here, they can neither serve nor guard you."
"All that may be true," said the King, "but what right have you to say it?"
Feet-in-the-Ashes said nothing but he held the cup up to the King and the King saw three teeth in it and he took them out and placed them in his mouth and the teeth went into their places and there firmly they stayed.
Then Feet-in-the-Ashes told how he had gone to the Green Island and how he had avenged the insult offered to the king and how he had got what he had gone to search for. Then he demanded the King's daughter in marriage and a quarter of the Kingdom, and both were made over to him on the spot. As for the powerful captains and the strong-armed guards, some of them were made horse-boys and some were made dog-boys
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