Dor looked dourly up at the cloud. "Go soak your empty head!" he yelled at it "You're no thunderhead, you're a dunderhead!"

       He was answered by a spate of yellow hailstones, and had to hunch over like a zombie and shield his face with his arms until they passed.

       "Be halfway sensible, Dor!" Grundy urged. "Don't mess with that mean storm! It'll wash us out!"

       Dor reluctantly yielded to common sense. "We'll seek cover. But not at home; the zombie's there."

       "I wonder what Millie sees in him," Grundy said.

       "That's what I asked." The rain was commencing. They hurried to an umbrella tree, whose great thin canopy was just spreading to meet the droplets. Umbrella trees preferred dry soil, so they shielded it against rain. When the sun shone, they folded up, so as not to obstruct the rays. There were also parasol trees, which reacted oppositely, spreading for the sun and folding for the rain. When the two happened to seed together, there was a real wilderness problem.

       Two larger boys, the sons of palace guards, had already taken shelter under the same tree. "Well," one cried. "If it isn't the dope who talks to chairs!"

       "Go find your own tree, twerp," the other boy ordered. He had sloping shoulders and a projecting chin.

       "Look, Horsejaw!" Grundy snapped. "This tree doesn't belong to you! Everyone shares umbrellas in a storm."

       "Not with chair-talkers, midget."

       "He's a Magician!" Grundy said indignantly. "He talks to the inanimate. No one else can do that; no one else ever could do that in the whole history of Xanth, or ever will again!"

       "Let it be, Grundy," Dor murmured. The golem had a sharp tongue that could get them both into trouble. "We'll find another tree."

       "See?" Horsejaw demanded triumphantly. "Little stinker don't stand up to his betters." And he laughed.