“I daren’t write to enquire. I don’t care to give my location away, you see. Old-fashioned reticence about money matters, and cautious that way,” said the Boar.

“No one would call you cowardly, old darling,” said Mister Mikko, which sounded like a riposte in a disagreement between them that stretched back years. “A little mustard on your cheese butty? I think so. Let me spread it for you.”

Perhaps it was a thrill of sympathy for Professor Lenx having to endure that particular slur-cowardly!-or maybe Brrr was simply relieved not to be the target of the criticism himself. He found himself saying, “I actually had a profile in Shiz once-of a sort-and of course I am now formally a Namory, by order of Lady Glinda.”

“A Namory! And you didn’t mention it till now. You are too humble, Sir Brrr,” said Professor Lenx. “May I humble you further with another spoonful of pottage?”

“There’s a shortage of certain kinds of labor in the Emerald City these days,” said Brrr. “Domestic work isn’t yet open to Animals again, it seems, but there are other opportunities. The WOO is history, gentlemen. Your old stomping ground, Shiz, has become ringed with factories. I understand Dixxi House to the north of Shiz is begging for a workforce. The Animal Adverse laws are greatly relaxed, and the EC is making all sorts of overtures to exiled Animals.”

“Well, we’re far too old to enter the workforce,” said Mister Mikko.

“And I’m crippled,” said Professor Lenx. “Not to mention that my field was mathematics. I specialized in diluted equations.”

“Did you say deluded equations?” Mister Mikko posed this piously.

“Ha-ha, exceedingly ha. What a robust sense of humor you have. Too bad it isn’t equaled by your sense of history. Or perhaps you taught histrionics, I quite forget, as of course one would tend to.”

As much to smooth over the comedy of professional sniping as for any other reason, Brrr said, “If the EC’s ministers of labor are really interested in wooing back the Animal workforce, they would be smart to free up any funds appropriated from Animals who had to leave under the Wizard’s ‘courtesies.’”

“We didn’t have to leave,” said Mister Mikko. “I did teach history, young Sir Brrr, and I know that much. We could quite as freely have chosen to go to prison, you know. That option was never denied us. So we are considered to have departed of our own volition.”

“You know what I mean,” said the Lion. “The banks could institute an amnesty of sorts. If Animals were permitted again to invest and profit, they might be more likely to lend their shoulders to the wheel of industrial progress. The powers that be should consider this.”

“Well, I wouldn’t trust the current administration any more than I trusted the Wizard of Oz, may he rot in hell and all babies sleep well, thank you very much.” Professor Lenx worked at a bit of rind with his tongue and then spat the mess out of the side of his bristly mouth.