Alas that Roby's housemobile would be pierced by a gondola falling from on high, but she was little the worse for the wear, and what's more the ad hoc renovation could be put to the virtue of the installation of skylights later—after the mess was cleansed and the most chaotic debris removed. But one issue demanded a more immediate solution: the wounds to the gondolier, Mario.

“I have,” said Mario, “a bump on my head, and one on my toe.”

“Do not experience fear,” said Roby, “if you can refrain from doing so. I believe a healer is near, so you will be well from head to toe!”

“Not from,” said Mario, “I can't afford the full job—just the head and the toe.”

Roby said considerately, “We shall heal the from as well, if it has a bruise or a swell,” and she took the wheel and sped off in the direction of the nearest hospital. The hospital saw her coming, however, and slapped together a quick moat to keep her at bay. It wasn't much to look at, but it got the job done, and what really did the trick was the hat—donning a common deerstalker, the hospital looked decidedly unhospitallish, and Roby was thoroughly bamboozled. She opted for the next best thing: asking directions at a pancake factory.

Now, there was a problem at the pancake factory—honestly, have you ever known a pancake factory that didn't have constant problems? Really, that the place was still standing at all should've counted as half a miracle. As it was, it was only barely standing, and standing around it now was a large group of strikers, riotously angry, all shouts and clattering jawing and opinionation. Roby considered the fanciness of her house, and her new-made baronial status—it wouldn't do to rub one's success in others' faces, after all. Not if one wanted more pancakes later. And so, she parked at the dam store around the corner and scoped the sitch.

The sitch was this: owing to the strike that had occurred at the pancake factory, gathered around were a series of bowlers and baseballers, all arguing about whether or not the strike was a good thing—alternately claiming it for themselves, or foisting it on the other.

“It's ten points,” said the bowlers, “plus the total pins knocked down in the next two frames.”

“It's a third of an out,” said the baseballers, “which in turn is a third of an inning.” Some of the baseballers went on to debate the strategy of allowing a strike so as to tempt a ball from a pitcher expecting a desperate batter to swing at anything. Some more of the baseballers, who were new to the job, started asking why a strike is denoted with a K and not an S.

“Augh! The bumps!” wailed Mario. “I still have them! Pancakes shall not suffice—full muffins are needed here.”

“This is no kind of cake,” said Roby, “but perhaps your pain it shall take.” She handed Mario a very old magazine where the entire cover, front and back, had completely fallen off, and so had the first page, but it was all ads anyway so it didn't matter. Mario couldn't identify the magazine, but opened it at random to a photo of a man bobsledding. A large quote beneath the photo read, “And That's When My Son Turned Into Too Many Fish Sticks.”

“Just what I needed,” said Mario, with a sigh of relief.

Roby heard a hubbub. A series of soccericians arrived at the scene of the strike, with a whole new definition to contend with, but they all became sick with gout and misplaced a box of stamps. “Won't someone acknowledge us?” they cried, and the bowlers and baseballers surrounded them and began revving up some accusatory words.

This was the critical moment. Roby saw the opportunity for action and drove her house over to the strike and said, “Long lost is your solution now found today! Relinquish confusion and play like your schooldays! Board my house so we may drive about and go to the park for a plan which is smart—you may pose for a portrait, and go on to collect it, and when all is done and you have had fun, grab your backpack and backtrack back to the factory and if unliked strikes are in sight you might smite the bright light and have a fight night!”

It was too late—the trap was sprung, and all the bowlers, baseballers, and soccericians leapt upon Roby's house, and sank their teeth into its timbers and its eaves, and plunged their claws into its shingles and its floorboards, and gored their horns into its windows and its wainscoting. Roby, not outdone, opted to roll and floored it.

“The park must be delayed,” she said. “You can call me dismayed!”

“I'll man the flamethrowers,” said Mario as he manned the flamethrowers.

“Is it feasting time already?” said Roby. “Then, man the machine well and steady!”

Roby drove into a tunnel that went under a toadstool forest just as Traycup, Ben Garment, and Phillippo emerged from said forest, stretching their sirloins in the bright morning sun, and stomping with all their feet to enjoy the firmness of the Earth beneath them. Phillippo had a map, but it didn't help, since it only showed Tunisia.

“How is't planned to find our Roby?” said Traycup.

“You've not got one?” said Ben Garment. “It's not my kind of way to have too much of a plan—I know you're a doer, after all, and I'm more of a beer.”

“Mayhap no plan is a plan of its own kin,” said Traycup. “See, we've a new friend in Phillippo—and a wise one, in truth! Spill out your brains, won't you, Phillippo?”

“A plan? Me? I've no plan, nor brains at all!” said Phillippo. It folded up the map and put it away carefully. “Well, I'll give it a shot. We can try, for example, shouting at the top of our lungs or at the bottom of our hearts. Perhaps she'd hear our clarion call? Or if hearing's not her thing, what of seeing? Let's put in place a desired thing, and watch the flocking.” The costume had been struck by a clever insight indeed.

“A citation plan,” said Ben Garment, “but what's beloved?”

“Well!” said Traycup with gladness, “now I've got some pieces, so let's dress the board! With undue haste!”

Ben Garment grimly said, “With, undo, haste.”

“My plan is this—construction! A real cariboueqsue monochromancy we'll mold, with our hands and fins and hooves, all combined in one—we'll make a pretzel unseen before, uneaten afore, and therein, sneak a snack and be derived us both. The thing won't bear to see its duty undone! So, let's shake it, in a capitalist way!”

They acted quickly, they sang slowly, and they did the dishes at a medium speed. Traycup went to the geranium district and purchased ten small boxes of smaller boxes, each containing part of the instruction manual for a Kodak Z712 IS ZOOM digital camera, and buried them in a line alongside a comic book store, wherein Ben Garment got a part time job standing on someone else's head so that he could get a good look over the fence out back, which was adjacent to the vacant lot where they used to store organs. Meanwhile, Phillippo went on tour with the foreign legion and served in three entire battles, won them all, and took home the biggest trophy it could carry.

“I yield! I yield!” cried Aperture Wendel, emerging from behind Phillippo's ear. “I do yield indeed!”

Traycup threw Aperture into a hamster ball and gave him a pair of glasses. Aperture could do no more, and wept. “I saw the stealer of the wallaby's shoes,” he said. “I saw the event! I saw the eventuality! But, I am innocent!”

“I've no doubt,” said Traycup, “but now say! Where on this bus ticket is the assigned seat number shown?”

With a trembling hand, Aperture pointed out where the ticket said “SEAT 3C.”

“It's so,” said Traycup, “easy to lie when it's not your life on the line.”

“Please,” said Aperture, “have mercy! I've done not wrong!”

“Pleas?” said Ben Garment. “No mercy. Wrong: you've done naught.”

Now they shook Aperture upside down over a young magnet so that all his paperclips would be removed from his pocketage, and once done, he was free to go, for there was no more to be gained from the interrogation, and nothing more to be gained. If they hurried, they could get to the big statue of a squirrel shaver in the middle of the park before Roby.

But they would have to hurry indeed, for there was Roby's housemobile, half an inch from the squirrel shaver statue and moving at full speed, all the bowlers and baseballers and soccericians unconstructing the house from basement to engine, from chimney to glove box, and then finally at the last hour they found the load-bearing tire and delugnutted it, and the house fell to pieces, every beam splintered, every hose unraveled, every nail unhammered and screw undrove, and when it collided with the holy statue it was nothing more than unsorted lumber and hardware falling neatly into organized piles and sealing themselves in plastic bags, shipping themselves back to factories, mills, and warehice as if the mansion-on-wheels had never existed, and the sportsfolks landed in trilithons as if they were rebuilding Sporthenge.

Traycup, Ben Garment, and Phillippo forgot all about Greek mythology and ran to the scene of the chaos, and some parents shushed them for causing such a ruckus near the children, but they were heedless and Robyless.

“We're in lateness,” said Traycup, “and Roby is lost!”

“A flawless plan with a planned flaw!” said Ben Garment, doing some brief knitting.

“It's what she would have wanted,” said Phillippo, removing its tuxedo respectfully.

“I have a want of a pretzel,” said Roby, “so if one is still on offer, stand not on ceremony and please begin to proffer!”

Now, everyone was surprised to see Roby emerge and not have been slain in the collision, and Traycup was not the least among them. “Ah!” he said with jovialness. “Daring friend! We are misjoined no longer! Today is a day of good gladness! We are all at last cotravaillers!”

“At now,” said Roby, “I will retell this for all and one: the legend of the house, and the doings it had done.” And so Roby recounted the events to Traycup that had occurred in the strange manor, in a strange manner, her acquisition of the title of Lady Shirechester, and ultimately the demise of the house. She explained, “The struggling workers perceived me a lurker, and mistook my closeness as to them a boastness. Raising up had not succeeded, so with lowering down I then proceeded, and shed my wealth with excessive spending on friendly health, and wounds fully mending!”

Nearby, the healed Mario sipped a rum and coke. “A purchase unaffordable,” he said half to himself. Roby nodded.

“And so,” said Traycup, “the house became gifted in the buying—and unwanted occupiers obligated to depart!”

“Depart we did,” said Roby, “and then did not partake in the taking-apart of the thing in the end.”

“Well,” said Ben Garment, “it's as well as all are joined now! So—what action next do we pursue?”

“Respite,” said Roby, “is a thing now wanted.”

Everyone looked at Roby strangely, for she had said unusual words.

“And—the pretzel has not yet arrived,” she said.

“The pretzel will be delivered,” said Traycup. “Both Mario and Roby Lopkit have a wisdom now! Here is a fine park, but for the stern glares of stroller-pushers. Let's to have a moment and distribute beverages and pretzels! Oopertreepia'll not go without us.”

“It may,” warned Ben Garment. “Oopertreepia's ways are Oopertreepian indeed.”

Roby became concerned on hearing this—rushing to Oopertreepia would surely interfere with snack time. Moreover, had not Traycup promised to see her to Nesodi Iveent? “Oopertreepia is the goal of you? Is this a plan concocted anew?”

“Alas for hasty speech!” said Traycup. “I'm for Oopertreepia—but not all at once. Take heart! As foretold, we'll to Nesodi Iveent in the first, but my journey stretches longer than that.”

“Mine does not,” said Roby, “and already I am nearly stretched! But, let us not have a misstanding, we and you have barely met!” And so to celebrate their newly made friendships, they called over the beernuts guy and all bought some Rice Krispie squares and marmalade and had a minor picnic, and then made a pledge to make their journey to Nesodi Iveent together, and from there—well, the future was left to the future's concern. Oopertreepia, eventually, apparently.

Some days are better than others, but they come one after another, nonetheless. It is all we can do to do the best we can do with what we're given, and give the best of what we've got to give, and get done with what we've got to do, and when we've got it done, we get to get gone.