The adverbs sold like hotcakes, and the adjectives sold well also. By the fair's end, both Russet and the fourth daughter were rich, and there were still plenty of adverbs left.

"They must have been breeding, though I didn't notice," said Russet. "What are you going to do with them?"

"Let them go," said the daughter.

"Why?" asked Russet sharply.

"I have enough money to provide for myself, my mother, and my younger sister. Greedyis an adjective and not one of my wares." She opened the cages. The adverbs ran free -- slowly, quickly, hoppingly, happily. In the brushy land around the fairground, they proliferated. The region became known as Varietie. People moved there to enjoy the brisk, invigorating, varied weather, as well as the fair, which happened every year thereafter.

As for the fourth daughter, she built a fine house on a hill above the fairground. From there she could see for miles. Out back, among the bushes, she put feeding stations for the adverbs, and she sent for her mother and one remaining sister. The three of them lived together contentedly. The fourth daughter did not marry Russet, though she remained always grateful for his help. Instead, she became an old maid. It was a good life, she said, as long as one had money and respect.

In time, the fifth daughter came of age. (She was the youngest by far.) Her sister offered her a dowry, but she said, "I will do no less than the rest of you. Let my mother give me whatever she has left, and I will go to seek my fortune."

The mother went into her study, full of new books now, and looked around. "I have a new collection of nouns," she told the youngest daughter.

"No, for my oldest sister took those and did well with them, from all reports. I don't want to repeat someone else's adventures."

Verbs were too active, she told her mother, and adjectives too varied and subtle. "I'm a plain person who likes order and organization."

"How about adverbs?" asked the mother.

"Is there nothing else?"

"Prepositions," said the mother, and showed them to her daughter. They were dull little words, like sometimes a smith might make from pieces of iron rod. Some were bent into angles. Others were curved into hooks. Still others were circles or helixes. Something about them touched the youngest daughter's heart.

"I'll take them," she said and put them in a bag. Then she thanked her mother, kissed her sister, and set off.

Although they were small, the prepositions were heavy and had sharp corners. The youngest daughter did not enjoy carrying them, but she was a methodical person who did what she set out to do. Tromp, tromp she went along the highway, which wound finally into a broken country, full of fissures and jagged peaks. The local geology was equally chaotic. Igneous rocks intruded into sedimentary layers. New rock lay under old rock. The youngest daughter, who loved order, had never seen such a mess. While neat, she was also rational, and she realized she could not organize an entire mountain range. "Let it be what it is," she said. "My concern is my own life and other people."

The road grew rougher and less maintained. Trails split off from it and something rejoined it or ended nowhere, as the daughter discovered by trial. "This country needs engineers," she muttered peevishly. (A few adverbs had hidden among the prepositions and would pop out now and then. Peevishlywas one.)

At length the road became nothing more than a path, zigzagging down a crumbling mountain slope. Below her in a valley was a town of shacks, though town might be the wrong word. The shacks were scattered helter-skelter over the valley bottom and up the valley sides. Nothing was seemly or organized. Pursing her lips -- a trick she had learned from her mother, who did it when faced by a sentence that would not parse -- the fifth daughter went down the path.

When she reached the valley floor, she saw people running to and fro.

"Madness," said the daughter. The prepositions, in their bag, made a sound of agreement like metal chimes.

In front of her, two women began to argue -- over what she could not tell.

"Explain," cried the fifth daughter, while the prepositions went "bong" and "bing."

"Here in the Canton of Chaos nothing is capable of agreement," one woman said. "Is it age before beauty, or beauty before age? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Does might make right, and if so, what is left?"

"This is certainly madness," said the daughter.

"How can we disagree?" said the second woman. "We live topsy-turvy and pell-mell, with no hope of anything better." Saying this, she hit the first woman on the head with a live chicken.

"Egg!" cried the first woman.

"Left!" cried the second.

The chicken squawked, and the grammarian's last daughter opened her bag.

Out came the prepositions: of, to, from, with, at, by, in, under, over,and so on. When she'd put them into the bag, they had seemed like hooks or angles. Now, departing in orderly rows, they reminded her of ants. Granted, they were large ants, each one the size of a woman's hand, their bodies metallic gray, their eyes like cut and polished hematite. A pair of tongs or pincers protruded from their mouths; their thin legs, moving delicately over the ground, seemed made of iron rods or wire.

Somehow -- it must have been magic -- the things they passed over and around became organized. Shacks turned into tidy cottages. Winding paths became streets. The fields were square now. The trees ran in lines along the streets and roads. Terraces appeared on the mountainsides.

The mountains themselves remained as crazy as ever, strata sideways and upside down. "There is always a limit to order," said the daughter. At her feet, a handful of remaining prepositions chimed their agreement like bells.

In decorous groups, the locals came up to her. "You have saved us from utter confusion. We are a republic, so we can't offer you a throne. But please become our first citizen, and if you want to marry, please accept any of us. Whatever you do, don't go away, unless you leave these ingenious little creatures that have connected us with one another."

"I will stay," said the fifth daughter, "and open a grammar school. As for marriage, let that happen as it will."

The citizens agreed by acclamation to her plan. She settled in a tidy cottage and opened a tidy school, where the canton's children learned grammar.

In time, she married four other schoolteachers. (Due to the presence of the prepositions, which remained in their valley and throughout the mountains, the local people developed a genius for creating complex social groups. Their diagrams of kinship excited the awe of neighbors, and their marriages grew more intricate with each generation.)

The land became known as Relation. In addition to genealogists and marriage brokers, it produced diplomats and merchants. These last two groups, through trade and negotiation, gradually unified the five countries of Thingnesse, Change, Subtletie, Varietie, and Relation. The empire they formed was named Cooperation. No place was more solid, more strong, more complex, more energetic, or better organized.

The flag of the new nation was an ant under a blazing yellow sun. Sometimes the creature held a tool: a pruning hook, scythe, hammer, trowel, or pen. At other times its hands (or feet) were empty. Always below it was the nation's motto: WITH.