I sat up, my lips twitching perilously near laughter.
“Dear Gogo,” I said, “I am so thankful to you, and so sorry; and I would not have said or done what I did, if I had known it would disturb you so. Won’t you let me get up?”
He scrambled to his feet—ah, fie upon the unmeant cruelty of the word!—and stood knotting his great hands, while his breast heaved stormily.
“Well, I think I was mad,” he roared suddenly. “Strike me! Stamp on me! Bind me to a pillar, and let the eternal remorse batten on my vitals! Whatever the spark at my tail, it started me up like a rocket: and behold me at the end, a blackened and empty case!”
He entreated me with his hands—
“Ah, the pagan sight of you! Ah, your wild hair, growing from the fern or melting into it! Ah, your face, the very flowering of a hamadryad! It wrought a frenzy in my brain. Forgive me, forgive me! And I will serve you seven times seven years, for the promise only to be godfather to your last—your Benjamin!”
He sank down on the stool, and, burying his face in his hands, was silent.
I thought a practical rescue of the situation best, and rising from my bed, went to bestir myself over the fire, which was burning redly. Moreover, a delectable odour had already reached my nostrils from the little caldron he had hung there, and whose contents were beginning to inspire me with a very lively curiosity.
I turned to the poor sufferer.
“Gogo, please, it is very sad; but if I am to go on being a hamadryad I must be fed. Gogo, what is in the pot?”