"I am dethroned then?" The observation from Miss Mivvins. "I used to be told that."
"Y-y-yes. But you never told me tales like Prince Charlie's."
Prince Charlie was a character in one of the stories Masters had told the child. A prince who had rescued innumerable princesses from giants, ogres and demons. Instantly it had pleased the listener to christen the narrator after the hero.
All her people, she informed him gravely, she christened out of stories. It was much nicer than calling them by their real names. They were so much prettier and lots easier to remember—didn't he think so?
Yes, he had made answer. He quite thought that Prince Charlie was an improvement on his own name. But Gracie betrayed no anxiety to know what that was. To her henceforth he was Prince Charlie. That was quite sufficient—she was a godmother of the most self-satisfied type.
Turning to Miss Mivvins the child continued, with a trace of reproach in her voice—she felt she had been defrauded:
"Besides, your giants never had three heads!"
A trinity of that description—unity is strength—appeared an unanswerable argument; seemed to her to clinch the matter. She climbed down from Masters' knee, and jumped her way down the steps to the sands, with bucket and spade rattling in her little hand.
As she disappeared, Masters took his courage in both hands; a trifle nervously continued the conversation:
"I shall have to prescribe a course of Grimm's Fairy Tales, if you wish to resume your position as story-teller-in-chief."