Teenie began to think the king a very nice man now, and so she told him, merely adding that he must not be naughty again, else he would be sent to school to learn manners.
The king was better dressed than any of his chiefs or followers. He wore a costume that was almost Arab-like—the long white under-garment, and the belt in which pistols were stuck; the cloak of camel’s hair, only on state occasions, and the gilded turban.
“May I ask you, King,” said Barclay, “how you procured that beautiful costume?”
“Oh,” he said, “I come back from far counteree. Much fine dings dere. But, my good friend Glasseye here, he buy me one two clothes all same as dis.”
The king also wore a naked sword, half as broad again as a newspaper column, and sharp on both edges.
As he sat beside Antonio, talking, he held in his left hand a massive spear as tall as a weaver’s beam.
I must confess, however, that I never have seen a weaver’s beam, but it must, by all accounts, be a big bit of wood.
The irrepressible Teenie came softly up and stood by the king’s knee. He smiled, and gently patted her head. Then she quietly disengaged his hand, finger after finger, from the spear, which she took immediate possession of. She made a bridle from two pieces of string, then mounted her fiery wooden horse, and, laughing merrily, rode out and away, straight down the green avenue with it.
She met many savages.
They were savage no more, when they beheld that little madcap, with her merry laughing face and cheeks so rosy, making a horse of the king’s favourite spear.