“What!” was the reply. “You are sorry, then, I did not send you a joint?”
That was the answer put into English. It was really a much more gruesome one. “It was a shuddery reply,” Johnnie said.
The lives of Johnnie, Willie, and Peggy (with noble Ralph, of course) were nearly all woodland and wave now. They had canoes, one each, in which they rowed races, or from which they fished, whenever it was fine, and around this enchanting island, cannibalistic though it was, the seas were nearly always smooth and blue.
They all carried revolvers wherever they went, not that there was much danger, but one should always be prepared. “Peggy was an excellent shot,” so said Willie; “because,” he added, “she always manages to hit the thing she isn’t aiming at.” By the way, the cannibals made a canoe for this dear little dwarf boy, and it wasn’t much bigger than a pocket dictionary—well, it might have been a little larger. It is best to be exact in matters of this sort.
The king dearly loved to have Peggy and the dwarf to play and sing to him, and usually went to sleep during the performance. This was very “sweet” of him, Peggy said, and “quite complimentary.”
Peggy’s influence over this cannibal king was very great. She twined him round her little finger, so to speak. He had to do everything the pretty little minx told him, and take her and her companions out in the royal canoe whenever she wanted a picnic or an airing. The king would sit patiently on his daïs sometimes, as calm and serene as a summer sunset or a stucco cat, while she dressed him from top to toe in flowers and leaves and strings of beads, and finally crowned him with her oldest tartan Tam o’ Shanter. He looked so droll in this get-up that Peggy had to clap her hands and laugh and run round and round about him, to view him from every quarter. If there had been a missionary on the island and Peggy had asked the king to throw a stone at him, the king would have obeyed, unhesitatingly.
There had been a missionary there once, the king allowed. The missionary said Providence had sent him. The king believed him, for that missionary, his majesty told Johnnie, made the best curry ever he had tasted!
“The missionary was a good cook, then?” said Johnnie.
“Good cook!” cried the king. “No, no, my fat old wife the cook. My wife cookee he!”
The king was being taught English, but it wasn’t the best.