“I don't think, Grumio, that you ought to call me lambs and pigeon pies just now,” remarked the Princess, judiciously. “Do you think it's respectful? they don't in Shakespeare, I'm sure.”
“I won't do it again, Honey—I mean Madam;” said the Captain, bowing with great humility. “I beg your honourable majesty's pardon, and I won't never presume to—”
“Yes, you will!” cried the Princess, flinging herself across the table at him, and nearly choking him with the sudden violence of her embrace. “You shall call me pigeon pie, and anything else you like. You shall call me rye porridge, though I hate it, and it's always full of lumps. And don't ever look that way again; it kills me!”
The Captain quietly removed the clinging arms, and kissed them, and set the half-weeping child back in her place. “There, there, there!” he said, soothingly. “What a little tempest it is!”
“Say 'delicate Ariel,'” sobbed Star. “You haven't said it to-day, and you always say it when you love me.”
“Cream Cheese from the dairy of Heaven,” replied the Captain; “if I always said it when I loved you, I should be sayin' it every minute of time, as well you know. But you are my delicate Ariel, so you are, and there ain't nothin' in the hull book as suits you better. So!” and his supper ended, the good man turned his chair again to the fire, and took the child, once more smiling, upon his knee.
“And now, Ariel, what have you been doin' all the time I was away? Tell Daddy all about it.”
Star pondered a moment, with her head on one side, and a finger hooked confidentially through the Captain's buttonhole. “Well,” she said, “I've had a very interesting time, Daddy Captain. First I cleaned the lamps, of course, and filled and trimmed them. And then I played Samson a good while; and—”
“And how might you play Samson?” inquired the Captain.
“With flies!” replied Star, promptly. “Heaps upon heaps, you know; 'With the jaw-bone of an ass have I slain a thousand men.' The flies were the Philistines, and I took a clam-shell for the jaw-bone; it did just as well. And I made a song out of it, to one of the tunes you whistle: 'With the jaw-bone! with the jaw-bone! with the jaw-bone of an ass!' It was very exciting.”