All the gentlemen fairies clapped their tiny hands.
"Who is he?" Storm ramped up and down in front of her, and the more he raged, the softer was her stroking. "Just let me at your little man this once. I'll corpse the swine. I'll tear his hide off over his ears. Now out with it! Who is he? Where is he?"
"Whom I did swear to love, honor, and obey—more or less, in his little tantrums, these two hundred years."
"Ah!" gasped the lady fairies. "Two hundred minutes!"
"Two hundred years? What d'ye mean?"
"Since you and I were wed, John Rolfe, in our last life, my little man, two hundred years ago. Don't you remember, John, how we came freezing in the bitter east wind into the courtyard at the 'Mermaid Inn,' so numb with cold that we couldn't get down off the horse. Don't you remember, dear? There was a bald vagabond came out of the bar parlor bearing a posset to warm us—God's charity to poor travelers. He told us he acted at the theater. Why, John, it seems but yesterday."
"You mean that I——"
"Dear stupid, I mean that you're my little man Master John Rolfe the planter of Virginia, and I'm your true wife, once called the Blessed Pocahontas, King Powhatan's daughter, christened i' the name of Rebecca, known to the Englishry as the Lady Rebecca Rolfe. I'd know you again by your naughty temper, John, pug nose, and fighting jaw, Storms-all-the-time. Oh! fie upon you! Can't you remember how you vexed the Bishop, the Heap Big Medicine Man of London, when we did lie in his lodge at Brentford?"
"I don't believe one word of it," said Storm. "It's only one of your games. Now, isn't it?"
"Oh, John dear, Matoaka speaks, your Matoaka. Can't you remember even that, my birth name? Why, you would whisper it in the night, weaving it into sonnets when you thought I was fast asleep! Oh, well!" she sighed, "you were not at all clever, John, dear, only a good, religious gentleman."