"The island! What island?" asked Frances.
The little man cocked up his eyebrows in surprise at the question.
"What island?" he repeated. "Why, the Floating Island, of course," pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.
"Oh! So you come from the Floating Islands, do you!" exclaimed Margaret.
"Yes. You will have noticed, I dare say, how the islands keep coming and going and breaking in pieces and changing their shapes. Well, that is what they did yesterday, and every time I thought I was going to land I found that the island had moved away and I had to begin all over again."
"That was horrid," remarked Frances. "Weren't you afraid of being drowned?"
At this question the little Admiral, in spite of his politeness, could not help laughing.
"Drowned!" he cried. "We, Hardwoods, don't get drowned. Why, the Lord Chancellor was washed off the island once and floated about for three months. We all thought he was gone for good, but he turned up again one day none the worse except that his joints wouldn't work for a couple of weeks and nearly all his paint had washed off."
"His paint!" cried Margaret, glancing at the little man's red cheeks. "What is he made of, then?"
"He is one of the Quartered-Oaks—written with a hyphen—a very good family, very hard and very serviceable; though—Ahem!—not quite of such quality as the Boxwoods."