“Why no, you told me you’d bring home a couple of lobsters for dinner.”
“So I have, they’re in the parlor.”
One of his grandma’s maids of honor tells the following story of Prince Eddie when he was a few years younger:
Just after King Edward’s coronation, when he underwent an operation for appendicitis and was lying convalescent, he sent for his grandchildren.
The little ones trooped into the room, cautioned by their nurse that they must keep very quiet, and stood about their grandfather’s bed. He talked with them for a few minutes and they replied in awed whispers. Then when the nurse told them they must go, Prince Eddie said:
“But, grandpa, can’t we see the baby?”
Rossetti’s fondness for humorous stories and his interest in a particular soldier of fortune, or rather of misfortune, are shown in Hall Caine’s autobiography. Beginning life as the secretary of Ruskin, the man ultimately lived on his cleverness and audacity and made Rossetti in particular his conscious and delighted victim. Feeble as Rossetti was, the visits of this man did him good, and he laughed all the evening and told droll stories himself. One of the latter was of a man near to death to whom the clergyman came and said: “Dear friend, do you know who died to save you?” “Oh, meenister, meenister,” said the dying man, “is this a time for conundrums?”