We’ve plenty of time to play!
By special permission of the publishers, Metzler & Co., Ltd.
This they used to sing as they sipped their ices, and ate their rout-cakes and almond toffee. The song might strike you at first as rather too complimentary to themselves, but it was not really so, as each man who sang it was alluding to all the others, and left himself out of the question, and so it came to pass that every man paid a pretty compliment to his neighbours, and received one in return, which was quite fair and led to no quarrelling.
As the sailors sat and talked they were joined by a rather stout but very interesting elderly woman of striking personal appearance. She was what is called a “bum-boat woman,” that is to say, a person who supplied the officers and crew with little luxuries not included in the ship’s bill of fare. Her real name was Poll Pineapple, but the crew nick-named her “Little Buttercup,” partly because it is a pretty name, but principally because she was not at all like a buttercup, or indeed anything else than a stout, quick-tempered, and rather mysterious lady, with a red face and black eyebrows like leeches, and who seemed to know something unpleasant about everybody on board. She had a habit of making quite nice people uncomfortable by hinting things in a vague way, and at the same time with so much meaning (by skilful use of her heavy black eyebrows), that they began to wonder whether they hadn’t done something dreadful, at some time or other, and forgotten all about it. So Little Buttercup was not really popular with the crew, but they were much too kind-hearted to let her know it.
Little Buttercup had a song of her own which she always sang when she came on board. Here it is:
I’m called Little Buttercup—dear Little Buttercup,
Though I could never tell why,