Part 25 (1/2)
”Oh, you _are_ nice!” she said.
The Terror's ineffable serenity was for once scattered to the winds.
He flushed and gazed round the wood with horror-stricken eyes: if any one should have seen it!
The princess marked his trouble, and said in a tone of distress: ”Don't you like for me to kiss you?”
The Terror swallowed the lump of horror in his throat, and said, faintly but gallantly: ”Yes--oh, rather.”
”Then kiss me,” said the princess simply, snuggling closer to him.
The despairing eyes of the Terror swept the woods; then he kissed her gingerly.
”I _am_ fond of you, you know,” said the princess in a frankly proprietary tone.
The Terror's scattered wits at last worked. He rose to his feet, and said quickly:
”Yes; let's be getting to the others.”
The princess rose obediently.
But the ice was broken; and the kisses of the princess, if not frequent, were, at any rate, not rare. The Terror at first endured them; then he came rather to like them. But he strictly enjoined discretion on her; it would never do for Erebus to learn that she kissed him. The princess had no desire that Erebus, or any one else for that matter, should learn; but discretion and kisses have no natural affinity; and, without their knowing it, Wiggins became aware of the practise.
He had always observed that the Twins had no secrets from each other; and he never dreamed that he was letting an uncommonly awkward cat out of a bag when during a lull in the strenuous life, he said to Erebus:
”I suppose the Terror's in love with the princess, kissing her like that. I think it's awfully silly.” And he spurned the earth.
Erebus grabbed his arm and cried fiercely: ”He never does!”
Wiggins looked at her in some surprise; her face was one dusky flush; and her eyes were flas.h.i.+ng. He had seen her angry often enough, but never so angry as this; and he saw plainly that he had committed a grievous indiscretion.
”Perhaps she kissed him,” he said quickly.
”He'd never let her!” cried Erebus fiercely.
”Perhaps they didn't,” said Wiggins readily.
”You know they did!” cried Erebus yet more fiercely.
”I may have made a mistake. It's quite easy to make a mistake about that kind of thing,” said Wiggins.
Erebus would not have it, and very fiercely she dragged piecemeal from his reluctant lips the story of the surprised idyl. He had seen the princess with an arm round the Terror's neck, and they had kissed.
With clenched fists and blazing eyes Erebus, taking the line of the least resistance, sought the princess. She found her lying back drowsily against a sunny bank.
Erebus came to an abrupt stop before her and cried fiercely: ”Princess or no princess, you shan't kiss the Terror!”
The drowsiness fled; and the princess sat up. Her gray eyes darkened and sparkled. She had never made a face in her life; it is not improbable, seeing how sheltered a life she had led, that she was ignorant that faces were made; but quite naturally she made a hideous face at Erebus, and said: