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But the truth of the matter was, as I suspect, that she thought he would probably drop in of his own accord, some time in the course of the evening. As the brisk little people from the North came up the palace steps, Miss Muffet was sure that Hans Christian Andersen must have had a party once, or how could he have described them so well?
Then, when Ursus had opportunely arrived to frighten him away as easily as the Spider frightened Miss Muffet, she had been impishly amused. In Toys at Peter Rolls's she had been vexed, irritated, but never hotly angry. The young man's persistence had not seemed serious enough to call "persecution."
Miss Prescott, when she came, did not displace the Muffet. She was installed additional to the Muffet; and as touching the modern principles relating to children she very soon told Muffet a thing or two not previously dreamt of in the Muffet philosophy but having, thence forward, occasional place in the Muffet nightmares.
He said he had no doubt but that the little elves were helping in the kitchen. "It would be just like them; the little dears!" said Miss Muffet. The shoemaker felt very much more at home when he met a young fellow named Hans who had come from the same village.
And then, by a chance, one quiet autumn evening, a veritable godsend of a little Miss Muffet comes wandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half asleep, fagged out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine yourself in his place, and he in yours! Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his sleek hair shining. 'The one clinching chance of a century!
They remarked that if they were at liberty to tell their adventures, as seafaring men, the stories that had been told would seem quite tame; but they didn't feel at liberty, and only looked at each other so wisely that Miss Muffet wondered whether any persons could really be as wise as they looked. A sturdy, round-faced man stood just behind the group, but took no part in the conversation.
"You know I wouldn't ask for wages; I would do it just for the love of it." Hindbad frowned darkly. "It would never do, Miss Muffet! I can't have little girls coming over on the banks of the Tigris and taking the bread out of the mouths of my family."
Whistler told a pretty story related by Muffet, a good author, of Dr. Caius, that built Keys College; that, being very old, and living only at that time upon woman's milk, he, while he fed upon the milk of an angry, fretful woman, was so himself; and then, being advised to take it of a good-natured, patient woman, he did become so, beyond the common temper of his age.
He told his story in a charming oriental way, but without a touch of exaggeration. "That would have spoiled it," said Miss Muffet to Baron Munchausen, who was standing by. "Don't you like simplicity, Baron?" The Baron bowed in a courtly, old-fashioned way, and said that he was inordinately fond of it.
This was such sound sense that they all agreed to it, though Mr. Wolf declared that the First Person, Plural, seemed to him to be more sociable. "Does it make any difference about the moods and tenses?" asked Miss Muffet. "Passive First Person, Singular, I am hunted." There was a general cry of horror. "What a dreadful point of view!" said the Dodo; "it makes me shiver to think about it."
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