The Island Queen

“Indeed!” exclaimed the old gentleman, whose incredulity was fast taking the form of sarcasm. “Not far, I suppose, from that celebrated island which was the last home and refuge of our famous ancestor, the Spanish pirate, who was distantly related, through a first cousin of his mother, to Don Quixote.”

“You doubt us, daddy, I see,” said Pauline, laughing; “but I do assure you we are telling you the simple truth. I appeal to Dr Marsh.”

Dr Marsh, who had chiefly acted the part of observant listener up to that moment, now assured Mr Rigonda with so much sincerity that what had been told him was true, that he felt bound to believe him.

“Yes, indeed,” said Dr Marsh, “your daughter was in truth a queen, and I was one of her subjects. Indeed, I may say that, in one sense, she is a queen still, but she has been dethroned by fire and water, as you shall presently hear, though she still reigns in the affections of her people, and can never be dethroned again!”

This speech was greeted with some merriment, for the doctor said it with much enthusiasm. Then Dominick began to give an account of their adventures, interrupted and corrected, not infrequently, by his pert brother Otto, who, being still afflicted with his South-Sea-island appetite, remained unsatisfied until the last slice of toast, and the last muffin, and the last wedge of cake had disappeared from the table.

Dominick’s intentions were undoubtedly good; and when he asserted that it was his purpose to give his father and mother merely an outline of their adventures, he was unquestionably sincere; but the outline became so extended, and assumed such a variety of complex convolutions, that there seemed to be no end to the story—as there certainly seemed to be no end to the patience of the listeners. So Dominick went, “on and on and on,” as story-books put it, until the fire in the grate began to burn low; until Otto had consumed the contents of the teapot, and the cream-jug, and the sugar-basin, and had even gathered up, economically, the crumbs of the cake; until the still eager audience had begun to yawn considerately with shut mouths; until the household cat, lost in amazement at prolonged neglect, had ventured to creep from the coal-hole, and take up a modest position on the floor, in the shadow of its little old mistress.

There is no saying how long this state of things would have gone on, if it had not been for the exuberant spirits of Otto, who, under an impulse of maternal affection, sprang to his mother’s side with intent to embrace her, and unwittingly planted his foot on the cat’s tail.

Then, indeed, the convoluted outline came to an abrupt end; for, with a volcanic explosion, suggestive of thunder and lightning, inlaid with dynamite, the hapless creature sprang from the room, followed by a shriek from its mistress, and a roar of laughter from all the rest.

It is not certainly known where that cat spent the following fortnight. The only thing about it that remains on record is the fact that, at the end of that space of time, it returned to its old haunts, deeply humbled, and much reduced; that it gradually became accustomed to the new state of things, and even mounted the table, and sat blinking in its old position, and grew visibly fatter, while the old lady revived old times by stroking it, as she had been wont to, and communicating to it some of her thoughts and fancies.

“Ay, pussy,” she said, on one of these occasions when they chanced to be alone together, “little did you and I think, when we used to be sitting so comfortably here, that our darlings were being tossed about and starved in open boats on the stormy sea! Ah! pussy, pussy, we little knew—but ‘it’s all well that ends well,’ as a great writer that you know nothing about has said, and you and I can never, never be thankful enough for getting back, safe and sound, our dear old man, and our darling boys, and our—our little Pauline, the Island Queen.”

The End