“I took a fatherly interest in the little boats that floated there, and in the pretty, long-haired mermaids who swam up into the moonlight to sing love-songs to the sailors. The fishes that leaped and circled and shone in the purple light of dusk were all my friends, and the big and small winds knew me for their master. And I had a little son,—a beautiful, scaly son, born in the sea, and fated to inherit my power and my great sea-kingdom. But all that was very, very long ago!” He wept. “That was surely very nice,” said Dick, to encourage him. “Nice! It was—” The Sea Kobold sought for a word. “Bully?” suggested Dick. “I never heard the adjective,” said the Sea Kobold, primly. “But I will accept it for the moment. It was bully!—What was I saying? Ah, yes! It is a _very_ sad story. The Wicked King lives, as you must know, on the further shore of this sea. He has a very pretty daughter, with whom Prince Humpty Dumpty used to be in love.” “Humpty Dumpty!” exclaimed Dick, now all ears. “Yes.—Don’t interrupt, please! It distracts my mind.—Well, the Wicked King wanted her to marry someone else,—a gentleman named Grump, I believe,—and forbade her to even see Humpty Dumpty. But of course the lovers would not obey him. He was so cruel and unkind always that his daughter did not think it wrong to do as he had told her not to; and, for my part, I did not, either. “Humpty Dumpty came every night and sang love-songs to her, and one night he came in a beautiful little boat, made out of a big shell, with a sail spun entirely out of rose-leaves of different colours. And down by the shore he sang the very prettiest song that he had ever sung—or that any one else had ever sung, for that matter—and that I know, for I was listening. A _very_ pretty song it was, to be sure! “We were great friends, he and I, and I held his boat between two quiet waves when he went on shore to meet the Princess. And down she came from the City Wall Gate, holding up her skirts daintily and looking as sweet as possible. And they got into the sea-shell boat, and I puffed a breeze to fill the rose-leaf sail, and off they sailed. “But just then who should appear upon the shore but the Wicked King himself, and Grump with him! Grump—who was half a wizard and a _very_ disagreeable person, besides being very much in love with the little Princess—jumped into the sea and swam after the boat. The Wicked King stood on the shore and raved and threatened and swore. “I tried my best to drown Grump, but he wouldn’t sink any more than a piece of cork, and in spite of all my efforts he overtook the boat and pulled it slowly back to the shore. Grump made some magic passes over the prow of the little sea-shell skiff, and—oh, ’tis too sad!—when the boat reached the shore, there was nothing in it but the Princess, crying like a baby, and beside her a big egg.