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A
Paradox.
Ruth:
When you had left our pirate fold,
We tried to raise our spirits faint,
According to our custom old,
With quips and quibbles quaint.
But all in vain the quips we heard,
We lay and sobbed upon the rocks,
Until to somebody occurred
A startling paradox.
Frederic:
A paradox?
King: (laughing) A paradox!
Ruth:
A most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha! ha!
King:
We knew your taste for curious quips,
For cranks and contradictions queer;
And with the laughter on our lips,
We wished you there to hear.
We said, "If we could tell it him,
How Frederic would the joke enjoy!"
And so we've risked both life and limb
To tell it to our boy.
Frederic: (interested).
That paradox?
That paradox?
King and Ruth: (laughing)
That most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho! ho!
King:
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to
be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the
Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February,
twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and
twenty.
Through some singular coincidence-- I shouldn't be surprised if
it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy--
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born
in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by
birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over!
Ruth: Ha! ha! ha! ha!
King: Ho! ho! ho! ho!
Frederic:
Dear me!
Let's see! (counting on fingers)
Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!
All:
Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! ho!
Frederic: (more amused than any)
How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I've been alive,
Yet, reck'ning by my natal day,
Yet, reck'ning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!
Ruth/King:
He is a little boy of five!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
All:
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! , etc.
(Ruth and King throw themselves back on seats, exhausted with
laughter)
Frederic:
Upon my word, this is most curious-- most absurdly
whimsical. Five-and-a-quarter! No one would think it
to look at me!
Ruth:
You are glad now, I'll be bound, that you spared us.
You would never have forgiven yourself when you
discovered that you had killed two of your comrades.
Frederic:
My comrades?
King: (rises)
I'm afraid you don't appreciate the delicacy
of your position: You were apprenticed to us--
Frederic:
Until I reached my twenty-first year.
King:
No, until you reached your twenty-first birthday
(producing document), and, going by birthdays, you are
as yet only five-and-a-quarter.
Frederic:
You don't mean to say you are going to hold me to that?
King:
No, we merely remind you of the fact, and leave the
rest to your sense of duty.
Ruth:
Your sense of duty!
Frederic: (wildly)
Don't put it on that footing! As I was
merciful to you just now, be merciful to me! I implore
you not to insist on the letter of your bond just as
the cup of happiness is at my lips!
Ruth:
We insist on nothing; we content ourselves with
pointing out to you your duty.
King:
Your duty!
Frederic: (after a pause)
Well, you have appealed to my sense of
duty, and my duty is only too clear. I abhor your
infamous calling; I shudder at the thought that I have
ever been mixed up with it; but duty is before all --
at any price I will do my duty.
King:
Bravely spoken! Come, you are one of us once more.
Frederic:
Lead on, I follow.
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