duckling days

"But ye'll surely step in it, and get yer dainty slippers wet. Come now, let Cap'n Triton offer ye a hand."

Though exasperated as much as if not more than he is endeared, Daphnes persists, for the umpteenth time, "Dear captain, I was once a boat. Perhaps I still am, in matter of fact." Whatever would help to convince, if anything in this world or any other could. "So if you would kindly let me step through...?"

It's not a river. Not a creek or stream. In truth, it's little more than a puddle, a rising of wetness up to the surface of the grass surrounding the broad and narrow of the path. With all of his kingly intellect, past and present and future, summed together, Daphnes cannot comprehend why it is that Triton is so insistent upon the avoidance of a subtle splash in the road.

Triton still stands, bars the way, shakes his head solemnly from side to side with beard passing just as nobly over jabot. His fists are propped at his sides, his stance wide and his cape triumphant.

So Daphnes holds out his own elbow (sighing, but he does).

"What's this, now?"

Oh, for the love of- "You're going to assist me, my good man? Or were you going to break out your country club court squeegee and settle it that way?"

Properly befuddled as only a true imbecile could be, Triton dissembles somewhat from his erstwhile proud posture. "Eh? Ye thought I meant to offer ye my arm?"

"You did say to 'let me offer ye a hand,'" Daphnes reminds him. It should be only more and more grating, but actually, the routine is charming, if one has time to waste, and Daphnes finds that he'll see his way clear to find some, somewhere.

This gets through, anyway. "Ah! So I did." A matching elbow from Triton comes linked across, and the pair skirt the puddle in style.

"That was foolish, you know."

"Well, and I am."