The prince consort's feelings--for such there could be no doubt he was--were involved in no such mystery; and he broke out into a hyena-like scream of laughter, as he recognized, upon a second look, his young friend of the Golden Crown.
"So you have come, have you ?" he cried, thrusting his unlovely visage over the table, till it almost touched sir Norman's.

"You have come, have you, after all I said ?" "Yes, sir I have come!" said Sir Norman, with a polite bow.
"Perhaps you don't know me, my dear young sir--your little friend, you know, of the Golden Crown." "Oh, I perfectly recognize you! My little friend," said Sir Norman, with bland suavity, and unconsciously quoting Leoline, "once seen in not easy to be-forgotten." Upon this, his highness net up such another screech of mirth that it quite woke an echo through the room; and all Sir Norman's friends looked grave; for when his highness laughed, it was a very bad sign.
"My little friend will hurt himself," remarked Sir Norman, with an air of solicitude, "if he indulges in his exuberant and gleeful spirits to such an extent.

Let me recommend you, as a well-wisher, to sit down and compose yourself." Instead of complying, however, the prince, who seemed blessed with a lively sense of the ludicrous, was so struck with the extreme funniness of the young man's speech, that he relaxed into another paroxysm of levity, shriller and more unearthly, if possible, than any preceding one, and which left him so exhausted, that he was forced to sink into his chair and into silence through sheer fatigue.

Seizing this, the first opportunity, Miranda, with a glance of displeased dignity at Caliban, immediately struck in: "Who are you, sir, and by what right do you dare to come here ?" Her tone was neither very sweet nor suave; but it was much pleasanter to be cross-examined by the owner of such a pretty face than by the ugly little monster, for the moment gasping and extinguished; and Sir Norman turned to her with alacrity, and a bow.
"Madame, I am Sir Norman Kingsley, very much at your service; and I beg to assure you I did not come here, but fell here, through that hole, if you perceive, and very much against my will." "Equivocation will not serve you in this case, sir," said the queen, with an austere dignity.

"And, allow me to observe, it is just probable you would not have fallen through that hole in our royal ceiling if you had kept away from it.