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!
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?
KING and RUTH:
(laughing) That paradox,
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! ha!
Ha! ha! ha! this paradox!
CHANT--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 and KING:
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
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! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
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 and 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!
A paradox,
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
A curious paradox,
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
A most ingenious paradox!
(RUTH and KING throw themselves back on seats, exhausted with laughter)