‘Little sister,’ said Balkis, ‘you are quite right; but next time he begins to boast, take him at his word. Ask him to stamp, and see what will happen. We know what men-folk are like, don’t we? He’ll be very much ashamed.’
Away flew the Butterfly’s Wife to her husband, and in five minutes they were quarrelling worse than ever.
‘Remember!’ said the Butterfly. ‘Remember what I can do if I stamp my foot.’
‘I don’t believe you one little bit,’ said the Butterfly’s Wife. ‘I should very much like to see it done. Suppose you stamp now.’
‘I promised Suleiman-bin-Daoud that I wouldn’t,’ said the Butterfly, ‘and I don’t want to break my promise.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if you did,’ said his wife. ‘You couldn’t bend a blade of grass with your stamping. I dare you to do it,’ she said. Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!’
Suleiman-bin-Daoud, sitting under the camphor-tree, heard every word of this, and he laughed as he had never laughed in his life before. He forgot all about his Queens; he forgot all about the Animal that came out of the sea; he forgot about showing off. He just laughed with joy, and Balkis, on the other side of the tree, smiled because her own true love was so joyful.
Presently the Butterfly, very hot and puffy, came whirling back under the shadow of the camphor-tree and said to Suleiman, ‘She wants me to stamp! She wants to see what will happen, O Suleiman-bin-Daoud! You know I can’t do it, and now she’ll never believe a word I say. She’ll laugh at me to the end of my days!’
‘No, little brother,’ said Suleiman-bin-Daoud, ‘she will never laugh at you again,’ and he turned the ring on his finger--just for the little Butterfly’s sake, not for the sake of showing off,--and, lo and behold, four huge Djinns came out of the earth!
‘Slaves,’ said Suleiman-bin-Daoud, ‘when this gentleman on my finger’ (that was where the impudent Butterfly was sitting) ‘stamps his left front forefoot you will make my Palace and these gardens disappear in a clap of thunder. When he stamps again you will bring them back carefully.’
‘Now, little brother,’ he said, ‘go back to your wife and stamp all you’ve a mind to.’
Away flew the Butterfly to his wife, who was crying, ‘I dare you to do it! I dare you to do it! Stamp! Stamp now! Stamp!’ Balkis saw the four vast Djinns stoop down to the four corners of the gardens with the Palace in the middle, and she clapped her hands softly and said, ‘At last Suleiman-bin-Daoud will do for the sake of a Butterfly what he ought to have done long ago for his own sake, and the quarrelsome Queens will be frightened!’