When the sun princess and Froglip entered into the dining hall together, most eyes were on them.

Every noise shrank into small whispers as the people around the enormous table stared up at the goblin prince. He swept down the stairs as practiced as he could, the bottoms of his feet scraping upon the stone becoming the only audible sound.

At a glance around the table, he picked out Ophelia and the miner boy sitting at the table and with a sneaky smirk he began to head in their direction. However, before the prince of the goblins got so much as five steps in, Irenie grabbed his arm and corralled him back towards her.

"You, Prince Froglip, are going to fix the door in the adjacent hall," she said firmly and released him to point at the door. "The royal blacksmith will help you put the bolts back into the wall. Lucky the hinges weren't damaged or else we'd be having a very unpleasant discussion," Irenie said with a grim smirk, but Froglip registered it as a smile, nonetheless, as he left the hall.

"Any dith'cussion with the prin'theth of the thun people ith' a pleath'ant one." The goblin grinned back in his charming way and the princess paled a little before nodding and returning to sit with the others.

Froglip entered into the 'hall' he and his goblin men had first seen. Immediately, the 'blacksmith' who would apparently be aiding Froglip that morning in fixing the door began swearing and cursing at him. The goblin prince sneered and walked a large circle around the man who continued to curse him out and shake his fists at Froglip.

The blacksmith seemed to be pointing at the large spiked bolts attached to the door and then the gaping holes in the stone wall. However, while Froglip was propping up the large fallen door and rolling his eyes at cursing sun man before him, his keen goblin ears picked up whispering from the other room.

His mouth flattened into a line and the goblin prince craned his ears ever so slightly, a inconspicuous, blank look on his features.

"What an unkempt creature," one nasally voice hissed. "Cousin, are all goblins so uncivilized? It wasn't even wearing a shirt or breeches!"

Froglip's brow bunched into lines and a frown pulled down at the corners of his mouth as he continued to ignore the blacksmith and bash his fist into the large iron bolts, driving them deep into the wall.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

A gasp came from the blacksmith which interrupted his string of verbal curses but Froglip shushed him.

"If I didn't know any better, cousin, I would say that thing fancies you. Perhaps the foolish creature is interested in marrying you." The nasty, nasally voice continued to hiss little rotten things in the other room that made Froglip's fingers curl. The nerve of a sun welp to call him, Prince of the Goblins, a thing.

BAM! BAM!

He struck two other bolts before going deathly silent, his fist hovering over the last bolt in anticipation.

"Well, Jeffery," the princess said in a low whisper as she spoke under her breath. "I would rather marry a goblin than a miserable, whiny rake."

Marriage? Was that true?

Princess Irenie had just admitted along with a handful of other things that she would marry a goblin.

Of course the prince knew he had arrested Princess Irenie's attention ever since the first time they met. It was clear every time she shivered with excitement at his arrival that the princess was enthralled by Froglip. He just didn't expect the princess to voice her opinion this soon!

Quickly, the prince hit his fist into the last bolt, combed back his spiked, pink hair and jumped into a trot for the dining room. He came upon a very tense image of the princess hovering deathly still over the sun man she must have been arguing with.

"Oh, Prince Froglip, would you care to sit?" She asked and pointed to the chair furthest from her. Well that just wouldn't do! If the princess was so affectionate towards him, she would want to sit with him, wouldn't she?

Froglip instead took his chair in front of the princess and in the process scooted the sun man to the side. To his enjoyment the man looked annoyed with his pink nose wrinkled.

"And what hath the Printh'eth Irenie arranged for today?" The goblin asked with his most charming of smiles while Irenie shivered again.

She looked at him, then down, and then at the people surrounding the table.

"I was hoping that a few of you present would volunteer to accompany Curdie and I to the village just along the outside of the mountain. We will be building houses for the miners who had lost them in a mud slide."

Froglip's smile immediately faltered. If there was one true thing all goblins could agree on, it was that they hated the miners.

"I certainly will not be doing manual labour. Why can't they do it themselves? Aren't miners supposed to be strong?" The man talking was the very same sun-whelp who had called him a thing.

The Goblin Prince considered what the sun man had said to Irenie and shifted his jaw in contemplation. "I would gladly lend my goblins to help with the miners recon'thtruc'thion." The Prince glanced at the man with a cruel sneer.

The princess held a faint smile even though the rest of royals' mumbling seemed to agree with the sun man. Perhaps they wouldn't be of any help, but that just made Froglip look all the better.