Page 25 of The Very Virile Viking

"I want a bow and arrows, Father," Hamr said.

"You will shoot your eye out."

"I want a wagon, Father. A red one," Kolbein said.

"If it will stop you from clutching my leg all the time, the answer is yes, yes, yes."

"I want a pair of den-ham braies , Father," Torolf said. "All the men wear them in this country, and see how fine their arses look."

"Your arse looks fine enough, thank you very much."

How his children had managed to see so many things in the short time they'd been in the mart was beyond him.

It seemed like an hour but was only minutes later that Angela returned with a fresh-smelling, gooing Lida.

If he was not already half in love with this woman, he would be now. Her gentle treatment of his daughter touched him deeply.

"Dare I hope that one of those chests you insisted on bringing with you in the van contains a change of

clothing for this baby?" she asked.

"Nay," he answered. He might consider her his destiny, but he did not trust her enough yet to let her know he had left a fortune back in her locked vehicle.

"By the way, what in God's name is this?" She tossed a soft cloth belt at him that was exceedingly heavy.

It nad been wrapped around Lida's middle, and Angela must have discovered it when she'd changed her nappy.

"It is a coin belt," he said, raising his chin defiantly it her glance of condemnation. "All my children wear them, as I do. What if we had been shipwrecked? We would need some means to survive once we were rescued, wouldn't we?"

"I guess so." She was shaking her head at him, though.

On the way back from the baby department, where she picked out several outfits for Lida called

"onesies" and "sleepers," a "sippy" cup, and a "teething ring," which the baby instantly began to slobber over, Angela led them to the toil-a-trees section for some hair moose she wanted to buy herself. That was something he really wanted to see… till he discovered it was just a container of some foamy substance and not a large, hairy animal. Was it moose drool she intended to put on her silky hair? He shuddered with revulsion at the thought. While there, he noticed a long aisle of shelves filled with nothing but different types of dee-odor-ants. When he asked Angela what they were, she said, "They prevent excess sweating and foul body odors." She looked pointedly at him when she said the latter.

"Do I smell?" he asked, fully expecting her to say no.

"To high heaven."

The woman just said I stink. No one has ever dared insult me so. Shall I lop off her head?

Mayhap later. She had already turned away from him and was heading toward the food department. He lifted one arm and sniffed himself. Yea, she was right. He was a mite odorsome. He noticed that Torolf was doing the same. Their gazes connected of a sudden and they both shrugged sheepishly. Neither of them had ever had a female tell them that they stank "to high heaven." Probably because the women they'd known were also a bit fragrant. He grabbed a half dozen of the products marked "Old Spice," and put them in Torolf's cart.

"What in the name of Thor is that?" Torolf was pointing to a headless, armless figure of a man wearing a tight-fitting garment around his arse and man parts.

Angela's face turned pink with embarrassment before she murmured, "Jockey shorts."

"Jaw-key shorts?" Torolf repeated. "What purpose does such attire fulfill?"

"It's male underpants. Some men—and boys—wear those, and others wear the looser boxer shorts."

She pointed to another headless, armless figure as an example. "Surely they have the same kinds of things in your country."

"Nay, they do not," he and Torolf said at the same time.

"Loincloths suffice for most men, or small clothes made of linen for those of a more refined nature, or nothing at all," Magnus explained.

They bought jaw-key shorts for him and his sons in six different sizes. Hamr grumbled that he would rather go bare-arsed and buy a bow and arrows. That purchase prompted Kirsten and Dagny to demand lace-trimmed undergarments of their own, including special dual-cupped pieces of cloth to support their tiny, almost nonexistent breasts.