Percy and Ingrid went to a party, and Percy enjoyed the sight of party food making its way into Ingrid’s mouth. He liked the way the girl's haunting green eyes sparkled out towards him, as she went to work on a mouthful of tasty food, and he liked to look at her shapely lips. Percy and Ingrid had never had a quarrel, and yet they had taken a lot of time to become extremely familiar with each other. Ingrid knew the times when it would be more helpful to be serious, and yet she was also perfectly capable of supplementing Percy's sense of humour with her own. She enjoyed a little mischief - or even a lot of it on occasions - and she never failed to coerce Percy into a conversation wherein the dialogue was as witty and intelligent as some of the Sneaky Spy's most memorable monologues.

"Percy, could we sit on the couch for a while? I think that my toes need a rest already."
"Will I still be able to stare at your eyes?"

"I was hoping that you might have a storehouse of sweet nothings to whisper in my ear."

"I thought of a few while we were dancing actually. Alright, let's sit down. Mind you, some of those sweet nothings have got a lot of something in them."
"Something from nothing, Percy?"

"You really are something," Percy said under his breath."
"Something?"

"Oh nothing."

They sat down.

"Oh yes, what are those sweet little nothings of yours?"

"Well seriously, just that I feel so..."

Percy's voice was now a whisper.

"....complete and happy when we're together."

"Thank you," said Ingrid.

"It's not just that.... Ingrid, I can't even see your ears while I keep kissing under your chin between sentences. Can you still hear the sweet nothings loud and clear?"

"Yes, but not too loud and too clear, please. We don't want everybody else in the room here with us to hear them as well."

She kissed his cheeks.

Percy looked again at her dress.

"You know that outfit makes you look absolutely regal."

"Percy, you have impeccable taste."

Percy wondered how he might convincingly be surprised by Ingrid after shrinking himself again. To go to her house again would be stretching coincidence. He waited until she gave him some advance notice of a place that she would be attending without him.

She said that she wanted to shop for his birthday present in the city and then take a walk through the Botanical Gardens.

“I love that nice pathway that goes towards Government House’s borderline fence,” she said, which gave him a way to identify a good place to which he might teleport and get ‘caught.’

He waited for her in the garden beside that path at the estimated time of her arrival. One thing was different. This time there were several people in the gardens, mainly housewives whose husbands were at work. She would not be able to stop and talk to him. He guessed that she would most likely put him into her shopping bag until she could find a solitary spot to announce his fate.

He saw Ingrid approaching and let her see him. She walked over, looked around, and then picked him up quickly and lifted him up above her head, tilted her head back, opened her mouth and popped him straight in.

“Not even a lick,” he thought, “She sure solved the problem of avoiding being noticed.”

She walked for a while with him in her mouth, and then gulped him down.

That night she came to his house, snuggled up into bed with him, and licked him suddenly.

“It’s funny,” she said, “I can’t think what you remind me of, but you taste like something else I’ve had lately.”

Ingrid was becoming suspicious. To hide his secret, he would have to prepare the ruse of his Sneaky Spy career.

“You’re very understanding too.”

“About most things,” said Ingrid, “But I still can’t get over how familiar you tasted when I licked you before this adventure started.”

“But you’d licked me before that,” said Percy.

“I suppose so,” said Ingrid.

She was undoubtedly getting closer to the truth.

“You don’t know what it might have been that you ate that I taste like?” he asked.

“Well maybe not, but I think it’s something I had when I was a teenager. I might find some more there at the school fete. Would you like to go there with me?”

She was thinking of searching the grounds for more little boys, where she’d caught him the first time, and eating them, and possibly even thinking of testing to see whether Percy would be around at the time she caught the little boy.

“I’d love to go,” thought Percy.

This would not be her opportunity to confirm any subconscious or open suspicions of Percy being the shrunken men she was eating. It would be his opportunity to allay her suspicions. He agreed to meet her at the fete after attending to some legal issues following on from the drug case.

On that day, he shrank himself and teleported into the same school garden where Ingrid had caught him as a teenager. He let her find him again. She picked him up proudly.

“I’ve enjoyed eating a few little fellows like you,” she said, licking him twice to taste him, “It’s not your lucky day, is it?”

“No,” said Percy.

“Well you can think on it until dinner time. It’s nothing personal. I just enjoy the taste of you, and there’s nothing else like it.”

Ingrid put him into her handbag and clasped it tight, and then walked up to the gate to meet Percy and walk down with him. Percy teleported back home with the ring, and then rode his new motor scooter to Pymble as fast as he could, something he’d never done before. He had to get to her before she looked in the bag again.

He parked just near the school, walked up to the gate, and met Ingrid. She suddenly licked his cheek.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“I thought you liked it,” said Ingrid.

“It’s a bit embarrassing in public,” said Percy, well aware that she was comparing the taste of him to the taste of the tiny man that she assumed was still in her handbag. He had to make sure that she did not open it at all.

“Well I’m sorry for being late,” he said, “Today everything you like is my treat.”

“Thank you,” she said.

That would keep her from opening her bag. He would offer to carry everything in his backpack too, leave the motor scooter there and let her think he needed a lift home, as she had not seen him park it. She didn’t even know he’d bought it specifically for the purpose of this ruse, though it would be useful for Sneaky Spy adventures, he felt sure.

After a romantic day with Ingrid, which included watching her licking cream from a jam and cream bun, he walked her to her car, and invited her to come over for dinner.

“I did have some of my own food in mind, but I love to spend every moment I can with you,” she said.

She drove him home, and he set her up in the dining room, noticing that she carried her handbag by her side the whole time, not wanting him to escape.

He ran upstairs, shrank and teleported directly into the bag just in time to see her lift it and look in at him.

“We’re at my boyfriend’s house, and I’m most likely going to stay the night. I can’t risk you escaping the bag while we’re asleep. So I’ll have to look for a suitable moment to eat you up quickly, when he’s not likely to walk back into the room. I’m sorry it’s so up in the air, but we’ll work something out.”

The politeness of the speech excited him in yet another way.

As soon as she’d closed the bag, he teleported back upstairs and then came down fully dressed once again (having removed most of his clothing except for his underpants, each time he had shrunken). They had dinner together and then he decided to engineer the opportunity for her to eat him in privacy.

He had to get her away from his bag this time, to make sure she didn’t discover his absence before he could teleport into it again. He invited her to dance with him and led her upstairs, holding hands, before she could think to pick up her bag. She would be worried about the little man’s escape.

“I’ll just get my bag,” she said.

“Nothing will happen to it,” he said.

“I know, I just think …. Maybe I should hang it up on the clothes hooks to stop its contents getting damaged,” she said.

That was still far enough away from their dancing destination.

He led her up to his bedroom after she hung up the bag. They danced arm in arm on the balcony and in the bedroom until she said that she needed to go and fetch a glass of water from downstairs.

He let her go, and raced into the laboratory room, which he always kept locked, and shrank himself and teleported into the bag.

He heard her briskly approaching and taking the bag into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry for the short notice, but it’s more than my last tiny man meal got,” she said, recalling the rapid gobbling in the Botanical Gardens, “I’ll have to eat you all up now. No more time to talk.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Thanks for being such a good sport,” she said, and opened her mouth and slipped him in.

She swallowed quickly this time, and he was just as quick in teleporting back to the laboratory and returning to the bedroom.

He soon heard her ascending the stairs and saw her with a glass of water.

“Thank goodness she really got one to authenticate HER journey,” he thought, “It gave me more time to hide mine.”

They snuggled into bed and she licked him again.

“I guess you just have that kind of a taste,” she said, having apparently disproved her suspicions.

“I can’t believe how devoted you’ve become to me,” said Ingrid the following night, “Come to think of it, I see now that you were always that devoted to me. I’m the one who’s become devoted. I guess my tastes in men have really changed.”

If she only knew how much he appreciated what he thought had been an unintentional pun on the phrase ‘tastes in men’.

“Do you think they’ll ever change again?”

“I don’t think so.”

He began to wonder about continuing the shrinking games though. She might not be so understanding about him having a secret locked room, even though he claimed it was for Sneaky Spy paraphernalia and scientific experiments. He dropped off to sleep without having come to any solution.

He awoke the following morning, before the sun had arisen, to find that he seemed to be alone in the dark bedroom. There was no familiar feel of Ingrid beside him. He called to her and got out of bed, wondering if she’d gone for water or was feeling sick.

He bumped into something hard but not a wall. He felt in front of him and felt bars. Somehow one of his enemies had imprisoned him, but he had no idea which one, let alone how it had been done. What must they have done to Ingrid, after all he had done to keep her safe from Colin Geoffries? Did the man have contacts on the outside of prison?

Suddenly he heard movement, and then a light was turned on.

To his surprise, Ingrid had turned on a light outside the prison cell, which wasn’t a prison cell at all, but a small cage, with Percy inside it, shrunken. The cage was resting on a table in his laboratory, and beside that was his shrinking and teleportation machine.

He checked his fingers. His ring was not there, which was no surprise, as he only put it on himself when he shrank. Ingrid would not have known about it.

“I began to join some dots,” she said, walking over and looking into the cage as she sat down on the carpet beside the table, her high head just below him, “For one thing, the appearances of shrunken boys or men in my life, who incidentally were always age compatible with you, have been concurrent with your presence in my life. The second thing was the fact that, on the one hand you gave me a key to your house, but on the other, you never gave me a key to this room. It was easy enough to take yours after I put some sleeping tablets into the dessert you were cooking last night. Now you know why I didn’t feel like the dessert. I don’t know how you’ve been setting the recall mechanism on this machine, but that’s what you must have been doing. I had no trouble working out how to reduce you with it though, and you certainly haven’t had any opportunity to set a recall mechanism this time.”

“Touché, Ingrid,” he said.

“The only question is: why did you keep doing it?”

“You liked eating me, every me.”

“Was that the only reason?”

“I liked it too. I loved it, Ingrid. It’s why I had to save you from Smiling Island. I never forgot how much I loved the pleasant surprise when you did it the first time.”

“Well I thought I might give you the chance to enjoy it once more,” said Ingrid, “But I think you can see that this means our engagement is off.”

“You outwitted me, fair and square.”

“You better believe I did. This is one trap the Sneaky Spy will never escape from.”

“From my favourite villainess.”

“Flattery will get you … about as far as my stomach.”

“I wouldn’t have had things turn out any other way that didn’t involve all that’s happened between us,” said Percy.

“Still sweet,” she said, and opened the cage and took him out and kissed him, “Those pills really knocked you out. You’ve been asleep until mid afternoon. I’ve had breakfast and lunch without you, but you certainly won’t be left out of dinner.”

“I had a hunch,” said Percy.

Ingrid smiled adorably, while Percy enjoyed the new thrill. This time there were no easy escapes, none at all if she had her way.

Ingrid carried him to the bedroom, where she showed him that his real bed was still there. She had found a dolls house bed and cage for him while he’d slept. She lay down on the bed and let him climb all over her upper body, something that he hadn’t even enjoyed when they were teenagers.

“Did you suspect that day at the school fair?” he asked.

“I had a vague idea, but of what I wasn’t sure. You just tasted so nice in both of your sizes. I forgot to mention that as my first clue. Now that I know what happened, it’s easy enough to guess how you pulled off that ruse at home the same night.”

Ingrid pressed her giant lips to him.

“That was lovely,” he said.

“I’m glad you think so, but you do realise that this time is your last, don’t you?”

“Yes. In a way it’s also a first. It’s the first time you’ll be eating me, knowing that it’s me. That’s a new thrill. In a way I’ve always wanted that, but known it could only be done once before the game was given away. Now that you’ve got me, we might as well do it.”

“We’ll see if you’re sounding so cooperative when I get you into the oven,” she said, “I won’t make it too hot for you, but it is traditional to cook a meal first, and you do have a fine dining table.”

Some of the old mockery was back. This was the first time he was enjoying it as much as he had when they had been teenagers.

There was just one thing, he thought, as Ingrid dozed off. He had enjoyed being eaten several times, but he had never enjoyed being married.

“I might as well try to get away,” he thought, “If it doesn’t work, she’ll eat me. If it does, I might get back to the machine, or instruct someone how to build another one and restore me.”

He noticed that her head was in the centre of the pillow. It was not resting on either side. He opened the end of the pillowslip and pulled several pieces of pillow foam out, tearing hard with his hands, until he had enough to cushion his fall. Then he dropped it all on the floor and jumped to land on the pile.

He looked to see that the balcony door was open, but there was no way he could cart all that foam over and drop it to the garden in a safely grouped pile to cushion his fall, and it wouldn’t work from that height anyway. Besides that, she would almost certainly awaken and capture him. He might as well go for the shrinking machine in the laboratory.

He ran over, slid under the door and ran along the hallway. He was just passing the door of the room before the laboratory, when he heard Ingrid stirring.

“So we’re trying for a comeback, are we?” he heard her call.

He ducked under the nearby door and into the spare room, heard Ingrid open the bedroom door and run along the hallway into the laboratory.

“When she doesn’t find me in the machine, she’ll guess the only place I could have gone,” he thought, “I’ve got to hide quick, and well!”

He noticed there was enough sunlight in the room to light his way, and darted towards an old television set which lay on the carpet with its back to him. It had a wooden board panel with holes at the back, just large enough for him to get into. He climbed up and into it, and peeked out of a smaller hole as Ingrid came into the room and turned the light on. She was towering beautifully. The suspense was the most arousing thing to date. This time they were both playing for keeps, and they both knew that they were playing for Percy Dale.

He watched her tall shapely powerful legs striding around the room, as she looked in various places. Finally her eyes came upon the television set. He ducked back and hid behind a valve or transistor or whatever was inside it. James Hamilton might have known by feel, but he could not see what was concealing him. Ingrid peeked in, but could not see him. She got up and left the room.

“I guess I’ll have to ride it out here until she’s left the house,” he thought, “I hope she doesn’t do anything to incapacitate the shrinking machine before she goes.”

He waited for some time and then heard Ingrid come back into the room … with a screwdriver visible in her hand. He ducked back behind the object which had concealed him before, and listened to her unscrewing the board from the back of the television set. As soon as it was removed, he saw her fingers reaching around. They knocked against him, knocking him into view.

“I seem to recall a few clever puns as your previous selves met their nonesuch fate,” said Ingrid, smiling proudly, “But you’re about to be a TV DINNER, Percy.”

Ingrid took him downstairs, put him in the oven and walked happily around the kitchen preparing herself for the meal to end all meals. Soon she came over, licked her finger and touched him with it.

“Warm enough, and just as delicious and cute looking as ever,” she said, “Are you ready for our final dinner date, Percy?”

“Sure am,” he said, “I couldn’t decide whether to face it or get my size back and get married. You sure helped me make up my mind.”

“Even if I believe that, it won’t do you any good,” she said, and put him on a plate and carried it to the dinner table.

She sat down, licked her lips several times, lifted Percy up, gave him an enormous kiss, and a generous view of her partly visible breasts.

“That dress is magnificent, and so are you,” he said, “I never stopped thinking of you or comparing every girl to you throughout those years between our two meetings.”

“That I know and believe,” she said.

“And I know from what you told my second shrunken self that you’ll always remember this meal,” he said.

“And the others … if I live to be 100,” she said, “But I can’t remember what I haven’t started. Thanks for everything, Percy. It’s been fun, and you’re a true romantic. Down you go.”

She put out her tongue this time, and slid him along it, into her mouth, and then held his leg as she drew her tongue in, so that it didn’t take him down her throat straight away. Instead, it slid under him as it retracted, while his position remained constant. He lay on her tongue recalling all their happy times together, and then saw her open her mouth and felt her tapping him on the back of the leg.

“She wants me to turn around,” he thought.

He rolled his body around, until he was facing the front of her mouth and saw that she was positioning a pocket mirror in front of her mouth. She wanted him to see the final movement that drew him into her throat.

“Thanks for the view,” he called, “You look better than ever.”

Ingrid absorbed the compliment, and then slowly angled her tongue upward, so that he began to slide, but not steep enough to obscure his view of the mirror. He slowly reached her throat, and stopped just inside the upper part of it. He recalled the powerful gulping with which she had easily despatched him in the past. This time he had an incentive to fight against that. He stretched his body out as much as he could, and pushed against Ingrid’s throat.

He was still incredibly aroused, despite the danger he was in. He heard a laugh coming up from her throat and realised she was about to gulp. Ingrid had a far more powerful advantage, and he was trapped inside her, no matter how things turned out. Yet he wanted to prolong the adventure for as long as he possibly could, knowing that once she had succeeded in despatching him to her stomach, she would go on with her life and hold him only in her memories.

Ingrid began to gulp, and he felt the incredible pressure. For her, it was merely a gesture which took a minimum of effort, he considered. She would be sitting at the table enjoying the process, while he fought with all his strength to keep her from gobbling him down any further.

Ingrid’s throat was wet. He realised that he was in fact still pressed against her tongue. Though not visible from the outside, the tongue starts somewhere down inside the throat. It was hard to gain any friction when pressing against it. Percy felt himself slipping further down.

Then he suddenly felt his legs get caught in some opening. It was not below him, where he had been gulped several times before, but beside him. Percy pushed with his hands, and his legs went into the opening. Then he lost his grip, and his upper body fell over, dangling into her throat. He reached up with his hands to pull himself into the opening, and then eased his whole body into it.

He was surrounded by a soft inner part of Ingrid’s upper body, which was moving constantly. He felt the air, and then deduced where he was.

“I’ve made it into her lungs,” he thought, “She can’t swallow me any more now. I can’t ever get out, but she can’t ever gulp me down to her stomach either.”

Ingrid must have known what he had done, but was powerless to get at him. The safest place for him had turned out to be within her own body.

“My turn to say touché,” he heard her say, “But at least I’ve stopped you recalling yourself to your machine.”

For the next few weeks, he lived in her lungs, occasionally crawling out to the opening while she was eating, to catch pieces of falling food while they were still fresh, long before they would otherwise have reached her stomach. They sustained him, and allowed him to lie in her lungs and think about her.

One day she started speaking again.

“I’m constantly aware that you’re in my lungs,” she said, “I can so often feel you there. It makes it hard to put the thought of gulping you down out of my head. I’ll make you a deal, and you can trust me on my word of honour about this. I’ve never lied to you, have I, regardless of how menacing my conquests of you have been. I’m going to lie down. If you come into my throat, I’ll let you climb towards my mouth, and then turn you loose in the garden. I’ll go inside for the rest of the day, and make no effort to hunt you down until the next day. If you can make it back to your machine before I find and catch you, I will marry you. If I catch you first, I will use your machine to make you just a little bit smaller, so that you can’t slow your fall in my throat. Then I will gulp you down so fast that you’ll never have a chance to escape to my lungs again. If you think that such a challenge would put an end to this stale mate, I’ll expect you to climb out soon.”

He thought for a few minutes and decided that it was worth it either way … especially since he had an advantage. He didn’t have to make it to his machine, but only to the ring. She didn’t know about it.

“Good to see you again,” said Ingrid, as he emerged from her mouth onto the pillow beside her head.

“You look lovely as ever,” said Percy.

Ingrid took him down to the garden and put him down on the grass. Then she lay down on her stomach with her face right in front of him, resting on her hands. She had brought him down in her right hand, but he noticed something which took his breath away. Ingrid had removed her engagement ring and replaced it with his homing signal ring. He remembered that he had last left it on his bedside table. She must have chosen to wear a piece of his jewellery when she found the ring, and had no knowledge of its power to rescue him from her mercy.

Now it would be so much harder and riskier to get at it. He had to get close to her, which involved the greatest risk of recapture, in order to do it.

Ingrid gave him a slow farewell kiss.

“Good luck. You’ll need it,” she said, and true to her word, she got up and went inside.

In the days ahead, Percy made a rope from fallen small garden vines, and tied it to a hook from a suitably shaped large twig. He managed to hook it around various structures in the wall far below his upstairs bedroom one day, and climbed each stage, until he reached the balcony. He slipped under the door and climbed up onto his bed and hid under the bed clothes and waited until Ingrid went to bed that night.

He had positioned himself on the far side, where the sheet and blanket were always tucked in, so that she would not notice him or roll onto him as she slipped into the bed. In the darkness, he heard her huge incredible body settling beside him, and then waited until he could estimate where her left hand would be.

He knew that she would be wearing the ring. It would have made things so much easier if she had been in the habit of removing it while she slept, but he knew from their last meeting, that she must have been wearing it while she had been lying down to allow him to take up her challenge. He must not let her know that he was anything other than a rumpled portion of sheet, as he felt about for the ring. To that end, he would always grab a bit of sheet, rumple it himself and use it like a glove, and touch her hand ever so softly, as he felt about for the ring.

It was awesome to consider that he was playing with a hand that could easily grip him inescapably, if she learned he was there. At last his hand came to rest on the ring. He could grip it just a little more strongly and without the sheet, because she would not feel it unless it moved, unlike the effects would have been of him touching his own skin against her actual fingers. Her hand seemed to be on its side at the moment. He ran each of his hands down either side of the ornament until he felt the circular ring itself.

He tensed up, anxious and considered the scale of the risk he now had to take. From what he could hear, she had fallen asleep during his search. Yet the moment he tugged on that ring, he would awaken her and alert her to his presence. He had to be able to activate the homing signal the moment he got the ring off her finger, and before she could grab him.

He tensed himself, prepared to act, and then stopped. It took him several attempts to summon up the determination to go ahead. He finally considered the alternative: hiding out indefinitely, if she didn’t find him first.

Percy wrenched the ring from her finger, felt her stirring and saw some light as she turned on the bedside table reading light. He put the ring around his neck, as it would not fit anywhere else, having not been reduced with him this time, as he saw the bedclothes pulled off. Ingrid sat up instantly, revealed in light in a beautiful nightgown. In that split second he saw her beautiful giant face gaping down at him with a mixture of realisation and resolve. He turned the ring, and the signal did its work.

“So that’s your-…” he heard her say, just before he was taken from the bedroom to reappear at the machine.

He knew that the remaining words of her sentence would have been “way of activating the recall mechanism.”

He heard her stepping out of bed and running to the door. She would be down the hallway and enter the laboratory in less than a minute. He felt for the controls in the darkness, as he heard Ingrid running down the hallway, and threw the full-sized ring away from the machine, which restored his full size just before she burst into the room. Percy dived for the ring and put it back on his finger.

“Don’t worry, darling,” he said, “I believe this means you’ll be able to start wearing another ring again anyway. If I let you stay, can I take your word that there’ll be no more spiking my food and drink with sleeping pills?”

“I promise,” she said.

He put out his arms for a hug, and she met him half way and they were soon kissing.

Several nights later, they were snuggling together in his bed.

“I really enjoyed the chase that night I hunted you down and caught you in the TV set,” she said.

“I can look back on that with some fondness too now,” he said, “What I really miss is being eaten over and over.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, “They were all you, but that only makes it better knowing I kept eating you, thinking it was a permanent conquest.”

“I can’t shrink myself anymore, now that you know. You’d have really gulped me down forever and had a happy life without me, if you’d won, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but I’ll just have to settle for a happy life WITH you,” said Ingrid.

“That’ll have to be good enough for both of us,” said Percy.

Half an hour later, Ingrid spoke again.

“What if I gave my word again each time?” she said.

“You mean, to let me go after each ‘eating game’, so we could do it again,” said Percy.

At this stage, they had known and loved and outwitted each other for so long, that they had that rare ability of couples to finish each other’s thoughts and sentences.

“I admit the deal is loaded slightly in your favour. You’ll get all the gobbling thrills you like out of it, without ever having to pay the full price,” said Ingrid, “But I can pretend it’s forever each time, and then let you recall yourself. I’ll never shrink you without you wearing your ring. At least I’ll get to eat you over and over again.”

“Ingrid! I don’t know what to say.”

“I guess I owe you a concession, after all you’ve done for me, all you’ve been through for me. To think that you saved my life at least once, knowing what I didn’t at the time, that I had eaten YOU, when I was dating that creep. We could have some great hunts and chases in that large lovely set of gardens you have here? Will you trust me to always eat you only temporarily?”

“Oh Ingrid, I love you more than ever. What a marriage we’ll have!”

“I think so too, and Percy, I love you more than my ex-boyfriend. I always will.”

Later ercy lifted a large prawn towards Ingrid’s mouth.

“May I do the honours?” he asked.

Ingrid opened her mouth and practically sucked the prawn from his fingers.

She swallowed it and then gave a quiet laugh.

“I’ve just realised what occasions like this must have been like for you all those years between our teens and our reunion,” she said, “You couldn’t have gone to any party and watched any pretty girl eat anything, without dreaming of riding her tongue, and any other girl would have let you into her mouth without gulping you down, I’d expect.”

“That and your greater beauty are what make you so special. I never showed that machine or my shrunken self to anyone else. I only ever thought of riding tongue with you.”

“You are so sweet!” said Ingrid, “I could just … eat you all up!”