The moon was at its full again, and as she sat, sorting these familiar articles, she could see the white blur of Sophy's gown in one of the hammocks, and hear the soft undertone of voices, as she and her lover talked together.
"Just run along, you and Joe, Charlotte, dear," Sophy had said. "We'll come in by the time you're ready to put out the lights."
"And here," reflected Charlotte, frowning towards the hammocks, "it's eleven o'clock, and Joe and I nearly ready for bed, and she isn't even thinking of coming in!"
Her mood was such as in a vigorous, old-fashioned mother means a sound spanking for the offending child. And Charlotte felt that in some sort Sophy was her child, and dearly would she have liked to spank her.
Here Judge Macon came forth again, looking somewhat like the sheeted dead in the extreme length of his linen garment, and armed with a large, palmetto fan. He drew up a rocking-chair, and glancing out of the window towards the culprits, said just a trifle sheepishly, to his wife's acute ears:
"Let's give 'em as long as we can, old lady. Lovers on an old Virginia lawn in the moonlight! It's enough to soften the cockles of a stoic's heart."
Charlotte unbendingly smoothed out a bit of tin-foil and wrapped the piece of camphor-ice in it.
"The cockles of the heart, and the apple of the eye have always seemed absurd figures of speech to me," she then remarked, putting the unguent into her basket.
Judge Macon tried to take one of her hands, but she withdrew it and firmly wound up her watch before wrapping it in her handkerchief and laying it beside the camphor-ice.
"Come, old lady," wheedled her softer-natured mate, "what's the matter? Do you really foresee disaster?"