"And how did you work off your self-respect?" asked Uncle Dan, deeply interested.
"I told her I thought it was very strange that English people should mistake us. That we never mistook them; we knew at a glance a person from the Isles. She rose to it like a tennis-ball, and asked what isles I referred to. 'Why, the British Isles,' I answered, innocently. And then she looked mystified, and Pauline discovered that the noise was very fatiguing, and we came away."
For half-an-hour Uncle Dan listened, highly diverted, to the chatter of the girls, and it never once occurred to him to remember the meagreness and paltriness of their condition. After they had left him, he turned to the window, feeling that the dreariness without and within was a very transitory and inconsequent thing. And lo! a change had come. The influx of youth would appear to have put to flight other clouds than those of a morbid mind. The rain had altogether ceased. He could see the roses gleaming moistly in the circles of electric light. The serenaders were just pushing away in their big barge, with coloured lanterns swaying in the breeze. They were beginning to sing, and their voices sounded sweet and melodious in the open air. Above the Salute the clouds were breaking away, and there were stars gleaming in the deep blue clearing.
"Have you seen the stars, Uncle Dan?" came Pauline's voice through the key-hole. "We're going to have a glorious day to-morrow!"