“It is very beautiful,” said Jack; “but I don’t think I approve of false mediaevalism. At that date these fellows would have fought, and the best man would have had the girl.”
“Pray, at what date do you fix the dragon?” said Cherry.
“Jack is as matter-of-fact as the maiden herself,” said Mrs Stanforth, “who will not be happy because her uncle will not tell her if the knight got well and married somebody else.”
“No—no, mamma,” said one of the Stanforth girls, “he did no such thing; he was killed in King Arthur’s last battle. We settled it yesterday—we thought it was nicer.”
“You don’t think he gave in to the next dragon?” said Cherry, half to tease her.
“No, indeed, that knight never gave in. Did he, papa—did he?”
“My dear Minnie, I am not prepared with my knights’ history. There they are, and I leave them to an intelligent public, who can settle whether my object was to paint sunlight on primroses, or a smile on a wounded knight’s face—very hard matters both.”
“Don’t you really like it?” said Gipsy aside to Jack.
“Oh, yes,” said Jack uneasily, “I have seen him look so. I know what your father means. But I hate it. I’d rather have had a picture of him as he used to be, all sunburnt and jolly. Yes, I know, it’s the picture, not Cherry; but I don’t like it.”
Gipsy demurred a little, and they fell into a long talk in the twilight garden. Jack kept his promise, he did not “make love” to her, but never, even to Cheriton, had he talked as he talked then, for if he might not talk of the future, he could at least make Gipsy a sharer in all his past. When Cheriton came out upon them to call Jack away, they looked at him with half-dazzled eyes, as if he were calling them back from fairy-land.