Tom shifted in his chair.
“Some day, perhaps, you may think it serious,” he said.
“I daresay; a man with goat’s legs is not to be taken lightly,” said Evelyn. “And he sits by the roadside, doesn’t he, or so Browning says, playing the pipes? What pipes, I wonder? Bagpipes, do you suppose?”
Tom laughed; his equanimity was quite undisturbed even by chaff upon what was to him the most serious subject in the world.
“Ah, who was frightened at a nightingale coming to sit on my finger a few nights ago? Evelyn, if you are not serious, I’ll frighten you again.”
“Well, but is it bagpipes?” asked he.
“No, it sounded more like a glass flute very far off,” he said. “No explanations are forthcoming, because I haven’t got any.”
Evelyn was silent a moment.
“And when did you hear this glass flute very far off?” he asked.