"No, no," she said, gently leading him back to the front porch, repeating as she went:
"'The shooting stars attend thee,
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.'"
"It isn't their little eyes that glow; it's their little tails," said Ethan, with his nose flattened against the camphor-bottle.
When they got near the porch, the prudent young gentleman took off his coat, and wrapped the bottle from the too inquiring gaze of his grandmother. Aunt Valeria was in a kind of dream, and didn't seem to notice.
"What a perfect evening!" she half whispered, looking up through the trees.
"Good-night," said Ethan to his grandmother, trying to get through the ceremony and hold his coat round the bottle on Aunt Valeria's arm at the same time.
"Forty-eight years to-day," she went on to her mother, "since Shelley's body was burned on the sands at Viareggio."