No! no! no!
If I bolted would she miss me?
No! no! no!
She knows I haven't got a rap;
Besides, there is the other chap--
At him, not me, she sets her cap;
No! no! no!"
"Mr. Clendon," said Tommy, in a tone of dignified rebuke, "we don't want any music-hall songs. If you can't sing something refined, don't sing at all."
"I must collect my ideas first," replied Toby, running his fingers over the piano. "Wait till the spirit moves me."
Mrs. Belswin had resumed her seat near the sleeping form of Mrs. Valpy, and was thinking deeply, though her thoughts, judging from the savage expression in her fierce eyes, did not seem to be very agreeable ones, while Tommy leaned over the piano watching Toby's face as he tried to seek inspiration from her smiles.
Outside on the short dry grass of the lawn, Kaituna was strolling, accompanied by Archie Maxwell. The grass extended for some distance in a gentle slope, and was encircled by tall trees, their heavy foliage drooping over the beds of flowers below. Beyond, the warm blue of the sky, sparkling with stars, and just over the trembling tree-tops the golden round of the moon. A gentle wind was blowing through the rustling leaves, bearing on its faint wings the rich odours of the flowers, and the lawn was strewn with aerial shadows that trembled with the trembling of the trees. Then the white walls of the vicarage, the sloping roof neutral tinted in the moonlight, the glimmer of the cold shine on the glass of the upstair windows, and below, the yellow warm light streaming out of the drawing-room casements on the gravelled walk, the lawn beyond, and the figures of the two lovers moving like black shadows through the magical light. A nightingale began to sing deliciously, hidden in the warm dusk of the leaves, then another bird in the distance answered the first. The hoot of an owl sounded faintly through the air, the sharp whirr of a cricket replied, and all the night seemed full of sweet sounds.
Kaituna sat down on a bench placed under the drawing-room windows, and Archie, standing beside her, lighted a cigarette after asking and obtaining the requisite permission. The voices of the vicar and his curate sounded in high dispute from the adjacent library; there was a murmur of conversation from within, where Mrs. Belswin was talking to the other lovers, and at intervals the sharp notes of the piano struck abruptly through the voices, the songs of the nightingale, and the charm of the night.