“If you try to catch it so, you must miss it, and perhaps lose your balance, besides exhibiting yourself in an extremely ungraceful attitude;” and she threw out her arms in laughing imitation of him in the act of saving himself from a fall. “Now try again. Are you ready?”
“Yes, I should think so! You sha’n’t laugh at me this time!”
The game began again. The shuttlecock was tossed from the one to the other amid cries and more laughter, both combatants being nimble, quick of eye and hand, and as much excited as if their very lives depended on the keeping up of the flimsy thing of leather and feathers. Harry’s own breath came and went as fast as theirs as he watched, not the game, but the graceful, active little player in white, whose movements in the abandon of the game had a fascination such as no famous dancer he had ever seen had exercised upon him; and when, as, once more pausing, the shuttlecock fell to the ground, she stood panting under the soft light of a Chinese lantern, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes sparkling, her beautiful brown hair shining as her head moved, and her lips parted with smiles, the blood mounted to his face, and he watched her, with all the passionate admiration of his twenty years in his heart and in his eyes. He dared not move; he would not for the world have broken the charm by letting her know that the game had a spectator.
A minute later the shuttlecock was flying again. Opposite to the door where Harry was standing hidden was another door; and, as, with her eyes fixed upon the toy in the air above her head, Miss Lane tripped backward against the curtain, her foot caught in its folds, she stumbled, and might have fallen, had not an arm from behind the curtain caught and saved her. It was George’s. He had taken up his position just as his brother had taken his a few minutes later, at the opposite door.
Quick as thought, Miss Lane had shrunk at the touch of the unexpected hand into the shell of demure propriety she generally wore.
She showed not even surprise, only a little shame and confusion.
“Thank you. I am much obliged to you,” said she, modestly, without raising her eyes, extricating herself gently from the obliging arm. “I—I caught the curtain with my foot.”
“Are you sure you have not twisted your ankle?” asked George, bending down over her with great solicitude.
“Quite, thank you.”
George bowed his handsome head still lower, and murmured mischievously.