“Did you ever see that before, Joan?”
“Do you remember showing me a horse just like that one, only larger?” she returned. “It was in the drawing-room.”
“Quite well,” he answered.
“It made me think of this,” she continued, “which I had often seen in that same closet where I suppose you found it yesterday.”
Cosmo unscrewed the joints and showed her the different boxes.
“There’s nothing in them,” he said; “but I suspect there is something about this stick more than we can tell. Do you remember the silly Scotch rime I repeated the other day, when you told me I had been talking poetry in my sleep?”
“Yes, very well,” she answered.
“Those are words an uncle of my father, whom you may have heard of as the old captain, used to repeat very often.”—At this Joan’s face turned pale, but her back was to the light, and he did not see it.—“I will say them presently in English, that you may know what sense there may be in the foolishness of them. Now I must tell you that I am all but certain this stick once belonged to that same great uncle of mine—how it came into your father’s possession I cannot say—and last night, as I was looking at it, I saw something that made me nearly sure this is the horse, insignificant as it looks, that was in my uncle’s head when he repeated the rime. But I would do nothing without you.”
“How kind of you, Cosmo!”
“Not kind; I had no right; the stick is yours.”