The lady nodded and took the soft little body on her knees and held it close to her, while the man kneeled before her rubbing the small, milk-white feet with strong and tender touches. Presently, as they were thus engaged, they heard the sprite faintly whispering, while one of his eyelids flickered:
"I think—if each of you—would kiss me—on opposite cheeks—at the same moment—those kind of movements would revive me."
The two friends looked at each other, and the man spoke first.
"He talks ungrammatically, and I think he is an incorrigible little savage, but I love him. Shall we try his idea?"
"If you love him," said the lady, "I am willing to try, provided you shut your eyes."
So they both shut their eyes and tried.
But just at that moment the unruly sprite slipped down, and put his hands behind their heads, and the two mouths that sought his cheeks met lip to lip in a kiss so warm, so long, so sweet that everything else was forgotten.
Now you can easily see that as the persons who had this strange experience were the ones who told me the tale, their forgetfulness at this point leaves it of necessity half-told. But I know from other sources that the man who was also a writer went on making books, and the lady always told him truly whether they were good, bad, or merely popular. But what the unruly sprite is doing now nobody knows.