"Oh! I 'specks she's somewhere looking at the moon; everybody looks at the moon, you know; Betty does, an' the lady with the man with a funny name 'bout being bald, an'—"
"I think you had better come up to the house," said Mr. Selwyn.
"Do you think you could get me an ice cream if I did?" asked the Imp, persuasively; "nice an' pink, you know, with—"
"An ice!" repeated Mr. Selwyn; "I wonder how many you have had already to-night?"
The time for action was come. "Lisbeth," I said, "we must go; such happiness as this could not last; how should it? I think it is given us to dream over in less happy days. For me it will be a memory to treasure always, and yet there might be one thing more—a little thing Lisbeth—can you guess?" She did not speak, but I saw the dimple come and go at the corner of her mouth, so I stooped and kissed her. For a moment, all too brief, we stood thus, with the glory of the moonlight about us; then I was hurrying across the lawn after Selwyn and the Imp.
"Ah, Mr. Selwyn!" I said as I overtook them, "so you have found him, have you?" Mr. Selwyn turned to regard me, surprise writ large upon him, from the points of his immaculate, patent-leather shoes, to the parting of his no less immaculate hair.
"So very good of you," I continued; "you see he is such a difficult object to recover when once he gets mislaid; really, I'm awfully obliged." Mr. Selwyn's attitude was politely formal. He bowed.
"What is it to-night," he inquired, "pirates?"
"Hardly so bad as that," I returned; "to-night the air is full of the clash of armour and the ring of steel; if you do not hear it that is not our fault."
"An' the woods are full of caddish barons and caitiff knaves, you know, aren't they, Uncle Dick?"