"Eh, mam, eh? Nightingales, brooks? I say—oh, Gad, mam!" and the
Captain relapsed into tobacco-puffing indignation.
"What more could youth and beauty ask? Ah, Jack, Jack!" sighed the Duchess, "had you paid more attention to brooks and nightingales, and stared at the moon in your youth, you might have been a green young grandfather to-night, instead of a hoary old bachelor in a shabby coat—sucking consolation from a clay pipe!"
"Consolation, mam! For what—I say, I demand to know for what?"
"Loneliness, Jack!"
"Eh, Duchess,—what, mam? Haven't I got my dear Clo, and the Bo'sun, eh, mam—eh?"
"The Bo'sun, yes,—he smokes a pipe, but Cleone can't, so she looks at the moon instead,—don't you dear?"
"The moon, God-mother?" exclaimed Cleone, bringing her gaze earthwards on the instant. "Why I,—I—the moon, indeed!"
"And she listens to the brook, Jack,—don't you, my dove?"
"Why, God-mother, I—the brook? Of course not!" said Cleone.
"And, consequently, Jack, you mustn't expect to keep her much longer—"