“Oh, Harry! Harry!” exclaimed the maiden, “what can that red glow on the horizon be? Is it a forest on fire?”
“No, it is the rising moon, Nell.”
“To be sure, that’s the moon,” cried Jack Ryan, “a fine big silver plate, which the spirits of air hand round and round the sky to collect the stars in, like money.”
“Why, Jack,” said the engineer, laughing, “I had no idea you could strike out such bold comparisons!”
“Well, but, Mr. Starr, it is a just comparison. Don’t you see the stars disappear as the moon passes on? so I suppose they drop into it.”
“What you mean to say, Jack, is that the superior brilliancy of the moon eclipses that of stars of the sixth magnitude, therefore they vanish as she approaches.”
“How beautiful all this is!” repeated Nell again and again, with her whole soul in her eyes. “But I thought the moon was round?”
“So she is, when ‘full,’” said James Starr; “that means when she is just opposite to the sun. But to-night the moon is in the last quarter, shorn of her just proportions, and friend Jack’s grand silver plate looks more like a barber’s basin.”
“Oh, Mr. Starr, what a base comparison!” he exclaimed, “I was just going to begin a sonnet to the moon, but your barber’s basin has destroyed all chance of an inspiration.”
Gradually the moon ascended the heavens. Before her light the lingering clouds fled away, while stars still sparkled in the west, beyond the influence of her radiance. Nell gazed in silence on the glorious spectacle. The soft silvery light was pleasant to her eyes, and her little trembling hand expressed to Harry, who clasped it, how deeply she was affected by the scene.