He sat for a few minutes in ecstatic silence; then he began to beg her to descend. For fully ten minutes he lavished on her flattery, endearing words, and offers of gifts, dear to feminine hearts, that he would bestow on her in return for the very smallest, fleetest, most evanescent thing in the shape of a caress.
She stared unheedingly up at the sky, and when he brought his eloquent words to a close, she said, “I see a boat in the moon. It is waiting for a bad sailor who has broken his word for the first time in his life.”
Captain Fordyce hastily pulled out his watch and a match-case. Yes, his boat was at the landing-stage waiting to take him to the Merrimac.
“I must go,” he said, hurriedly. “When shall I come for you, Nina?”
“The man in the moon says haste is folly, delay is wisdom, and to take a leap in the dark is a sure landing in the midst of difficulties.”
“There will be plenty of light, Nina,” he pleaded. “Come, now, say good night to Lady Forrest and come home with me.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Lantern,” she replied, decidedly.
“It’s confoundedly lonely on the Merrimac,” he went on. “I miss my little girl till I am half-dead for the sight of her. I am lonely, lonely—” and he dwelt on the word that he thought had power to afflict her.
“Lonely,” she repeated, with a shiver of delight, “most beautiful word in the American language, for it implies future consolation. Put your cheek against the tree trunk.”
He obeyed her, trying at the same time to roll his eyes upward. The experiment was not a success, and she exclaimed, “Look at me, you foolish man. It will slip down to you.”