“Oh, I don’t really care,” he said, with charming impudence. “I just wanted you to stop and speak to me. What a jolly night it is!”
She looked sharply at him. Yet his fresh, young face really was alight with wonder and admiration as he gazed up at the blue vault above them.
“Have you ever studied astronomy?” he asked.
“Yes,” she returned, guardedly, “I have a smattering of it.”
“Stars ought to be the best astronomers,” he went on, “for they have studded the heavens since the world began.” Then walking across the deck, he stuck his knees in the bulwark, and, steadying the plate on the top of the rail, said: “Do you know the name of that constellation near the pole-star?”
“No,” she replied, regretfully, “I don’t.”
“It is Cassiopeia’s chair,” he said, gravely. “I wonder whether she found it comfortable. She was sphered at her death, you know. Neptune sent a great sea-serpent to ravage the kingdom of her husband, a king of Ethiopia, because she, naughty Cassiopeia, had had the presumption to declare herself fairer than the sea-nymphs. Astonishing, isn’t it, how vain women are?”
“I know what those two stars are,” said Nina, drawing her lemonade bottle from under her arm, and pointing it skywards, “Castor and Pollux, twin brothers, who, unlike any specimens of perfect youth we have nowadays, were so much attached to each other that Jupiter set them among the stars.”
“H’m, yes,” the boy replied. “I didn’t know that before. And so they are twins. They are certainly very much alike.”
Nina laughed, looked again at the luminous bodies that point by point resembled each other, until she heard a quick, “O malignant and ill-boding stars!”