"What is that?" asked Mamie.
"Night-jar," suggested the Young Man.
We listened in vain for more warblings from the nightingale. He had flown for good, and they all said it was my fault.
"Did you have a good concert?" asked his Reverence, as we returned to the drawing-room.
And at the chorus of approval he laughed, and assured us the nightingale had given him a dress rehearsal, and that was why we waited so long.
Mamie declared his Reverence was the biggest dear she had met "this side," for you never could believe a word he said. He and the Young Man had both been to the same school, she reckoned.
Next morning she had a tale to tell of her own special nightingale throbbing with love just below her window, and again in the early morning hours at her door. When she laid great stress on the "throbbing with love," Jim got bashfully red. Then she maintained she heard him flutter downstairs just as she was going to pipe her love tale too, and that always, always, she will love her English nightingale the best of all British institooshons.
"You don't think she really knows," whispered Jim to me, "because if she does, she is going rather far, isn't she?"