"Now you understand how we happened to listen when Claire and her father were talking," I whispered to Zebedee. "It seemed no more real than this old lady's song did."
Zebedee wiped his eyes. Of course the song and its setting had made all the Tuckers weep. Molly Brown was not dry-eyed, and one might have spied a lunar rainbow in my eyes, too.
CHAPTER XII
MORAL COURAGE
The Battery was wonderful, wonderful, and out of all whooping. The moon was high up over the water, having made her début sooner than Professor Green had calculated. The tide was coming in, or rather rolling in, and every wave seemed to rise up to catch a little kiss from the moon. The palmettos were, as is their way, rustling and waving their leaves like ladies of olden times in swishing silks using their fans as practiced flirts. The live-oaks did very well as cavaliers bending gallantly to catch the tender nothings of the coquettes. The Spanish moss on one particularly twisted oak hung like a great beard from the chin of some ancient, and as the slender palmetto swayed in the breeze and waved her tresses provokingly near, the gray beard mingled with them for a moment.
"The old rip!" exclaimed Zebedee to me.
"Why, I was just thinking that! It does look just like an old man."
Mr. Tucker and I, as no doubt I have remarked before, often came out with exactly the same thought almost as though we were able to read each other's minds.