"It would be awful if anyone saw me here."
George silently cursed the too vivid imagination which had led him to suppose that he had seen a dark form outlined against the summer sky. He had spoiled the golden moment, and it could not be recaptured.
"Don't be afraid, dear," he said. "Even if he had seen you, he would never have guessed who you were."
"You mean he would naturally expect to find you up here kissing some girl?"
George was in the state of mind when a man cannot be quite sure what his words mean, if anything: but so positive was he that he did not mean this that he got his tongue tied in a knot trying to say so in three different ways simultaneously.
"Well, after what happened this afternoon ..." said Molly.
She drew away. She was not normally an unkind girl, but the impulse of the female of the species to torture the man it loves is well-known. Woman may be a ministering angel when pain and anguish rack the brow: but, if at other times she sees a chance to prod the loved one and watch him squirm, she hates to miss it.
George's tongue appeared to him to be now in the sort of condition a ball of wool is in after a kitten has been playing with it. With a supreme effort he contrived to straighten out a few of the major kinks, just sufficient to render speech possible.
"I swear to you," began George, going so far in his emotion as to raise a passionate fist towards the moon.
Molly gurgled delightedly. She loved this young man most when he looked funny: and he had seldom looked funnier than now.