“Now are you awake?”
Dorothy smiled, still dreaming.
“Hello!” cried Katherine, with renewed animation, “they’ve got the Secretary safe aboard the lugger, and they seem to be clearing the decks for action. Here is my dear Lieutenant returning; tall even among tall men. Look at him. He’s in a great hurry, yet so polite, and doesn’t want to bump against anybody. And now, Dorothy, don’t you be afraid. I shall prove a perfect model of diffidence. You will be proud of me when you learn with what timidity I pronounce prunes and prism. I think I must languish a little at him. I don’t know quite how it’s done, but in old English novels the girls always languished, and perhaps an Englishman expects a little languishment in his. I wonder if he comes of a noble family. If he doesn’t, I don’t think I’ll languish very much. Still, what matters the pomp of pageantry and pride of race—isn’t that the way the poem runs? I love our dear little Lieutenant for himself alone, and I think I will have just one dance with him, at least.”
Drummond had captured a camp-stool somewhere, and this he placed at right angles to the settee, so that he might face the two girls, and yet not interrupt their view. The sailor on guard once more faded away, and the band now struck up the music of the dance.
“Well,” cried Drummond cheerfully, “I’ve got everything settled. I’ve received the Secretary of the Navy: our captain is to dance with his wife, and the Secretary is Lady Angela’s partner. There they go!”
For a few minutes the young people watched the dance, then the Lieutenant said:
“Ladies, I am disappointed that you have not complimented our electrical display.”
“I am sure it’s very nice, indeed, and most ingenious,” declared Dorothy, speaking for the first time that evening to the officer, but Katherine, whose little foot was tapping the deck to the dance music, tossed her head, and declared nonchalantly that it was all very well as a British effort at illumination, but she begged the young man to remember that America was the home of electricity.
“Where would you have been if it were not for Edison?”
“I suppose,” said the Lieutenant cheerfully, “that we should have been where Moses was when the candle went out—in the dark.”