The Tyro whirled. For a moment he thought that his heart had struck work permanently, so long did it remain inert in his throat. A sense of the decent formalities of the occasion impelled him to make a hasty catch at his cap. As he removed it, an impish windgust snatched it away from his nerveless grasp and presented it to a large and hungry billow, which straightway swallowed it and retired with a hiss of acknowledgment like a bowing Jap.
The Tyro paid not the slightest heed to his loss. With his eyes fixed firmly upon the bewitching face before him,—these apparitions vanish unless held under determined regard,—he cautiously reached around and pinched himself. The Vision interpreted his action, and signalized her appreciation of it by a sort of beatified chuckle.
"Oh, yes; you're awake," she assured him, "and I'm real."
"Wishes do come true," he said with the profoundest conviction.
Up went the Vision's quaintly slanted brows in dainty inquiry, with further disastrous results to the young man's cardiac mechanism.
"Have yours come true?"
"You have," he averred.
"Then you're glad to see me again?"
Again? Again? Here it behooved him to go cautiously. Inwardly he cursed the reticence of Judge Enderby with a fervor which would have caused that aged jurist the keenest delight. Then he made one more despairing call upon the reserve forces of memory. In vain. Still, he mustn't let her see that. Play up and trust to happy chance!
"Glad!" he repeated. "Don't you hear a sound of inner music? That's my heart singing the Doxology."