'Hoop!' cried Maud, and 'Hoop!' answered the steep crag opposite, and Maud, in a mood to be pleased with everything, was quite delighted. 'Hoop, hie!' she cried again, and all the hillside seemed to echo to her joyful tones.
'See,' cried Desvœux, 'you have waked the Genius of the Mountain. If you called long enough the nymphs would come and dance and crown you for a rural queen, the fairest that Arcadia ever saw!'
'Now,' said Maud, quite breathless with her calls, 'shout out something, Mr. Desvœux, and see what the mountain nymphs will have to say to you.'
'No,' Desvœux said sentimentally, 'the nymphs would answer nothing: my voice is too rough to please them. Besides I know by experience it is my fate to call and call, and rocks and other things just as hard will give me no response.'
'Indeed,' said Maud, 'I think they answer quite as much as is good for you.'
'Our echoes,' cried Desvœux, turning suddenly upon her and speaking with a vehemence that was only half in play—
'Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever——'
'And ever and ever,' laughed Maud. 'Well, now, it is high time that they stopped growing for the present. Come, Mr. Desvœux, let us get back before our dear friends have torn us quite to pieces.'
Maud came back in great spirits and made a public laugh at General Beau for his desertion of her.
'"The rocks are slippery, the water is deep!"' she cried, taking him off to his face with great success, '"I implore, I entreat, I command"; but I don't jump! O faithless, faithless General Beau!'