I had seen it more than once, and I said so.
“They tell me there’s a song there——” she went on.
“There are a lot of songs,” said I.
“There’s one in particular.”
There wasn’t any use in fencing, so I answered: “You mean the ‘Jo-Jo’ song. It’s a silly little ditty, and it’s sung by——”
“A girl named Hartopp—Maisie Hartopp.” She was speaking as if she were trying to remember where she’d heard the name.
Of course, me for the clumsy speech. “She’s a winner,” I cut in.
She got up at that, and walked over to the fireplace. “She seems to be,” she said, picking at a bit of bronze, a wedding present, I think. Then she came over to where I was sitting and put a hand on my shoulder. I’d have got to my feet if I hadn’t been afraid to face her. “Percy——” she began, and I felt the fingers on my shoulder quiver. I don’t think the Apaches handed out anything much worse in the torture line than the quiver of a woman’s ringers upon your shoulder, when you know that those fingers aren’t quivering on your account. Maybe that occurred to her, for a second later she took her hand away. “You once said something foolish to me, Percy,” she said.
I nodded my head, my eyes upon an edge of the Royal Bokhara. “It was in a canoe, wasn’t it?” I replied. “There was a moon, of course, and the paddle blades went drip, drip.”
“You meant what you said then, didn’t you?”