"Why not?"
"Oh, Sally—dearest love—how can it?"
"Well! Perhaps why not was fibs. And, of course, mother's an angel, so it's not fair. But, Prosy dear, I'll tell you one thing I do think—that affectionate sons make very bad medical attendants for their ma's; and I should say the same if they had all the degrees in Christendom."
"You think a nervous element comes in?..."
And so the conversation ripples on, a quiet undertone of perfect confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly
discovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It ripples on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady and a gentleman again. But there must be a little farewell to the enchanted land they are leaving behind—a recognition of its story, under the beech-trees as the last gleam goes, and leaves us our inheritance of twilight.
"Do you remember, darling, how we climbed up there, coming, and had hold to the top?" His lips find hers, naturally and without disguise. It is the close of the movement, and company-manners will be wanted directly. But just a bar or two, and a space, before the music dies!...
"I remember," says Sally. "That began it. Oh, what a long time ago that does seem now! What a rum start it all is—the whole turn-out!" For the merpussy is her incorrigible self, and will be to the last.