“Would you like me to marry and go away and leave you?” asked Carlotta, after a long pause.
“I suppose,” I said with a sigh, “that some tin-pot knight will drive up one of these days to the castle in a hansom-cab and carry off my princess.”
“Then you’ll be sorry?”
“My dear,” I answered, “do not let us discuss such gruesome things on an afternoon like this.”
“You would like better for me to go on playing at being your Turkish wife?”
“Infinitely,” said I.
Alas! The day is sped. I have asked the fleeting moment to tarry, and it laughed, and shook its gossamer wings at me, and flew by on its mad race into eternity.
As we lay, a cicada set up its shrilling quite close to us. I slipped my head from Carlotta’s lap and idly parted the rank grass in search of the noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately. On the top of a blade of grass sat a brown little Juliet—a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo’s serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied, she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set up a louder note some yards away and, without a nod or a sign, Juliet skipped off into space, leaving the most disconsolate little Romeo of a grasshopper you ever beheld. He gave vent to a dismal failure of a vibration and hopped to the foot of the faithless lady’s bower.
Carlotta broke into a merry laugh and clapped her hands.
“I am so glad.”