"On they come fast enough, not single spies, but in battalions," Lady Scilly had answered pettishly; "what I complain of is that they won't go! See if you can't pull me through, dear boy." I thought it indecent of her to make poor Simon do her sums for her, on a heavenly night like this, when the tide is fully in, and all you can see through the white rails of the Esplanade is a soft creeping heap of dark water, like a pailful of ink. Simon now got up and looked down into it, and his forehead became one mass of wrinkles, like a Humphrey's iron building. And Ariadne got up too, and looked into the water with him, but she said nothing. I know her pretty well, and that it was because she had nothing to say, and as he evidently didn't want her to say it, it didn't matter. She had put her hand on the railing, and it looked very nice and white in the moonlight somehow, quite like a novel heroine's, so she is repaid for her trouble and expense in almond paste-balls. Simon Hermyre looked at it, as I used to stand and look at a peach or an apple on the wall when I was little. He would have liked to pick it, as I would the apple or peach, and hold it tight in his own hand, I thought, but he didn't, but sighed instead and said-- "I wish I had a mother!" That wretched Ernie boy began to giggle. I nearly smothered him, for I wanted to hear what Ariadne would say. "Do you?" she said. "I have." Did any one ever hear anything so stupid and obvious? Yet Simon seemed to like it, for the next thing he said was-- "Why don't I know your mother? I expect she is gentle and sweet like you." I have no doubt Ariadne would have been imbecile enough to answer Yes, not seeing the pitfall there was hidden in the words, but at that very moment George and Lady Scilly came out with a lot of other people. They came drifting along to the balustrade where we were, and Lady Scilly put her hand on Simon's shoulder very lightly, and George put his heavily on Ariadne's. Simon whisked away his shoulder and wriggled as much as he dared. Ariadne of course could not move at all. She said afterwards she felt as if it was her own marriage-service, and that George was "giving this woman away" quite naturally. He likes to see her with Simon and shows it, it is the only time in his life that he is what they call fatherly. Lady Scilly gave Simon two taps. "I love this thing, you know," she said to George. Then, going a little way back--"Just look at them! Isn't it idyllic? Romeo and Juliet spooning on a balcony over the sea instead of over a garden, and with a squawking gull instead of a nightingale to listen to. And I--poor I--am Romeo's deserted Rosaline. Did Rosaline take on Mercutio, I wonder, when she had had enough of Romeo?"