"I! Oh, how can you? I speak the Queen's English." "Do you really?" said Tommy, laughing. "Well, I at present speak the President's American, so go right along, stranger, and look slippy with the barrel organ." "If your mother hears you," remonstrated Mrs. Belswin, "she will----" "Yes, I know she will," retorted Tommy, imperturbably; "but she's asleep and I'm awake, very much so. I say, Mrs. Belswin, where's Kaituna?" "I think she's walking on the lawn with Mr. Maxwell." "As a chaperon you should hunt them out," said Miss Valpy, mischievously. "Suppose I give the same advice to your mother," replied Mrs. Belswin, dryly. "Don't," said Toby, in mock horror; "as you are strong be merciful." "Certainly, if you sing something." "What shall I sing?" "Anything," said Tommy, sitting down, "except that new style of song, all chords and no tune." Toby laughed mischievously and began to sing-- "If I mashed her would she kiss me? No! no! no! If I bolted would she miss me? No! no! no! She knows I haven't got a rap; Besides, there is the other chap-- At him, not me, she sets her cap; No! no! no!" "Mr. Clendon," said Tommy, in a tone of dignified rebuke, "we don't want any music-hall songs. If you can't sing something refined, don't sing at all." "I must collect my ideas first," replied Toby, running his fingers over the piano. "Wait till the spirit moves me." Mrs. Belswin had resumed her seat near the sleeping form of Mrs. Valpy, and was thinking deeply, though her thoughts, judging from the savage expression in her fierce eyes, did not seem to be very agreeable ones, while Tommy leaned over the piano watching Toby's face as he tried to seek inspiration from her smiles. Outside on the short dry grass of the lawn, Kaituna was strolling, accompanied by Archie Maxwell. The grass extended for some distance in a gentle slope, and was encircled by tall trees, their heavy foliage drooping over the beds of flowers below. Beyond, the warm blue of the sky, sparkling with stars, and just over the trembling tree-tops the golden round of the moon. A gentle wind was blowing through the rustling leaves, bearing on its faint wings the rich odours of the flowers, and the lawn was strewn with aerial shadows that trembled with the trembling of the trees. Then the white walls of the vicarage, the sloping roof neutral tinted in the moonlight, the glimmer of the cold shine on the glass of the upstair windows, and below, the yellow warm light streaming out of the drawing-room casements on the gravelled walk, the lawn beyond, and the figures of the two lovers moving like black shadows through the magical light. A nightingale began to sing deliciously, hidden in the warm dusk of the leaves, then another bird in the distance answered the first. The hoot of an owl sounded faintly through the air, the sharp whirr of a cricket replied, and all the night seemed full of sweet sounds.