"Looking for base varlets!" 

 "Don't you know that all little boys—all nice little boys—should have been in bed hours ago?" 

 "But I'm not a nice little boy; I'm a Knight-errant; would you like to get a lance, Mr. Selwyn, an' break it with me to the glory of my Auntie Lisbeth?" 

 "The question is, what has become of her?" said Mr. Selwyn. We waited almost breathlessly for the answer. 

 "Oh! I 'specks she's somewhere looking at the moon; everybody looks at the moon, you know; Betty does, an' the lady with the man with a funny name 'bout being bald, an'—" 

 "I think you had better come up to the house," said Mr. Selwyn. 

 "Do you think you could get me an ice cream if I did?" asked the Imp, persuasively; "nice an' pink, you know, with—" 

 "An ice!" repeated Mr. Selwyn; "I wonder how many you have had already to-night?" 

 The time for action was come.  "Lisbeth," I said, "we must go; such happiness as this could not last; how should it? I think it is given us to dream over in less happy days. For me it will be a memory to treasure always, and yet there might be one thing more—a little thing Lisbeth—can you guess?"  She did not speak, but I saw the dimple come and go at the corner of her mouth, so I stooped and kissed her. For a moment, all too brief, we stood thus, with the glory of the moonlight about us; then I was hurrying across the lawn after Selwyn and the Imp. 

 "Ah, Mr. Selwyn!" I said as I overtook them, "so you have found him, have you?"  Mr. Selwyn turned to regard me, surprise writ large upon him, from the points of his immaculate, patent-leather shoes, to the parting of his no less immaculate hair. 

 "So very good of you," I continued; "you see he is such a difficult object to recover when once he gets mislaid; really, I'm awfully obliged."  Mr. Selwyn's attitude was politely formal. He bowed. 

 "What is it to-night," he inquired, "pirates?" 

 "Hardly so bad as that," I returned; "to-night the air is full of the clash of armour and the ring of steel; if you do not hear it that is not our fault." 

 "An' the woods are full of caddish barons and caitiff knaves, you know, aren't they, Uncle Dick?" 

 

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