Missy drew in a quick, sharp breath. Mr. Saunders, now smiling straight at Aunt Isabel as she tried to pick the chords, went on:
“They plucked the stars out of the blue, dear, Gave them to you, dear, For eyes...”
How expressively he sang those words! Missy became troubled. Of course Romance was beautiful but those things belonged in ancient times. You wouldn't want things like that right in your own family, especially when Uncle Charlie already had a broken big toe...
She forgot that the music was beautiful, the night bewitching; she even forgot to listen to what Raleigh was saying, till he leaned forward and demanded irately:
“Say! you haven't gone to sleep, have you?”
Missy gave a start, blinked, and looked self-conscious.
“Oh, excuse me,” she murmured. “I guess I was sort of dreaming.”
Mr. Saunders, overhearing, glanced up at her.
“The spell of moon and music, fair maid?” he asked. And, though he smiled, she didn't feel that he was making fun of her.
Again that quaint language! A knight of old might have talked that way! But Missy, just now, was doubtful as to whether a knight in the flesh was entirely desirable.
It was with rather confused emotions that, after the visitors had departed and she had told Aunt Isabel good night, Missy went up to the little white-painted, cretonne-draped room. Life was interesting, but sometimes it got very queer.
After she had undressed and snapped off the light, she leaned out of the window and looked at the night for a long time. Missy loved the night; the hordes of friendly little stars which nodded and whispered to one another; the round silver moon, up there at some enigmatic distance yet able to transfigure the whole world with fairy-whiteness--turning the dew on the grass into pearls, the leaves on the trees into trembling silver butterflies, and the dusty street into a breadth of shimmering silk. At night, too, the very flowers seemed to give out a sweeter odour; perhaps that was because you couldn't see them.
Missy leaned farther out the window to sniff in that damp, sweet scent of unseen flowers, to feel the white moonlight on her hand. She had often wished that, by some magic, the world might be enabled to spin out its whole time in such a gossamer, irradiant sheen as this--a sort of moon-haunted night-without-end, keeping you tingling with beautiful, blurred, indescribable feelings.