"The heather moon!" Barrie said softly, looking out of the open window at the purple night, purple as heather.
"What do you mean by a heather moon?" asked Basil, interested. "It sounds sweeter than honeymoon."
"It's the sweetest moon of the year," the girl answered. "The moon when all the most beautiful things ought to happen to the people who are worthy of them--and the honeymoon can't come till afterward. I've always wanted something romantic to happen to me in the heather moon; yet nothing ever has, so far. It couldn't, at Grandma's!"
"But you haven't explained the heather moon," Basil reminded her.
"Don't you _really_ know?" She opened her eyes very wide as she smiled at him in a friendly, childlike way; and Basil and Somerled forgot that there was a Mrs. West in the room. It was a momentary lapse of memory, but Aline felt it electrically. She was enraged at Basil, and disgusted with Barrie, though merely grieved with Somerled.
"_There's_ a minx for you!" thought Moore, who was plain, and had been chosen by Mrs. Keeling because her teeth stuck out more than the lady's own.
"Wait! I believe, as a good Scotsman, I can guess," said Somerled. "The heather moon's the moon of August, the moon when the heather's in its prime of bloom."
"Yes!" cried Barrie, joyous that it should be he, her first friend, the friend of her mother, who had solved the puzzle. "That's it: and it's the moon for falling in love. That's why the honeymoon has to come afterward." Then, seeing that Mrs. West was looking at her with a look that might mean astonishment or disapproval, she blushed. It was queer, but for a minute that pretty, quite young woman--if widows could be called _quite_ young--had an expression almost like Grandma's.
"Oh, I do hope I haven't said anything horrid?" Barrie appealed from one to another. "You see, I never dared say anything at all about love before Grandma or Heppie, but it is talked about so _much_ in books, I thought I might mention it in company. I'm sorry if I've not been maidenly, which Miss Hepburn is always telling me I'm not."
"I suspect most maidens think a good deal about love whether or no they talk of it, don't they, Norman?" said Somerled.
Both men were different from their everyday selves to-night. They seemed self-conscious.