II
“Beastly awkward,” said I, as meditatively; “I’d give a great deal to know how I’m going to get my hat back without breaking through the blessed hedge, and rousing the house, and being taken for a burglar, may be—”
“It is terrible,” assented a quite tranquil voice; “but if gentlemen will venture abroad on such terrible nights—”
“Eh?” said I. I looked up quickly at the moon; then back toward the possessor of the voice. It was peculiar I had not noticed her before, for she sat on a rustic bench not more than forty feet away, and in full view of the street. It was, perhaps, the strangeness of the affair that was accountable for the great wonder in my soul; and the little tremor which woke in my speech.
“—so windy,” she complained.
“Er—ah—yes, quite so!” I agreed, hastily.
“I am really afraid that it must be a tornado. Ah,” she continued, emotion catching at her voice, “heaven help all poor souls at sea! How the wind must whistle through the cordage! how the marlinspikes must quiver, and the good ship reel on such a night!” She looked up at a cloudless sky, and sighed.
“Er h’m!” I observed.
For she had come forward and had held out my hat toward me, and I could see her very plainly now; and my mouth was making foolish sounds, and my heart was performing certain curious and varied gymnastics which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be included among its proper duties, and which interfered with my breathing.