avoided the impostor's eyes. It was trying enough to hear his impudent
defence.

"You've been at me about them all the summer, Amy, and I felt we were in
for a spell of real hot weather at last."

"I can't think why you've put them out there, Uvo," remarked his mother.
"They won't dry any better in the dew, my dear boy."

"They won't make a hopeless mess of the grass, at all events!" he
retorted. "But why varnish our dirty chairs in public? Mr. Gillon won't
be edified; he'd much rather listen to the nightingale, I'm sure."

Had they a nightingale? I had never heard one in my life. I was obliged
to say something, and this happened to be the truth; it led to a little
interchange about Scotland, in which the man Uvo assumed a Johnsonian
pose, as though he had known me as long as I felt I had known him, and
then prayed silence for the nightingale as if the suburban garden were a
banqueting hall. It was a concert hall, at any rate, and never was
sweeter solo than the invisible singer poured forth from the black and
jagged wood between glimmering lawn and starry sky. I see the picture
now, with the seated ladies dimly silhouetted against the French
windows, and our two cigarettes waxing and waning like revolving lights
seen leagues away. I hear the deep magic of those heavenly notes, as I
was to hear them more summers than one from that wild wood within a few
yards of our raw red bricks and mortar. It may be as the prelude of what
was to follow that I recall it all so clearly, down to the couplet that
Uvo could not quite remember and his sister did:

"The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown."

"That's what I meant!" he cried. "By emperor, clown, and old man
Mulcaster in his cups! Think of him carrying on in there to such a tune,
and think of pious Christopher holding family prayers to it now!"

And the bare thought dashed from my lips a magic potion compounded of
milky lawn and ebony horse-chestnuts, of an amethyst sky twinkling with
precious stars, and the low voice of a girl trying not to drown the one
in the wood; the spell was broken, and I was glad when at last we had
the garden to ourselves.

"There are two things I must tell you for your comfort," said the
incorrigible Uvo as we lifted one Dutch chair from the hole it covered
like a hatchway, but left the other pressed down over the heap of earth.
"In the first place, both my mother and sister have front rooms,