"What _I_ should like to know," said the dear, precious cub, hugging his knee by the mantel, "is where _I_ come in!"
"You don't come in," said Billings, lifting him playfully by the ear; "you come _out_!" And out they went.
And my dear girl and I were like what's-his-name's picture--alone at last, you know. She stirred softly and her sigh came like the wind through the trees at night.
"I suppose we will have to burn them," she said dolefully; "the professor says it is the only thing to do."
"Jolly shame, I say!" I murmured indignantly.
"It seems a crime," she said softly, and there was a little choke in her voice. She slipped to the soft-fibered rug before the fire. I gently brought my chair closer to her.
For a moment she pressed her cheek against the crimson mass, then kneeling forward, laid it gently on the glowing coals. There was a flash, a lightning blaze of red that almost blinded us, and then for a brief space a field of shining ash. Against this the tiny serpent frogs writhed and twisted and turned at last to leaden gray. Over the spread of all, swept wave after wave of golden, crimsoned pictures--temples and pagodas--dragons that licked fiery tongues at us--strange faces that came and went, leering hideously into our own.
And then of a sudden it was all faded--gone! The breeze from the open window stirred the ashes to the side. She dropped back with a deep sigh.
"Never mind," I said; "you've these left." And daringly I laid my hand upon the one that clasped the rubies. And I thrilled as it lay still beneath my own.
"Good-by, you dear old, wicked, enchanted pajamas," she said. "I don't care--I just love you, because--" She paused.
"Because they brought us together?" By Jove, I didn't know I had said it, till it came out!
An instant, and then I caught it--just a little whisper, you know:
By Jove! And then, dash it, my monocle dropped! But I let it go.
Presently she looked at the glowing rubies in her hand.
"They are from India, you know, Dicky--from Mandalay, the professor said." And she murmured: "'On the road to Mandalay, where the old flotilla lay'--don't you remember? I've been there, Dicky."
"By Jove!" I said. "Have you, though? Is it jolly?"
"The poet seemed to think so--" She laughed. "Do you know Kipling, Dicky?" I tried to think, but dashed if I could remember.