“No,” she protested, “I’ve longed to say ‘Off with his head’ to too many people who have said all that to me.  And you mustn’t say that a holiday always seems like Sunday, either.”

Whereat they both laughed, and it seemed an uncommonly pleasant world, and even the sad errand that was taking Olivia to Yaque looked like a hope.

Then the talk ran on pleasantly, and things went very briskly forward, and there was no dearth of fleet little smiles at this and that.  What was she to bring him from Yaque—­a pet ibis?  No, he had no taste for ibises—­unless indeed there should be Fourth-Dimension ibises; and even then he begged that she would select instead a magic field-glass, with which one might see what is happening at an infinite distance; although of what use would that be to him, he wanted to know, since it would be his too late to follow her errantry through Yaque?  They felt, as they talked, quite like the puppets of the days of Haroun-al-Raschid; only the puppets, poor children of mere magic, had not the traditions of the golden age of science for a setting, and were obliged to content themselves with mere tricks of jars of genii instead of applied electricity and its daring.  What an Arabian Nights’ Entertainment we might have had if only Scheherazade had ever heard of the Present!  As for the thousand-and-one-nights, they would not have contained all her invention.  No wonder that the time went trippingly for the two who were concerned in such bewildering speculation as the prince had made possible and who were furthering acquaintanceship besides.

“Ah, well now, at all events,” begged St. George at length, “will you remember something while you are away?”

“Your kindness, always,” she returned.

“But will you remember,” said St. George with his boy’s eagerness, “that there is some one who hopes no less than you for your success, and who will be infinitely proud of any command at all from you?  And will you remember that, though I may not be successful, I shall at least be doing something to try to help you?”

“You are very good,” she said gently, “I shall remember.  For already you have not only helped me—­you have made the whole matter possible.”

“And what of that,” propounded St. George gloomily, “if I can’t help you just when the danger begins?  I insist, Miss Holland, that it takes far more good nature to see some one else set off at adventure than it takes to go one’s self.  Won’t you let me come back here at twelve o’clock and go down with you to the boat?”

“By all means,” Olivia assented, “my aunt and I shall both be glad, Mr. St. George.  Then you can wish us well.  What is a submarine like,” she wanted to know; “were you ever on one?”

“Never, excepting a number of times,” replied St. George, supremely unconscious of any vagueness.  He was rapidly losing count of all events up to the present.  He was concerned only with these things:  that she was here with him, that the time might be measured by minutes until she would be caught away to undergo neither knew what perils, and that at any minute Mrs. Hastings might escape from the chemist’s.