Her wedding-ring caught the moonlight, and the boy leaned forward with a
frown.
"Take that thing off, won't you, just for to-night? I hate to think you're
married. You're not, you know. We're in fairyland, and married people
never go there. The fairies will turn you out if they see it."
Very gently he inserted one finger between her clasped ones and began to
draw the emblem off.
Nan made no resistance whatever. She only sat and laughed. She was in her
gayest, most inconsequent mood. Some magic of the moonlight was in her
veins that night.
"There!" said Jerry triumphantly. "Now you are safe. Jove! Did you hear
that water-sprite gurgling under the boat? It must be ripping to be a
water-sprite. Can't you see them, Nan, whisking about down there in
couples along the stones? Give me your hand, and we'll dive under and
join them."
But Nan's enthusiasm would not stretch to this. She fully understood his
mood, but she would only sit in the moonlight and laugh, till presently
Jerry, infected by her merriment, began to laugh too, and spun the ring
he had filched from her high into the moonlight.
How it happened neither of them could ever afterwards say; but just at
that critical moment when the ring was glittering in mid-air, some
wayward current, or it might have been the water-sprite Jerry had just
detected, lapped the water smartly against the punt and bumped it against
the bank.
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