Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/223

 She threw her head back and looked at him, with eyes blazing with laughter that was not in any way mockery, but a childish delight at the crowning coincidence of a fairy—tale.

"Splendid!"she cried. "So the cow really does jump over the moon!"

Green put up his hand to his hair; and after a short silence said suddenly, like a man recalling a recondite Greek quotation:

"Why, I've heard that somewhere. There was something else—'The little dog laughed'"

Then something happened, which was in the world of ideas much more dramatic than the fact that the little dog laughed. The professor of astronomy laughed. If the world of things had corresponded to the world of ideas, the leaves of the apple tree might have curled up in fear or the birds dropped out of the sky. It was rather as if the cow had laughed.

Following on that curt and uncouth noise was a silence; and then the hand he had raised to his head abruptly rent off his big blue spectacles and showed his staring blue eyes. He looked boyish and even babyish.

"I wonder whether you always wore them," she said. "I should think they made that moon of yours look blue. Isn't there a proverb or