Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/15

 swings and benches stood in the sands and there were posts with life-lines strung in the water; but bath-houses, benches and swings, the beach and the water all were deserted on this calm, October midnight. The moon tipped them with glistening gray and they stood quiet for their silvering, except the water which flecked duller and brighter as it lapped its complaint at the shore.

Joan Daisy relaxed in dreamy reverie, gazing to the south along the shore line which crept out and out in its long, leisurely curve under the moon and twinkled with the night-lights of millions of people asleep. Here and there were gleaming spots where many persons were still awake and dancing and clapping their hands for an encore each time the music ceased.

She aroused and searched the twinkling for the gleam of the Echo Garden where Fred Ketlar played; and she set to humming, softly, swaying a little to the rhythm of the tune as she imagined Fred Ketlar's blond head tossing to the lively measure of his music.

She pictured, pleasantly, his strong, well-formed hands hurrying over the piano keys as he improvised his surprising, reckless cadenzas. She thought of him leaping up and seizing a violin and, with the loss of hardly a measure, conducting the dance by the swing of his young, agile body as he flourished his bow across the strings. Next he would snatch up a trombone or saxophone and play and play to his applause.

Joan Daisy deliberately constrained the stir in her breast; she gazed out at the lake and at the stars which brought the sparkling bowl of the sky down to the distant, even edge of the water. She smoothed the sand before her and, picking up pebbles, she laid them after a pattern of a patch of the sky.

Arising without spoiling her pattern, she returned to the walk beside the beach and she went along, glancing up at a large building in sight from the shore.