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"We'll go out one of these days and see. There's an old punt down there that'd do for a canoe."

He vaulted lightly to a seat on the licheny old bastion and played a gay little strain on his mouth organ.

"We might compose a moating song," he reflected. "Something like this."

He improvised a few insinuating bars.

"A new kind of sea chantey, the moating song. Sentimental ditty: If you and I were moating, Beneath the old château—" He paused, hunting a rhyme. "Let's see, boating, coating, doting——"

"And idling there and floating," she suggested.

"Good girl! Say, you're a poet. And idling there and floating In our petit bateau——"

"We'd drift about, not noting——"

"The taxes and the voting——"

"For pleasures beyond quoting——"

"Just you and I would know," he finished with delight. "Great stuff! We could write a new anthem for the Republic that'd beat that