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.

Jerry exclaimed and nearly overbalanced backwards; Nan made a hasty grab at her falling property, but her hand only collided with his, making a similar grab at the same moment, and between them they sent the ring spinning far out into the moonlit ripples.
It disappeared before their dazzled eyes into that magic bar of light, and the girl and the boy turned and gazed at one another in speechless consternation.
Nan was the first to recover.

She drew a deep breath, and burst into a merry peal of laughter.
"My dear boy, for pity's sake don't look like that! I never saw anything so absolutely tragic in my life.

Why, what does it matter?
I can buy another.

I can buy fifty if I want them." Thus reassured, Jerry began to laugh too, but not with Nan's abandonment.
The incident had had a sobering effect upon him.
"But I'm awfully sorry," he protested.