Then it grew when she begged me to reach her A dressing-case under the seat; She was "really so tiny a creature That she needed a stool for her feet!" Then it drooped, and revived at some hovels― She thought "Wives and Daughters" "so jolly!" "Had I read it?" She knew when I had, Like the rest, I should dote upon "Molly;" And "poor Mrs. Gaskell-how sad!" "Like Browning?" "But so-so." His proof lay Too deep for her frivolous mood, That preferred your mere metrical soufflé Yet at times he was good-" as a tonic;" And clever, and naughty, or how? Then we trifled with concerts and cro quet, Then she daintily dusted her face; Then she sprinkled herself with "Ess Bouquet," Fished out from the foregoing case; And we chattered of Gassier and Grisi, And voted Aunt Sally a bore; Discussed if the tight rope were easy, Or Chopin much harder than Spohr. And oh! the odd things that she quoted, And the price of two buns that she noted While her talk like a musical rillet Flashed on with the hours that flew; Till at last in her corner, peeping But with one blind impulse making To the sounds of the spring overhead; And I watched in the lamplight's swerving 2 But she suddenly woke in a fidget, Got out at the very next station, So left me to muse on her graces, To doze and to muse, till I dreamed That we sailed through the sunniest places In a glorified galley, it seemed; But the cabin was made of a carriage, And the ocean was Eau-de-Cologne, And we split on a rock labeled MARRIAGE, And I woke-as cold as a stone. And that's how I lost her-a jewel- Not prudent enough to be cruel, Not worldly enough to be proud. And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, AUSTIN DOBSON. DORA versus ROSE. "The case is proceeding." FROM the tragic-est novels at Mudie's— But no case that I ever yet met is Of Rose, who a charming brunette is, And Dora, a blonde. |