Part 54 (1/2)

It was a silly and inept ending, I knew as soon as I had finished--still, it conveyed my meaning.

She paused a moment and evidently started to look at me, but as evidently she thought better of it. She, however, murmured, ”I thought we would quote verses, not make them.”

I took this to be a confession that she was not able to make them, and I determined to show how much cleverer I was; so, without noticing the cut of the eye which told of her wavering, I launched out:

”There was a young lady of fas.h.i.+on, Who, finding she'd made quite a mash on A certain young swain, Who built castles in Spain, Fell straight in a terrible pa.s.sion.”

To this she responded with a promptness which surprised me:

”A certain young lady of fas.h.i.+on, Had very good grounds for her pa.s.sion, It sprang from the pain Of a terrible strain On her friends.h.i.+p, and thus laid the lash on.”

I felt that I must be equal to the situation, so I began rapidly:

”I'm sure the young man was as guiltless As infant unborn and would wilt less If thrown in the fire Than under her ire----”

”Than under her ire,” I repeated to myself. ”Than under the ire”--what the d.i.c.kens will rhyme with ”wilt less”? We had reached the dining-room by this time and I could see that she was waiting with a provoking expression of satisfaction on her face over my having stalled in my attempt at a rhyme. I placed her in her chair and, as I took my own seat, a rhyme came to me--a poor one, but yet a rhyme:

”And since, Spanish castles he's built less,”

I said calmly as I seated myself, quite as if it had come easily.

”I was wondering how you'd get out of that,” she said with a little smile which dimpled her cheek beguilingly. ”You know you might have said,

”'And since, milk to weep o'er he's spilt less';

or even,

”'And since, striped mosquitoes he's kilt less.'

Either would have made quite as good a rhyme and sense, too.”

I did not dare let her see how true I thought this. It would never do to let her make fun of me. So I kept my serious air.

I determined to try a new tack and surprise her. I had a few shreds of Italian left from a time when I had studied the poets as a refuge from the desert dulness of my college course, and now having, in a pause, recalled the lines, I dropped, as though quite naturally, Dante's immortal wail:

'Nessun maggior dolore Che recordarci del tempo felice Nella miseria.'

I felt sure that this would at least impress her with my culture, while if by any chance she knew the lines, which I did not apprehend, it would impress her all the more and might prove a step toward a reconciliation.

For a moment she said nothing, then she asked quietly, ”How does the rest of it go?”

She had me there, for I did not know the rest of the quotation.

”'E ci sa il tuo dottore,'”

she said with a cut of her eye, and a liquid tone that satisfied me I had, as the saying runs, ”stepped from the frying-pan into the fire.”

She glanced at me with a smile in her eyes that reminded me, through I know not what subtle influence, of Spring, but as I was unresponsive she could not tell whether I was in earnest or was jesting.

I relapsed into silence and took my soup, feeling that I was getting decidedly the worst of it, when I heard her murmuring so softly as almost to appear speaking to herself: