| |
| “AND even our women,” lastly grumbles Ben, | |
| “Leaving their nature, dress and talk like men!” | |
| A damsel, as our train stops at Five Ashes, | |
| Down to the station in a dog-cart dashes. | |
| A footman buys her thicket, “Third class, parly;” | 5 |
| And, in the huge-buttoned coat and “Champagne Charley” | |
| And such scant manhood else as use allows her, | |
| Her two shy knees bound in a single trouser, | |
| With, ’twixt her shapely lips, a violet | |
| Perched as a proxy for a cigarette, | 10 |
| She takes her window in our smoking carriage, | |
| And scans us, calmly scorning men and marriage. | |
| Ben frowns in silence; older, I know better | |
| Than to read ladies ’havior in the letter. | |
| This aping man is crafty Love’s devising | 15 |
| To make the woman’s difference more surprising; | |
| And, as for feeling wroth at such rebelling, | |
| Who ’d scold the child for now and then repelling | |
| Lures with “I won’t!” or for a moment’s straying | |
| In its sure growth towards more full obeying? | 20 |
| “Yes, she had read the ‘Legend of the Ages,’ | |
| And George Sand too, skipping the wicked pages.” | |
| And, whilst we talked, her protest firm and perky | |
| Against mankind, I thought, grew lax and jerky; | |
| And, at a compliment, her mouth’s compressure | 25 |
| Nipped, in its birth a little laugh of pleasure; | |
| And smiles, forbidden her lips, as weakness horrid, | |
| Broke, in grave lights, from eyes and chin and forehead; | |
| And, as I pushed kind ’vantage ’gainst the scorner, | |
| The two shy knees pressed shyer to the corner; | 30 |
| And Ben began to talk with her, the rather | |
| Because he found out that he knew her father, | |
| Sir Francis Applegarth, of Fenny Compton, | |
| And danced once with her sister Maude at Brompton; | |
| And then he stared until he quite confused her, | 35 |
| More pleased with her than I, who but excused her; | |
| And, when she got out, he, with sheepish glances, | |
| Said he ’d stop too, and call on old Sir Francis. | |
| |
