So Daisy prospered and grew sleek and fat, and his days were long in the land.  He consented indeed to partake of our hospitality for over a year, won many hearts, but kept his own intact, until the following spring, when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love; then be preened his white waistcoat and sallied forth.

***

Did I say he was a bachelor?  The last we beard of him was from a fisherman friend who, when in search of sea-birds’ eggs, saw and recognised our Daisy by the fierceness of his one eye.  He was reluctantly taking his turn on the family egg while Mrs. Daisy stretched and titivated herself after her domestic labours.

Does he sometimes, we wonder, think regretfully of his celibate days and the beer barrel, where he lived en garcon?

* * * * *

    “Widower, 35, abstainer, would like to correspond with
    respectable widow, or otherwise, view matrimony.”—­Provincial
    Paper.

He seems an easy-going fellow who would make any woman happy.

* * * * *

DEMOBILISED DAYDREAMS.

  At 10 A.M. or so (in bed,
    With lowered blinds and curtains drawn),
  There wander lightly through my head
    Memories of ruddy dawn—­
  A thing I never could have said
    Before we warred against the Hun,
  For then, although I may have heard
  That this phenomenon occurred,
    I had no notion how the thing was done.

  A stranger to the birth of day,
    How many have I watched since then! 
  At least a thousand, I should say
    (It seems to me like ten);
  On Salisbury Plain, austere and grey,
    Breaking night’s gloom and deepening mine,
  When, crawling forth, I used to see
  Stonehenge all shaken visibly
    By the rude Sergeant’s bellow, “Rise and shine!”

  Gilding the foam of distant seas—­
    And humbly then I bowed my neck
  And sank forlornly to my knees
    To swab the blooming deck;
  A wealth of flaming pageantries,
    When, in a dusty Indian fort,
  I went to early morning jerks,[A]
  Cursing the sun and all his works
    And dripping perspiration by the quart;

  In Egypt, too, a pallid glow
    Through swirls of desolating dust—­
  There often have I watched it grow,
    Fed up enough to bust;
  In Palestine, uncertain, slow
    (While standing-to, with drowsy eyes),
  Herald of shells and, what was worse,
  Waking the ancient Eastern curse,
    A hundred thousand million ravenous flies.

  Sombre, inspiring, radiant, chill,
    Mysterious, wild, inert, ablaze,
  A thousand times on plain and hill
    The dawn has held my gaze;
  Idly I dream of it, until
    A sterner mood invades my brain
  And I grow resolute.  Here and now
  I register a mighty vow
    Never to see the beastly thing again.