* * * * *

[Illustration:  “LOOK ’ERE—­THIS ARF-CROWN WON’T DO.  IT AIN’T GOT NO MILLING ON ITS HEDGE.”

“BLIMY!  NOR IT ’AS!  I KNEW I’D FORGOTTEN SOMEFINK.”]

* * * * *

FLOWERS’ NAMES.

          DAME’S DELIGHT.

  There was a Lady walked a wood;
  She never smiled, nor never could. 
  One day a sunbeam from the South
  Kissed full her petulant proud mouth;
  She laughed, and there, beneath the trees,
  Fluttering in the April breeze,
  Spread tracts of blossom, green and white,
  Curtseying to the golden light—­
  The broken laugh of Dame’s Delight.

* * * * *

FIRST LOVE AND LAST.

[It is pointed out by a contemporary that the dressmaker’s waxen model has quite lost her old insipid air.  The latest examples of the modeller’s art show the “glad eye” and features with which “any man might fall in love.”]

  In the days when I started to toddle
    I loved with a frenzy sublime
  A dressmaker’s beauteous model—­
    I think I was three at the time;
  She was fair in the foolish old fashion,
    And they found me again and again
  With my nose in an access of passion
          Glued tight to the pane.

  But I thought they were gone past returning
    Till Time should go back on his tracks,
  Those days of a child’s undiscerning
    But fervent devotion to wax;
  Could a heart, though admittedly restive,
    Recapture that innocent mood
  At sixty next birthday?  I’m blest if
          I thought that it could.

  But Art, ever bent on progression,
    Has taken the model in hand,
  And brought in the line of succession
    A figure more pleasingly planned;
  Her eyes with the gladdest of glances,
    Her lips and her hair and her cheek
  Can puncture like so many lances
          A bosom of teak.

* * * * *

HARD TIMES FOR HEROINES.

“Oh, Bertram,” breathed Eunice as she glided into his arms, “if Ernest knew, what would he think?”

At this point of my story I admit that I was held up.  I myself couldn’t help wondering how Ernest would regard the situation.  He was a perfectly good husband and, personally, I preferred him to Bertram the lover.  I might get unpopular with my readers, however, if they suspected this, so I continued:—­

“Ernest can never appreciate you as I do, dearest,” Bertram whispered hoarsely; “he is cold, hard, indifferent—­”

Again I paused.  If Eunice had been the really nice girl I meant her to be she would have asked Bertram what on earth he meant by saying such things about her husband, and would have told him the shortest cut to the front-door.  In which case she might never have got into print.