Quick answer'd Lilia 'There are thousands now Such women, but convention beats them down: It is but bringing up; no more than that: That I were some great Princess, I would build And one said smiling 'Pretty were the sight If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair. I think they should not wear our rusty gowns, But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear, If there were many Lilias in the brood, However deep you might embower the nest, Some boy would spy it.' At this upon the sward She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot : 'That's your light way; but I would make it death For any male thing but to peep at us.' Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd; A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, And sweet as English air could make her, she : All else was well, for she-society. They boated and they cricketed; they talk'd At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics; They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans ; They rode; they betted; made a hundred friends, And caught the blossom of the flying terms, But miss'd the mignonette of Vivian-place, The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke, Part banter, part affection. "True,' she said, 'We doubt not that. O yes, you miss'd us much. I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.' She held it out; and as a parrot turns Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, And takes a lady's finger with all care, And wrung it. 'Doubt my word again!' he said. 'Come, listen! here is proof that you were miss'd: We seven stay'd at Christmas up to read; And there we took one tutor as to read: The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and square Were out of season: never man, I think, So moulder'd in a sinecure as he : For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet, And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms, We did but talk you over, pledge you all In wassail; often, like as many girls Sick for the hollies and the yews of home- Charades and riddles as at Christmas here, And what's my thought and when and where and how, And often told a tale from mouth to mouth As here at Christmas.' She remember'd that: A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. But these-what kind of tales did men tell' men, She wonder'd, by themselves? A half-disdain Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips : And Walter nodded at me; 'He began, The rest would follow, each in turn; and so We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind? Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms, Seven-headed monsters only made to kill Time by the fire in winter.' 'Kill him now, The tyrant! kill him in the summer too,' Said Lilia; 'Why not now,' the maiden Aunt. 'Why not a summer's as a winter's tale? A tale for summer as befits the time, And something it should be to suit the place, Heroic, for a hero lies beneath, Grave, solemn !' Walter warp'd his mouth at this To something so mock-solemn, that I laugh'd And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth An echo like a ghostly woodpecker, Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt (A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face With colour) turn'd to me with 'As you will ; Heroic if you will, or what you will, Or be yourself your hero if you will.' |