Thus did our Jocko play, for Betsey’s sake,
The Grand Domestic Game of Give and Take,
Until her rudeness to her friend was such
As makes men say “This is a straw too much.”
One day he sat, as docile as a lamb,
By Betsey-Jane who, upright in her pram,
Refused to sleep and went from bad to worse,
Kicked off her rug and disobeyed her nurse;
And though her Jocko did not speak his mind
And only stared to see her so unkind,
In Endless Street, some yards from their abode,
She picked him up and flung him in the road.
V
On sped the pram nor did the nurse’s pace
Leave time to miss our hero from his place.
Flat by the curb lay Jocko, still and pale,
Till a rude sparrow plucked him by the tail
And up he sat;—the sparrow hopped around
And eyed him seated sadly on the ground,
Propped up against the parapet and grey
With grime and dust that in the gutter lay.
Then Jocko spoke, he smoothed his sullied fur
With one long trembling paw, and thought of her
And said, all torn betwixt his love and pain,—
“I will go back no more to Betsey-Jane.”