'At night I think of you, beloved.
Dream that I see your face,
Fancy I feel you kiss me
As I rest in your embrace.
But at the rose glow of morning
You fade like a summer mist,
And I wake, and long
For a dream that has gone,
For a face that I fancied I kissed.'
Of course it is not strictly accurate, for I never have the luck to
dream of Michael, 'but a _Poet_,' I observed as I wrote the last lines
down, 'is not expected to be verbally truthful in a _Poem_.'
'What, still slinging ink, little 'un?' said father, coming into my room
at this point, 'why, you've got a blob on your neck!'
And then he picked up this chapter in that impertinent way he has and
read it, with his eyes all curled up at the corners.
'Might one criticise the poem, Meg?' he asked diffidently.
'Oh, do,' I replied, conscious that it was beyond all criticism.
'Your "poem,"' he said, getting the word out with difficulty, 'has
defective rhymes, darling. "Long" does not rhyme with "gone," nor is
the--um--"poem" a sonnet.'
'But I never said it was, daddy.'
'No, Meg?'
'Oh, father,' I said, shaking his arm, 'it would look deliriously
beautiful printed on good paper with wide margins and rough edges?'
Nannie said, 'You give it to Master Michael, dearie. He'll like it, and
as to rhymes, why the stuff your father reads never has any.'
So I presented it to Michael, and I had no illusions then as to whether
I were kissed or not.
Later, at tea, father had just observed that, like the Ephesians, we
were 'in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar,' when a
telegram was brought to him.
'The tone of this household will have to buck up a bit,' he remarked as
he read it.
'It will after to-morrow,' grinned Charlie Foxhill, 'when Meg's gone,
sir.'
(For oh, to-morrow is my wedding day, just fancy.)
'It's got to buck up before that,' father replied; 'this wire is from
the new Bishop of Ligeria, he's coming here this afternoon and wants to
stop the night. He'll have to stay on for the wedding, of course.'
'Oh, daddy,' I exclaimed in great disgust, 'we can't have this Ligerian
fossil here to-morrow, it'll spoil everything, besides, there isn't a
bed.'
'He'll have to sleep in his suit-case then, and his chaplain in the lid,
Meg; there's no time to put him off, and _do_ try to behave like 'a
clergyman's daughter' while he's here, little 'un! Why, good gracious!'
For there was the Bishop of Ligeria, and a livid kind of chaplain who
looked like a limp curl-paper, alighting at the front door from a
motor-car.
Daddy rushed out into the hall and I after him. I wished I had had time
to change into something black, as father seemed so anxious to make a
good impression on the Bishop, but I managed to part my hair in the
middle by the hall glass and I turned the collar of my blouse up instead
of down.
And then one of those terrible delusions came over me, for I thought
father seized the Bishop by the hand and shook it violently,
exclaiming,--
'Hallo, Porky, what priceless luck.'
'What about that ten bob, old bean?' said Porky.
Then father turned and saw _me_ with my hair parted down the middle, and
the _chaplain_, partially paralysed with horror.
'My daughter, me lud,' he said, and led the Bishop and his attendant
into the drawing-room for a belated tea.
I got away as soon as I could. I felt I must have quiet to think things
out. Is this another delusion, or did father really call a Bishop
'Porky'? Nannie said once that putting the feet in hot water draws the
blood from the head and eases mental strain, so I decided to have a bath
before dinner.