He carried flowers and diamond rings to please that dazzling belle, and
caramels and other things that damsels love so well. He’d sit for hours
upon a chair and hold her on his knees; he blew his money here and
there, as though it grew on trees. “If I had half what you are worth,”
he used to say, “my sweet, I’d put a shawlstrap round the earth and lay
it at your feet.”
He had no other thought, it seemed, than just to cheer her heart; and
everything of which she dreamed, he purchased in the mart.
“When we are spliced,” he used to say, “you’ll have all you desire—a
gold mine or a load of hay, a dachshund or a lyre. My one great aim will
be to make your life a thing of joy, so haste and to the altar take your
little Clarence boy.”
And so she thought she drew a peach when they were wed in June. Alas!
how oft for plums we reach, and only get a prune!
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