Page:A Literary Courtship (1893).pdf/152

 ting one evening in my room, turning them over, when I came across a sheet of paper on which there were three verses written in pencil in Miss Lamb's hand. Considering poetry to be public property, I glanced over the verses, which rejoiced in the hilarious title of "A Plaint." They were not so harrowing as some of their predecessors, to be sure, yet they were hardly calculated to have an exhilarating effect upon John. He had about succeeded in convincing himself that the "friend" was genuine, that appearances were not deceitful, that the girl of his choice was not a blighted being. This, although there was so much evidence of the poems having been written in Colorado Springs and by some one sharing all Miss Lamb's personal interests, that he was almost driven to accept the "unenterprising" Mrs. Ellerton's authorship as the sole alternative. And here was Miss Lamb herself—no mistaking the author this time—still fondly and mournfully contemplating the fragments of a