Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/125

Rh To keep the beast in humor for a month. But her sister Jane—the mother of little Jane, Sylvester, and Young George—may, after all, Have known; for she was—well, she was a woman.

Young George, however, did not yield himself To nourish the false hunger of a ghost That made no good return. He saw too much: The accumulated wisdom of his years Had so conclusively made plain to him The permanent profusion of a world Where everybody might have everything To do, and almost everything to eat, That he was jubilantly satisfied And all unthwarted by adversity. Young George knew things. The world, he had found out, Was a good place, and life was a good game— Particularly when Aunt Imogen Was in it. And one day it came to pass— One rainy day when she was holding him And rocking him—that he, in his own right, Took it upon himself to tell her so; And something in his way of telling it— The language, or the tone, or something else— Gripped like a baby's fingers on her throat,