Page:Cuthbert Bede--Verdant Green married and done for.djvu/47

Rh look at her, Patty, while I rest the glass for you." So he balanced it on his shoulder, while Miss Patty looked through it with her one eye, and placed her fingers upon the other—after the manner of young ladies when they look through a telescope; and then burst into such animated, but not thoughtful observations, as "Oh! I can see it quite plainly. Oh! it is rolling about so! Oh! there are two little men in it! Oh! one of them's pulling a rope! Oh! it all seems to be brought so near!" as if there had been some doubt on the matter, and she had expected the telescope to make things invisible. Miss Patty was quite in childish delight at watching the Fleur-de-lys' movements, and seemed to forget all about the proposed sketch, although Mr. Verdant Green had found her a comfortable rock seat, and had placed her drawing materials ready for use. "How happy and confiding they are!" he thought, as he gazed upon them thus standing together; "they seem to be made for each other. He is far more fitted for her than I am. I wonder if I shall ever see them after they are—married. I shall never be married." And, after this morbid fashion, the young gentleman took a melancholy pleasure in arranging his future.

It was about this time that the divine afflatus—which had lain almost dormant since his boyish "Address to the Moon"—was again manifested in him by the production of numberless poetical effusions, in which his own poignant anguish and Miss Patty's incomparable attractions were brought forward in verses of various degrees of mediocrity. They were also equally varied in their style and treatment; one being written in a fierce and gloomy Byronic strain, while another followed the lighter childish style of Wordsworth. To this latter class, perhaps, belonged the following lines, which, having accidentally fallen into the hands of Mr. Bouncer, were pronounced by him to be "no end good! first-rate fun!" for the little gentleman put a highly erroneous construction upon them, and, to the great laceration of the author's feelings, imagined them to be altogether of a comic tendency. But, when Mr. Verdant Green wrote them, he probably thought that "deep meaning lieth oft in childish play:"—

"Pretty Patty Honeywood, Fresh, and fair, and plump, Into your affections I should like to jump! Into your good graces I should like to steal; That you lov'd me truly I should like to feel.