Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/182

 kicked, as I did, furiously at its bedclothes, sought a cool place on its pillow, twitched, turned again, dozed for a moment, and awoke with a start, more desperately uneasy than before.

I rose as the first gray of dawn touched my window and groped about for the matches. As I did so, something slipped off my table to the floor, and, upon striking a light, I found it was a dinner-card, preserved as a memento of a recent festivity in town. It was a ridiculous affair, designed by the youngest daughter of the hostess, and represented an anatomically impossible gentleman in the act of bounding nimbly into something which resembled an ill-constructed bird’s nest. Below, in gilt paint, were my name and these lines:

“There was a man in our town And he was wondrous wise; He jumped into a bramble-bush And scratched out both his eyes: