Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/183

 And when he found his eyes were out, With all his might and main He jumped into that bramble-bush And scratched them in again.”

I remembered that, when I had found this beside my place at table, I thought it the most meaningless thing in the world; but, for that matter, there is no record of King Belshazzar having immediately seen the point of the writing on the wall. Now the significance of the doggerel was as clear as crystal. I was the man. The confirmed estate of bachelorhood was the bramble-bush. My unpractised manner of jumping into the latter, at first, had naturally led me to scratch my eyes out over a silly semblance of a love-affair. Well, I was the wiser for the experience, and the same thing would not be apt to happen a second time. I could jump back into my bramble-bush with the certainty of recovering my former point of view. I replaced the prophetic