Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/155

142 not be ashamed to own him there); and ultimately, furnished with cash for the trip by the remonstrating brewer, went.

So these Parcæ, daughters of the shears, arranged and settled the young man’s fate. His task was to learn the management of his mouth, how to dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—rare qualities in man or woman, I assure you; the management of the mouth being especially admirable, and correspondingly difficult. These achieved, he was to place his battery in position, and win the heart and hand of an heiress.

Our comedy opens with his return from Portugal, in company with Miss Rose, the heiress; the Honourable Melville Jocelyn, the diplomate; and the Count and Countess de Saldar, refugees out of that explosive little kingdom.

Marion Gray was an old maid confest Of some forty and two p’rhaps to spare; And she lived in a region that once was “the West,” And held up its head I’ve been told with the best— In short, it was Red Lion Square.

Though the first bloom of youth had been wiped from her cheek, Though her hair was—don’t breathe it—a wig, Though the vulgar remarked that her voice was a squeak, And her nose rather red, and her temper not meek, She was “merry as e’er was a grig.”

The Square has gone down, but the trees are still green That o’ershadow the dull plot of ground, Some grass and a sprinkling of flowers are seen By those who in summer-time peep through the screen Of old iron that totters around.

Her house is an old one—’twas built at the time When Anna the Stuart was Queen: No legends suggested that aught of sublime Was connected therewith, and no terrible crime Rooms, closets, or cellars had seen.