"I take a subject for a verse," said Bones airily, waving his hand toward Throgmorton Street. "A 'bus, a fuss, a tram, a lamb, a hat, a cat, a sunset, a little flower growing on the river's brim, and all that sort of thing--any old subject, dear old miss, that strikes me in the eye--you understand?"
"Of course I understand," she said readily. "A poet's field is universal, and I quite understand that if he writes nice things about his friends he doesn't mean it."
"Oh, but doesn't he?" said Bones truculently. "Oh, doesn't he, indeed? That just shows what a fat lot you know about it, jolly old Miss Marguerite. When I write a poem about a girl----"
"Oh, I see, they're about girls," said she a little coldly.
"About _a_ girl," said Bones, this time so pointedly that his confusion was transferred immediately to her.
"Anyway, they don't mean anything," she said bravely.
"My dear young miss"--Bones rose, and his voice trembled as he laid his hand on the typewriter where hers had been a second before--"my dear old miss," he said, jingling with the letters "a" and "e" as though he had originally put out his hand to touch the keyboard, and was in no way surprised and distressed that the little hand which had covered them had been so hastily withdrawn, "I can only tell you----"
"There is your telephone bell," she said hurriedly. "Shall I answer it?" And before Bones could reply she had disappeared.
He went back to his flat that night with his mind made up. He would show her those beautiful verses. He had come to this conclusion many times before, but his heart had failed him. But he was growing reckless now. She should see them--priceless verses, written in a most expensive book, with the monogram "W.M." stamped in gold upon the cover. And as he footed it briskly up Devonshire Street, he recited:
"O Marguerite, thou lovely flower, I think of thee most every hour, With eyes of grey and eyes of blue, That change with every passing hue, Thy lovely fingers beautifully typing, How sweet and fragrant is thy writing!
He thought he was reciting to himself, but that was not the case. People turned and watched him, and when he passed the green doorway of Dr. Harkley Bawkley, the eminent brain specialist, they were visibly disappointed.