A BALLAD OF A BAZAAR.
BY CAMPBELL RAE-BROWN.
First Day.
He was young, and she—enchanting!
She had eyes of tender grey,
Fringed with long and lovely lashes,
As he passed they seemed to say,
With a look that was quite killing,
"Won't you buy a pretty flower?
Come, invest—well, just a shilling,
For the fairest in my bower!"
Though that bower was full of blossoms,
Yet the fairest of them all
Was the pretty grey-eyed maiden
Standing 'mong them, slim and tall,
With her dainty arms uplifted
O'er her figure as she stood
Just inside the trellised doorway
Fashioned out of rustic wood;
And she pouted as he passed her,
And that pout did so beguile,
That he thought it more bewitching
Than another's sweetest smile.
Fair as tiny dew-dipped rosebuds
Were the little rounded lips;
And the youth ransacked his pockets
In a rhapsody of grips.
Then he went and told her plainly
That he'd not a farthing left,
But would gladly pledge his "Albert";
So with fingers quick and deft,
She unloosed his golden watch-chain—
Coiled it round her own white arm,
Said she'd keep it till the morrow
As a souvenir—a charm.
Second Day.
Full of hope, and faith, and fondness,
He went forth at early morn,
And paced up and down the entrance,
Like a man that was forlorn.
Thus for hour on hour he waited,
Till they opened the bazaar;
Then she came with kindly greeting;
"Ah, well, so then, there you are!
Come, now, go in for a raffle—
Buy a ticket—half-a-crown."
Ah, those eyes! who could refuse them?—
And he put the money down.
Then, enthralled, he stood and watched her—
Sought each movement of that face,
With its wealth of witching beauty,
And its glory and its grace.
When the raffling was over,
Thus she spake in tones of pain:
"You are really most unlucky—
My—my husband's won your chain!"