THREE DAYS’ GRACE.
THE tiny slipper she had dropped
He lifted from the brookside dust,
And placed it on the dainty foot
That had so lightly held its trust.
“Ah! Cinderella,”—but she waived
His homage of the eye and knee;
Half mockingly, half tenderly—
“I am your debtor, sir,” said she.
“Ay, and I wait the payment, love!”
She flushed, then laughed back, as she sped
From stepping-stone to stepping-stone:
“Give me three days of grace,” she said.
He cleared the streamlet at a bound,
And whispered, gazing on her face,
“The favor is not mine to grant,
For all your days are Days of Grace!”
Sarah J. Burke.