Miss Courteen was so much charmed by this loquacious dream that she began to compose an appropriate verse destined to be wrapped round the green stalks of the flowers.
| The snowdrop's white |
| And so are you. . . |
The smallest foot in the world beat time upon the balcony making the iron bars on which she stood vibrate in twanging chords, but failed to summon from the caves of Poesy an echo worthy of the snowdrop's white.
"The last line is monstrous easy," she thought.
The bluebell's blue! and the accumulation of liquids and labials has enchanted her mouth to such a delicious pout that Mr. Vernon is leaning forward and combing his wig more contemplatively than ever, for, although he cannot see his charmer's lips, he feels sure from the attitude of her whole body that her face is infernally captivating, and the memory of her last whispered good-bye assails him and kindles a leaping flame at the back of his hazel eyes.
Such a merciless regard as ours penetrates to the heart and we know that Mr. Vernon is wondering what on earth will come of his affair with Miss Courteen, and speculating how much she will inherit, and whether matrimony is quite so expensive a joy as his friends make out. The thought of money writes an ugly twisted line across his high smooth forehead, and this line broadens into a hundred little tributary lines as he thinks of his debts. So he brings himself back to the obstacles of life in rather a gloomy frame of mind and faces the necessity of his toilet in such a depression of spirits that he selects a suit to match his mood. And that is the reason why Mr. Francis Vernon wore purple sattin on Valentine morning.
All this while, Miss Courteen is quite unable to invent that odious third line, and though she taps her foot to aerial musick and pulls a chestnut curl right over her nose and twists it round her fingers and wonders whether 'white' is a notably difficult word to rhyme, she never succeeds, and just when she has almost succeeded, her mother's voice sounds from the floor above. This disposes of inspiration altogether, for though her mother's voice is very melodious and sounds prodigiously pleasant as it murmurs 'Spadille' or 'Manille' over the card-tables, it will allow no competition, and drives all invisible musick far away.
"Coming, dear mamma," says Phyllida just as Mr. Vernon decides to wear purple and just as we step out of Mrs. Choke's front door thinking it can no longer be indiscreet to follow our Muses to the scene of Mrs. Courteen's toilet.
As we cross the road glittering in the sunshine with last night's rain, we see a tall young gentleman writing busily in a set of ivory tablets as he strolls quietly along the pavement. Mr. Lovely, the young gentleman, looks up very quickly as a three-cornered note flutters down and lodges in a fold of his ruffles. Miss Courteen who felt the note falling, and thinks that after all she need not make more than a pretty attempt to save it, peers over the railing into the upturned face of the young gentleman who bows very low and sweeps his hat round in a very grand curve, and begs to apologize for the awkwardness of his ruffles in thus intercepting a lady's note. And you and I, my inquisitive companion, stand still for a moment and watch the picture, remembering it is merry Valentine morn. The maid with wide eyes and crimson cheeks nestling in swansdown and the young man of the laughing expectant face, in his peach-coloured velvet suit, seem somehow to have caught the spirit of the day: they make us think of broken stiles, of hedges heavy with may, of blue and white April noons, of lambs, and children with pinafores a-flutter gathering cowslip-posies on a wind-washed down, and of all the old and dear delights of Spring.
Says Phyllida, "Oh! pray pardon my clumsiness."