"Until to-day I had hoped. It seems that I have built my hopes on a false foundation, and one word of yours has crumbled them into the dust!"
This pretty sentence embodied an idea that he had stolen from his own Legend of the Fair Margaret. He felt so much pride in his property that, as Miss Patty looked slightly bewildered and remained speechless, he reiterated the little quotation about his crumbling hopes.
"Whatever can I have done," said the young lady, with a smile, "to cause such a ruin?"
"It caused you no pain to utter the words," replied Verdant; "and why should it? but, to me, they tolled the knell of my happiness." (This was another quotation from his Legend.)
"Then hurrah for the pirate bold. And hurrah for the rover wild!" sang the meek Mr. Poletiss.
Miss Patty Honeywood began to suspect that Mr. Verdant Green had taken too much champagne!
"What do you mean?" she said. "Whatever have I said or done to you that you make use of such remarkable expressions?"
"And hurrah for the yellow gold, And hurrah for the ocean's child!" chorussed Messrs. Poletiss, Bouncer, and Co.
Looking as sentimental as his spectacles would allow, Mr. Verdant Green replied in verse -