“Ah, you old rogue, I see what you’re driving at!—you’ve been having a call from the Muse.”
“Rather from some poor vagabond tricked out in her cast-off mantle, you mean.”
Kate goes and stands behind the high-backed arm-chair, and toys with her brother’s jetty locks. (Are they not her pride and consolation—those clustering curls? Not all the flying bullets, and slashing sabres, and ruthless cannon-balls could rob him of those—no, nor the weary, wasting sickness that followed the privations and exposure, and left him—blind.) “Come, now, Wallie, stop joking, and let me have the verses, won’t you?”
And so this is what “Wallie” says about
“NEIGHBOR EDITH.”
Alas! I cannot see what hue her eyes are,
Nor yet the color of her silken hair;
Tho’—thought consoling!—if I could, I fear me
She’d be less lavish with her kisses rare.