Rosy is the south,
Rosy are her cheeks
And a rose her mouth.”
Now what do you think of it? I call it very pretty—not so good, on the whole, as the bower of roses by Bendameer's stream, but still quite nice. You would not be afraid to let one of your little girls read it—yes, every line.”
Dorothy said that she would not; but then Dorothy is afraid of nothing—not even an antiquarian.
He returned to us the next day with the full text—only embellished with half a dozen of the Gazette's misprints—of the Lalla Rookh song, and read it out to us in full, but failing now and again to get into the lilt of Moore's melodious anapaests—a marvellous feat, considering how they sing and swing themselves along from line to line. But that was not enough, He had another story for us—fresh, quite fresh, from the stock of a brother antiquarian who recollected it, he said, when watching the players on the bowling-green.
“I thought I should not lose a minute in coming to you with it,” he said. “You are so close to the bowling-green here, it should have additional interest in your eyes. The story is that Nelson was playing bowls when some one rushed in to say that the Spanish Armada was in sight. But the news did not put him off his game. 'We'll have plenty of time to finish our game and beat the Spaniards afterwards,' he cried; and sure enough he went on with the game to the end. There was a man for you!”
“And who won?” asked Dorothy innocently.
“That's just the question I put to my friend,” he cried. “The story is plainly unfinished. He did not say whether Nelson and his partner won his game against the other players; but you may be sure that he did.”
“He didn't say who was Nelson's partner?” said Dorothy.