Crying with a loud voice, “A sail! a sail!
I am saved,” and so fell back and spoke no more.
So past the strong, heroic soul away.
And when they buried him the little port
Had seldom, seen a costlier funeral.'
“Now tell me if I don't do well to be angary,” cried Dorothy. “Those two lines—'a costlier funeral'! he should have given the items in the bill and said what was the name of the undertaker. Oh, why didn't you warn me off that awful conclusion? What should you say the bill came to? Oh, Alfred, Lord Tennyson!”
I shook my head sadly, of course.
“He does that sort of thing now and then,” I said sadly. “You remember the young lady whose 'light blue eyes' were 'tender over drowning dies'? and the 'oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies.'”
“I do now, but they are not so bad as that about the costly funeral. Why does he do it—tell me that—put me wise?”
“I suppose we must all have our bit of fun now and again. Kean, when in the middle of his most rousing piece of declamation, used to turn from his spellbound audience and put out his tongue at one of the scene-shifters. If you want to be kept constantly at the highest level you must stick to Milton.”