“Both of which are to his fancy,” observed young Tom to me, aside.
“Human natur’,” quaintly observed Stapleton.
“Well, then, you shall have your wish. I’ll give you one that might be warbled in a lady’s chamber without stirring the silk curtains:—
“Oh! the days are gone when beauty bright
My heart’s chain wove,
When my dream of life from morn to night
Was Love—still Love.
New hope may bloom, and days may come,
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As Love’s young dream;
Oh! there’s nothing half so sweet in life,
As Love’s young dream.”
The melody of the song, added to the spirits he had drunk and Mary’s eyes beaming on him, had a great effect upon the Dominie. As old Tom warbled out, so did the pedagogue gradually approach the chair of Mary; and as gradually entwine her waist with his own arm, his eyes twinkling brightly on her. Old Tom, who perceived it, had given me and Tom a wink, as he repeated the two last lines; and then we saw what was going on, we burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. “Boys! boys!” said the Dominie, starting up, “thou hast awakened me, by thy boisterous mirth, from a sweet musing created by the harmony of friend Dux’s voice. Neither do I discover the source of thy cachinnation, seeing that the song is amatory and not comic. Still, it may not be supposed, at thy early age, that thou canst be affected with what thou art too young to feel. Pr’ythee continue, friend Dux, and, boys, restrain thy mirth.”
“Though the bard to a purer fame may soar
When wild youth’s past,
Though he win the wise, who frowned before,
To smile at last,
He’ll never meet a joy so sweet
In all his noon of fame,
As when first he sung to woman’s ear
His soul-felt flame;
And at every close she blush’d to hear
The once-lov’d name.”
At the commencement of this verse the Dominie appeared to be on his guard; but gradually moved by the power of song, he dropped his elbow on the table, and his pipe underneath it; his forehead sank into his broad palm, and he remained motionless. The verse ended, and the Dominie, forgetting all around him, softly ejaculated, without looking up, “Eheu! Mary.”
“Did you speak to me, sir?” said Mary, who, perceiving us tittering, addressed the Dominie with a half-serious, half-mocking air.
“Speak, maiden? nay, I spoke not; yet thou mayest give me my pipe, which apparently hath been abducted while I was listening to the song.”
“Abducted! that’s a new word; but it means smashed into twenty pieces, I suppose,” observed young Tom. “At all events, your pipe is, for you let it fall between your legs.”