The fickle One-and-Nine, while we were here, fell in love with a wax figure exhibited in a hair-dresser’s window in Sandgate Road. It represented a beautiful lady with her hair dressed in the latest fashion, and the wooden soldier was greatly infatuated. He spent hours gazing through the window, watching the lady slowly revolve by clockwork; and he became frightfully jealous of the hair-dresser, whom he caught one morning rearranging the drapery around the lady’s shoulders.
Eventually, with the assistance of the Rhymester, he composed the following piece of poetry—which he stuck, by means of six gelatine sweets, on to the hair-dresser’s window with the writing inside, in order that the lady might see it.
TO THE BEAUTIFUL LADY IN THE HAIRDRESSER’S WINDOW.
I love you, oh! I love you,
And I beg you to be mine;
I’m a gallant wooden soldier,
And my name is 1/9.
If you will only marry me,
’Twill be the greatest fun
To puzzle folks by telling them,
That we’re both 2/1.
’Twill be the truth, for man and wife
Are one, I beg to state,
This fact’s as clear as 4/4,
Or 2/6 make 8.
They tell me, dear, you have no feet;
But what is that to me?
2 feet be 4/2 behind
On animals you see.
That you have none, is 0 to me,
Dear 1/4 your sake,
No trifles such as these shall e’er
My true affections shake.
I bought some penny tarts for you,
But I am much distrest
To tell you by mistake I sat
On 1/8 the rest.
One-and-Nine was quite happy in finding that the paper had disappeared from the shop window when he passed by a little later, and declared that it must mean that the lady had accepted him and his poetry.