"Alas, it is too late. Your super-efficient postal service has brought this to me just forty-eight hours behind time. Day before yesterday was the day, now that I think of it."
Mrs. Pollock mentally resolved to indite a short poem to him, notwithstanding. She could feel it coming, even as she stood there talking to him. The first line was already written, so to speak. It went:
"The flight of Time has brought once more—"
He continued, oblivious to the workings of the Muse: "Twenty-nine! By Jove, I begin to feel that I'm getting on in life." He ripped open one of the envelopes.
Maude Baggs Pollock looked intently at the ceiling of the outer office, and thought of line number two:
"The busy Reaper to his door,"
She hastily snatched a pencil from her hair and began jotting down these precious lines. Fumbling for a bit of paper her fingers encountered an envelope addressed to Alaska Spigg. The Muse worked swiftly. Before she had dashed off the first two lines, the second pair were crowding down upon them, to wit:
"But while he whets his fatal scythe, Gaze ye upon his victim lithe."
At this juncture George Rice's son came in for a half dozen postal cards, and while she was making change for a dime the Muse forsook her. Bent on preserving the lines already shaped, she stuffed Alaska's letter into the pocket of her apron, intending to copy them at the first leisure moment. Unfortunately for Alaska, there was a rush of business at the window, including an acrimonious dispute with Mrs. Ryan over the non-arrival of a letter she was expecting from her son, and a lengthy conversation with Miss Flora Grady who dropped in to say that her chilblains always began to bother her in October. In the meantime, Courtney departed.
Two days later, Alaska Spigg received her letter, considerably crumpled and smelling of licorice root,—(a favourite remedy of Mrs. Pollock's)—but rendered precious by the presence of a mysterious "quatrain" done in violet hues by some poetic wielder of an indelible pencil. Guilt denied Maude Baggs Pollock the right to claim authorship of these imperishable lines, and to this day they remain unidentified in the archives of the Windomville Public Library, displayed upon request by Alaska Spigg, their proud and unselfish donor.