It is said—I won't vouch for the fact—that Captain Brown was heard to say, sotto voce, "D——n Dr. Johnson!" If he did, he was penitent afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkyns's arm-chair, and endeavouring to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing subject. But she was inexorable. The next day she made the remark I have mentioned about Miss Jessie's dimples.
SALLY SIMPKIN'S LAMENT; OR JOHN JONES'S KIT-CAT-ASTROPHE
[Sidenote: Hood]
"Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
And quite in middling haste?
It is the picture of my Jones,
And painted to the waist.
"It is not painted to the life,
For where's the trousers blue?
Oh, Jones, my dear!—Oh dear! my Jones,
What is become of you?"
"Oh! Sally dear, it is too true,—
The half that you remark
Is come to say my other half
Is bit off by a shark!
"Oh! Sally, sharks do things by halves,
Yet most completely do!
A bite in one place seems enough,
But I've been bit in two.
"You know I once was all your own,
But now a shark must share!
But let that pass—for now to you
I'm neither here nor there.
"Alas! death has a strange divorce
Effected in the sea,
It has divided me from you,
And even me from me.
"Don't fear my ghost will walk o' nights,
To haunt, as people say;
My ghost can't walk, for oh! my legs
Are many leagues away!
"Lord! think, when I am swimming round,
And looking where the boat is,
A shark just snaps away a half
Without a quarter's notice.