Everyone protested except Gorgas.
“I think you had better take it off,” she shook her head. “I’ve been bubbling with shut-in laughter all evening. I like fun, but this—is—carrying things a little—too far.” She pushed her laughter back with her handkerchief. “I don’t wonder the Elizabethan ladies didn’t reply. Poems praising men’s eyes and noses and beards! Là! là! là! là! That would be too funny!”
It was a relief to get away from Holden and its small politics. Elizabethan lyrics were such a remove. So he left them in a cheerful mood and promised to come back soon, with his notes, and let them have his amorous studies, that substitute for fussy little trustees.
The next morning his mail brought him an unsigned communication in the sprawling hand of Gorgas Levering. Evidently she had penned it after he had gone the night before. It read:
To My Lord and Eke My Master
Thy beard is waggling in my thoughts, I find,
Oh, lord and master, chosen of my heart;
Thy loving prattle have I heard but part,
The waggling beard distracted all my mind.
And those gray eyes—or are they slightly green?—