"H-m. Suggests satin breeches and hair-powder, men who could navigate a ball-room floor more safely than the Trades, doesn't it? Wherever did you get such notions?"
I showed her a volume, one of Captain Blaise's, an anthology of the Elizabethan and Restoration poets. "I was trying to write like one of 'em," I explained. "And I thought it was pretty good."
"I don't—a poor girl believing that Heaven made her kind for the high people's pleasure. No, I don't like that. And 'hair as silk as tasselled corn!' Do you like tasselled corn hair?"
[pg 158]
"Why, no—in a man. But my own being black—"
"Hush! Black's best. No, you're not intended for that kind of writing."
"But here—listen:
"'True love can neither hate nor scorn,
And ne'er will true love pass away.'