"But I don't write verses—any longer," I amended. "Still how would this do,—for an oak, say,—
"I found a lovely centre-piece
Upon the supper-table,
But when I looked at it again
I saw I wasn't able,
And so I took my mother home
And locked her in the stable."
She considered that the plot of this epic was not sufficiently inevitable. It hadn't, she lamented, a quite logical ending; and the plot of it, in fine, was not, somehow, convincing.
"Well, in any event," I optimistically reflected, "I am a nickel in. If your dicta had emanated from a person in Peoria or Seattle, who hadn't bothered to read my masterpiece, they would have sounded exactly the same, and the clipping-bureau would have charged me five cents. Maybe I can't write verses, then. But I am quite sure I can groan." And I did so.
"It sounds rather like a fog-horn," said Rosalind, still in the critic's vein; "but I suppose it is the proper thing. Now," she continued, and quite visibly brightening, "you can pretend to have an unrequited attachment for me."
"But I can't—" I decisively said.
"Can't," she echoed. It has not been mentioned previously that Rosalind was pretty. She was especially so just now, in pouting. And, therefore, "—pretend," I added.
She preserved a discreet silence.
"Nor," I continued, with firmness, "am I a shambling, nameless, unshaven denizen of Arden, who hasn't anything to do except to carry a spear and fall over it occasionally. I will no longer conceal the secret of my identity. I am Jaques."
"You can't be Jaques," she dissented; "you are too stout."