Now folks that never married don't seem to understand
That a little baby's language is the sweetest ever planned—
Why, I tell you it's pure music, and I'll just go on to say
That I sometimes have a notion that the angels talk that way!
There's a chapter in this story I'd be happy to destroy;
I could burn it up before you with a mighty sight of joy;
But I'll go ahead and give it—not in detail, no, my friend,
For it takes five years of reading before you find the end.
My Annie's folks relented—at least, in some degree;
They sent one time for Annie, but they didn't send for me.
The old man wrote the message with a heart as hot and dry
As a furnace—"Annie Mullen, come and see your mother die."
I saw the slur intended—why I fancied I could see
The old man shoot the insult like a poison dart at me;
And in that heat of passion I swore an inward oath
That if Annie pleased her father she could never please us both.
I watched her—dark and sullen—as she hurried on her shawl;
I watched her—calm and cruel, though I saw her tear-drops fall;
I watched her—cold and heartless, though I heard her moaning,
call
For mercy from high Heaven—and I smiled throughout it all.
Why even when she kissed me, and her tears were on my brow,
As she murmured, "George, forgive me—I must go to mother now!"
Such hate there was within me that I answered not at all,
But calm, and cold and cruel, I smiled throughout it all.
But a shadow in the doorway caught my eye, and then the face
Full of innocence and sunshine of little baby Grace.
And I snatched her up and kissed her, and I softened through and
through
For a minute when she told me "I must kiss her muvver too."
I remember, at the starting, how I tried to freeze again
As I watched them slowly driving down the little crooked lane—
When Annie shouted something that ended in a cry,
And how I tried to whistle and it fizzled in a sigh.
I remember running after, with a glimmer in my sight—
Pretending I'd discovered that the traces wasn't right;
And the last that I remember, as they disappeared from view,
Was little Grace a-calling, "I see papa! Howdy-do!"
And left alone to ponder, I again took up my hate
For the old man who would chuckle that I was desolate;
And I mouthed my wrongs in mutters till my pride called up the
pain
His last insult had given me—until I smiled again