“Then the lads would scan the lasses up and down, and sing back, as if every one of ’em had been born a lord, or high sheriff of the county at least—
“‘You’re all too black and too blowsy, too blowsy
For a dilly-dally officer.’
“Then the maids would sing with a bit of spite—
“‘We’re good enough for you, sirs, good enough for you.’
“Then a lad would leave his fellows, and say with a shrug of his shoulders, and crestfallen like—
“‘If I must have one I will have this,
So away with you my pretty miss.’”
And then old Nana told us that the maids would laugh and the lads would jeer, for in turn each lad had to choose a lass, and sometimes the lass he had a mind to wouldn’t go.
A RING OF ROSES