“Detestable little cat!” she said—“I can see her at it! Dressed by Worth, of course, and with all her diamonds on, reciting her trash before that ridiculous old Dummer-Esel, who doesn’t know the difference between verse and prose,—smirking and smirking and giving herself all the airs of a Paris stage soubrette! And Royalty is going to take her up, is it? Not if I know it! It shall take me up first!”
Her eyes flashed, and for once her cheeks were a fine crimson without the aid of rouge. She looked at herself in the glass,—ran her white fingers through her “Titian Gloire” hair, and pulled it over on either side of her ears till it looked wild and wonderful,—opened her eyelids wide,—blinked them to note the effect of her long eyelashes,—then smiled languishingly at her own reflection and said,—
“I will do a poem!”
In this observation she strictly preserved her honesty. She did not say even to herself that she would “think” a poem, or “write” a poem. She said she would “do” a poem. And she did. She shut herself up in her room all day and went to work. She happened to have an unusually large collection of music-hall ditties and “soldiers’ songs,” which had been sung in happier times by her absent husband. She turned these over, perused them carefully, and eliminated “bits” therefrom. It was hard work, but she persevered, and like a child piecing a puzzle together, she fitted in lines and halves of lines until, by dint of close consideration and painstaking study of the music-hall “models,” she hit out something like a feeble imitation. And finally, after making herself quite feverish and thirsty with worry and fatigue and the confusion of brain resulting from “variety” ballad-mixtures, she succeeded in “arranging” the following colloquial and effective stanzas, much to her own satisfaction.
“Hullo, Tommy! Wheer’ye off to?”
“I’m a leavin’ old England’s shore,—
I’m ordered on active service,
An’ mebbe I’ll come back no more—
I’m bound to polish off Kruger—
’Twill be a tough job, old pal!—