O swift let friendly winds attend
And faithful to her errands bend!
Then when adown the lane she goes
Make leap before her vine and rose!
From elfin land bring Ariel
To walk beside and guard her well.
Defend her, pray, from faun and gnome
Till through the Lane she wanders home!”
It was bad enough to apostrophize my neighbor’s wife in song; but to publish my infamy to the world was an even more grievous sin. I tore the thing down, bore it home, and thrust it into the kitchen range before the eyes of the contrite Banzai. Across the way Olive played, and I thought there was mockery in her playing.
Realism is, after all, on much better terms with Romance than the critics would have us believe. If Manderson had not thawed sufficiently to borrow the realistic monkey-wrench which Banzai used on our lawn-mower, and if Olive had not romantically returned it a week later with a card on which she had scribbled “Many apologies for the long delay,” I might never have discovered that she was not in fact Manderson’s wife but his sister. Hers was the neatest, the best-bred of cards, and bore the name incontrovertibly——