Come back to me, my darling, my eager heart cries,
And the bitter tears rush from my heart to my eyes.”
“The last four lines are true, anyhow,” sobbed Thea, forlornly. She laid her fair head down on the table a moment in silence, thinking surely it must be time for the nurse now, although barely fifteen minutes have elapsed since she had been left alone.
But no sound broke the stillness, save the torturing gnawing of a miserable mouse in the wainscot, and Thea’s mind wandered a minute from her own poor attempt at poetry to the glorious laureate:
“All day within the dreary house
The doors upon their hinges creaked;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the moldering wainscot shrieked,
Or from the crevice peered about.
Old faces glimmered through the doors,