CHAPTER XXX
'I CANNOT SING THE OLD SONGS'
'Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye:
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die!
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live;
Ask me no more.
'Ask me no more; thy fate and mine are seal'd:
I strove against the stream and all in vain:
Let the great river take me to the main:
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
Ask me no more.'
Tennyson's Princess.
Richard had promised to pay them another visit shortly, and one Saturday evening while Polly and Sue were racing each other among the gravel-pits and the furze-bushes of the people's great common, and the lights twinkled merrily in the Vale of Health, and the shifting mist shut out the blue distances of Harrow and Pinner, Mildred was charmed as well as startled by the sound of his voice in the hall.
'Well, Rex, you are getting on famously, I hear; thanks to Aunt Milly's nursing,' was his cheerful greeting.
Roy shook his head despondingly.