FOND HEARTS ASKEW
By
M**R*CE H*WL*TT
TO
WILLIAM ROBERTSON NICOLL
SAGE AND REVEREND
AND A TRUE KNIGHT
THIS ROMAUNT
OF DAYS EDVARDIAN
PROLOGUE.
Too strong a wine, belike, for some stomachs, for there's honey in it, and a dibbet of gore, with other condiments. Yet Mistress Clio (with whom, some say, Mistress Thalia, that sweet hoyden) brewed it: she, not I, who do but hand the cup round by her warrant and good favour. Her guests, not mine, you shall take it or leave it—spill it untasted or quaff a bellyful. Of a hospitable temper, she whose page I am; but a great lady, over self-sure to be dudgeoned by wry faces in the refectory. As for the little sister (if she did have finger in the concoction)—no fear of offence there! I dare vow, who know somewhat the fashion of her, she will but trill a pretty titter or so at your qualms.
BENEDICTUS BENEDICAT.
I cry you mercy for a lacuna at the outset. I know not what had knitted and blackened the brows of certain two speeding eastward through London, enhansomed, on the night of the feast of St. Box: alter, Geoffrey Dizzard, called "The Honourable," lieu-tenant in the Guards of Edward the Peace Getter; altera, the Lady Angelica Plantagenet, to him affianced. Devil take the cause of the bicker: enough that they were at sulks. Here's for a sight of the girl!
Johannes Sargent, that swift giant from the New World, had already flung her on canvas, with a brace of sisters. She outstands there, a virgin poplar-tall; hair like ravelled flax and coiffed in the fashion of the period; neck like a giraffe's; lips shaped for kissing rather than smiling; eyes like a giraffe's again; breasts like a boy's, and something of a dressed-up boy in the total aspect of her. She has arms a trifle long even for such height as hers; fingers very long, too, with red-pink nails trimmed to a point. She looks out slantwise, conscious of her beauty, and perhaps of certain other things. Fire under that ice, I conjecture—red corpuscles rampant behind that meek white mask of hers. "Forsitan in hoc anno pulcherrima debutantium" is the verdict of a contemporary journal. For "forsitan" read "certe." No slur, that, on the rest of the bevy.