"'And since, striped mosquitoes he's kilt less.'
Either would have made quite as good a rhyme and sense, too."
I did not dare let her see how true I thought this. It would never do to let her make fun of me. So I kept my serious air.
I determined to try a new tack and surprise her. I had a few shreds of Italian left from a time when I had studied the poets as a refuge from the desert dulness of my college course, and now having, in a pause, recalled the lines, I dropped, as though quite naturally, Dante's immortal wail:
'Nessun maggior dolore
Che recordarci del tempo felice
Nella miseria.'
I felt sure that this would at least impress her with my culture, while if by any chance she knew the lines, which I did not apprehend, it would impress her all the more and might prove a step toward a reconciliation.
For a moment she said nothing, then she asked quietly, "How does the rest of it go?"
She had me there, for I did not know the rest of the quotation.
"'E ciò sa il tuo dottore,'"
she said with a cut of her eye, and a liquid tone that satisfied me I had, as the saying runs, "stepped from the frying-pan into the fire."