hey all about?" she asked for about the twentieth time.

"What are they about?" said Bones slowly and thoughtfully. "They're
about one thing and another, but mostly about my--er--friends. Of
course a jolly old poet like me, or like any other old fellow, like
Shakespeare, if you like--to go from the sublime to the ridiculous--has
fits of poetising that mean absolutely nothing. It doesn't follow that
if a poet like Browning or me writes fearfully enthusiastically and all
that sort of thing about a person... No disrespect, you understand,
dear old miss."

"Quite," she said, and wondered.

"I take a subject for a verse," said Bones airily, waving his hand
toward Throgmorton Street. "A 'bus, a fuss, a tram, a lamb, a hat, a
cat, a sunset, a little flower growing on the river's brim, and all
that sort of thing--any old subject, dear old miss, that strikes me in
the eye--you understand?"

"Of course I understand," she said readily. "A poet's field is
universal, and I quite understand that if he writes nice things about
his friends he doesn't mean it."

"Oh, but doesn't he?" said Bones truculently. "Oh, doesn't he, indeed?
That just shows what a fat lot you know about it, jolly old Miss
Marguerite. When I write a poem about a girl----"

"Oh, I see, they're about girls," said she a little coldly.

"About _a_ girl," said Bones, this time so pointedly that his confusion
was transferred immediately to her.

"Anyway, they don't mean anything," she said bravely.

"My dear young miss"--Bones rose, and his voice trembled as he laid his
hand on the typewriter where hers had been a second before--"my dear
old miss," he said, jingling with the letters "a" and "e" as though he
had originally put out his hand to touch the keyboard, and was in no
way surprised and distressed that the little hand which had covered
them had been so hastily withdrawn, "I can only tell you----"

"There is your telephone bell," she said hurriedly. "Shall I answer
it?" And before Bones could reply she had disappeared.

He went back to his flat that night with his mind made up. He would
show her those beautiful verses. He had come to this conclusion many
times before, but his heart had failed him. But he was growing
reckless now. She should see them--priceless verses, written in a most
expensive book, with the monogram "W.M." stamped in gold upon the
cover. And as he footed it briskly up Devonshire Street, he recited:

"O Marguerite,