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"Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffin sits Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits." "Humph!" ejaculated my visitor. "You're a great Hiram, you are." And then rising from his chair and walking to my "poet's corner," the magician selected two volumes. "There," said he, handing me the Departmental Ditties.
It was quite true that the squire had become very fond of Molly. The charm of having a young girl dancing and singing inarticulate ditties about the house and garden, was indescribable in its novelty to him. And then Molly was so willing and so wise; ready both to talk and to listen at the right times. Mrs. Hamley was quite right in speaking of her husband's fondness for Molly.
Then Jigerdilla began to sing a popular ballad all about love. Even in those times such ditties used to be sung, but on the sly, in the woods or the meadows; for within the walled cities the clergy forbade them, preached whole series of sermons against them, called them "flower songs," said that they only served to corrupt good manners.
"I do not know a 'devil's ditty, and would not sing one if I did," replied Jean La Marche, jealous of the ballads of his own New France. "Indians cannot swear because they know no oaths, and habitans cannot sing devil's ditties because they never learned them; but 'St. Malo, beau port de mer, I will sing that with any man in the Colony!"
Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, My three antic shadows wear; And no sound they make in playing, For the six small feet are bare. "Dancing gayly, dancing gayly, To and fro all together, Like a family of daisies Blown about in windy weather; Nimble fairies, nimble fairies, Playing pranks in the warm glow, While I sing the nursery ditties Childish phantoms love and know.
He thought of the conversation at dinner, of brilliant speeches he might have made, of the encouragement of Katherine's smiling eyes and sympathetic speech, of the scene in the gallery that morning, of Mary Cathcart's old-time love ditties. The City of God was far off. All these were things very near at hand. Notwithstanding the scanty folds of the cassock, they importuned him still.
He sang many comic songs to cheer us up during that night of dolor, filling the intervals between the ditties with anathemas against his South African luck and realistic stories of his Australian experiences. He had lived, he told us, for several years by earning pennies in the Melbourne streets.
If our Lauras find Petrarchs now, they are usually very beardless ones, and the green morocco cover, with its golden lock, covers their indiscretions. Those who write love ditties for the piano must celebrate a shadow who can't be critical. Imagine any man insulting a real woman of average intellect with 'Will you love me then as now!" "Yes," she assented, "they are too absurd as a rule.
To smoke and sprawl and read a little, and exchange chit-chat, was poetry enough for him. So contented was he that his joy was apt to find an outlet in ditties and whistling he possessed a slightly tuneful, rollicking knack at both a proceeding which commonly culminated in his causing Selma to sit beside him on the sofa and be made much of, to the detriment of her toilette.
Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living, and the 'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another of Miss Francie Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and pathetic. We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter. Miss Forsyte should go far.
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