"
"Then he shall carry me there on his back: with rings on my fingers and
bells on my toes"--
She rode unto the knacker's yard,
And tirled at the pin:
Right glad were then the cat's-meat men
To let that lady in!
--especially, Lobelia, when she alighted and sat upon the ground and
began to tell them sad stories of the death of kings. But they cut off
Sentry-go's head and nailed it over the gate. So he died, and she very
imprudently married the master knacker, who had heard she was an heiress
in her own right, and wanted to decorate his coat-of-arms with an
escutcheon of pretence; and besides, his doctor had recommended a
complete change "--
"Law, miss, how you _do_ run on!"
The young lady who had given utterance to this amazing rigmarole stood
at the top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two
leaden statuettes (headless)--a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat,
with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old tartan
shawl, which she had pinned about her to imitate a horse-woman's habit.
As she paced to and fro between the leaden statuettes--
pedes vestis defluxit ad imos
Et vera incessu patuit dea,
--and I noted almost at once that two or three butterflies ("red
admirals" they were) floated and circled about her in the sunlight.
A child of commoner make, and perhaps a year older, dressed in a buff
print frock and pink sunbonnet, looked up at her from the foot of the
steps.
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