"I'm serious all the time, dear old flicker of keyboards," said Bones, seating himself deferentially, and at a respectful distance.
She waited for him to begin, but he was strangely embarrassed even for him.
"Miss Marguerite," he began at last a little huskily, "the jolly old poet is born and not----"
"Oh, have you brought them?" she asked eagerly, and held out her hand. "Do show me, please!"
Bones shook his head.
"No, I have not brought them," he said. "In fact, I can't bring them yet."
She was disappointed, and showed it.
"You've promised me for a week I should see them."
"Awful stuff, awful stuff!" murmured Bones disparagingly. "Simply terrible tripe!"
"Tripe?" she said, puzzled.
"I mean naughty rubbish and all that sort of thing."
"Oh, but I'm sure it's good," she said. "You wouldn't talk about your poems if they weren't good."
"Well," admitted Bones, "I'm not so sure, dear old arbitrator elegantus, to use a Roman expression, I'm not so sure you're not right. One of these days those poems will be given to this wicked old world,UGG Clerance, and--then you'll see."
"But what are they 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,Designer Handbags, 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,ugg bailey button triplet 1873 boots, 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,homepage, "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.
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