DICK bowed and smiled. The Great Man stared, With look half puzzled and half scared; Then seemed to recollect, turned round, And mumbled some imperfect sound: A moment more, his coach of state Dipped on its springs beneath his weight; And DICK, who followed at his heels, Heard but the din of rolling wheels. Away, too, all his dreams had rolled; And yet they left him half consoled: Fame, after all, he thought might wait. Would CIS? Suppose he were too late! Ten months he'd lost in Town--an age! Next day he took the _Wiltshire_ Stage. VERS DE SOCIETE. INCOGNITA. Just for a space that I met her-- Just for a day in the train! It began when she feared it would wet her, That tiniest spurtle of rain: So we tucked a great rug in the sashes, And carefully padded the pane; And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, Longing to do it again! Then it grew when she begged me to reach her A dressing-case under the seat; She was "really so tiny a creature, That she needed a stool for her feet!" Which was promptly arranged to her order With a care that was even minute, And a glimpse--of an open-work border, And a glance--of the fairyest boot. Then it drooped, and revived at some hovels-- "Were they houses for men or for pigs?" Then it shifted to muscular novels, With a little digression on prigs: She thought "Wives and Daughters" "so jolly;" "Had I read it?" She knew when I had, Like the rest, I should dote upon "Molly;" And "poor Mrs. Gaskell--how sad!" "Like Browning?" "But so-so." His proof lay Too deep for her frivolous mood. That preferred your mere metrical _souffle_ To the stronger poetical food; Yet at times he was good--"as a tonic:" Was Tennyson writing just now? And was this new poet Byronic, And clever, and naughty, or how? Then we trifled with concerts and croquet, Then she daintily dusted her face; Then she sprinkled herself with "Ess Bouquet," Fished out from the foregoing case; And we chattered of Gassier and Grisi, And voted Aunt Sally a bore; Discussed if the tight rope were easy, Or Chopin much harder than Spohr. And oh! the odd things that she quoted, With the prettiest possible look, And the price of two buns that she noted In the prettiest possible book; While her talk like a musical rillet Flashed on with the hours that flew, And the carriage, her smile seemed to fill it With just enough summer--for Two. Till at last in her corner, peeping From a nest of rugs and of furs, With the white shut eyelids sleeping On those dangerous looks of hers, She seemed like a snow-drop breaking, Not wholly alive nor dead, But with one blind impulse making To the sounds of the spring overhead;