“I must let” (Lucy was going to say “Tom,” but she substituted “mother” instead); “I must let mother see it!” and she ran out of the room, leaving the door open, with that intent. But somebody met her on the stairs, and stopped her for examination. Davie tried to shut his ears, but he could not help hearing that ominous “Don’t, Tom; please don’t;” though, as balm to his wounded feelings, he also caught the echo of a--what shall I say?--a slap? a box?--what do you call it when a pretty maiden brings her hand sharply in contact with her lover’s cheek? Well, no matter--it is a something which always is or ought to be avenged by six kisses on the spot; it was condignly punished in this instance, for Tom lacked modesty even more than French polish. Davie instantly slammed the door, and sat down to compose his feelings by inditing a sonnet on “Disappointed Love.” When it was finished--the lines being flowing and the rhymes musical--he felt more placid and easy in his mind; but, before the wedding, he withdrew himself from the house, and went into country lodgings to hide his griefs. In process of time he rhymed himself into a belief that he was the victim of a disappointed passion, the prey of a devouring sorrow; that his heart was a wreck, a ruin, dust, ashes, a stone, dwelling alone; that life was stale, an unfinished tale, a hopeless, joyless pageant: all because blue-eyed Lucy had married Tom Burton of Ravenscroft. This was the early love-romance which furnished my brother Davie with his cynicism, his similes of darts, flames, and wounds that are scattered everywhere through his verses. Some of the productions of his troubled muse, after he fled to Highgate, shall be quoted. What would have been Lucy’s astonishment could she have heard herself apostrophised in such burning numbers! her orbs of sunny blue would have dilated until she would have looked, indeed, a round-eyed Juno. Here is one of Davie’s effusions from a little manuscript-book, bound in white vellum, the confidante of his poetical woes at this mournful era:-- Thou hast come like a mist o’er my glorious dreaming, Thy image stands up ’twixt my soul and the sun! Oh! why, when youth’s noontide of gladness was beaming, Hast thou darken’d all that it shone upon? To see thee, to love thee, ay, love thee to madness, To know that thou ne’er couldst be aught to me! To leave thee! and read in my spirit’s lone sadness, That the love was all hopeless I centred in thee! The muse appears at this junction to have been quite troublesome with her declarations. The following was written one evening instead of going to dinner like a Christian gentleman to Uncle Sampson’s on Christmas Day. It stands entitled, I Love Thee! and is written with a neatness that says little for its spontaneity:--