A second lover came ambling by— A timid lad with a frightened eye And a colour mantling highly. He muttered the errand on which he’d come, Then only chuckled and bit his thumb, And simpered, simpered shyly. “No,” said the maiden, “go your way; You dare but think what a man would say, Yet dare to come a-suing! I’ve time to lose and power to choose; ’T is not so much the gallant who woos, As the gallant’s _way_ of wooing!” A third rode up at a startling pace— A suitor poor, with a homely face— No doubts appeared to bind him. He kissed her lips and he pressed her waist, And off he rode with the maiden, placed On a pillion safe behind him. And she heard the suitor bold confide This golden hint to the priest who tied The knot there’s no undoing; “With pretty young maidens who can choose, ’Tis not so much the gallant who woos, As the gallant’s _way_ of wooing!” HONGREE AND MAHRY A RICHARDSON MELODRAMA THE sun was setting in its wonted west, When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Met MAHRY DAUBIGNY, the Village Rose, Under the Wizard’s Oak—old trysting-place Of those who loved in rosy Aquitaine. They thought themselves unwatched, but they were not; For HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Found in LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC A rival, envious and unscrupulous, Who thought it not foul scorn to dodge his steps, And listen, unperceived, to all that passed Between the simple little Village Rose And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores. A clumsy barrack-bully was DUBOSC, Quite unfamiliar with the well-bred tact That animates a proper gentleman In dealing with a girl of humble rank. You’ll understand his coarseness when I say He would have married MAHRY DAUBIGNY, And dragged the unsophisticated girl Into the whirl of fashionable life, For which her singularly rustic ways, Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude), Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical), Would absolutely have unfitted her. How different to this unreflecting boor Was HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores. Contemporary with the incident Related in our opening paragraph, Was that sad war ’twixt Gallia and ourselves That followed on the treaty signed at Troyes; And so LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC (Brave soldier, he, with all his faults of style) And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Were sent by CHARLES of France against the lines Of our Sixth HENRY (Fourteen twenty-nine), To drive his legions out of Aquitaine. When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Returned, suspecting nothing, to his camp, After his meeting with the Village Rose, He found inside his barrack letter-box A note from the commanding officer, Requiring his attendance at head-quarters. He went, and found LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES.