She has mocked me, an'
others, more'n once."
He sighed, still smarting at the memory of a gibe; then he recited the
following in an effective monotone:--
"Oh! scorn not the humble worm, proud bird,
As you sing i' the top o' the tree;
Though doomed to squirm i' the ground, unheard.
He'll make a square meal for thee."
"It ain't Shakespeare," murmured the bard, "but the idee is O.K."
My brother commended the lines as lacking neither rhyme nor reason,
but he questioned the propriety of alluding to a lady's appetite, and
protested strongly against the use of that abject word--worm. He told
Jasperson that in comparing himself to a reptile he was slapping the
cheeks of his progenitors.
"But I do feel like a worm when Miss Birdie's around," objected the
man of acres. "It may be ondignified, but that there eye of hers does
make me wiggle."
"It's a thousand pities," said I softly, "that Miss Dutton has only
one eye."
Jasperson wouldn't agree with me. He replied, with ardour, that he
would never have dared to raise his two blue orbs to Miss Dutton's
brilliant black one, unless he had been conscious that his mistress,
like himself, had suffered mutilation.
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