But assuredly
the sight that met his eyes caused his blood to boil; for Mr.
Moggridge was calmly in possession of the chair and newspaper which
Sam had but a moment since resigned.
"Excuse me, but that is my chair and my paper."
"Eh?" The poet looked up sweetly. "Surely, the Club chair and the
Club paper--"
"I have but this moment left them."
"By a singular coincidence, I have but this moment taken possession
of them."
"Give them up, sir."
"I shall do nothing of the kind, sir."
At this point Sam was seized with the unlucky inspiration of quoting
from Mr. Moggridge's published works:
"Forbid the flood to wet thy feet,
Or bind its wrath in chains;
But never seek to quench the heat
That fires a poet's veins!"
This stanza, delivered with nice attention to its author's
drawing-room manner, was too much.
"Sir, you are no gentleman!"
"You seem," retorted Sam, "to be an authority on manners as well as
on Customs. I won't repeat your charge; but I'll be dashed if you're
a poet!"
My Muse is in a very pretty pass. Gentlest of her sisterhood, she
has wandered from the hum of Miss Limpenny's whist-table into the
turmoil of Mars. Even as one who, strolling through a smiling
champaign, finds suddenly a lion in his path, and to him straightway
the topmost bough of the platanus is dearer than the mother that bare
him--in short, I really cannot say how this history would have ended,
had not Fortune at this juncture descended to the Club-room in form
and speech like to Admiral Buzza.
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