VI.
I WENT up-stairs, this morning, when she rung—
I guess she must of just got out of bed—
It seemed to me her nose looked kind of red;
They was a little wad of hair that hung
Down in a pigtail on her back; she brung
A telegram out to the door, and said:
“Well, get a move—good Heavens, are you dead?”
Somehow she didn’t seem to look so young.
I can’t help kind of wonderin’ to-day
What made her look so queer; it seems as though
There’s something that is gone. I’d like to know
If all the ones that’s beautiful when they
Get on their riggin’ and are fixed up gay
Ain’t much but framework when they’ve gone at night
And safely locked themselves in out of sight
And laid what ain’t growed on to them away.
When me and Mike, the porter, were alone
I got to tellin’ him about my thoughts—
Mike’s had two wives, and so, of course, knows lots.
He told me in a kind of sollum tone:
“Me boy, a woman cr-rathure’s like a shtone—
At laste some women ar-re—Whin dr-ressed they’re foine,
But whin they ain’t ye’ll ha-ardly see a soign
Av beauty that ye’d ta-ake to be their own.”