ask’d 105
  If James were coming.  “Coming every day,”
  She answer’d, “ever longing to explain,
  But evermore her father came across
  With some long-winded tale, and broke him short;
  And James departed vext with him and her.” 110
  How could I help her?  “Would I—­was it wrong?”
  (Claspt hands and that petitionary grace
  Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)
  “O would I take her father for one hour,
  For one half-hour, and let him talk to me!” 115
  And even while she spoke, I saw where James
  Made toward us, like a wader in the surf,
  Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.

  ’O Katie, what I suffer’d for your sake! 
  For in I went, and call’d old Philip out 120
  To show the farm:  full willingly he rose: 
  He led me thro’ the short sweet-smelling lanes
  Of his wheat-suburb, babbling as he went,
  He praised his land, his horses, his machines;
  He praised his ploughs, his cows, his hogs, his dogs; 125
  He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea-hens,
  His pigeons, who in session on their roofs
  Approved him, bowing at their own deserts: 
  Then from the plaintive mother’s teat he took
  Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each, 130
  And naming those, his friends, for whom they were: 
  Then crost the common into Darnley chase
  To show Sir Arthur’s deer.  In copse and fern
  Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail. 
  Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech, 135
  He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said: 
  “That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire.” 
  And there he told a long long-winded tale
  Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass,
  And how it was the thing his daughter wish’d, 140
  And how he sent the bailiff to the farm
  To learn the price, and what the price he ask’d,
  And how the bailiff swore that he was mad,
  But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;
  He gave them line; and five days after that 145
  He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,
  Who then and there had offer’d something more,
  But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;
  He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;
  He gave them line:  and how by chance at last 150
  (It might be May or April, he forgot,
  The last of April or the first of May)
  He found the bailiff riding by the farm,
  And, talking from the point, he drew him in,
  And there he mellow’d all his heart with ale, 155
  Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.