This translation of a favourite romance into terms of the servants’ hall chilled Maud like a cold shower.  She recoiled from it.

“Wouldn’t you like to get a good education, Albert,” she said perseveringly, “and become a great poet and write wonderful poems?”

Albert considered the point, and shook his head.

“No, m’lady.”

It was discouraging.  But Maud was a girl of pluck.  You cannot leap into strange cabs in Piccadilly unless you have pluck.  She picked up another book from the stone seat.

“Read me some of this,” she said, “and then tell me if it doesn’t make you feel you want to do big things.”

Albert took the book cautiously.  He was getting a little fed up with all this sort of thing.  True, ’er ladyship gave him chocolates to eat during these sessions, but for all that it was too much like school for his taste.  He regarded the open page with disfavour.

“Go on,” said Maud, closing her eyes.  “It’s very beautiful.”

Albert began.  He had a husky voice, due, it is to be feared, to precocious cigarette smoking, and his enunciation was not as good as it might have been.

    “Wiv’ blekest morss the flower-ports
      Was-I mean were-crusted one and orl;
    Ther rusted niles fell from the knorts
      That ’eld the pear to the garden-worll. 
    Ther broken sheds looked sed and stringe;
      Unlifted was the clinking latch;
      Weeded and worn their ancient thatch
    Er-pon ther lownely moated gringe,
      She only said ’Me life is dreary,
        ‘E cometh not,’ she said.”

Albert rather liked this part.  He was never happy in narrative unless it could be sprinkled with a plentiful supply of “he said’s” and “she said’s.”  He finished with some gusto.

    “She said — I am aweary, aweary,
     I would that I was dead.”

Maud had listened to this rendition of one of her most adored poems with much the same feeling which a composer with an over-sensitive ear would suffer on hearing his pet opus assassinated by a schoolgirl.  Albert, who was a willing lad and prepared, if such should be her desire, to plough his way through the entire seven stanzas, began the second verse, but Maud gently took the book away from him.  Enough was sufficient.

“Now, wouldn’t you like to be able to write a wonderful thing like that, Albert?”

“Not me, m’lady.”

“You wouldn’t like to be a poet when you grow up?”

Albert shook his golden head.

“I want to be a butcher when I grow up, m’lady.”

Maud uttered a little cry.

“A butcher?”

“Yus, m’lady.  Butchers earn good money,” he said, a light of enthusiasm in his blue eyes, for he was now on his favourite subject.  “You’ve got to ’ave meat, yer see, m’lady.  It ain’t like poetry, m’lady, which no one wants.”

“But, Albert,” cried Maud faintly.  “Killing poor animals.  Surely you wouldn’t like that?”