This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
124
what's o'clock
Where thinking was concerned, what speculations
Another might have had, he was without.
So laying the second dole beside the first
He stumped downstairs to dust the chancel rail.
But when, next day, two baskets greeted him,
Both full, he felt enough perplexity
To risk a whistle on it; and the third
Encounter with the baskets, all of them,
Induced such lively wonder that he climbed
The three long flights of curling stairs to see
What ailed old Neron. Scratching match on match
He came at last upon him, crushed beneath
A fallen wooden statue, dead as nails.
"The poor old beggar was dead as last year's fly,"
He told his mates, and later told the Dean,
And also mentioned something of a figure
Of painted wood. And there were two of them,
A king and queen, so wondrously preserved
They looked quite new, although the architect