Lady Geraldines Hardship

by Rudyard Kipling

　　

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I turned Heaven knows we women turn too much To broken reeds, mistaken so for pine That shame forbids confession a handle I turned (The wrong one, said the agent afterwards) And so flung clean across your English street Through the shrill-tinkling glass of the shop-front-paused, Artemis mazed 'mid gauds to catch a man, And piteous baby-caps and christening-gowns, The worse for being worn on the radiator. . . . . . . . My cousin Romney judged me from the bench: Propounding one sleek forty-shillinged law That takes no count of the Woman's oversoul. I should have entered, purred he, by the door, The man's retort, the open obvious door, And since I chose not, he--not he could change The man's rule, not the Woman's, for the case. Ten pounds or seven days... Just that... I paid!

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