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Page 17
He watched and watched
At every halt for a good hour: the cloak
And lilac ribbon never came in sight
Then, on the left, there showed a spire or two
Above a sprinkling of grey houses stretched
In straggling streets along a gradual slope,
And the train stopped again where the white board
Said "WOODLEY." And while the uncouth blurred shout
That should have been the place's name still rang
Along the platform, he saw suddenly
That Woodley was his journey's end. He saw
Just not too late, and so the train hissed past,
Clanging and rattling on towards the north,
And left him in the quiet.
Now his way,
The ribbon guiding still, was through the lanes
And leisurely spruce streets, with here a step,
Here a front garden or the doctor's porch,
Of rural comfortable Woodley where
There seemed no hurry, as if every one
Had thriven long ago and, now content,
Took business cosily, as a good way
Of killing time and happening on one's friends.
Gervase kept well aloof, for he had seen
This Lota's likeness was not by herself,
But with a broad short woman, elderly,
With something of the peacock in her gait,
A homely matron in a changing silk
Bulged out with flounces, and an azure tuft
Of roses or of dahlias quivering
On the satin thing a Madame milliner
Would shriek to hear called bonnet. Gervase said
"Not Lota, no. That dame of Valentines
Proves the younger one not Lota." Yet a cry
"Oh Lota, Lota, turn and speak to me"
Rose in his heart. Then too a subtle grace
Of rippling equal movement, a swan curve
Of the slight neck, a rapid easy turn,
This way or that, to look or speak, seemed strange
With the strangeness of a once familiar thing.
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