Explore "A Bird of Passage" by B.M. Croker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I say to thee, though free from care, / A lonely lot, an aimless life, / The crowning comfort is not there / Son, take a wife." / Jean Ingelow.
SCENE: a splendidly furnished dining-room in the most fashionable square in London; season, end of July; hour, nine p.m.; _dramatis persone_, a father and son; the former, an old gentleman with a red face, beaky nose, and bristling white hair, is holding a glass of venerable port between his goggle eye and the light, and admonishing his companion, a sunburnt young man, who is leaning back in his chair and carelessly rolling a cigarette between his fingers. A young man so dark, and tanned, that his visage would not look out of place beneath a Spanish sombrero; nevertheless, we have no difficulty in recognizing our former friend, Gilbert Lisle.