And the smell of fish and tallow no more.”
These words to herself she sadly spoke,
Breaking the thread from the last-set stitch,
When Mackerel into her presence broke—
“Wife, we’re—we’re—we’re, wife, we’re—we’re
“
I’ll pull your hair if you’re fooling me.”
“Oh, don’t, love, don’t! the letter is here—
You can read the news for yourself, my dear.
The one who sent you that white crape shawl—
There’ll be no end to our gold—he’s dead;
You know you always would call him stingy,
Because he didn’t invite us to Injy;
And I am his only heir, ‘tis said.
A million of pounds, at the very least,
And pearls and diamonds, likely, beside!”
Mrs. Mackerel’s spirits rose like yeast—
“How lucky I married you, Mac,” she cried.
Then the two broke forth into frantic glee.
A customer hearing the strange commotion,
Peeped into the little back-room, and he
Was seized with the very natural notion
That the Mackerel family had gone insane;
So he ran away with might and main.
Mac shook his partner by both her hands;
They dance, they giggle, they laugh, they stare;
And now on his head the grocer stands,
Dancing a jig with his feet in air—
Remarkable feat for a man of his age,
Who never had danced upon any stage
But the High-Bridge stage, when he set on top,
And whose green-room had been a green-grocer’s shop.
But that Mrs. Mac should perform so well
Is not very strange, if the tales they tell
Of her youthful days have any foundation.
But let that pass with her former life—
An opera-girl may make a good wife,
If she happens to get such a nice situation.
A million pounds of solid gold
One would have thought would have crushed them dead;
But dear they bobbed, and courtesied, and rolled
Like a couple of corks to a plummet of lead.
‘Twas enough the soberest fancy to tickle
To see the two Mackerels in such a pickle!
It was three o’clock when they got to bed;
Even then through Mrs. Mackerel’s head
Such gorgeous dreams went whirling away,
“Like a Catherine-wheel,” she declared next day,
“That her brain seemed made of sparkles of fire
Shot off in spokes, with a ruby tire.”
Mrs. Mackerel had ever been
One of the upward-tending kind,
Regarded by husband and by kin
