The Schizoid

"I shall cut off your right digits!" And the fine red-haired girl fidgets! Not in early teens, now Eighteen: Should with success run a canteen... But Joyce before speaker just trembles, Every fresh slipped threat Shock resembles; No thoughts of a leg being simply pulled, To flee not from the scene herself fooled; For all her friends still holding tea cups, No counting of the present grown-ups, The scratched fears on their lit-up faces A comic one with all its traces... Already a Joyce tasting torture: Her just slashed fingers she could picture... Soon, pleas to her friends to save the life Of one who would soonest be a wife: "From the Enemy, please, snatch death's knife!"