“You don't know WHAT you want," said he; “Last year it was a yacht and then The sables and the Pekinese— And now, it's something else again."
He moved—impatient to be gone, Between his lips a cold cigar— Glanced at his watch—“Well, 'bye my dear," And off he dashes in his car.
Her smile was not a merry one “Know what I want? Oh, yes I do! You give me many substitutes But all I really want is you!"
A husband accuses his wife of never knowing what she wants, rattling off the proof: first a yacht, then sables and a Pekinese, now something new again. He treats her longing as simple greed, a restless habit of wanting. Meanwhile he is already halfway out the door, cigar in his mouth, glancing at his watch, then speeding away in his car.
The final stanza turns the whole argument around. She smiles, but not happily, and tells him she knows exactly what she wants: him. The expensive things he has handed her were only "substitutes," stand-ins for the attention he never gives. Notice that his own behavior, the hurried exit and the cold cigar, proves her point before she even speaks.
The mood is light on the surface, with its brisk rhymes and glossy details, but underneath it is sad. The wit is bitter, and the poem ends on a quiet ache rather than a joke.