“I’ve a poem, too,” said Ethelwyn, taking her place in the audience, and Elizabeth began: 

“Once there was a little boy whose father was cross to him, and kept him home all the while, and when he let him go anywhere, he said he ‘mustn’t’ and ‘don’t’ so much, it spoiled all his fun.  Once the boy went in the woods where lived a fairy prince.  ‘Go not near the fairy prince,’ had said the boy’s father so much that the boy thought he’d die if he did.  So the fairy prince looked over the back fence and said, ’Avast there,’ so the boy avasted as fast as he could.  ‘I’m in trouble,’ said the fairy prince.  ‘What about?’ said the boy.  ’I can walk only on one foot till somebody cuts off my little toe,’ said the prince.

“So the boy did it with his father’s razor, and it thundered and lightened, and his father came and scolded over the back fence, but the prince waved his magic cut toe; then they all banged and went up on a Fourth of July sky rocket, till the father fell off and bumped all his crossness out of him, and like birds of a fevver, they all lived togevver afterwards.”

“The saints be praised,” said Mrs. Flaharty, fanning herself with her apron.

Then Ethelwyn came forward.  “This is my poem,” she said, bowing to the audience.

    “A little girl lived way down East,
    She rose and rose, like bread with yeast,
    She rose above the tallest people,
    And far above the highest steeple. 
    She kept right on till by and by
    She took a peek into the sky—­”

“Oh, what did she see?” asked Elizabeth, interested at once.

“That you can guess,” replied the poet with dignity.  “Mother says she likes poems and pictures that you can put something into from your own something or other, I forget what—­you let folks guess about it.”

“My sister is smart,” complacently remarked Elizabeth to Nan, who had just come over.

“So am I, then,” said Nan, not to be outdone.  “I can make up beautiful poems.”

“Let’s hear one.”

So Nan came forward, bowed profoundly and began: 

    “I have a little kitty,
    Who is so very pretty,
    Tho’ growing large and fat,
    I fear she’ll be a cat. 
    One day, my sakes, she saw a dog,
    Her tail swelled up just like a log;
    He barked, she spit,
    She does not love dogs, not a bit.”

“What color is she?” asked Ethelwyn.

“That is left for your guessing part,” said Nan promptly.

Mrs. Flaharty now reluctantly arose.

“It’s a trate to hear ye,” she said, “but I mus’ git troo, and go home.  There’s a spindlin’ lad named Dick nex’ door but wan to where I live, that can walk only wid a crutch an’ not able to do that lately.  He’d be cheered entoirely wid your rhymes an’ tales.”

“O, maybe mother’ll take us to see him this afternoon.  We’ll ask her.  She’s intending to go down that way herself, I know, and she’ll be so good to Dick; she just can’t help it,” said Ethelwyn, and at once they dashed off to see, leaving the saucepan crown rolling down the yard, and their gingham aprons lying on the steps.