“I wish it was to me!” exclaimed the child. “Then you needn’t be so shy about it. Why don’t you change it to me? Look here—like this. Say:
“‘I felt inclined to sing
About Cissy Pickering.’
Cissy instead of Mrs.!”
“Oh no, my dear. That wouldn’t do at all. It isn’t done. You can’t alter a sonnet to another person. If it came to that I’d sooner write one to you as well, some time or another, when you’re older.”
“Oh, do, dear Cliff! I should love it.”
“All right. Perhaps I will some day. But, you see, just now I want to do the one about her.”
“It’s very nice and polite of you,” she said in a doubting voice. “But you said you’d done some more.”
“Rather. So I have. You mustn’t think it’s cheek, you know, if I call your mother by her Christian name in the poetry. It’s only for the rhyme.”
Blushing and apologetically he read aloud in his gruff, shy voice:
“‘Geraldine, Geraldine,
She has the nicest face I have ever seen,
She did not say
Until the other day
That I might call her Geraldine,
And I think she is like a Queen.’