'What shall we do now?' asked Susie, sinking back luxuriously into the basket-chair, when the contents of the chocolate-box had been successfully removed.
'Suppose we play at nonsense verses,' said Lilian, tearing a few pages from an exercise-book, and hunting out a supply of pencils. 'You all know the famous one about the lady of Riga:
"There was a young lady of Riga,
Who smiled as she rode on the tiger;
They came home from their ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger."
Well, the game is this. We each write down the name of a person we all know on a slip of paper; they are folded up and shuffled, and everybody draws one, and you must write a nonsense rhyme about the person whose name you find upon your particular slip. Then we elect a president and read them out.'
'It sounds dreadfully difficult,' sighed Lucy. 'I'm not at all clever at poetry.'
'Oh, never mind, do try;' said Peggy, dealing out the pencils. 'It's ever such fun when once you begin.'
The names were written out, the papers shuffled and drawn, and for ten minutes or more the girls sat knitting their brows and biting their pencils in all the agonies of composition. When everyone had finished the slips were folded up and placed in a basket, and Lilian, who had been chosen to read the effusions, shut her eyes and drew one out at a venture. The name was 'Mademoiselle,' and the lines ran as follows:
'There once was a French mademoiselle
Who thought she knew English quite well.
When she meant "I am happy,"
She said "I am snappy,"
Which made us all laugh, I can tell.'
The girls tittered, for Mademoiselle's mistakes in English were a by-word all over the school.
'I wonder who wrote that!' said Susie, with an innocent air.