"Only eight papers to-day! You slackers! Audrey, where's yours? Haven't had time to think of anything? How weak! Doreen, I expected the Fifth to do its duty. Thanks, Phœbe, I'm glad you've written something, and you too, Beryl."
"Please keep mine till the very last, and don't read it at all if there isn't much time!" implored Phœbe.
"You mustn't read mine first!" fluttered Dorothy.
"Nor mine!"
"Nor mine!"
"Look here! Somebody has got to come first! I shall do it by lot; I'll write your names on slips of paper and shuffle them. Lend me a pencil, Patsie. There! I'll stir them round, and Audrey shall draw one."
Audrey picked out at random one of the little twisted scraps of paper, and the lot fell upon the protesting Dorothy. She rose apologetically.
"They're not much," she murmured. "Just a few 'Ruthless Rhymes', that's all.
Anna Maria
Fell into the fire,
She was burnt to a cinder.
Pa said: 'Let's open winder!'
In a river in the city
Jack was drowned
And never found.
Mother said it was a pity
His new boots went down with him.
They'd have fitted Brother Jim.