"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle had died away. "It's your turn." Allison referred to the lines she had scribbled on the back of a magazine:
"There is a young maiden, they say,
Who grows more beloved every day.
When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble
To be next to the maid who is Gay."
"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarrassed exclamation from the boughs above, and Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her, too. I said:
"Like the bow on the strings when she plays,
So she crosses with music our days.
Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June,
And the smile that brings sunshine is Gay's."
"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!" exclaimed Kitty, and Gay called down: "It's awfully nice of you, girls, but please change the subject. I'm so covered with confusion that I'm about to fall off this limb."
"Well, here's something mean enough to brace you up," answered Kitty. "It's about Maud Minor. It's hateful of me to write it, but I happened to see her going down the terrace steps and it just popped into my head:
"There is a young lady named Maud,
Whose manners are overmuch thawed.
She'll beat an oil-well. When they'd gushed for a spell
It would take a back seat and applaud."
"What's the matter, Kitty?" asked Betty, "I thought you admired her immensely."
"I did that first week, but it's just as I say. She gushes over me so, simply because I am Malcolm's cousin. I know very well that I am not the dearest, cutest, brightest, most beautiful and angelic being in the universe, and she isn't sincere when she insists that I am. She overdoes it, and is so dreadfully effusive that I want to run whenever she comes near me. I wish she wasn't going on the excursion to-morrow."
"She doesn't worry me," said Gay. "I meet her on her own ground and fire back her own adjectives at her, doubled and twisted. She has let me alone for some time."