“No, I never did. And I don’t say that I would have kept you here if you had had blue eyes and golden hair; but it might have influenced me if you had looked more like your mother,—and your father said you did. As it is, I cannot think of allowing you to stay here, and so when your trunks come this morning—and I suppose Mr. Marks will bring them pretty soon—I shall send them back, and you with them, to Boston. There my lawyer will meet you and start you back to London. Mr. Thomas J. Bond had no right to send you here uninvited, and he may burden some one else with you. I positively decline the honor.”
Ladybird had paid polite attention at first, but toward the end of her aunt’s speech her mind began to wander, and as Miss Priscilla finished the child said:
“Aunty, I can make poetry, can you?”
Now the one ambition of Priscilla Flint’s early life had been to become a poetess.
Her favorite day-dream was of a beautiful volume, bound in blue and gold, that should contain poems like those of Mrs. Hemans. But though she had written many, many verses,—and indeed, had a little hair-trunk in the attic packed quite full of them,—yet she had never been able to summon sufficient courage to offer them to any publisher; and lately she had begun to think she never would, for poetry had changed since Mrs. Hemans’s day, and she doubted if her efforts would stand the tests of modern editors or publishers.
But she said: “Yes, child, I have written poetry. It is a talent that runs in our family. Have you written any?”
“Oh, no, I don’t write it. I just say it. Like this, you know:
“I have a dear aunt named Priscilla,
Who lives in a beautiful villa;
She has lovely old cups,