Mabel snorted indignantly over this injustice to her beloved Bettie and started to rise, but Marjory promptly seized her skirt and dragged her down. Laura, however, saw the movement and was correspondingly elated. It showed in her voice:
But the worst of the lot is Mabel,
She eats all the pie she's able.
She's round as a ball,
Has no waist at all,
And her manners are bad at the table.
Marjory giggled. She had no thought of being disloyal, but this verse was certainly a close fit.
"You just let me go," muttered Mabel, crimson with resentment and struggling to break away from Marjory's restraining hand. "I'll push her off that post."
"Hush!" said diplomatic Marjory, "perhaps there's more to the song."
But there wasn't. Laura began at the beginning and sang all the verses again, giving particular emphasis to the ones concerning Mabel and Marjory. This, of course, grew decidedly monotonous; the girls got tired of the constant repetition of the silly song long before Laura did. There was something about the song, too, that caught and held their attention. Irresistibly attracted, held by an exasperating fascination, neither girl could help waiting for her own special verse. But while this was going on, Mabel, with a finger in the ear nearest Laura, was industriously scribbling something on a scrap of paper.
As everybody knows, the poetic muse doesn't always work when it is most needed, and Mabel was sadly handicapped at that moment. She was not satisfied with her hasty scrawl but, in the circumstances, it was the best she could do. Suddenly, before Marjory realized what was about to happen, Mabel was shouting back, to an air quite as objectionable as the one Laura was singing:
There's a very rude girl named Laura,
Whose ways fill all with horror.
She's all the things she says we are;
All know this to their sorrow.
"Yah! yah!" retorted quick-witted Laura. "There isn't a rhyme in your old song. If I couldn't rhyme better 'n that, I'd learn how. Come over and I'll teach you!"
For an instant, Mabel looked decidedly crushed—no poet likes his rhymes disparaged. Laura, noting Mabel's crestfallen attitude, went into gales of mocking laughter and when Mabel looked at Marjory for sympathy Marjory's face was wreathed in smiles. It was too much; Mabel hated to be laughed at.