So the evening passed merrily away, and Miss Gibson was much touched by the evidence of kindness and thoughtfulness on the part of the children, and the little picture, with its vivid green leaves and bright berries, was put away among her treasures.
CHAPTER XIX.
POETS.
All the children got the writing craze at “Gillong.” They all wanted to be poets or authors, and there was one continual scribble. Papers and books and slates were covered with little scraps of verses, till Mother declared she could never read another bit of poetry.
Sometimes Eileen would come along with fourteen verses of very much the same kind of jingle, and ask them to listen and criticise.
“Oh, you said all that before!” Willie would say, in disgust—“away up there in the third verse.”
“Yes, but, Willie, don’t you see it’s put in different words, and you have to keep saying the same thing over—only a little bit different to fill up.”
“Ugh! you’re a sickening old poet; you’d make a fellow tired.”
But Eileen was not daunted. Only lately she had taken to looking very important, and had kept quiet about her work, but, all the same, she scribbled like grim death.
“Some day she’ll come in with about a million verses and make a fellow listen to them,” Willie would grumble.
Sure enough, one day she came to them with a fat note-book, and asked them to listen to the very best she had ever written—quite a gem, she considered—so they all sat down to hear it: