It was very good beetle poison, and there were hundreds of them lying dead—but Noel only wrote a piece of poetry for one of them. He said he hadn’t time to do them all, and the worst of it was he didn’t know which one he’d written it to—so Alice couldn’t bury the beetle and put the lines on its grave, though she wanted to very much.
Well, it was quite plain that there wasn’t enough poetry for a book.
‘We might wait a year or two,’ said Noel. ‘I shall be sure to make some more some time. I thought of a piece about a fly this morning that knew condensed milk was sticky.’
‘But we want the money now,’ said Dicky, ‘and you can go on writing just the same. It will come in some time or other.’
‘There’s poetry in newspapers,’ said Alice. ‘Down, Pincher! you’ll never be a clever dog, so it’s no good trying.’
‘Do they pay for it?’ Dicky thought of that; he often thinks of things that are really important, even if they are a little dull.
‘I don’t know. But I shouldn’t think any one would let them print their poetry without. I wouldn’t I know.’ That was Dora; but Noel said he wouldn’t mind if he didn’t get paid, so long as he saw his poetry printed and his name at the end.
‘We might try, anyway,’ said Oswald. He is always willing to give other people’s ideas a fair trial.
So we copied out ‘The Wreck of the Malabar’ and the other six poems on drawing-paper—Dora did it, she writes best—and Oswald drew a picture of the Malabar going down with all hands. It was a full-rigged schooner, and all the ropes and sails were correct; because my cousin is in the Navy, and he showed me.
We thought a long time whether we’d write a letter and send it by post with the poetry—and Dora thought it would be best. But Noel said he couldn’t bear not to know at once if the paper would print the poetry, So we decided to take it.