"You do?" Miss Twining started to get up, then sat down again. "I wonder if you would care for my verses?" she hesitated. "You could have a copy as well as not." Her soft eyes rested on Polly's face.
"Oh, I should love them—I know I should!" Polly declared.
Miss Twining went over to her closet and stooped to a trunk at the end.
"There!" she said, putting in Polly's hand a small, cloth-bound volume neatly lettered, "Hilltop Days."
The girl opened it at random. Her eye caught a title, and she read the poem through.
"That is beautiful!" she cried impulsively.
"Which one is it?" asked the childlike author.
"'A Winter Brook.'"
"Oh, yes! I like that myself."
"What lovely meter you write!" praised Polly. "The lines just sing themselves along."