was effort number two. There had been a variant reading of this—
“Max a plate will lick
At your nice picnic,”
and the matter had been fought out before entering the post office, Lynn liking the first and Pauline and Max himself inclining to the second. But Miss Bibby being made umpire declared against the second as not very “nice.” So Hugh knew only the fact that Max would come quick.
“Please take enough
To the picnic. From Muff”
would assuredly not have been allowed by Miss Bibby one little month since, to be sent as an acceptance to the invitation of a person nearly eight times her own age. The fact [p240] that it was handed across the counter—and with a smile, too—was a sign that the foundations of a liberal education may be successfully laid even at thirty-six.
“Your loving friend Lynn
With much joy doth grin,”
in no way satisfied Lynn’s ideas either of composition or beauty, but she had been so occupied helping with the couplets of the others that she was forced to compose hers standing on the door step of the post office. The word “grin” vexed her; yet “thin” would not allow itself to be worked in and no other “ryum” that would make sense would suggest itself, so she quite mournfully sent on the information that with joy she did grin.