“I think I’ll play it again,” she said, and [p80] crossed over to the piano with melancholy eyes.
Lynn was wrestling with her first page.
“‘Dearie mother, we don’t cough so mush’ (how do you spell cough, Miss Bibby? There’s a horrid g or q in it somewhere, I know)—‘I don’t smudg so mush.’ I wish (Oh, dear, you said we oughtn’t to say we wished she’d come back, didn’t you, Miss Bibby, cause she might stop enjoying herself? What else could I put after ‘I wish’? I’ve got that written).”
“Suppose you say you wish you could write better,” suggested Miss Bibby.
“I suppose that will have to do,” said the little girl sadly. “No, I’ll tell you, ’cause I don’t much want to write better, I’ll say I wish words would ryum better. Look at beauty, nothing will go with it but duty, and duty is such a ugly word in a song, isn’t it?”
“No, I think it is a beautiful word,” said Miss Bibby; she expected herself to say this, and was not disappointed.
“Well, I don’t,” sighed Lynn. “I could have made a lovely song this morning. It began—
‘Oh, the bush is full of beauty,
And the flowers are full of love,’
but I couldn’t go any farther, ’cause there was nothing to ryum but that horrid duty.”