“If you’ll tell me something interesting about German schools,” said Alice, “I’ll write it up, and that will go in as our contribution. You could make room for it, couldn’t you, Mr. Editor?”
“Indeed, I could. I’d be mighty glad to get it. It would be better than filling up with poetry, the way they often do. By the way, I did cut out a poem of the reporter’s. I forgot all about that. Wonder where it is,” and he began searching in his pockets.
“That’s what made him angry,” cried Catherine. “Anybody would be angry at that. Was it a very bad poem?”
“I can’t remember much of it. Only it had a refrain every two inches of ‘My woe! My woe!’
‘I cannot tell the world my woe,’
was the way it began, and then he went straight ahead to try to do that very thing. Here! I’ve got a scrap of it.
‘Things are seldom what they seem,
Nor is Life what its livers dream,
My woe, my woe!’”
The audience shouted with laughter, but Catherine looked sympathetic.
“Poor boy!” she said. “He probably loved his quotations and his poetry, and had looked forward to Mr. Morse’s being away to have a beautiful time 251 with the paper. I don’t blame him for resigning and eating his heart out. Not a poem of mine will I send you, Mr. Penfield, or any of your hard-hearted staff. I’ll confine myself to finding out what’s happening in Winsted, and leave the head-lines to your own inventive genius.”
Two days later, the editorial staff of the Courier had an impromptu meeting in the library. Max had come in to ask Algernon for notes, and Catherine and Hannah were waiting for Frieda and Alice to join them to go to a tea at Dot’s.