"You mustn't see," cried Alexia, twitching it away; "you go on and address your own, Pickering, and let mine alone."
"Well, I've seen already," said Pickering coolly. "It would be impossible not to read your writing a mile off, Alexia."
"Well, that's much better than to write such mean, lazy little words that nobody can make them out," she retorted.
"Oh, clear! we haven't a pattern of the notice made yet," said Polly, leaning back in her chair, after the labor of getting the first envelope addressed; and she pushed up the little brown rings of hair from her brow, for Polly didn't like very well to write, and it always took her some time to achieve anything in that line. "Jasper, you draw up one, do," she begged.
"Oh, dear me!" cried Jasper, aghast, "I can't, Polly; you can do it much better."
"Misery me!" exclaimed Polly, "I couldn't do it in all this world," and she looked so distressed that Jasper hastened to say:
"Come along then, Pick, and help me out, and I'll try."
But Picketing protesting that he didn't know any more how to write such a notice than Prince lying on the rug before the fire, Jasper in despair drew up a sheet of paper, and wrote in big staring letters and with a great flourish, clear across the top of the page:
"ATTENTION."
"Goodness me!" cried Pickering, his pale eyes following Jasper's pen, "it looks like a fire-alarm summons."