"Shame! Don't tease the little girl!" But several tittered.
"I'm going to recite a great poem for you," said Laura rallying to her programme with what really was pluck, though misdirected. "Poetry is good for you to hear, because you all work so hard, and hear so little that is fine."
"How can she? How can a child of mine be so pompous and so foolish?" groaned her mother.
"It is only the artistic temperament, my dear," said Miss Bradbury philosophically, her keen eyes twinkling.
Then Laura began to recite Paul Revere's ride; she explained afterwards that she had selected that because it was patriotic for the Fourth of July, and that she thought she would throw in a smattering of historical teaching with the poetical training she was giving the Crestvillians.
What was her amazement to hear three voices join with hers in the recitation, and an additional voice occasionally shout out a word at the end of a line, as if some of her audience knew what rhyme to expect!
"It's in the Reader," whispered Gretta to Happie, and then Happie understood.
As Laura's voice faltered on the last syllable of the familiar poem, a big boy jumped up on the platform and bowed ironically to Laura.
"I am appointed by the residents of Crestville to thank you for improving them so much," he said. Then he turned to the audience, and added: "Ladies and gentlemen, considering you live so far from the city, and are a lot of hayseeds anyhow, I will recite for you a few poems, because poetry's good for you after haying. 'Hickory, dickory dock, the mouse ran up——'"
He could get no further. Instantly all the younger portion of the audience was on its feet shouting Mother Goose rhyme after Mother Goose rhyme, sometimes in chorus, more often raggedly, each one, apparently, saying whatever rhyme presented itself, and young and old shouting with laughter the while.