He cleared the barrier with a single bound.
“Have you not heard the poet tell,
Ding, dong, dell, pussy’s in the well,
Down in the meadow, sweet blue bell.”
“That wasn’t bad fun,” said Louie. “Now suppose we try the other way. Tell us how you do it, Mary Ann.”
“You compose four lines of poetry, or stuff—of course you can’t really call it poetry—and leave off the rhymes, and pass it to the next one to guess out the rhymes and put them in.”
“But, my goodness, child, we can’t all compose poetry! What do you take us for?” asked Louie. “Wont it do to quote four lines from a book?”
“Not quite so well, for it might be familiar, and then there’d be no skill in getting the rhymes.”
“O, let’s try it,” said Lily. “It needn’t be real poetry, as Mary Ann says, and we’ll get some fun out of it, I guess.”
Some narrow strips of paper were supplied to each of the party, who, with the exception of two or three who declared it was impossible for them to think of any thing to write, were soon busy trying to wrench poetical ideas from their puzzled brains.