And bid them stop their—
Their shrieks and—
Their howls and—
Have driven me almost crazy.”
That was considered funny, because two of the girls had actually jumped out of bed at daylight to suppress some unmelodious cats whose wails had kept them awake; but their united efforts could not produce all the needful rhymes; so Edna read them off from the back of the paper: “dawn, howling, lawn, yowling, groans, moans.”
It was a noticeable fact that when Edna joined a circle which included Mary Ann the latter soon made an excuse for leaving; so after the last poetry had been read and laughed at she quietly slipped out of the room, leaving the others to continue the sport without her.
Edna commented on her departure with a sarcastic supposition that she had probably gone to seek more congenial society in the servants’ quarters, and, although there was not a girl present who believed what she said, still there were none who openly contradicted her, for Edna had acquired a sort of influence over the girls that required some moral courage to combat.
Study-hour came soon after for some of them, but the half-dozen older ones who were left kept on making the verses, which, unfortunately, assumed a personal character that made them seem very pointed and witty to the thoughtless girls, but which led to unhappy results a week later.