She threw Aunt Ailie’s cloak over one shoulder, put forth a ridiculously little leg with an air of the playhouse, and made the gestures of Jim Molyneux.
“I thought you couldn’t read,” said Ailie. “You little fraud! You made Aunt Bell think you couldn’t spell cat.”
“Oh, Queen of Sheba! did she think I was in earnest?” cried Bud. “I was just pretending. I’m apt to be pretending pretty often; why, Kate thinks I make Works. I can read anything; I’ve read books that big it gave you cramp. I s’pose you were only making-believe about that garden, and you haven’t any key at all, but I don’t mind; I’m not kicking.”
Ailie put her hand to her bosom and revealed the Twopenny she had bought to be the key to the wonderful garden of letters—the slim little grey-paper-covered primer in which she had learned her own first lessons. She held it up between her finger and thumb that Bud might read its title on the cover. Bud understood immediately and laughed, but not quite at her ease for once.
“I’m dre’ffle sorry, Aunt Ailie,” she said. “It was wicked to pretend just like that, and put you to a lot of trouble. Father wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking,” said Ailie, borrowing her phrase to put her at her ease again. “I’m too glad you’re not so far behind as Aunt Bell imagined. So you like books? Capital! And Shakespeare no less! What do you like best, now?”
“Poetry,” said Bud. “Particularly the bits I don’t understand, but just about almost. I can’t bear to stop and dally with too easy poetry; once I know it all plain and there’s no more to it, I—I—I love to amble on. I—why! I make poetry myself.”
“Really?” said Ailie with twinkling eyes.
“Sort of poetry,” said Bud. “Not so good as ‘As You Like It’—not nearly so good, of course! I have loads of truly truly poetry inside me, but it sticks at the bends, and then I get bits that fit, made by somebody else, and wish I had been spry and said them first. Other times I’m the real Winifred Wallace.”
“Winifred Wallace?” said Aunt Ailie inquiringly.