"It's surely not dinner time yet!" Allee protested. "Why, I've got only one poem and half of a story copied."
"That's better'n me," Peace dolefully sighed, closing the First Reader with reluctant hands and laying it aside. "I haven't done a line yet. I haven't even found a poem to pattern after, though I guess I'll take 'Long Time Ago' for my first one. That's easy, and when I get onto the hang of it, I'll try something harder. If it's dinner time already the days must be getting lots shorter again."
"You are right, they are," Jud agreed. "Soon it will be too cold out here for you—"
"I shan't mind," Peace interrupted. "I'm going to write a good deal this winter. Gussie'll teach me to be a poet, and I always could write better inside the house. There's too much to look at out-of-doors."
Jud heaved a gusty sigh. "You all think a heap of Gussie, don't you?" he asked with a jealous pang, for he found it almost impossible to get a quiet word with that busy and important member of the household, and now that winter was coming on, it would be harder than ever, for even the little after-dinner chats in the garden would have to be discontinued.
"I sh'd say we do!" both girls chorused. "She is worth thinking a lot of—"
"That's where you are right again," the man agreed heartily.
"She can do anything" said Peace, who was never tired of singing Gussie's praises.
"Even to making poets," he teased.
"Yes, sir, even to making poets, and some day you will see for yourself."