"I don't want to die."'"
By the time she had finished reading the queer stanzas, five heads were clustered about hers, for even the President cast aside his paper to listen; and five pair of eager eyes were striving to read the uneven scrawls with which the pages were filled.
"Well, I declare!" ejaculated the learned Doctor of Laws, rubbing his spectacles vigorously, and bending over the ink-blotted book again. "I had no idea that Allee was far enough advanced in school to write compositions and—and—rhymes.'
"She is nearly up with Peace," said Gail proudly. "I predict that she will be a poet yet."
"Wouldn't be at all surprised," replied the doctor. "Her grandfather might have shone in literature if he had chosen that field instead of the ministry."
"I like Peace's contributions almost the best," murmured the grandmother apologetically, brushing a tear from her cheek as she finished reading some incomplete lines penned by the brown-eyed maid:—
"Shut up here with no trees nor plants,
I can't tear my close on a barb wire fence.
With my feet on a pillow where I can't use 'em
There's nothing on earth can ever bruise 'em.