PEGGY FAIRLY SHRIEKED WITH LAUGHTER OVER THE POEM.
"Oh, do excuse me, Milly!" she cried, as soon as she could speak. "I didn't mean to laugh, but it struck me as so awfully funny, don't you know. 'About your closet door,' and bringing the—the—camphor forth. Oh, oh, moth-balls are better, and you might have put in something about the smell! Ha, ha, ha!" and Peggy fairly shrieked with laughter as she held her side and rocked to and fro. "Oh, do excuse me! But—but— I can't h—help it! It's—the funniest thing I ever heard! At least it isn't really, but it just struck me so. And—and—if you can tread a moth under your—your heel, you're terribly smart. Oh, Mill, Mill!"
"There!" said Millicent, rising, and thrusting her papers into a drawer in her desk, and turning the key with an angry snap. "I knew just how it would be. I believe you would laugh at my funeral."
"Oh no, indeed, I wouldn't. Milly—not at your funeral. But really, you know, it just struck me. I think the rhymes are perfectly splendid. Don't you, Joan?"
"Indeed I do," cried Joanna; "and I don't see what you saw to laugh at. I think they are beautiful, Millicent. Aren't you going to read some more?"
"No, indeed. Never!"
"I wish you would write a poem about Cousin Appolina," said Peggy. "Hateful thing! She might take at least one of us abroad with her, if not all three. She has such loads of money, and no one to spend it on but herself."
"Probably she will take one of us," observed Joan.
"It won't be me, then," said her cousin, positively, but ungrammatically; "she hates me like fury. It will be one of you. Well, it wouldn't be much fun to dance attendance on Cousin Appolina if she should happen to have a cranky fit. Mill, I know you are mad, for you haven't spoken a word since I laughed. Do forgive me. And, tell me, what are you going to send to the fair?"
"I have nothing to send," replied Millicent, rather shortly.