At three o’clock I was fully prepared for an honorable guest.
The coffee on the oil-stove was surging, when two parties went by, not spending even one look at my sign.
“Times are awfully hard, I think. People have not luxury enough to spare even a dime,” I murmured sadly.
I said that I would have no business, if I didn’t make the next party my victim.
I appeared before the tent, when a few girls—who were born for laughing, but not for thinking—came close by.
“Will you rest and taste the cake that the poet made, ladies?” I said.
“That’s nice,” they said, rolling into the tent.
I served them with coffee and cake.
“Is this surely the poet’s cake? It looks like baker’s cake,” one girl said.
“Mr. Poet assured me it was of his own making,” I replied in cool reserve.