ngles.

All had had some practice at the game parties, and pencils went briskly
for a few minutes, while silence reigned, as the poets racked their
brains for rhymes, and stared at the blooming array before them for
inspiration.

"Oh, dear! I can't find a word to rhyme to 'geranium,'" sighed Molly,
pulling her braid, as if to pump the well of her fancy dry.

"Cranium," said Frank, who was getting on bravely with "Annette" and
"violet."

"That is elegant!" and Molly scribbled away in great glee, for her poems
were always funny ones.

"How do you spell _anemoly_--the wild flower, I mean?" asked Jill, who
was trying to compose a very appropriate piece for her best basket, and
found it easier to feel love and gratitude than to put them into verse.

"Anemone; do spell it properly, or you'll get laughed at," answered Gus,
wildly struggling to make his lines express great ardor, without being
"too spoony," as he expressed it.

"No, I shouldn't. This person never laughs at other persons' mistakes,
as some persons do," replied Jill, with dignity.

Jack was desperately chewing his pencil, for he could not get on at
all; but Ed had evidently prepared his poem, for his paper was half full
already, and Merry was smiling as she wrote a friendly line or two for
Ralph's basket, as she feared he would be forgotten, and knew he loved
kindness even more than he did beauty.

"Now let's read them," proposed Molly, who loved to laugh even at
herself.

The boys politely declined, and scrambled their notes into the chosen
baskets in great haste; but the girls were less bashful. Jill was
invited to begin, and gave her little piece, with the pink hyacinth
basket before her, to illustrate her poem.

"TO MY LADY

"There are no flowers in the fields,
No green leaves on the tree,
No columbines, no violets,
No sweet anemone.
So I have gathered from my pots
All that I have to fill
The basket that I hang to-night,
With heaps of love from Jill."

"That's perfectly sweet! Mine isn't; but I meant it to be funny," said
Molly, as if there could be any doubt about the following ditty:--

"Dear Grif,
Here is a whiff
Of beautiful spring flowers;
The big red rose
Is for your nose,
As toward the sky it towers.

"Oh, do not frown
Upon this crown
Of green pinks and blue geranium
But think of me
When this you see,
And put it on your cranium."

"O Molly, you will never hear the last of that if