but the plan sounded very
attractive; it would fill up her spare hours, and keep her from worrying
over Eleanor, and getting cross at Helen, so she was very willing to
help if Mary honestly thought she could draw well enough.

"Goodness, yes!" said Mary, rushing off to borrow Roberta's water-color
paper and Katherine's rhyming dictionary.

So the partnership was formed, a huge red heart covered with hastily
decorated samples was stuck up on the "For Sale" bulletin in the
gymnasium basement, and, as Betty's cupids were really very charming and
her Christy heads quite as good as the average copy, names began to
appear in profusion on the order-sheet.

Mary had written two sample verses with comparative ease, and in the
first flush of confidence she had boldly printed on the sign: "Rhymed
grinds for special persons furnished at reasonable rates." But later,
when everybody seemed to want that kind, even the valuable aid of the
rhyming dictionary did not disprove the adage that poets are born, not
made.

"I can't--I just can't do them," wailed Mary finally. "Jokes simply will
not go into rhyme. What shall we do?"

"Get Roberta--she writes beautifully--and Katherine--she told me that
she'd like to help," suggested Betty, without looking up from the chubby
cupid she was fashioning.

So Katherine and Roberta were duly approached and Katherine was added to
the firm. Roberta at first said she couldn't, but finally, after
exacting strict pledges of secrecy, she produced half a dozen dainty
little lyrics, bidding Mary use them if she wished--they were nothing.
But no amount of persuasion would induce her to do any more.

However, Katherine's genius was nothing if not profuse, and she
preferred to do "grinds," so Mary could devote herself to sentimental
effusions,--which, so she declared, did not have to have any special
point and so were within her powers,--and to the business end of the
project. This, in her view, consisted in perching on a centrally located
window-seat in the main building, in the intervals between classes, and
soliciting orders from all passers-by, to the consequent crowding of the
narrow halls and the great annoyance of the serious-minded, who wished
to reach their recitations promptly. But from her point of view she was
strikingly successful.

"I tell you, I never appreciated how easy it is to make money if you
only set about it in the right way," she announced proudly one day at
luncheon. "By the w