. I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't
want them to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about
it; but here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go and read it
aloud to the whole crowd of 'em! And then they all wanted to know what
other poems I'd written and why I didn't keep it up and write some more,
and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this and why that, till I thought
I'd die of shame!"

"You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp," Bibbs suggested.

"I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every
time anybody speaks of the thing."

Bibbs looked grieved. "The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were
only seventeen when you wrote it."

"Oh, hush up!" she snapped. "I wish it had burnt my fingers the first
time I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where
it was. I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--"

"No, no," he said, comfortingly. "It was the very most flattering thing
ever happen to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the
machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to--"

"But I DON'T like it!" she exclaimed. "I don't even understand it--and
papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The
truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize."

"Maybe they expected father to endow the school," Bibbs murmured.

"Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE!
I hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how
I 'keep my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of
thing, the way he says it. I hate it!"

"You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another
name you might find--"

"Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first
chance I get." She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. "I'd like
to think I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!"

"Edith!" he called, as she went into the hall.

"What's the matter?"

"I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used
to me?"

"What on earth do you mean?" she said, coming back as far as the
threshold.

"When I first came you couldn't look at me," Bibbs explained, in his
impersonal way. "But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if
I'd--"

"It's because you look so much better," she told him, cheerfully. "This
month you've been here's done you no end of good.