said Lynn, "write this down." And she dictated slowly. And
slowly and a little painfully, for the space was cramped, Pauline
wrote:--

"'Silent and sad it wates by the road,
And it's eyes are shut with tears.
Oh, Tenby, my heart is so greavous for you,
You haven't woked up for years.
Why don't you open your eyelids up wide
And laugh and dance and frolick outside?
And why don't--'"

"There can't be any more," said Pauline inexorably; "I'm at the bottom
of the card."

"Oh," said the little poetess piteously, "you must put in the end
lines,--can't you turn over?"

"Well, go on," said Pauline--"but it's very silly. As if a house _could_
frolic outside of itself! Mother will laugh like anything."

But Lynn's face was trustfully serene. Mother never laughed.

"Go on," she said,--"the next line is, 'Out on the grass.'"

"I won't write stories," said Pauline decisively. "There's not a bit of
grass in that garden, and you know there isn't."

Lynn looked distressed.

"But there ought to be," she said.

"But there _isn't_," repeated Pauline; "and I tell you I won't write
untruths."

"Very well," said Lynn meekly, "it can be earth, only it doesn't sound
so green. Say,

'Out on the earth where the fairies play;
Come and play with us, oh, come and play.'"

"'Out on the earth where the fairies play,'" wrote Pauline, and the next
line said, "Prime middle cuts at Octavius Smith's, Elevenpence a pound."

"Here's Larkin," called Muffie excitedly, "an' he's coming very slowly,
so he can't be in a hurry. Let's ask him for another ride."

The four clambered on to the gate again.

Larkin was riding back with lowered crest.

He was a thin lad, small for fourteen, with sharp features and blue
eyes, and a head of hair nearer in shade to an orange than to the lowly
carrot to which red hair is popularly likened. He wore a khaki coat a
size too small for him, and an old Panama hat some big-headed "stranger"
had left behind. Round this latter dangled a string veil that he had
manufactured for himself against the ubiquitous and famous mountain fly.

But the flamboyant head drooped wretchedly just at present.

He pulled up at the gate, seeing Miss Bibby was not on guard, and poured
out a graphic account of the ride between himself and Howie. Browning's
"Ghent to Aix" was nothing to it, and "How we beat the Favourite" was
colourless narrative to the early part of Larkin's recital. But the