, at all?"

Silence.

She looked again at Dale and found him listening to Ann. Again the
Colonel proved unpromising. One slight remark was entirely lost on
someone else, and Miss Liz offered more remote possibilities than
before. After the situation recommenced its torture, rather wearily she
said to her plate:

"Hey, diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the
moon."

"I love that one," he whispered, and, taking up her meter, continued:
"The little dog howled, and the pretty girl scowled, but promised to
make up soon! That's the second verse."

Another silence, but not so prolonged, when her voice reached him:

"Brent, Brent, the rich man's son, broke his word and away he run!"

"Heart," he corrected. "'Broke his heart,' is the way that goes!"

The silence was desperate now, and, after he had exhausted many forms of
pleading, she simply said:

"Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town!"

"I don't think it's nice to be so personal in our Mother Goose party,"
he reproved her. "However, if you insist--"

"But I don't insist!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I was just going to repeat: 'There was a
little boy and a little girl lived in an alley.' Will you finish it
out?"

"I don't remember it," she said, too hurriedly to be convincing. "I'll
say this one: 'Birds of a feather flock together, and so will pigs and
swine; rats and mice will have their choice, and so will I have mine.'"

"You have a choice collection, at any rate," he grinned.

"Some verses," she explained, "were added to the very recent editions
used in my childhood."

His grin became broader. "I hoped you might come across on that before
the evening was over. Has your very recent edition the one in it about:
'Jane was saucy, Jane was pert'?"

"You're a bit shocking tonight," she said, turning to the Colonel, whose
attention was still on Nancy.

Brent waited a minute, then: "Maybe you don't remember this one in your
very recent edition: 'A hard-hearted Queen from Flat Rock, Whose anger
came as a great shock, Said: I will not speak, sir, To you for a week,
sir, So he went out and--' but I haven't had time to make the last line
fit. You ought to laugh now!"

"I wish I could."

"It's original!"

"So I judge."

"Is that open window too cool for you?"

Silence.

"Here's another out of your very recent edition," he began, when she
desperately turned to him.

"I wish you'd play fair!"

"Have you