r the
assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank
in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer air, warm, and
deliciously odorous.

The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line
beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with
gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or crimson.

"They grow something like steeples," thought little Rebecca Randall, who
was weeding the bed, "and the flat, round flowers are like rosettes; but
steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about
them in a composition you'd have to give up one or the other, and I
think I'll give up the steeples:--

Gay little hollyhock
Lifting your head,
Sweetly rosetted
Out from your bed.

It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of steepling up
to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL hollyhock.'... I might
have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but
oh, no! I forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty
to say that its head is 'sweetly rosetted'... I wish the teacher wasn't
away; she would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned
out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the
waves at the beach.... I could make nice compositions now, everything
is blooming so, and it's so warm and sunny and happy outdoors. Miss
Dearborn told me to write something in my thought book every single day,
and I'll begin this very night when I go to bed."

Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house ladies, and
at present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, education,
and incidentally such discipline and chastening as might ultimately
produce moral excellence,--Rebecca Randall had a passion for the rhyme
and rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been
to her what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she
amused herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of
a story took a "cursory glance" about her "apartment," Rebecca would
shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a "cursory glance" at her oversewing
or hemming; if the villain "aided and abetted" someone in committing
a crime, she would before long request the pleasure of "aiding and
abet