Hartley, when the tired but happy
Hexagon Club trooped up the front steps of the ranch house late that
afternoon, "how about it? What did you think of the fair Quentina?"

"Think of her! O Quentina, you should 'seen her!" sang Tilly, in so
perfect an imitation of the minister's daughter that the girls broke
into peals of laughter.

"She's lovely, Father--honestly, she is," declared Genevieve, as soon as
she could speak.

"And so pretty!" added Cordelia, "and has such a sweet, slow way of
speaking!"

"Such lovely dark eyes!"--this from Alma.

"And such glorious hair--all golden and kinky!" breathed Bertha.

"And she looks just as pretty in her high-necked apron as she does in
her white dress," cried Elsie.

"Well, well, upon my soul! What is this young lady--a paragon?" laughed
Mr. Hartley, raising his eyebrows.

"I'll tell you just what she is, sir," vouchsafed Tilly, confidentially.
"She _is_ a rhyming dictionary, Mr. Hartley, just as I said in the first
place; and I'd be willing to guarantee any time that she'd find a rhyme
for any word in this or any other language within two seconds after the
gun is fired. If you don't believe it, you should hear her 'unearth 'em'
on the 'nasturtium.'"

"Tilly, Tilly!" choked Genevieve, convulsively.

"Oh, but she _said_ she couldn't find one for petunia," broke in the
exact Cordelia.

"You don't mean she actually writes--_poetry_!" ejaculated Mrs. Kennedy.

"Writes it!--my dear lady!" (Tilly had assumed her most superior air.)
"If that were all! But she talks it, day in and day out. Everything is a
poem, from a letter to a scraggly nasturtium. She carries an unfailing
supply of her own verses in her head, and of other people's in her
pocket. If you ask for the butter at the table, you're never sure she
won't strike an attitude, and chant:

"'Butter, Butter, Oh, good-by!
Better butter ne'er did--er--fly.'"

"I think I should like to see this young person," observed Mrs. Kennedy,
when the laughter at Tilly's sally had subsided.

"Maybe you will sometime. She wants to go East," rejoined Tilly.

"She does? What for?"

"Principally to see Paul Revere's grave, I believe; incidentally to go
to school."

"Oh, I wish she could come East to school!" exclaimed Genevieve.

"So do I--if she'd come to Sunbridge," laughed Tilly. "She takes things
even more literally than Cordelia does. Sometime I'm going to tell her
the moon _is_ made of green cheese