"No fair! We're all just as badly off, and there isn't one of us
that has got a brother to turn to. Here's another for Mr. Kincaid."
"There are plenty more. Come, Mr. Oldways, Mr. Geoffrey, won't you
try 'Crambo?' There's a good deal in it, as there is in most
nonsense."
"We'll come and see what it is," said Mr. Geoffrey; and so the
chairs were drawn up, and the gray, grave heads looked on over the
young ones.
"Why, Hazel's got through!" said Lois, scratching violently at her
paper, and obliterating three obstinate lines.
"O, I didn't bother, you see! I just stuck the word right in, like a
pin into a pincushion, and let it go. There wasn't anything else to
do with it."
"I've got to make my pincushion," said Dorris.
"I should think you had! Look at her! She's writing her paper all
over! O, my gracious, she must have done it before!"
"Mother and Mr. Geoffrey are doing heaps, too! We shall have to
publish a book," said Diana, biting the end of her pencil, and
taking it easy. Diana hardly ever got the rhymes made in time; but
then she always admired everybody's else, which was a good thing for
somebody to be at leisure to do.
"Uncle Oldways and Lilian are folding up," said Hazel.
"Five minutes more," said Miss Craydocke, keeping the time with her
watch before her. "Hush!"
When the five minutes were rapped out, there were seven papers to be
read. People who had not finished this time might go on when the
others took fresh questions.
Hazel began reading, because she had been ready first.
"'What is the difference between sponge-cake and doughnuts?'
'Hallelujah.'"
"Airiness, lightness, and insipidity;
Twistiness, spiciness, and solidity.
Hallelujah! I've got through!
That is the best that I can do!'"
There was a shout at Hazel's pinsticking.
"Now, Uncle Titus! You finished next."
"My question is a very comprehensive one," said Uncle Titus, "with a
very concise and suggestive word. 'How wags the world?' 'Slambang.'"
"'The world wags on
With lies and slang;
With show and vanity,
Pride and inanity,
Greed and insanity,
And a great slambang!'"
"That's only _one_ verse," said Miss Craydocke. "There's another;
but he didn't write it down."
Uncle Titus laughed, and tossed his Crambo on the table. "It's true,
so far, anyway," said he.
"_So far_ is hardly ever quite true," said Miss Craydocke
Lilian Ashburne had to answer the question whether she had ever read
"Young's Night Thoughts;" and her word was "Comet."
"'Pray might I be allowed a pun,
To help me through with just this one?
I've tried to read Young's Thoughts of Night,
But never yet could come it, quite.'"
"O, O, O! That's just like Lilian, with her soft little 'prays' and
'allow me's,' and her little pussy-cat ways of sliding through tight
places, just touching her whiskers!"
"It's quite fair," said Lilian, smiling, "to slide through if you
can."
"Now, Mr. Geoffrey."