“Make up a—what did you say?” asked Ned.
“Make up a verse,” answered Polly, placidly. “As you did the other day
when you went out. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh!” Laurie looked somewhat embarrassed and a trifle silly. “Why, you
see—we only do that when—when—”
“When we have inspiration,” aided Ned, glibly.
“Yes, that’s it, inspiration! We—we have to have inspiration.”
“I’m sure Antoinette ought to be enough inspiration to any poet,”
returned Polly, laughing. “You know you never saw a more beautiful
rabbit in your life—lives, I mean.”
Ned looked inquiringly at Laurie. Then he said, “Well, maybe if I close
my eyes a minute—” He suited action to word. Polly viewed him with
eager interest; Laurie, with misgiving. Finally, after a moment of
silent suspense, his eyelids flickered and:
“O Antoinette, most lovely of thy kind!” he declaimed.
“Thou eatest cabbages and watermelon rind!” finished Laurie, promptly.
Polly clapped her hands, but her approval was short-lived. “But she
doesn’t eatest watermelon rind,” she declared indignantly. “I’m sure it
wouldn’t be at all good for her!”
Laurie grinned. “That’s what we call poetic license,” he explained.
“When you make a rhyme, sometimes you’ve got to—to sacrifice truth
for—in the interests of—I mean, you’ve got to think of the _sound_!
‘Kind’ and ‘carrot’ wouldn’t sound _right_, don’t you see?”
“Well, I’m sure watermelon rind doesn’t sound right, either,” objected
Polly; “not for a rabbit. Rabbits have very delicate digestions.”
“We might change it,” offered Ned. “How would this do?
“O Antoinette, more lovely than a parrot,
Thou dost subsist on cabbages and carrot.”
“That’s silly,” said Polly, scornfully.
“Poetry usually is silly,” Ned answered.
Laurie, who had been gazing raptly at his shoes, broke forth exultantly.
“I’ve got it!” he cried. “Listen!
“O Antoinette, most beauteous of rabbits,
Be mine and I will feed thee naught but cabbits!”
A brief silence followed. Then Ned asked, “What are cabbits?”
“Cabbits are vegetables,” replied Laurie.
“I never heard of them,” said Polly, wrinkling her forehead.
“Neither did any one else,” laughed Ned. “He just made them up to rhyme
with rabbits.”
“A cabbit,” said Laurie, loftily, “is something between a cabbage and a
carrot.”
“What does it look like?” giggled Polly.
Laurie blinked. “We-ell, you’ve seen a—you’ve seen an artichoke,
haven’t you?” Polly nodded and Laurie blinked again. “And you’ve seen
a—a mangel-wurzel?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then I don’t see how I can tell you,” said Laurie, evidently relieved,
“because a cabbit is more like a mangel-wurzel than anything else. Of
course, it’s not so deciduous, and the shape is different; it’s more
obvate than a mangel-wurzel; more—” he swept his hands vaguely in
air—“more phenomenal.”
“Oh, dry up,” said Ned, grinning. “How’d you like to have to put up with
an idiot like that all your life, Polly? The worst of it is, folks
sometimes mistake him for me!”
“Yes, it’s awful, but I manage to bear up under it,” Laurie sighed.
“How did you ever come to think of making those funny rhymes?” Polly
asked.
“Oh, we had measles once, about four years ago,” said Ned. “We always
had everything together—measles, whooping-cough, scarlet fever,
everything. And when we were getting over it they wouldn’t let us read
and so we made up rhymes. I forget whose idea it was. I’d make up one
line and Laurie would make up the other, or the other way round. The
idea was to have the last word of the first line so hard that the other
fellow couldn’t rhyme to it. But I guess I only stuck Laurie once. Then
the word was lemon.”
“You didn’t really stick me then,” Laurie denied. “I rhymed it with
demon. You said they didn’t rhyme, but I showed you a rhyming dictionary
that said they did.”
“The dictionary said it was an imperfect rhyme, Laurie, and—”
“Just the same, a rhyme’s a rhyme. Say, Ned, remember the one we made up
about Miss Yetter?” Ned nodded and grinned. “Miss Yetter was our nurse.
We thought it was pretty clever, but she didn’t like it.
“When feeling ill send for Miss Yetter.
If you don’t die, she’ll make you better.”
“She was quite insulted about it,” laughed Ned, “and told Dad; and he
tried to lecture us, but we got laughing so he couldn’t. We made rhymes
all the time for a while and nearly drove folks crazy; and finally Dad
said if we didn’t stop it he’d whale us. And I said, ‘All right, sir,
we’ll try not to do it’; and Laurie, the chump, butted in with, ‘’Cause
if we do, we know we’ll rue it!’ We nearly got the licking right then!”
“You _are_ funny!” laughed Polly. “Is your mother—haven’t you—”
“She died when we were kids,” answered Laurie. “I just remember her, but
Ned doesn’t.”
“You think you do. You’ve just heard Dad, and nurse talk about her. We
were only four when Mother died.”
Laurie looked unconvinced, but didn’t argue the matter. Instead he
asked, “Your father’s dead, isn’t he, Polly?”
“Yes, he died when I was eight. He was a dear, and I missed him just
terribly. Mother says I look like him. He was very tall and was always
laughing. Mother says he laughed so much he didn’t have time for
anything else. She means that he wasn’t—wasn’t very successful. We were
very poor when he died. But I guess he was lots nicer than he would have
been if he had just been—successful. I guess the most successful man in
this town is Mr. Sparks, the banker, and no one has ever seen him laugh
once. And Uncle Peter was successful, too, I suppose; and he was just as
sour and ill-tempered as anything. He wasn’t my real uncle, but I called
him that because Mother said it would please him. It didn’t seem to.”
“Was that Mr. Coventry?” asked Laurie. “The mis—I mean the man who
lived in the big square house over there?”
“Yes. And I don’t mind your calling him the miser, because that is just
what he was. He was Mother’s half-brother, but he didn’t act as if he
was even a quarter-brother! He was always just as horrid as he could be.
When Father died he wrote Mother to come here and he would provide her
with a home. And when we came, we found he meant that Mother was to live
here and pay him rent. She didn’t have enough money to do that, and so
Uncle Peter made the front of the house into a store and bought some
things for her and made her sign a mortgage or something. When he died,
we thought maybe he had left Mother a little; but there wasn’t any will,
and not much property, either—just the big house on Walnut Street and
this place and about two thousand dollars. When the property was
divided, Mother got the other heirs to let her have this as her portion
of the estate, but she had to pay four hundred and fifty dollars for it.
That took about all she had saved and more, and so we haven’t been able
to do much to the house yet.”
“It doesn’t look as if it needed much doing to,” said Ned, critically.
“Oh, but it does! It needs a new coat of paint, for one thing. And some
of the blinds are broken. And there ought to be a furnace in it. Stoves
don’t really keep it warm in winter. Some day we’ll fix it up nicely,
though. As soon as I get through high school, I’m going to work and make
a lot of money.”
“Attaboy!” approved Ned. “What are you going to do, Polly?”
“I’m learning stenography and typewriting, and Mr. Farmer, the
lawyer,—he’s the one who got the others to let Mother have the house
when Uncle Peter’s estate was settled,—says he will find a place for me
in his office. He’s awfully nice. Some stenographers make lots of money,
don’t they?”
“I guess so,” Ned agreed. “There’s a woman in Dad’s office who gets
eighteen dollars a week.”
Polly clasped her hands delightedly. “Maybe I wouldn’t get that much,
though. I guess Mr. Farmer doesn’t pay his stenographer very high wages.
Maybe I’d get twelve dollars, though. Don’t you think I might?”
“Sure!” said Laurie. “Don’t you let any one tell you any different.
Didn’t folks think that your Uncle Peter left more money than was found,
Polly?”
“Oh, yes; but no one really knew. The lawyers looked everywhere. If he
did have any more, he must have hidden it away pretty well. They looked
all through the house and dug holes in the cellar floor. It was very
exciting. Mother thinks he lost what money he had speculating in stocks
and things. He used to go to New York about four times a year. No one
knew what he did there, not even Hilary; but Mother thinks he went to
see men who deal in stocks and that they got his money away from him.”
“Who is Hilary?” Laurie inquired.
“Hilary was a colored man that Uncle had had a long time. It seemed to
me that if Uncle had had much money, Hilary would have known about it;
and he didn’t.”
“Where is he now? Hilary, I mean,” added Laurie, somewhat unnecessarily.
“I don’t know. He went away a little while after Uncle Peter died. He
said he was going to New York, I think.”
“You don’t suppose he took the money with him, do you? I mean—”
“Oh no!” Polly seemed quite horrified. “Hilary was just as honest as
honest! Why, Uncle Peter died owing him almost forty dollars and Hilary
never got a cent of it! The lawyers were too mean for anything!”
“There’s a fellow named Starling living there now,” Laurie said. “His
father’s rented the house for three years. Bob says that he’s going to
find the money and give it to your mother.”
Polly laughed. “Oh, I wish that he would! But I guess if the lawyers
couldn’t find it he never will. Lawyers, they say, can find money when
nobody else can! Is he nice?”
“Bob? Yes, he’s a dandy chap. You ought to know him, Polly; he’s your
next-door neighbor.”
“Back-door neighbor, you mean,” interpolated Ned.
“I think I saw him in the garden one day,” said Polly. “His father is an
engineer, Mae Ferrand says, and he’s building a big bridge for the
railway. Or maybe it’s a tunnel. I forget.”
“Is Mae Something the girl with the molasses-candy hair you were with at
the high school game?” Laurie asked.
“Yes, but her hair isn’t like molasses candy. It’s perfectly lovely
hair. It’s like—like diluted sunshine!”
Laurie whistled. “Gee! Did you get that, Neddie? Well, anyway, I like
dark hair better.”
“Oh, I don’t! I’d love to have hair like Mae’s. And, what do you think,
she likes my hair better than her own!”
“Don’t blame her,” said Laurie. “What do you say, Ned?”
“I say I’ve got to beat it back and get into football togs. What time is
it?”
“Look at your own watch, you lazy loafer. Well, come on. I say, Polly,
would your mother let you go to the game with me Saturday? That is, if
you want to, of course.”
“Oh, I’d love to! But—I’ll ask her, anyway. And if she says I may,
would you mind if Mae went too? We usually go together to the games.”
“Not a bit. I’ll be around again before Saturday and see what she says.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she said yes,” remarked Polly. “I think she
must like you boys. Anyway, you’re the first of the Hillman’s boys she
has ever let me invite out here.”
“Really? Bully for her! Wait till I say farewell to Antoinette, ‘most
beauteous of rabbits!’ What does she twitch her nose like that for?”
“I think she’s asking for some cabbits,” replied Polly, gravely.
“She’s making faces at you, you chump,” said Ned, rudely. “Come on.”
They returned through the little living-room, empty save for a big black
cat asleep in a rocking-chair, and found Mrs. Deane serving the first of
the afternoon trade in the shop beyond. They said good afternoon to her
very politely, and Polly went to the door with them. Outside on the
walk, Ned nudged Laurie, and they paused side by side and gravely
removed their caps.
“We give you thanks and say farewell, Miss Polly.”
“The visit’s been, indeed, most jolly!”