masterpiece I'd draw her,
But failing that, I pen these lines
Which now I place before her.

"It's not very good," declared Ethel. "It was so hard to make it scan
properly. I know 'happy' and 'Patty' don't really rhyme, but what else
could I put? The last line's rather tame, but then again I couldn't find
a rhyme for 'draw her'. I thought at first of putting 'And hope they
will not bore her', or 'To show how I adore her', but perhaps it's
better as it is."

Patty, who had no talent for poetry, was immensely impressed by these
lines. She showed them to everybody in the class, and Ethel's work was
much admired until it was entirely eclipsed by a contribution from Jean
Bannerman. Jean had drawn a funny picture of a kitten with a pile of
books under its arm. She had copied it from a magazine, but the verse
which she wrote under it was her own composition. She called it:

AN ENTHUSIAST

Her head well stored with copious knowledge,
Miss Fluffy Purrem goes to College,
Secure that never yet she's failed.
Her subjects will not be _cur_tailed:
On _cat_acombs she'll wax ecstatic,
Yet much objects to be _dog_matic.
She's great on ornithology,
And also on astrology;
She lets the Dog Star go astray,
But revels in the _Milky Way_.
She claims the _Manx_ to be a nation,
And holds strong views about cre(a)mation;
At _Mew_nham they declare she's sure
A first-class try_puss_ to secure.

This delighted the girls, because the kitten's face really looked a
little like Patty's, which was round too, and what Jean described as
"purry",--"that's to say, looking pleased at everything, as if she were
purring," she explained.

Enid had reserved her efforts until the last, and her page in the album
was considered the very best of all. It was headed by a picture which
was a curious notion of her own. When glanced at casually it might be
taken for a sketch of a crocodile, but when examined closely it showed
that the body was made up of girls walking along two and two, the
smaller ones tapering down in height, and vanishing in the distance to
form the tail. Though the details were not particularly well drawn, the
whole effect was wonderfully good, and as "crocodiling" was the popular
term at The Priory for walking two and two, the idea was most
appropriate. Enid described it in the accompanying verses:

THE BALLAD OF THE SWEET CROCODILE

Oh! haven't you heard