ch make a Limerick.
Five minutes is the limit, and the one that hasn't his little verse
ready when the time is up will have to answer truthfully any question
the others agree to ask."

"No," objected Lloyd. "I'd be suah to be it. I can make the rhymes, but
the lines limp too dreadfully for any use."

"We won't count that," promised Kitty, looking at her chatelaine watch.
"Now, one, two, three! Fire away!"

There was silence for a little space, broken only by the soft cooing of
a far-away dove. Then Betty looked up with a satisfied smile. The
anxious pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison nodded her
readiness.

"Lloyd first," called Kitty, looking at her watch again.

A mischievous smile brought the dimples to the Little Colonel's face as
she began:

"There's a girl in our school called Kitty,
Evidently not from the city.
With screeches and squawkin's
She upset the nerves of poah old Hawkins.
Oh, her behaviour was not at all pretty."

A burst of laughter greeted Lloyd's attempt at verse-making, for the
subject which she had chosen recalled one of Kitty's outbreaks the first
week of school, when the temptation to upset Hawkins's dignity was more
than she could resist. No one of them who had seen Hawkins's wild exit
from the linen closet the night she hid on the top shelf, and raised
his hair with her blood-curdling moans and spectral warnings (having
blown out his candle from above), could think of the occurrence without
laughing till the tears came to their eyes.

"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle had died away. "It's
your turn." Allison referred to the lines she had scribbled on the back
of a magazine:

"There is a young maiden, they say,
Who grows more beloved every day.
When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble
To be next to the maid who is _Gay_."

"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarrassed exclamation from the boughs
above, and Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her, too. I
said:

"Like the bow on the strings when she plays,
So she crosses with music our days.
Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June,
And the smile that brings sunshine is Gay's."

"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!" exclaimed Kitty, and Gay
called down: "It's awfully nice of you, girls, but please change the
subject. I'm s