" asked Lynn anxiously, "I was 'fraid you wouldn't
like grin, but nothing else would rhyme."

"Like them!" said Hugh, "I shall keep them in my desk among my
Correspondence from Celebrated Persons. As a special and particular
favour I will allow Kate to see them," and he drew out the budget of
telegraph forms.

"Your friend Pauline
Will be glad to be seen,"

was the uniquely _apropos_ answer to his invitation to the eldest
daughter of the Judge.

"Max will come quick
To your nice picnic"

was effort number two. There had been a variant reading of this--

"Max a plate will lick
At your nice picnic,"

and the matter had been fought out before entering the post office, Lynn
liking the first and Pauline and Max himself inclining to the second.
But Miss Bibby being made umpire declared against the second as not very
"nice." So Hugh knew only the fact that Max would come quick.

"Please take enough
To the picnic. From Muff"

would assuredly not have been allowed by Miss Bibby one little month
since, to be sent as an acceptance to the invitation of a person nearly
eight times her own age. The fact that it was handed across the
counter--and with a smile, too--was a sign that the foundations of a
liberal education may be successfully laid even at thirty-six.

"Your loving friend Lynn
With much joy doth grin,"

in no way satisfied Lynn's ideas either of composition or beauty, but
she had been so occupied helping with the couplets of the others that
she was forced to compose hers standing on the door step of the post
office. The word "grin" vexed her; yet "thin" would not allow itself to
be worked in and no other "ryum" that would make sense would suggest
itself, so she quite mournfully sent on the information that with joy
she did grin.

Pauline pounced on the formal telegram from Miss Bibby--"Will bring my
charges. Many thanks for thinking of them."

"We did a _much_ better one for her," she said, "only she wouldn't send
it. I liked it best of all."

"What was it?" asked Hugh, and learnt that the "rejected address" was--

"Won't it be nibby?
Yours truly, Miss Bibby."

But at this point Miss Bibby's slender figure in its pale grey muslin
was seen crossing the road, so the presents were hastily distributed,
and four pairs of young eyes tried to outrival in brightness the just
peeping stars of the early evening.

Miss Bibby shook hands with Kate, then with Hugh, on