as a fine-looking fellow.

"Council of War?" asked Gerald; "or do we intrude?"

"Sit down!" said Bell. "We were just beginning to plan the evening. What
are your ideas, if any?"

The boys--for they were still the boys, even if they had passed one and
twenty--stretched themselves along the wharf in picturesque attitudes.

"I would sing!" announced Gerald. "Prose will not express my feelings at
this juncture.

"My fertile brain is simmering,
My fancy's fire is glimmering;
I'd fain betake
Me to the lake,
When bright the moonlight's shimmering.

"Your turn, Ferguson. Go on; the song upraise!"

"Let me see!" said Phil. "Well--on the whole--

"I can't agree with himmering;
_My_ fancy's fire is dimmering;
If you would know
The thing I'd doe,
Methinks I'll go a swimmering."

"Oh! no, Phil," said Gertrude. "Not the very first night the girls are
here; it will take them a day or two to get used to camp ways, Margaret
at least; and we want to do something all together, something that
Colonel Ferrers will like, too. I think--"

"Sing it! sing it!" cried Gerald. "The song upraise, Tintinnabula! no
escape! 'Trimmering' is still left you."

"Is there only one vowel?" demanded Bell, laughing. "I refuse to be
fettered. Wait a second!--now I have it.

"Forbear, forbear your clamoring,
And cease this hasty hammering;
I think, with Jerry,
'Twere wise and merry
To row by moonlight glamouring.

Your turn, Toots!"

"I cannot!" said Gertrude. "You know I cannot, Bell. Besides, there
aren't any more rhymes."

"Oh!" cried Gerald, "you know what you are telling, and you know what
happens to people who tell them. Perpend, Tootsina!

"You yodel, yodel yammering,
You stutter, stutter stammering;
And when you cry,
'I will not try!'
We know you're only shammering."

"Gracious!" said Gertrude. "Don't you suppose I would make rhymes if I
could? It's really a dreadful thing to be the only prose member of a
large family. But Jack comforts me; you can't make them either, can you,
Jack?"

"Not to save my life!" said Jack. "Never could see how they do it."

"But you can set them to music!" said Gertrude. "That is the delightful
thing about you."

"And you can illustrate them! That is one of the many delightful things
about y