when school and lessons
took up so much time that it almost shut out reading and the wonderful
dreams which reading is bound to bring you. Yet even school-especially
high school the first year-was interesting. The more so when there was
a teacher like Miss Smith, who looked too pretty to know so much about
algebra and who was said to get a letter every day from a lieutenant-in
the Philippines! Then there was ancient history, full of things
fascinating enough to make up for algebra and physics. But even physics
becomes suddenly thrilling at times. And always literature! Of course
"grades" were bothersome, and sometimes you hated to show your monthly
report to your parents, who seemed to set so much store by it; and
sometimes you almost envied Beulah Crosswhite, who always got an A and
who could ask questions which disconcerted even the teachers.

Yes, even school was interesting. However, summertime was best, although
then you must practice your music lesson two hours instead of one a day,
dust the sitting room, and mind the baby. But you could spend long,
long hours in the summerhouse, reading poetry out of the big Anthology
and-this a secret-writing poetry yourself! It was heavenly to write
poetry. Something soft and warm seemed to ooze through your being as you
sat out there and watched the sorrow of a drab, drab sky; or else, on a
bright day, a big shining cloud aloft like some silver-gold fairy palace
and, down below, the smell of warm, new-cut grass, and whispers of
little live things everywhere! It was then that you felt you'd have died
if you couldn't have written poetry!

It was on such a lilting day of June, and Melissa's whole being in tune
with it, that she was called in to the midday dinner-and received the
invitation.

Father had brought it from the post office and handed it to her with
exaggerated solemnity. "For Miss Melissa Merriam," he announced.

Yes! there was her name on the tiny envelope.

And, on the tiny card within, written in a painstaking, cramped hand:

Mr. Raymond Bonner At Home Wednesday June Tenth R.S.V.P. 8 P.M.

With her whole soul in her mouth, which made it quite impossible to
speak, she passed the card to her mother and waited. "Oh," said mother,
"an evening party."

Melissa's soul dropped a trifle: it still clogged her throat, but she
was able to form words.

"Oh, mother!"

"You KNOW you're not to ask to go to evening parties, Missy." Mother's
tone was as firm as doom.