"It's only five lines, and one rhyme. But it might be written up to.
They could say all sorts of things,--one and another:--

"_I_ wrote some little books;
_I_ said some little says;
_I_ preached a little preach;
_I_ lit a little blaze;
_I_ made things pleasant in one little place."

There was a shout at Barbara's "poem."

"I thought I might as well relieve my mind," she said, meekly. "I knew
it was all there would ever be of it."

But Barbara's rhyme stayed in our heads, and got quoted in the family.
She illustrated on a small scale what the "poems and articles" _may_
sometimes do in the great world,

We remembered it that day when Ruth said, "Let's co-operate."

We talked it over,--what we could do without a girl. We had talked it
over before. We had had to try it, more or less, during interregnums.
But in our little house in Z----, with the dark kitchen, and with
Barbara and Ruth going to school, and the washing-days, when we had to
hire, it always cost more than it came to, besides making what Barb
called a "heave-offering of life."

"They used to have houses built accordingly," Rosamond said, speaking
of the "old times." "Grandmother's kitchen was the biggest and