your own ideas of poetry? You know as much about writing poetry as I do
about tatting! 'Worry'! 'surrey'! Or did you mean that it should be read
'wawry,' 'sorry'?"

A fine way to talk to the Flower of the Rancho! Mary V looked as though
she wanted to slap Johnny Jewel's smooth, boyish face.

"Of course, you're qualified to teach me," she retorted. "Such doggerel!
You ought to send it to the comic papers. Really, Mr. Jewel, I have read
a good deal of amateurish, childish attempts at poetry--in the infant
class at school. But never in all my life--"

"Oh, well, if you ever get out of the infant class, Miss Selmer, you may
learn a few rudimentary rules of metrical composition. I apologize for
criticising your efforts. It is not so bad--for infant class work." He
said that, standing there in the very coat which she had mended for him!

Mary V turned white; also she wished that _she_ had thought of mentioning
the "rudimentary rules of metrical composition" instead of infant
classes. She smiled as disagreeably as was possible to such humanly
kissable lips as hers.

"No, is it?" she agreed sweetly. "Witless wight was rather good, I
thought. Wight fits you so well."

"Oh, that!" Johnny turned defensively to a tolerant condescension. "That
wasn't so bad, if it hadn't shown on the face of it that it was just
dragged in to make a rhyme. Do you know what wight means, Miss Selmer?"

Mary V was inwardly shaken. She had always believed that wight was a