society.
"You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell
me if you like the last verse?" she asked, taking out her paper.
"I've only read it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can
never be a poet, though she's a splendid writer. Last year when
she was twelve she wrote a birthday poem to herself, and she made
'natal' rhyme with 'Milton,' which, of course, it wouldn't. I
remember every verse ended:--
'This is my day so natal
And I will follow Milton.'

Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it
she said. This was it:--
'Let me to the hills away,
Give me pen and paper;
I'll write until the earth will sway
The story of my Maker.'"

The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he
controlled himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint
observations. When she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and
uncriticised, she was a marvelous companion.
"The name of the poem is going to be 'My Star,'" she continued,
"and Mrs. Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a
kind of magicness when they get into poetry, don't you think so?"
(Rebecca always talked to grown people as if she were their age,
or, a more subtle and truer distinction, as if they were hers.)
"It has often been so remarked, in different words," agreed the
minister.
"Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state