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