"'My dearest Mummie and Dad,--I played my Serenade through this morning without one single solitary mistake perhaps.'" Oh, how the wretched word pulled one up, tarnished the brilliant achievement!
"Pauline, you cannot have finished; sit down," said Miss Bibby.
Pauline shook her head gloomily. "I can't write yet," she said; "I think I'll just go and play it over once more to be certain. That might have been D flat."
"Oh," said Miss Bibby excusingly, for the Serenade was long, like the lay of the Last Minstrel. "Mother won't mind, dear--just say you played it very well, and I was much pleased."
"I think I'll play it again," she said, and crossed over to the piano with melancholy eyes.
"'Dearie mother, we don't cough so mush' (how do you spell cough, Miss Bibby? There's a horrid g or q in it somewhere, I know)--'I don't smudg so mush.' I wish (Oh, dear, you said we oughtn't to say we wished she'd come back, didn't you, Miss Bibby, cause she might stop enjoying herself? What else could I put after 'I wish'? I've got that written)."
"Suppose you say you wish you could write better," suggested Miss Bibby.
"I suppose that will have to do," said the little girl sadly. "No, I'll tell you, 'cause I don't _much_ want to write better, I'll say I wish words would ryum better. Look at beauty, nothing will go with it but duty, and duty is such a ugly word in a song, isn't it?"
"No, I think it is a beautiful word," said Miss Bibby; she expected herself to say this, and was not disappointed.
"Well, I don't," sighed Lynn. "I could have made a lovely song this morning. It began--
'Oh, the bush is full of beauty, And the flowers are full of love,'
but I couldn't go any farther, 'cause there was nothing to ryum but that horrid duty."
"I think you could have made it very pretty, dear, with that word," said Miss Bibby. "And say rhyme, Lynn, not ryum. You could have said,--
'Oh, the bush is full of beauty, And the flowers are full of love, And if we do our duty, We----we----'
finished Lynn discontentedly. "No, I didn't want it to go like that; it was just going to be a springy sort of a song, with wild birds in it, not a lessony sort."
"Well, get on with your letter, my dear," said Miss Bibby, who was often helpless before the fine instinct for the value of words with which Lynn had been gifted.