"When day is done, and darkness comes shadowing down the way, And Night with her rustling winglets blots out the garish day, We hear the song of an insect, singing its musical lay.
"Oh, insect with wings that flutter! Oh, insect on murder intent, Oh, creature, we'd love thee dearly if thou wert not on bloodshed bent! And we'd bear with thy visits gladly, we e'en would be content.
"Then cease thy busy prattle, and cease thy dangerous stings, Learn, learn to be meek and lamblike like other less-harmful things. Till we hail with joy thy coming, thy coming on peaceful wings!"
Here the poem ended, and the reader paused for the applause which she felt to be her due. Peggy had turned aside, and was leaning her head upon her hand so that Millicent could not see her face. Joan was the first to speak.
"Millicent, how perfectly lovely! Did you really do it all yourself? You are the smartest thing I ever knew. That beginning was just too perfect. Somehow it reminded me of something else."
"Longfellow, probably," said Millicent "'When day is done, and darkness comes shadowing down the way,' is suggestive of him."
"All except the 'shadowing,'" said Peggy.
"No; I made that word up," returned Millicent, with complacency. "Poets are obliged to coin words sometimes. What do you think of the poem, Peggy?"
"Wonderful!" replied her cousin, in a stifled voice. "How did you think of asking a mosquito to be like a lamb?"
She turned away again, and her shoulders shook convulsively.
"Do read the other!" cried Joan, enthusiastically. "I don't see how you ever make them rhyme so beautifully."
"Oh, that is easy enough," said Millicent, much pleased. "Whenever I don't know just what to put I look in my rhyming dictionary for a word."
"Rhyming dictionary?" repeated Peggy, at last uncovering a crimson face. "Do poets use rhyming dictionaries?"
"Of course. They are obliged to very often, and it saves so much time and thought, you know. Now this is a sonnet. It is my favorite form of verse. I suppose you both know that a sonnet must be just fourteen lines?"
"Oh, I know," agreed Peggy, amiably, "and there are other rules about it, too."
"Well, that one is the most important, about the fourteen lines. I don't pay much attention to the other rules. I think rules hamper you when you are composing."