Miss Lowry rose and unfolded her manuscript. It was written in a somewhat irreverent imitation of the scriptural "Chronicles;" but that seemed to please the young folks here gathered all the more. She began:
"And it came to pass in the reign of King Westerville Somers, who was likewise a seer and a prophet, and in the fourth month of the second year of his reign over the Pounder's School District, that a certain youth whose name rhymes with 'hitch it,' hitched himself to the apron-strings of a maid, who was at that time sojourning at the top of the hill--and was hitched so tight that you couldn't have pried the two apart with a crowbar!"
"Oh, by cracky!" gasped the suddenly ruddy-faced Lucas. "What a wallop!"
The paragraph was punctuated with a general titter from the girls all over the room, while some of the boys hooted at Lucas in vast joy.
Lyddy turned pale; 'Phemie's countenance for once rivalled Lucas's own in hue. But Miss Lowry went on to the next paragraph, which was quite as severe a slap at somebody else.
"Don't get mad with _me_, Miss 'Phemie," begged Lucas, in a whisper.
"Oh, you can't help it, Lucas," she said. "But I'll never come to this place with you again. Don't expect it!"
The amusing but sometimes merely foolish paragraphs were reeled off, one after the other. Sometimes the crowd shouted with laughter; sometimes there was almost dead silence as Miss Lowry delivered a particularly hard hit, or one that was not entirely understood at first.
"And it came to pass in those days that certain damsels of the Pounder's Brook Temperance Club gathered themselves together in one place, and saith, the one to the other:
"Is it not so that the young men of Pounder's Brook are no longer attracted by our girls? They no longer care to listen to our songs, or when we play upon the harp or psaltery. They pass us by with unseeing vision. Verily an Easter bonnet no longer catcheth the eye of the wayward youth, and holdeth his attention. Selah.
"Therefore spake one damsel to the others gathered together, and sayeth: 'Surely we are not wise. The young men of our tribe goeth after strange gods. Therefore, let us awake, and go forth, and show the wisdom of serpents and--each and every one of us--start a boarding house!'"