"
Kirk leaped dangerously near the sickle.
"You haven't made me a pome for ages!" he cried. "Stop sickling and do
it--quick!"
"It's a grand one," Ken said; "listen to this!
"Down in the marshes the sounds begin
Of a far-away fairy violin,
Faint and reedy and cobweb thin.
"Cricket and marsh-frog and brown tree-toad,
Sit in the sedgy grass by the road,
Each at the door of his own abode;
"Each with a fairy fiddle or flute
Fashioned out of a briar root;
The fairies join their notes, to boot.
"Sitting all in a magic ring,
They lift their voices and sing and sing,
Because it is April, 'Spring! Spring!'"
"That _is_ a nice one!" Kirk agreed. "It sounds real. I don't know how
you can do it."
A faint clapping was heard from the direction of the house, and turning,
Ken saw his sister dropping him a curtsey at the door. "That," she said,
"is a poem, not a pome--a perfectly good one."
"Go 'way!" shouted Ken. "You're a wicked interloper. And you don't even
know why Kirk and I write pomes about toads, so you don't!"
"I never could see," Ken remarked that night, "why people are so keen
about beds of roses. If you ask me, I should think they'd be uncommon
prickly and uncomfortable. Give me a bed of herbs--where love is, don't
you know?"
"It wasn't a bed of herbs," Felicia contended; "it was a dinner of
them. This isn't herbs, anyway. And think of the delectable smell of
the bed of roses!"
"But every rose would have its thorn," Ken objected.
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