The Little Colonel's Holidays

THEY had been writing a long time, when the Little Colonel looked up / with a mischievous smile. "Joyce will think that this is a wondahful / place," she said. "I've told her all about my bein' chased by a / Barley-bright witch, and how ugly she was, and what Davy said about her / goin' through keyholes. It sounds so real when I read it ovah that I / could half-way make myself believe that she is one. I'm goin' to slip / across into her room now, and see if I can't find the broomstick that / she rides around on at night. If there'd just be a black cat sittin' on / her pillow, I could almost believe what Davy said about her hoodoo word. / Wouldn't she be mad if she knew what was in this letter? I told Joyce / how mean she'd acted about the fishin'-worms too, and how she's scowled / at us evah since we came."

Betty looked up with a preoccupied smile, for she had long ago finished / her letter to Eugenia and was busy with some verses that she was trying / to write about the rain. The rhymes were falling into place almost as / easily and musically as the rain-drops tinkling down the eaves, and her / face was flushed with the pleasure of it. She was so wrapped up in her / own thoughts that she did not understand what Lloyd was saying, and / smiled a reply without the faintest idea of what it was that she / proposed to do.