Will made a verse one day which we thought pretty well for a little chap: 'To poor country folks Who have n't any clothes, Rich folks, to relieve them, Send old lace gowns and satin bows.'" "I think that Will is going to be as nice a poet as Mr.Shakespeare," remarked Maud in a tone of serious conviction.
"He is already a Milton; but I don't believe he will ever be anything but a poet in name," said Polly, working away while she talked.
"Did n't your mother ever let you wear the nice things that came ?" asked Maud.
"No, she thought it was n't the thing for a poor minister's girls to go flourishing about in second-hand finery, so she did what I 'm doing now, put away what would be useful and proper for us by and by, and let us play with the shabby, silk bonnets and dirty, flounced gowns.

Such fun as we used to have up in our big garret! I remember one day we 'd been playing have a ball, and were all rigged up, even the boys.

Some new neighbors came to call, and expressed a wish to see us, having been told that we were pattern children.

Mother called us, but we had paraded out into the garden, after our ball, and were having a concert, as we sat about on the cabbages for green satin seats, so we did n't hear the call, and just as the company was going, a great noise arrested them on the doorstep, and round the corner of the house rattled Ned in full costume, wheeling Kitty in a barrow, while Jimmy, Will, and I ran screaming after, looking like Bedlamites; for we were playing that Lady Fitz Perkins had fainted, and was being borne home senseless in a cab.
I thought mother would kill herself with laughing; and you can imagine what a fine impression the strangers received of the model children." Maud was so tickled with this youthful prank that she unguardedly sat down to laugh on the edge of an open trunk, immediately doubled up, fell in, and was with difficulty extricated.
"People in the country have great deal nicer times than we do.

I never rode in a wheelbarrow, I never sat on cabbages, and I don't think it 's fair," she said with an injured expression.