And spiced buns and toothsome tarts,
       And divers sweets beside,
     Were set to tempt the appetite
       With good housewifely pride.

     While walking out one day, it chanced
       She fell a-pondering sore. 
     A wicked thought in her small mind
       Did tempt her more and more.

     At all the neighbours’ doors she paused,
       Demure and shy was she. 
     With downcast eyes, she courtesied,
     And said, “Please come to tea.”

     Next day along the garden path,
       Just as the sun went down,
     A score of ladies primly walked,
       Each in her Sabbath gown.

     Surprised, her mother heard them say,
       “Dear child!  So shy is she! 
     What pretty manners she did have
       When asking us to tea.”

     Jemima now remembers well
       They once had company,
     Preserves and buns and toothsome tarts
       When ne’er a taste had she.

     For, supperless, to bed that night,
       She went, severely chid;
     No more the neighbours to invite,
       Save at her mother’s bid.

“Bravo! little girl,” cried Mrs. Sherman, while the girls clapped loudly.  “Have you anything else with you that you have written?  If you have, bring it down with you when you come.”

“Yes, godmother,” answered Betty, over the banister, blushing until she could feel her cheeks burn.  She was all a-tingle at the thought of her godmother seeing her verses.  She wanted her to see them, and yet,—­she couldn’t take down her old ledger for them all to read and criticise.  Not for worlds would she have Eugenia read her verses on “Friendship,” and there was one about “Dead Hopes” that she felt none of them would understand.  They might even laugh at it.

Several minutes went by before she could make up her mind.  When she went down-stairs she had put the old ledger back into her trunk and carried only one of the loose leaves in her hands.

“I’ll show the others to godmother sometime when we are alone,” she said to herself, as she went shyly up to the group waiting for her, “Here is one I called ‘Night,’” she said, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment.  “There are four verses.”

Mrs. Sherman took it, and, glancing down the lines, read aloud the little poem, commencing: 

     “Oh, peaceful Night, thou shadowy Queen
        Who rules the realms of shade,
      Thy throne is on the heaven’s arch,
        Thy crown of stars is made.”

“Oh, Betty, that’s splendid!” cried the girls, in chorus.  “How could you think of it?”

“It is remarkably good for a little girl of twelve,” said Mrs. Sherman, glancing over the last verses again.  “But I am not surprised.  Your mother wrote some beautiful things.  She scribbled verses all the time.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that!” cried Betty.  “How I wish I could see some of them!”