“Such a lovely poem!” sighed Miss Kirke.  “I’ve heard that the author was seven years writing it.”

“Seven years!” John echoed.  “Well!”

“He kept pruning it, and re-writing some of the verses,” Margaret explained.  “He wanted to make it a perfect poem.”

“It’s very fine,” said John.  Then he added, blushingly, “If I had any fields to keep tyrants away from, I’d like to be a village Hampden myself, even if I couldn’t become famous like the other one.”

“Oh, I don’t think one need take that line of the poem literally,” said Margaret.  “I like to have poetry suggest things to me that are not found in the mere words.  That is why I’m so fond of Shakespeare—­he admits of so many interpretations.  Perhaps,” she went on, softly and timidly, “if we keep the little tyrants of selfishness and wickedness away from our hearts, we can all become village Hampdens.  Such things are often harder to drive away than human tyrants—­don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” replied John, gravely, “I’m sure it is true—­though I’ve had no contests with human tyrants.”

“I know what my greatest tyrant is,” said Celia Kirke, who had grown serious with the others; “and whenever I see him trying to get into my fields,” she added, more lightly, “I shall ‘off with his head’ with scant ceremony.”

As John walked home alone in the frosty night, he vowed half aloud to the silent, listening stars that he would be a “village Hampden,” that the tyrant within him should be laid low for all time.

John had no need to mention the tyrant by name—­he knew very well that it was Carelessness with a capital C. How often had this little tyrant brought him into trouble, and how often had his employer warned him to break his bad habit before it was too late.

What a pleasant, sensible girl Margaret Shirley was—­not a bit spoiled by her studies in Boston!

Matilda Haines would have laughed more and talked more, but she would never have given a second thought to the poem they had just read.  John was rather glad she had walked home with some one else that evening—­even though his old tyrant of Carelessness had brought about this result.

John Hampden saw a good deal of Margaret Shirley and her cousin that winter at the meetings of the literary society, at choir practice, and in Margaret’s own home, where they often discussed the poems and essays they were reading.

Youth has a frank and sometimes harsh way of passing judgment upon people.  John had decided the first evening he met her that Celia Kirke was a frivolous girl, but when he got to know her better, he found that she could be as sensible as Margaret herself when occasion required it.

They had confessed to one another what each one’s particular tyrant was, and had agreed to help each other to suppress him.  Of course they had a good deal of fun about it, but under it all there was a general feeling that it was a serious matter they had undertaken.