“Only six months,” interrupted Mrs. Adams tartly.

“How do you expect to keep to-day’s minutes?” demanded the president.

“Oh, I am sure Miss Prudence will give me a pencil and paper, and I’ll copy them in the book as soon as ever I get home.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Prudence.  “There is a tablet on that table beside you, and pencils, too.  I thought we might need them.”

Then the president made a few remarks, but while she talked, Miss Carr was excitedly opening the tablet.  Miss Carr was always excited, and always fluttering, and always giggling girlishly.  Carol called her a sweet old simpering soul, and so she was.  But now, right in the midst of the president’s serious remarks, she quite giggled out.

The president stared at her in amazement.  The Ladies looked up curiously.  Miss Carr was bending low over the tablet, and laughing gaily to herself.

“Oh, this is very cute,” she said.  “Who wrote it?  Oh, it is just real cunning.”

Fairy sprang up, suddenly scarlet.  “Oh, perhaps you have one of the twins’ books, and they’re always scribbling and——­”

“No, it is yours, Fairy.  I got it from among your school-books.”

Fairy sank back, intensely mortified, and Miss Carr chirped brightly: 

“Oh, Fairy, dear, did you write this little poem?  How perfectly sweet!  And what a queer, sentimental little creature you are.  I never dreamed you were so romantic.  Mayn’t I read it aloud?”

Fairy was speechless, but the Ladies, including the president, were impatiently waiting.  So Miss Carr began reading in a sentimental, dreamy voice that must have been very fetching fifty years before.  At the first suggestion of poetry, Prudence sat up with conscious pride,—­Fairy was so clever!  But before Miss Carr had finished the second verse, she too was literally drowned in humiliation.

  “My love rode out of the glooming night,
  Into the glare of the morning light. 
  My love rode out of the dim unknown,
  Into my heart to claim his own. 
  My love rode out of the yesterday,
  Into the now,—­and he came to stay. 
  Oh, love that is rich, and pure, and true,
  The love in my heart leaps out to you. 
  Oh, love, at last you have found your part,—­
  To come and dwell in my empty heart.”

Miss Carr sat down, giggling delightedly, and the younger Ladies laughed, and the older Ladies smiled.

But Mrs. Prentiss turned to Fairy gravely.  “How old are you, my dear?”

And with a too-apparent effort, Fairy answered, “Sixteen!”

“Indeed!” A simple word, but so suggestively uttered.  “Shall we continue the meeting, Ladies?”

This aroused Prudence’s ire on her sister’s behalf, and she squared her shoulders defiantly.  For a while, Fairy was utterly subdued.  But thinking it over to herself, she decided that after all there was nothing absolutely shameful in a sixteen-year-old girl writing sentimental verses.  Silly, to be sure!  But all sixteen-year-olds are silly.  We love them for it!  And Fairy’s good nature and really good judgment came to her rescue, and she smiled at Prudence with her old serenity.