Part 15 (1/2)
CHAPTER X-POLLY ENTERTAINS
”Make up a-what did you say?” asked Ned.
”Make up a verse,” answered Polly, placidly. ”As you did the other day when you went out. Don't you remember?”
”Oh!” Laurie looked somewhat embarra.s.sed and a trifle silly. ”Why, you see-we only do that when-when-”
”When we have inspiration,” aided Ned, glibly.
”Yes, that's it, inspiration! We-we have to have inspiration.”
”I'm sure Antoinette ought to be enough inspiration to any poet,”
returned Polly, laughing. ”You know you never saw a more beautiful rabbit in your life-lives, I mean.”
Ned looked inquiringly at Laurie. Then he said, ”Well, maybe if I close my eyes a minute-” He suited action to word. Polly viewed him with eager interest; Laurie, with misgiving. Finally, after a moment of silent suspense, his eyelids flickered and:
”O Antoinette, most lovely of thy kind!” he declaimed.
”Thou eatest cabbages and watermelon rind!” finished Laurie, promptly.
Polly clapped her hands, but her approval was short-lived. ”But she doesn't eatest watermelon rind,” she declared indignantly. ”I'm sure it wouldn't be at all good for her!”
Laurie grinned. ”That's what we call poetic license,” he explained.
”When you make a rhyme, sometimes you've got to-to sacrifice truth for-in the interests of-I mean, you've got to think of the _sound_!
'Kind' and 'carrot' wouldn't sound _right_, don't you see?”
”Well, I'm sure watermelon rind doesn't sound right, either,” objected Polly; ”not for a rabbit. Rabbits have very delicate digestions.”
”We might change it,” offered Ned. ”How would this do?
”O Antoinette, more lovely than a parrot, Thou dost subsist on cabbages and carrot.”
”That's silly,” said Polly, scornfully.
”Poetry usually is silly,” Ned answered.
Laurie, who had been gazing raptly at his shoes, broke forth exultantly.
”I've got it!” he cried. ”Listen!
”O Antoinette, most beauteous of rabbits, Be mine and I will feed thee naught but cabbits!”
A brief silence followed. Then Ned asked, ”What are cabbits?”
”Cabbits are vegetables,” replied Laurie.
”I never heard of them,” said Polly, wrinkling her forehead.
”Neither did any one else,” laughed Ned. ”He just made them up to rhyme with rabbits.”
”A cabbit,” said Laurie, loftily, ”is something between a cabbage and a carrot.”