Mrs. Rhyme stopped counting on her fingers and frowning on her face, and took up a pencil in one hand and a pen in the other, and began writing with them both in her book. Sometimes she dipped them both in the ink, and then they both wrote ink, and sometimes she put them both in her mouth, and then one wrote pencil, the other nothing at all, because she had sucked the ink off. She seemed to be writing in shorthand, for it consisted of hooks and dashes and strokes and marks like footsteps in the snow. ‘It gives us all the utmost joy,’ she said, ‘to welcome here a human boy. They say your name is David Blaize, but it don’t matter what they says. The great thing is to stick to rhyme’— ‘And make up verses all the time,’ interrupted Master Rhyme, who began writing too. ‘We’re very pleased that you have _got_ here.’ ‘I’ve made a blot, and want the blotter,’ said Miss Rhyme. ‘Papa, don’t jog my elbow so, it stops my inspiration’s flow.’ David felt his head going round, and was in a perfect agony lest he should be expected to make poetry too, which he knew he was quite incapable of doing. But by this time the whole of the family were all writing together, and making poetry at the tops of their voices without paying the least attention to him or to each other. Blobs of ink were flying about everywhere, for they all tried to dip their pens and pencils in the ink-bottle together, and they kept stabbing each other’s fingers with their nibs, and wiping off the blots on to each other’s sleeves, or on to David’s white stockings, until he thought he had never seen such a noisy and messy family. Besides, he had come to listen to a concert, which was probably going on all the time, if only he could hear it. [Illustration: David and the Rhyme family] ‘I wonder if we had better talk so much,’ he said. ‘I believe a concert is going on.’ ‘It doesn’t rhyme, you silly ass,’ said Master Rhyme. ‘We couldn’t ever let that pass,’ said his sister. ‘I went and ate a few meringues,’ shouted Mrs. Ryhme, ‘and then threw twenty boomerangs.’ ‘She threw them once, she threw them twice,’ screamed Mr. Rhyme. ‘She put the others on the ice. The cupboard wouldn’t hold them all, and so she nailed them on the wall. She put them safe there, all and sundry, intending to come back on Mondray.’ David couldn’t stand this any more, for there were much more amusing things going on. The good old families of butchers and doctors and bakers and sweeps were changing places with each other exactly as if they were being collected. Some voice said, ‘Mrs. Dose, the doctor’s wife,’ and Mrs. Dose left her seat and moved somewhere else. Then somebody said ‘Mr. Dose, the doctor,’ and another voice said, ‘I haven’t got him. . . . Mrs. Dose, the doctor’s wife. Thank you . . .’