"What's the matter? What's up?" said their cousin Peggy, glancing quickly from one to the other. "Secrets? Now that's not a bit fair, to have secrets from me. I've got oceans of things to talk about; but, first of all, I met the postman just as I was coming in, and he gave me this for you, Mill. This huge envelope, and addressed in your own handwriting. It's awfully mysterious, and I am just about wild with curiosity. You must tell me what it is." A blank look came over Millicent's face, but she took the letter and said nothing. "Oh, come, now, aren't you going to tell us?" continued Peggy. "I'll never tell." "Do, Millicent!" urged Joanna. "If it's--if it has anything to do with what we were talking about when Peggy came in, you may as well tell. I want Peggy to know about it, and I'm sure she would like to hear them too." "Hear them? What in the world is it? Oh, I know! I know!" cried Peggy: "you have been writing and sending things to the magazines! Oh, Milly, _do_ show me!" Millicent looked at her long and doubtfully. "Will you never, never tell?" she asked at last. "Never, on my oath!" "I believe I will tell you, then, for I do think it is the meanest thing in those editors, and I just want to see what they have said this time, whether they have answered my note." She opened the envelope and drew forth several papers, one of which appeared to be a printed one. "No, they haven't. They have just sent the same old slip they always do, thanking me ever so much for sending the poems, and it may not be because they are not good that they send them back, but because they have so many things on hand. Oh dear, I think they might have answered it!" "What did you say in your note?" asked Peggy. "Oh, I told them that I thought these poems were perfectly suited to their magazine, and so they are. And I asked them to tell me of a good place to send them if they couldn't take them. I do think the man might have had the politeness to answer my note." "Well, do let us hear them," put in Peggy, briskly. "I am wild to know what they are like." Millicent again looked at her doubtfully. But in a moment she took a more upright position on the sofa, and holding her pretty head a little to one side, she remarked: "This is a little poem on something which is very familiar to us, but I like the idea of idealizing familiar things." Then she paused. "Oh, I don't believe I can read it, after all," she said, in an embarrassed way; "it is very hard to read your own productions." "Then let me read it," cried Peggy, attempting to seize the paper. "No, no! I would rather do it myself than have you," said Millicent, and presently she coughed hesitatingly and began. "It is about the mosquito, and is called "LINES TO A MOSQUITO. "When day is done, and darkness comes shadowing down the way, And Night with her rustling winglets blots out the garish day, We hear the song of an insect, singing its musical lay.