“They look a bit half-baked,” Selia remarked to Mr. Withersq and drew a frown from the teacher. “Write me now a good poem to the bakers horse” shouted he from his littel platform tossing slates to Selia and Mr. Withersq and all present began to scribble and squeek on the slates at which the good teacher pluckt hairs from his beard and smiled in a nodding sort of way like a grandma. Selia and Harold gave a sorry look at each other not knowing how to put bakers horses into poetry and thinking up till then that poetry was all rich like creamy cakes with love and nobel roman deaths for the schools they had went to taught nothing else. So they dotted down a few words hoping to pass in the crush. Selia wrote:— Oh horse of the daily baker What brings bread, I prefer your litel rolls With hot butter. Have you your blinkers Because of a secret Or to keep the oats ears from your wet eyes When you munch in your nosebag? Why is that Oh horse? and left it at that. The other pupils were scratching away on every side and she began to have douts and very likely as not she ought to have gone to a lower class but the teacher had guest by the air of her hat that she knew more than she did. “Isn’t this a go?” whispered Mr. Withersq to her. “I cant half write poems, Selia, you just wait,” for he guest he had put his foot on the road to success. “How perfect dear Harold” she whispred a bit madly for she had made a mess of it herself. “You can indeed shine before the duchesses and perhaps that will do the trick. You wont forget me then will you, dear Harold?” For she was if anything even keener than him to get on, and did not want to be left behind, for though she knew how the millions helpt she guest there was more to it than that. “Bring up your slates my poor clods of pupils,” cried the teacher looking vext. Two girls in gowns of patterns like chair covers swooned off, which was very successful and nicely done. “That’s the emoshun,” a snaky-faced chap whispered behind his hand to Selia. Another chap who might have been own brother to the nawseous Mr. Boon crackt his slate on his desk and scrumbled the bits on the floor. “Sir,” he cried, “my poem is too fair for the eyes of the herd.” The teacher pluckt his beard harder greatly taken by this swanky touch, and was going to give the prize to that chap until of a sudden Mr. Withersq sprang airily forward crying in a pulpit voice: “Read mine!” He had wrote:— Horse that never gallops, Mere bakers horse, half horse And half mare, You belong to a baker, You draw a cart with bread Down the blank streets. Growing pale with sorrow Why not kick up your heels? Springing on your back I will tame you, We will scamper to the prairies And skin some bears. That was the poem Mr. Withersq had wrote, he thought of it because of some cinemas he used to see. The teacher seazed his head between his hands and beat it madly on his desk and shreiked very loud.