“Why will we laugh, Ellie dear?” asked Robin, innocently. “Because we will be so glad that the little sick boy who composed it grew up strong and well,” I answered. And so I have written “the poem” here, that I may be able to fulfil my part of the prophecy. But now I want to talk a little of Geoffrey, for we are really anxious about him. There is no doubt the boy is very much changed. Yesterday afternoon he dropped in to see Ernie nearly an hour before school was out. “Why, Geof,” I said, “what are you doing here so early? It is scarcely two o’clock. Ernie isn’t home yet. Did you have a half-holiday?” Geoffrey looked confused. “’Guess your clocks are wrong,” he answered. “Can you give a fellow a bit of lunch, Elizabeth?” “I thought you got your lunch at school,” I returned. “But, of course,—if you are hungry. Rose has just finished baking. Isn’t that luck?” And I ran down to the kitchen, where a glass of milk, a couple of bananas, and a plate of hot ginger-bread were quickly collected. Geof ate in silence, crumbling his ginger-bread over the tray cloth on the library table. “Geoffrey!” I remonstrated. “That’s too good to waste. What you don’t want I am going to take up to Robin.” “All right,” answered Geof, pushing his plate indifferently toward me. “How is the kid?” Then he broke into a short chuckle. “I say, Elizabeth,” he remarked, “there’s a trained bear out at the zoo that would tickle Bobs most to death. I’ve been feeding it peanuts all the morning. It’s gentle as a kitten, the keeper says,—jolly good sort he seems, too,—and——” “Geoffrey!” I accused, in sudden shocked enlightenment. “You have been playing hookey.” Geof flushed angrily, and bit his lip. “Well, and if I have?” he blustered. “It’s nobody’s business but my own, I suppose!” “It certainly is somebody’s business,” I answered, decidedly. “And you ought to be ashamed of yourself. After all the trouble you were in last term over hockey and athletics, I should think you would have learned that such foolishness doesn’t pay.” Geof sprang to his feet. “Now see here, Elizabeth,” he said, “I’m not going to be jawed by you. I get enough of that sort of talk at home. If you can’t be pleasant, I’ll go somewhere else. There are plenty of other places where a chap can spend the afternoon, and Hollister and Sam Jacobs are glad enough to show ’em to me.” “Very well, Geoffrey,” I answered. “If you choose to treat the matter so! Only, I warn you frankly, in that case I shall go directly upstairs and tell mother,—I shan’t feel that I have any choice,—and she will tell Uncle George, I know.” Geof turned on me incredulously. “You sneak!” he cried. “If that doesn’t sound exactly like Meta!”