"I told you!--she _is_ a rhyming dictionary," whispered Tilly, in an aside that nearly convulsed the two girls that heard her. Inside the house they all met "mother." Mother, in spite of her lame foot, was a very forceful personality. She was bright and cheery, too, and she made the girls feel welcome and at home immediately. "It's so good of you to come!" she exclaimed. "Poor Quentina has been shut up with me for weeks. But I'm better, now--lots better; and I shall soon be about again." "I think it was very good of you to let us come," returned Genevieve, politely, "specially when you aren't well yourself. But we'll try not to make you any more trouble than we can't help." "Trouble, dear child! I reckon we don't call _you_ trouble," declared the minister's wife, fervently, "after all your kindness to my daughter, Alice." Genevieve raised a protesting hand, but Mrs. Jones went on smilingly. "And then that letter to Quentina--she's never ceased to talk and dream of the girls who sent it to her." "Oh, I did like it so much--indeed I did," chimed in Quentina. "Why, Genevieve, I made a poem on it--a lovely poem just like Tennyson's 'Margaret,' you know; only I put in 'Hexagons,' and changed the words to fit, of course." Tilly nudged Elsie violently, and Elsie choked a spasmodic giggle into a cough; but Quentina unhesitatingly went on. "It began: "'O sweet pale Hexagons, O rare pale Hexagons, What lit your eyes with tearful power, Like moonlight on a falling shower? Why sent you, loves, so full and free, Your letter sweet to little me?' That's just the first, you know," smiled Quentina, engagingly, "and of course when I wrote it I didn't know you weren't really 'pale,' at all; but then, we can just call that part poetic license." Genevieve laughed frankly. Tilly giggled. Cordelia looked nervously from them to Quentina. "I'm sure, that--that's very pretty," she faltered. Mrs. Jones smiled. "I'm afraid, for a little, you won't know just what to make of Quentina," she explained laughingly. "We're used to her turning everything into jingles, but strangers are not." "Oh, mother, I don't," cried Quentina, reproachfully. "There's heaps and heaps of things that I never wrote a line of poetry about. But how could I help it?--that beautiful letter, and the Happy Hexagons, and all! It just wrote itself. I sent it East, too, to a magazine, two or three times--but they didn't put it in," she added, as an afterthought. "Why, what a shame!" murmured Tilly. Genevieve looked up quickly. Tilly was wearing her most innocent, most angelic expression, but Genevieve knew very well the naughtiness behind it. Quentina, however, accepted it as pure gold. "Yes, wasn't it?" she rejoined cheerfully. "I felt right bad, particularly as I was going to send you all a copy when it was published."