"And she looks just as pretty in her high-necked apron as she does in her white dress," cried Elsie. "Well, well, upon my soul! What is this young lady--a paragon?" laughed Mr. Hartley, raising his eyebrows. "I'll tell you just what she is, sir," vouchsafed Tilly, confidentially. "She _is_ a rhyming dictionary, Mr. Hartley, just as I said in the first place; and I'd be willing to guarantee any time that she'd find a rhyme for any word in this or any other language within two seconds after the gun is fired. If you don't believe it, you should hear her 'unearth 'em' on the 'nasturtium.'" "Tilly, Tilly!" choked Genevieve, convulsively. "Oh, but she _said_ she couldn't find one for petunia," broke in the exact Cordelia. "You don't mean she actually writes--_poetry_!" ejaculated Mrs. Kennedy. "Writes it!--my dear lady!" (Tilly had assumed her most superior air.) "If that were all! But she talks it, day in and day out. Everything is a poem, from a letter to a scraggly nasturtium. She carries an unfailing supply of her own verses in her head, and of other people's in her pocket. If you ask for the butter at the table, you're never sure she won't strike an attitude, and chant: "'Butter, Butter, Oh, good-by! Better butter ne'er did--er--fly.'" "I think I should like to see this young person," observed Mrs. Kennedy, when the laughter at Tilly's sally had subsided. "Maybe you will sometime. She wants to go East," rejoined Tilly. "She does? What for?" "Principally to see Paul Revere's grave, I believe; incidentally to go to school." "Oh, I wish she could come East to school!" exclaimed Genevieve. "So do I--if she'd come to Sunbridge," laughed Tilly. "She takes things even more literally than Cordelia does. Sometime I'm going to tell her the moon _is_ made of green cheese, and ask her if she doesn't want a piece. Ten to one if she won't answer that she doesn't care for cheese, thank you. Oh, I wouldn't ask to go to _another_ show for a whole year if she should come to Sunbridge!" "Tilly! I don't think you ought to talk like that," remonstrated Cordelia. "One would think that Quentina was a--a vaudeville show." Tilly considered this gravely. "Why, Cordelia, do you know?--I believe that is _just_ what she is. Thank you so much for thinking of it." "Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, horrified. Genevieve frowned. "Honestly, Tilly, I don't think you are quite fair," she demurred. "Quentina isn't one bit of a show. She's sweet and dear and lovely, with just some funny ways to make her specially interesting." "All right; we'll let it go at that, then," retorted Tilly, merrily. "She's just specially interesting." "She must be," smiled Mrs. Kennedy. "In fact, I should very much like to see her, and--I don't believe Tilly means her comments to be quite so unkind as perhaps they sound," she finished with a gentle emphasis that was not lost on her young audience. CHAPTER XIII THE PRAIRIE--AND MOONLIGHT