Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/205



was much more annoyed with Fritz than the girls had realized that day at Marblehead. She had not imagined that a friend could be so unfriendly. For she knew that Fritz was well aware that her verse-writing  was one of her cherished secrets. She had hardly ever read any of her own poems to her mother, and it was  only by chance that Fritz had learned that she was in  the habit of writing verse. It was indeed wholly by chance that he had discovered her secret. When they were down on the rocks, one shady afternoon, while Fritz was busy reading the “Life of Washington,” Amy scribbled  so eagerly, and wrinkled her eyebrows so fiercely,  as she nibbled at her pencil, that Fritz could not desist  asking,—

“What in the world is it, Amy? You look as if you were trying to solve the hardest kind of a riddle.”

“Well, it’s harder than a riddle; it’s a rhyme. I’m trying to make two ideas rhyme—that is, two lines, and they won’t.”

Fritz almost let his book fall into the little pool of water beside the rock on which he was sitting.

“Why, Amy, is that what you are writing—rhymes, verses; not poetry is it?”