often find one ready to use, when she had an appreciative audience. This appreciative audience usually consisted only of her mother, although Fritz had begun to acquire what he called a “poetic ear,” and, in spite of his occasionally scoffing tone, he really did get great comfort from some of the poems which Amy liked the best. When it came to her original verses, however, she was less confidential with Fritz. He knew that she wrote poetry, because he had more than once come upon her when engaged in this entrancing occupation. Once or twice, too, when he had seemed to be in an appreciative mood, she had read some of her work to him. But she was willing to admit that she was once so annoyed with him for laughing at one of her particularly lofty sentiments, that since that time she had refused to let him near or see any more of her original poems. It was to punish her, then, that Fritz, whenever he saw a certain dreamy expression on her usually wide-awake face, would make some teasing allusion to her own poetic efforts.
While Julia and Amy were rather quiet, the quietest of the young people on the “Balloon,” Nora and Brenda and the two sophomores, or rather juniors, kept up a gay chattering. The scraps of conversation that floated to Mrs. Barlow’s ears often drew an involuntary smile.
“It may have been so in my day,” she said to herself, “but still I do think that the young people of the present day are more frivolous than they need be. They ought to be an improvement over their parents. Surely their advantages are greater. I wonder if Brenda will ever take life
