"I did think of it," replied Honor. "I was going to make a nice little series of acrostics on all of your names. I did one about Chatty, and showed it to Janie; but she said that it was far too slangy, and Vivian would never pass it, so I tore it up, and felt too squashed to go on."
"Oh! what was it?" exclaimed the girls. "Can't you remember it?"
"C hatty Burns is just a ripper! H air's the colour of a kipper; A nd her face so round and red is T hat you'd think her cheeks were cherries. T hough we often call her 'Fatty', Y ou depend we're nuts on Chatty."
"What a shame!" cried the indignant original of the acrostic. "My hair's auburn, it's not the colour of a kipper!"
"We certainly call you 'Fatty', though," laughed Lettice. "I think the poem is lovely!"
"It's a good thing you tore it up, all the same," said Ruth. "Vivian would have been simply horrified. We have a crusade against slang at Chessington, and 'ripper' is one of the words absolutely vetoed. We only say 'jolly' by stealth."
"I'm sure 'jolly' ought to be allowable. I saw it in a book in the library: 'as jolly as a sandboy', was the expression."
"What is a sandboy?" asked Lettice. "The phrase is always quoted as the high-water mark of bliss."
"I've never been able to find out," said Ruth. "I suppose it's either one of those wretched little urchins who dive for pennies, or an ordinary donkey boy. But this is what Miss Farrar calls 'a digression from the subject'. I want to hear if Honor has written any more acrostics."
"I made one on Lillie Harper," replied Honor. "It had an illustration, too, done very badly, in just a few crooked strokes, like little children draw:
"L illie is a dab at cricket; I depict her at the wicket. L ook how tight her bat she's grasping, L eaving all the fielders gasping! I have done this sketch in woggles, E specially to show her goggles.
"It ought to have the picture to really explain it," said Honor regretfully; "I'm sorry now that I tore it up. I began a piece on the exams. too; it was a parody of 'The boy stood on the burning deck', but I can't get beyond the first verse:
"The girl sat at the hard, bare desk, Whence all but she had fled; Her fingers they were stained with ink, And aching was her head."