"If you two are having a fight, I'll keep out," she said. "Go and help yourself, Magnus." And this he would have done from Cherry's plate, if that young damsel had not laid fast hold of her property; so he took Violet's instead.
But it was a delightful dinner: what though the courses were few and simple, and the trained waiters only the three girls. Then the two elders carried Magnus off to the porch for another talk while the girls cleared the table, and then they also came out, bringing the banjo.
"Now for the summer girl!" they cried, and Magnus left his place for one on the steps at Cherry's feet.
"_She_ has been called 'a summer girl,'" he said, "and I want to see how she likes her portrait. This lay is named: 'The Idle of the Summer Girl.'"
"Dear me, child," said Mrs. Kindred, "do they waste your time out there writing poetry?"
"They don't waste any of my time they get hold of, you'd better believe," said Magnus. "I should forget what time means if I didn't filch a little for my own use, now and then. This is: 'The Idle of the Summer Girl. By Two Who Idled With Her,' Cadet Rig being the other party. All the weak lines are his. There's another touching ditty on the same theme, much sung in camp at the time of full moon, but it takes two to do it justice, as you can judge from a specimen verse."
Magnus twanged the banjo lugubriously, and began his song, changing voice for the supposed two singers, and giving the words of comment in his own:
_1st Cadet_: "O the Summer Girl has come to town."
_1st Cadet_: "In a sky-scraper hat, and a trail--ing gown."
_3d Cadet_: "Steady on that, you haven't got any."
"Can't," said Magnus; "it exhausts my feelings. Too spoony."
"Is that the way you talk to each other?" said Violet.
"And does nobody take up the cudgels for the poor summer girl?" inquired Mr. Erskine.
"Oh, I'll take them up, if you wish," said Magnus. "My Idle does her justice," and he dashed off into a tune crazy enough for a patchwork quilt:
"I sing the song of the Summer Girl; She feels for the lonely cadet. Her chocolate creams, in my very dreams I seem to taste them yet."
("N. B.--The last ones weren't fresh. Bought at the station probably.")
"The peaches she threw at my head at drill, The apples she dropped at my feet; The little pound cake that she made me take, First biting, to make it sweet."