"You see, Loona Bimberton had a
Coronation Ode accepted by the NEW INFANCY, a paper that has been
started with the idea of making the NEW AGE seem elderly and
hidebound. 'So clever of you, dear Loona,' the Packletide
remarked when she had read it; 'of course, anyone could write a
Coronation Ode, but no one else would have thought of doing it.'
Loona protested that these things were extremely difficult to do,
and gave us to understand that they were more or less the province
of a gifted few. Now the Packletide has been rather decent to me
in many ways, a sort of financial ambulance, you know, that
carries you off the field when you're hard hit, which is a
frequent occurrence with me, and I've no use whatever for Loona
Bimberton, so I chipped in and said I could turn out that sort of
stuff by the square yard if I gave my mind to it. Loona said I
couldn't, and we got bets on, and between you and me I think the
money's fairly safe. Of course, one of the conditions of the
wager is that the thing has to be published in something or other,
local newspapers barred; but Mrs. Packletide has endeared herself
by many little acts of thoughtfulness to the editor of the SMOKY
CHIMNEY, so if I can hammer out anything at all approaching the
level of the usual Ode output we ought to be all right.
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