VALLEY

166 RAINBOW VALLEY"Oh, I hate crows," said Faith airily. "They areso black and sly I feel sure they're hypocrites. Theysteal little birds' eggs out of their nests, you know. Isaw one do it on our lawn last spring. Walter, whatmakes you so pale to-day?have the toothacheagain lastWalter shivered.night?"Did you"\es a raging one. I couldn't sleep a wink soI just paced up and down the floor and imagined I wasan early Christian martyr being tortured at the commandof Nero. That helped ever so much for a whileand then I got so bad I couldn't imagine anything.""Did you cry?" asked Faith anxiously."No but I lay down on the floor and groaned,"admitted Walter. "Then the girls came in and Nanput cayenne pepper in it and that made it worse andDi made me hold a swallow of cold water in my mouthand I couldn't stand it, so they called Susan. Susansaid it served me right for sitting upin the cold garretyesterday writing poetry trash. But she started up thekitchen fire and got me a hot water bottle and itstopped the toothache. As soon as I felt better I toldSusan my poetry wasn't trash and she wasn't anyjudge. And she said no, thank goodness she was notand she did not know anything about poetry exceptthat it was mostly a lot of lies. Now, you know,Faith, that isn't so. That is one reason why I likewriting poetry you can say so many things in it thatare true in poetry but wouldn't be true in prose.I