“Hang it all!” she cried, with a touch of her old spirit, “Here goes!”

And she plunged her pen neck deep in the ink. To her enormous surprise, there was no explosion. She drew the nib out. It was wet, but not dripping. She wrote. The words were a little long in coming, but come they did. Ah! but did they make sense? she wondered, a panic coming over her lest the pen might have been at some of its involuntary pranks again. She read,

And then I came to a field where the springing grass

Was dulled by the hanging cups of fritillaries,

Sullen and foreign-looking, the snaky flower,

Scarfed in dull purple, like Egyptian girls⁠—