A Game Of Fives

[Picture: Five little girls]

FIVE little girls, of Five, Four, Three, Two, One: Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun.

Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to Six: Sitting down to lessons—no more time for tricks.

Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven: Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough for seven!

[Picture: Now tell me which you mean]

Five winsome girls, from Twenty to Sixteen: Each young man that calls, I say “Now tell me which you mean!”

Five dashing girls, the youngest Twenty-one: But, if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?

Five showy girls—but Thirty is an age When girls may be engaging, but they somehow don’t engage.

Five dressy girls, of Thirty-one or more: So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before!

* * * *

Five passé girls—Their age? Well, never mind! We jog along together, like the rest of human kind: But the quondam “careless bachelor” begins to think he knows The answer to that ancient problem “how the money goes”!