yard for a little peace.

After an interval of torpor, she decided to go and see what Herbert was
doing--a move not short of desperation, on account of Herbert's new
manner toward her. For a week Herbert had steadily pursued his
scientific career, and he seemed to feel that in it he had attained a
distinction beyond the reach of Florence. What made it ridiculous for
her to hope was, of course, the fact that she was a girl, and Herbert
had explained this to her in a cold, unpleasant way; for it is true that
what is called "feminism" must be acquired by men, and is not a
condition, or taste, natural to them. At thirteen it has not been
acquired.

She found him at home. He was importantly engaged in a room in the
cellar, where were loosely stored all manner of incapacitated household
devices; two broken clothes-wringers, a crippled and rusted
sewing-machine, an ice-cream freezer in like condition, a cracked and
discarded marble mantelpiece, chipped porcelain and chinaware of all
sorts, rusted stove lids and flatirons, half a dozen dead mops and
brooms. This was the laboratory, and here, in congenial solitude,
Herbert conducted his investigations. That is to say, until Florence
arrived he was undisturbed by human intrusion, but he was not alone--far
from it! There was, in fact, almost too much life in the place.

Where the light fell clearest from the cobwebby windows at the ground
level overhead, he had placed a long deal table, once a helpmate in the
kitchen, but now a colourless antique on three legs and two starch
boxes. Upon the table were seven or eight glass jars, formerly used for
preserves and pickles, and a dozen jelly glasses (with only streaks and
bits of jelly in them now) and five or six small round pasteboard
pill-boxes. The jars were covered, some with their own patent tops,
others with shingles or bits of board, and one with a brick. The jelly
glasses stood inverted, and were inhabited; so were the preserve jars
and pickle jars; and so were the pill-boxes, which evidently contained
star boarders, for they were pierced with "breathing holes," and one of
them, standing upon its side like a little wheel, now and then moved in
a faint, ghostly manner as if about to start rolling on its own
account--whereupon Herbert glanced up and addressed it sternly, though
somewhat inconsistently: "You shut up!"

In the display of so much experimental paraphernalia, there may have
been a hint that Herbert's was a scienti