recklessness.

"Guess 'twouldn't make much difference to anybody particular, whether
they did or not," said this strange Florence.

Noble regarded her with astonishment; they had reached the front yard,
and paused under the trees where the darkness was mitigated by the light
from the shining windows. "Why, you oughtn't to talk that way,
Florence," he said. "Think of your mamma and papa and your--and your
Aunt Julia."

She tossed her head again. "Pooh! They'd all of 'em just say: 'Good
ribbons to bad rubbish,' I guess!" However, she seemed far from
despondent about this; in fact, she was naturally pleased with her
position as a young girl saved from the power of ruffians by a rescuer
who was her Very Ideal. "I bet if I died, they wouldn't even have a
funeral," she said cheerfully. "They'd proba'ly just leave me lay."

The curiosities of the human mind are found not in high adventure: they
are everywhere in the commonplace. Never for a moment did it strike
Noble Dill that Florence's turn to the morbid bore any resemblance to
his recent visions of his own funeral. He failed to perceive that the
two phenomena were produced out of the same laboratory jar and were
probably largely chemical, at that.

"Why, Florence!" he exclaimed. "That's a dreadful way to feel. I'm sure
your--your Aunt Julia loves you."

"Oh, well," Florence returned lightly;--"maybe she does. I don't care
whether she does or not." And now she made a deduction, the profundity
of which his condition made him unable to perceive. "It makes less
difference to anybody whether their aunts love 'em or not than whether
pretty near anybody else at all does."

"But not your Aunt _Julia_" he urged. "Your Aunt _Julia_----"

"I don't care whether she does than any other aunt I got," said
Florence. "All of 'em's just aunts, and that's all there is to it."

"But, Florence, your Aunt _Julia_----"

"She's nothin' in the world but my _aunt_," Florence insisted, and her
emphasis showed that she was trying hard to make him understand. "She's
just the same as all of 'em. I don't get anything more from her than I
do from any the rest of 'em."

Her auditor was dumfounded, but not by Florence's morals. The
cold-blooded calculation upon which her family affections seemed to be
founded, this aboriginal straightforwardness of hers, passed over him.
What shocked him was her appearing to see Julia as all of a piece with a
general lot of ordinary aunts. Helplessly, he mutte