e made her present intrusion upon his
working hours. He seemed to reciprocate.

"Listen! Didn't I and Herbert tell you to keep out o' here?" he said.
"Look at her, Herbert! She's back again!"

"You get out o' here, Florence," said Herbert, abandoning his task with
a look of pain. "How often we got to tell you we don't want you around
here when we're in our office like this?"

"For Heaven's sake!" Henry Rooter thought fit to add. "Can't you quit
runnin' up and down our office stairs once in a while, long enough for
us to get our newspaper work done? Can't you give us a little _peace_?"

The pinkiness of Florence's altering complexion was justified; she had
not been within a thousand miles of their old office for four days. With
some heat she stated this to be the fact, adding, "And I only came then
because I knew somebody ought to see that this stable isn't ruined. It's
my own uncle and aunt's stable, I guess, isn't it? Answer me that, if
you'll kindly please to do so!"

"It's my father and mother's stable," Herbert asserted. "Haven't I got a
right to say who's allowed in my own father and mother's stable?"

"You have not," the prompt Florence replied. "It's my own uncle and
aunt's stable, and I got as much right here as anybody."

"You have not!" Henry Rooter protested hotly. "This isn't either your
ole aunt and uncle's stable."

"_It isn't_?"

"No, it is not! This isn't anybody's stable. It's my and Herbert's
Newspaper Building, and I guess you haven't got the face to stand there
and claim you got a right to go in a Newspaper Building and say you got
a right there when everybody tells you to stay outside of it, I guess!"

"Oh, haven't I?"

"No, you 'haven't--I'!" Mr. Rooter maintained bitterly. "You just walk
down town and go in any Newspaper Buildings down there and tell 'em you
got a right to stay there all day long when they tell you to get out o'
there! Just try it! That's all I ask!"

Florence uttered a cry of derision. "And pray, whoever told you I was
bound to do everything you ask me to, Mister Henry Rooter?" And she
concluded by reverting to that hostile impulse, so ancient, which, in
despair of touching an antagonist effectively, reflects upon his
ancestors. "If you got anything you want to ask, you go ask your
grandmother!"

"Here!" Herbert sprang to his feet. "You try and behave like a lady!"

"Who'll make me?" she inquired.

"You got to behave like a lady as long as you're in our Newspape