r
Building, anyway," Herbert said ominously. "If you expect to come up
here after you been told five dozen times to keep out----"

"For Heaven's sakes!" his partner interposed. "When we goin' to get our
newspaper _work_ done? She's _your_ cousin; I should think you could get
her out!"

"Well, I'm goin' to, ain't I?" Herbert protested plaintively. "I expect
to get her out, don't I?"

"Oh, do you?" Miss Atwater inquired, with severe mockery. "Pray, how
would you expect to accomplish it, pray?"

Herbert looked desperate, but was unable to form a reply consistent with
a few new rules of etiquette and gallantry that he had begun to observe
during the past year or so. "Now, see here, Florence," he said. "You're
old enough to know when people tell you to keep out of a place, why, it
means they want you to stay away from there."

Florence remained cold to this reasoning. "Oh, Poot!" she said.

"Now, look here!" her cousin remonstrated, and went on with his
argument. "We got our newspaper work to do, and you ought to have sense
enough to know newspaper work like this newspaper work we got on _our_
hands here isn't--well, it ain't any child's play."

His partner appeared to approve of the expression, for he nodded
severely and then used it himself. "No, you _bet_ it isn't any child's
play!" he said.

"No, sir," Herbert continued. "This newspaper work we got on our hands
here isn't any child's play."

"No, sir," Henry Rooter again agreed. "Newspaper work like this isn't
any child's play at _all_!"

"It isn't any child's play, Florence," said Herbert. "It ain't any
child's play at all, Florence. If it was just child's play or something
like that, why, it wouldn't matter so much your always pokin' up here,
and----"

"Well," his partner interrupted judicially;--"we wouldn't want her
around, even if it _was_ child's play."

"No, we wouldn't; that's so," Herbert agreed. "We wouldn't want you
around, anyhow, Florence." Here his tone became more plaintive. "So, for
mercy's sakes can't you go on home and give us a little rest? What you
want, anyhow?"

"Well, I guess it's about time you was askin' me that," she said, not
unreasonably. "If you'd asked me that in the first place, instead of
actin' like you'd never been taught anything, and was only fit to
associate with hoodlums, perhaps my time is of _some_ value, myself!"

Here the lack of rhetorical cohesion was largely counteracted by the
strong expressiveness of her t