it's a little too late for that! Why, I wouldn't----'"

"Oh, say not so, Florence! Say not so!"

"'_Me_ to allow you to have one of my poems?' I'll say, 'Much less than
_that_!' I'll say, 'because even if I was wearing the oldest shoes I got
in the world I wouldn't take the trouble to----'"

Her conclusion was drowned out. "Oh, _Florence_, say not so! Say not so,
Florence! Say not so!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The hateful entreaty still murmured in her resentful ears, that night,
as she fell asleep; and she passed into the beginnings of a dream with
her lips slightly dimpling the surface of her pillow in belated
repartee. And upon waking, though it was Sunday, her first words, half
slumbrous in the silence of the morning, were, "Vile Things!" Her
faculties became more alert during the preparation of a toilet that was
to serve not only for breakfast, but with the addition of gloves, a hat,
and a blue-velvet coat, for Church and Sunday-school as well; and she
planned a hundred vengeances. That is to say, her mind did not occupy
itself with plots possible to make real; but rather it dabbled among
those fragmentary visions that love to overlap and displace one another
upon the changeful retina of the mind's eye.

In all of these pictures, wherein prevailingly she seemed to be some
sort of deathly powerful Queen of Poetry, the postures assumed by the
figures of Messrs. Atwater and Rooter (both in an extremity of rags)
were miserably suppliant. So she soothed herself a little--but not long.
Herbert, in the next pew, in church, and Henry in the next beyond that,
were perfect compositions in smugness. They were cold, contented,
aristocratic; and had an imperturbable understanding between themselves
(even then perceptible to the sensitive Florence) that she was a
nuisance now capably disposed of by their beautiful discovery of "Say
not so!" Florence's feelings were unbecoming to the place and occasion.

But at four o'clock, that afternoon, she was assuaged into a milder
condition by the arrival, according to an agreement made in
Sunday-school, of the popular Miss Patty Fairchild.

Patty was thirteen and a half; an exquisite person with gold-dusted
hair, eyes of singing blue, and an alluring air of sweet
self-consciousness. Henry Rooter and Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr.,
out gathering news, saw her entering Florence's gate, and immediately
forgot that they were reporters. They became silent, gradually moving
towar