u just ought to
_hear_ her," he went on, growing more and more severe. "You ought to
just come around our Newspaper Building any afternoon you please, after
school, when Henry and I are tryin' to do our work in anyway _some_
peace. Why, she just squawks and squalls and squ----"

"It must be terrible," Uncle Joseph interrupted. "What do you do all
that for, Florence, every afternoon?"

"Just for exercise," she answered dreamily; and her placidity the more
exasperated her journalist cousin.

"She does it because she thinks _she_ ought to be runnin' our own
newspaper, my and Henry's; that's why she does it! She thinks she knows
more about how to run newspapers than anybody alive; but there's one
thing she's goin' to find out; and that is, she don't get anything
_more_ to do with my and Henry's newspaper. We wouldn't have another
single one of her ole poems in it, no matter how much she offered to
pay us! Uncle Joseph, I think you ought to _tell_ her she's got no
business around my and Henry's Newspaper Building."

"But, Herbert," Aunt Fanny suggested;--"you might let Florence have a
little share in it of some sort. Then everything would be all right."

"It would?" he said. "It _woo_-wud? Oh, my goodness, Aunt Fanny, I guess
you'd like to see our newspaper just utterably ruined! Why, we wouldn't
let that girl have any more to do with it than we would some horse!"

"Oh, oh!" both Aunt Fanny and Aunt Carrie exclaimed, shocked.

"We wouldn't," Herbert insisted. "A horse would know any amount more how
to run a newspaper than she does. Soon as we got our printing-press, we
said right then that we made up our minds Florence Atwater wasn't ever
goin' to have a single thing to do with our newspaper. If you let her
have anything to do with anything she wants to run the whole thing. But
she might just as well learn to stay away from our Newspaper Building,
because after we got her out yesterday we fixed a way so's she'll never
get in _there_ again!"

Florence looked at him demurely. "Are you sure, Herbert?" she inquired.

"Just you try it!" he advised her, and he laughed tauntingly. "Just come
around to-morrow and try it; that's all I ask!"

"I cert'nly intend to," she responded with dignity. "I may have a slight
supprise for you."

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

At this, she looked full upon him, and already she had something in the
nature of a surprise for him; for so powerful was the