still balefulness
of her glance that he was slightly startled. "I might say not so," she
said. "I might, if I was speaking of what pretty eyes you say yourself
you know you have, Herbert."

It staggered him. "What--what do you mean?"

"Oh, nothin'," she replied airily.

Herbert began to be mistrustful of the solid earth: somewhere there was
a fearful threat to his equipoise. "What you talkin' about?" he said
with an effort to speak scornfully; but his sensitive voice almost
failed him.

"Oh, nothin'," said Florence. "Just about what pretty eyes you know you
have, and Patty's being pretty, too, and so you're glad she thinks
yours are pretty, the way _you_ do--and everything!"

Herbert visibly gulped. He believed that Patty had betrayed him; had
betrayed the sworn confidence of "Truth!"

"That's all I was talkin' about," Florence added. "Just about how you
knew you had such pretty eyes. Say not so, Herbert! Say not so!"

"Look here!" he said. "When'd you see Patty again between this afternoon
and when you came over here?"

"What makes you think I saw her?"

"Did you telephone her?"

"What makes you think so?"

Once more Herbert gulped. "Well, I guess you're ready to believe
anything anybody tells you," he said, with palsied bravado. "You don't
believe everything Patty Fairchild says, do you?"

"Why, Herbert! Doesn't she always tell the _truth_?"

"Her? Why, half the time," poor Herbert babbled, "you can't tell whether
she's just makin' up what she says or not. If you've gone and believed
everything that ole girl told you, you haven't got even what little
sense I used to think you had!" So base we are under strain,
sometimes--so base when our good name is threatened with the truth of
us! "I wouldn't believe anything she said," he added, in a sickish
voice, "if she told me fifty times and crossed her heart!"

"Wouldn't you if she said you _wrote down_ how pretty you knew your eyes
were, Herbert? Wouldn't you if it was on paper in your own handwriting?"

"What's this about Herbert having 'pretty eyes'?" Uncle Joe inquired,
again bringing general attention to the young cousins; and Herbert
shuddered. This fat uncle had an unpleasant reputation as a joker.

The nephew desperately fell back upon the hopeless device of attempting
to drown out his opponent's voice as she began to reply. He became
vociferous with scornful laughter, badly cracked. "Florence got mad!" he
shouted, mingling the purported informatio