n with hoots and cacklings.
"She got mad because I and Henry played some games with Patty and
wouldn't let her play! She's tryin' to make up stories on us to get
even. She made it up! It's all made up! She----"

"No, no," Mr. Atwater interrupted. "Let Florence tell us. Florence,
what was it about Herbert's knowing he had 'pretty eyes'?"

Herbert attempted to continue the drowning out. He bawled. "She made it
_up_! It's somep'n she made up her_self_! She----"

"Herbert," said Uncle Joseph;--"if you don't keep quiet, I'll take back
the printing-press."

Herbert substituted a gulp for the continuation of his noise.

"Now, Florence," said Uncle Joseph, "tell us what you were saying about
how Herbert knows he has such 'pretty eyes'."

Then it seemed to Herbert that a miracle befell. Florence looked up,
smiling modestly. "Oh, it wasn't anything, Uncle Joseph," she said. "I
was Just trying to tease Herbert any way I could think of."

"Oh, was that all?" A hopeful light faded out of Uncle Joseph's large
and inexpressive face. "I thought perhaps you'd detected him in some
indiscretion."

Florence laughed, "I was just teasin' him. It wasn't anything, Uncle
Joseph."

Hereupon, Herbert resumed a confused breathing. Dazed, he remained
uneasy, profoundly so: and gratitude was no part of his emotion. He
well understood that in conflicts such as these Florence was never
susceptible to impulses of compassion; in fact, if there was warfare
between them, experience had taught him to be wariest when she seemed
kindest. He moved away from her, and went into another room where his
condition was one of increasing mental discomfort, though he looked over
the pictures in his great-uncle's copy of "Paradise Lost." These
illustrations, by M. Gustave Dore, failed to aid in reassuring his
troubled mind.

When Florence left the house, he impulsively accompanied her,
maintaining a nervous silence as they walked the short distance between
Uncle Joseph's front gate and her own. There, however, he spoke.

"Look here! You don't haf to go and believe everything that ole girl
told you, do you?"

"No," said Florence heartily. "I don't haf to."

"Well, look here," he urged, helpless but to repeat. "You don't haf to
believe whatever it was she went and told you, do you?"

"What was it you think she told me, Herbert?"

"All that guff--you know. Well, whatever it was you _said_ she told
you."

"I didn't," said Florence. "I didn't say she to