"Yesterday evening," said Herbert. "Now, f'r instance, you take a common
lightning-bug----"

"Did she lose it, then?"

"Lose what?"

"Her earring."

"I d' know," said Herbert. "You take the common lightning-bug or, as
it's called in some countries, the firefly----"

He continued, quoting and misquoting the entomological authority of the
recent "Sunday Supplement"; but his friend on the other side of the
fence was inattentive to the lecture. Noble's mind was occupied with a
wonder; he had realized, though dimly, that here was he, trying to make
starry Julia the subject of a conversation with a person who had the
dear privilege of being closely related to her--and preferred to talk
about bugs.

Herbert talked at considerable length about lightning-bugs, but as his
voice happened rather precociously to be already in a state of
adolescent change, the sound was not soothing; yet Noble lingered.
Nephews were queer, but this one was Julia's, and he finally mentioned
her again, as incidental to lightning-bugs; whereupon the mere hearer of
sounds became instantly a listener to words.

"Well, and then I says," Herbert continued;--"I says: 'It's phosphorus,
Aunt Julia.' I guess there's hardly anybody in the world doesn't know
more than Aunt Julia, except about dresses and parasols and every other
useless thing under the sun. She says: 'My! I always thought it was
sulphur!' Said nobody ever _told_ her it wasn't sulphur! I asked her: I
said: 'You mean to sit there and tell me you don't know the difference?'
And she says: 'I don't care one way or the other,' she says. She said
she just as soon a lightning-bug made his light with sulphur as with
phosphorus; it didn't make any difference to her, she says, and they
could go ahead and make their light any way they wanted, _she_ wouldn't
interfere! I had a whole hatful of 'em, and she told me not to take 'em
into their house, because grandpa hates insecks as much as he does
animals and violets, and she said they never owned a microscope or a
magnifying-glass in their lives, and wouldn't let me hunt for one. All
in the world she knows is how to sit on the front porch and say: 'Oh
you don't mean _that!_' to somebody like Newland Sanders or that ole
widower!"

"When?" Noble asked impulsively. "When did she say that?"

"Oh, I d' know," said Herbert. "I expect she proba'ly says it to
somebody or other about every evening there is."

"She does?"

"Florence says so," Herbert i