les-Norton! He has as
much chance to escape you--as the earth has to stop whirling around. You
baby! Why, you've got all Nature on your side, plotting and scheming for
you. _His_ dice are loaded; he can't win!"

"Aunty, what _are_ you talking about! Here I am, un-unhappy, and needing,
needing, needing friendship, and you sit and talk--I don't know what."

"For, what is Charles-Norton?" continued the Boston lady, as though she
had not heard Dolly. "What is Charles-Norton? A man. Hence, a clung-to."

"A clung-to!" exclaimed Dolly, a dreadful suspicion beginning to add
itself to her greater trouble.

"Just so--a clung-to. And the direct heir of hundreds and hundreds and
thousands and thousands of clung-tos. For of the men since the beginning
of the world, Dolly, it's only the clung-tos that survived, or rather
that had babies that survived----"

"Auntie!" admonished Dolly.

"Certainly," went on Aunt Hester, seemingly misinterpreting Dolly's
interruption. "They alone had babies that survived. The babies of the
others--well, they starved, or fell into the fire, or were massacred in
the wars. So that now there _are_ no others. There are only descendants
of clung-tos, and hence clung-tos. Charles-Norton, Dolly, is a clung-to!"

"But, Auntie," protested Dolly, "he isn't any horrid such thing. And he's
gone, he's gone--and I certainly won't _force_ him to----"

"And you, Dolly," pursued Aunt Hester, unruffled, as though a professor
addressing a group of freshmen. "And you, Dolly, what are you? A woman.
Hence a cling-to."

"A cling-to!" screamed Dolly.

"Certainly. A cling-to. The end of a line of thousands and thousands of
cling-tos. For of the women since the beginning of the world, Dolly,
which survived? The cling-tos. They alone were able to live, and to have
baby-girls who survived--if cling-tos. The others, and the babies of the
others, they starved; that's all, Dolly, they starved. No mastodon steak
for them, Dolly; no nice wing-bone of ictiosaurus--they starved. So that
there are now no others--or mighty few. You, Dolly, being alive and well
and a woman, are inevitably a cling-to."

"Auntie! Auntie!" murmured Dolly, puzzled and horrified.

"To recapitulate," Aunt Hester swept on. "To recapitulate: Charles-Norton
is a clung-to; you are a cling-to. Neither of you can help him or
herself. For it is the very essence of the being of the one to hold, of
the other to be held."

"How horrible!" said Dolly, with a s