THE NORTH END DAILY ORIOLEAtwater & Rooter Owners & PropreitorsSUBSCRIBE NOW 25 Cents Per YearSubscriptions shloud be brought to the East etrance of Atwater& Rooter Newspaper Building every afternoon 4.30 to 6. 25 cents.========================================NEWS OF THE CITY_______The Candidates for mayor at the election are Mr P. N. Gordonand John T Milo. The contest is very great between these candi-dates.Holcombs chickens get in MR. Joseph Atwater's yard a god deallately. He says chickens are out of place in a city of this size.Minnie the cook of Mr. F. L. Smith's residisence goes downtownevery Thrusday afts about three her regular day for it.A new ditch is being dug accross the MR. Henry D. Vance backyrad.;Tis about dug but nobody is working there now. PattyFairchild received the highest mark in declamation of the 7A atSumner School last Friday.Balf's grorcey wagon ran over a cat of the Mr. Rayfort family.Geo. the driver of the wagom stated he had not but was willing totake it away and burg it somewheres Geo. stated regret and claimednothing but an accident which could not be helped and not his teamthat did the damage.MissColfield teacher of the 7A atSumner School was reproted onthe sink list. We hope she will soon be well.There were several deaths in the city this week.Mr. Fairchild father of Patty Fairchild was on the sick list severaldays and did not go to his office but is out now.Been Kriso the cHauffeur of the Mr. R. G. Atwater family washestheir car on Monday. In using the hose he turned water over thefence accidently and hit Lonnie the washWOman in back of MRS.Bruffs who called him some low names. Ben told her if he had havebeen a man he wrould strike her but soon the distrubance was at anend. There is a good deal more of other news which will be printedin our next NO.Advertisements & Poems20 Cents Each Up._______JOSEPH K. ATWATER & CO.127 South Iowa St,Steam Pumps._______THE OrganstepBY Florence AtwaterThe Organstep was seated at his organ in aIn some beautifil words of vagle and brirBut he was a gReat organstep and alwaysWhen the soil is wearyAnd the mind is drearqI would play music like a vast amenThe way it sounds in a church of newSubscribe NOW 25 cents Adv & Poetry20 cents up. Atwater & Rooter NewsPaper Building 25 cents per YEAR
THE NORTH END DAILY ORIOLEAtwater & Rooter Owners & PropreitorsSUBSCRIBE NOW 25 Cents Per YearSubscriptions shloud be brought to the East etrance of Atwater& Rooter Newspaper Building every afternoon 4.30 to 6. 25 cents.========================================
NEWS OF THE CITY_______
The Candidates for mayor at the election are Mr P. N. Gordonand John T Milo. The contest is very great between these candi-dates.Holcombs chickens get in MR. Joseph Atwater's yard a god deallately. He says chickens are out of place in a city of this size.Minnie the cook of Mr. F. L. Smith's residisence goes downtownevery Thrusday afts about three her regular day for it.A new ditch is being dug accross the MR. Henry D. Vance backyrad.;Tis about dug but nobody is working there now. PattyFairchild received the highest mark in declamation of the 7A atSumner School last Friday.Balf's grorcey wagon ran over a cat of the Mr. Rayfort family.Geo. the driver of the wagom stated he had not but was willing totake it away and burg it somewheres Geo. stated regret and claimednothing but an accident which could not be helped and not his teamthat did the damage.MissColfield teacher of the 7A atSumner School was reproted onthe sink list. We hope she will soon be well.There were several deaths in the city this week.Mr. Fairchild father of Patty Fairchild was on the sick list severaldays and did not go to his office but is out now.Been Kriso the cHauffeur of the Mr. R. G. Atwater family washestheir car on Monday. In using the hose he turned water over thefence accidently and hit Lonnie the washWOman in back of MRS.Bruffs who called him some low names. Ben told her if he had havebeen a man he wrould strike her but soon the distrubance was at anend. There is a good deal more of other news which will be printedin our next NO.
Advertisements & Poems20 Cents Each Up._______
JOSEPH K. ATWATER & CO.127 South Iowa St,Steam Pumps._______
THE OrganstepBY Florence AtwaterThe Organstep was seated at his organ in aIn some beautifil words of vagle and brirBut he was a gReat organstep and alwaysWhen the soil is wearyAnd the mind is drearqI would play music like a vast amenThe way it sounds in a church of newSubscribe NOW 25 cents Adv & Poetry20 cents up. Atwater & Rooter NewsPaper Building 25 cents per YEAR
Such was the first issue, complete, ofThe North End Daily Oriole. What had happened to thepoem was due partly to Atwater & Rooter's natural lack of experience in a new and exacting trade; partly to their enviable unconsciousness of any necessity for proof-reading; and somewhat to their haste in getting through the final and least interesting stage of their undertaking; for of course so far as the printers were concerned, the poem was mere hack work anti-climax.
And as they later declared, under fire, anybody that could make out more than three words in five of Florence's ole handwriting was welcome to do it. Besides, what did it matter if a little bit was left out at the end of one or two of the lines? They couldn't be expected to run the lines out over their margin, could they? And they never knew anything crazier than makin' all this fuss, because: Well, what if some of it wasn't printed just exactly right, who in the world was goin' to notice it, and what was the difference of just a few words different in that ole poem, anyhow?
For by the time these explanations (so to call them) took place, Florence was indeed makin' a fuss. Her emotion, at first, had been happily stimulated at sight of "BY Florence Atwater." A singular tenderness had risen in her—a tremulous sense as ofsomething almost sacred coming at last into its own; and she hurried to distribute, gratis, among relatives and friends, several copies of theOriole, paying for them, too (though not without injurious argument), at the rate of two cents a copy. But upon returning to her own home, she became calm enough (for a moment or so) to look over the poem with attention to details. She returned hastily to the Newspaper Building, but would have been wiser to remain away, since all subscribers had received their copies by the time she got there; and under the circumstances little reparation was practicable.
She ended her oration—or professed to end it—by declaring that she would never have another poem in their ole vile newspaper as long as she lived.
"You're right about that!" Henry Rooter agreed heartily. "We wouldn'tletanother one in it. Not for fifty dollars! Just look at all the trouble we took, moiling and toiling, to get your ole poem printed as nice as we could, so it wouldn't ruin our newspaper, and then you come over here and go on like this, and all this and that, why, I wouldn't go through it again for ahunderddollars! We're makin' good money anyhow, with our newspaper, Florence Atwater.You needn't think we depend onyoufor our living!"
"That's so," his partner declared. "We knew you wouldn't be satisfied, anyway, Florence. Didn't we, Henry?"
"I should say we did!"
"Yes, sir!" said Herbert. "Right when we were havin' the worst time tryin' to print it and make out some o' the words, I said right then we were just throwing away our time. I said, 'What's the use? That ole girl's bound to raise Cain anyhow, so what's the use wastin' a whole lot of our good time and brains like this, just to suither? Whatever we do, she's certain to come over and insult us.' Isn't that what I said, Henry?"
"Yes, it is; and I said then you were right, and youareright!"
"Cert'nly I am," said Herbert. "Didn't I tell you she'd be just the way some the family say she is? A good many of 'em say she'd find fault with the undertaker at her own funeral. That's just exactly what I said!"
"Oh, you did?" Florence burlesqued a polite interest. "Howvirry considerate of you! Then, perhaps you'll try to be a gentleman enough for onesimple moment to allow me to tell you my last remarks on this subject. I've said enough——"
"Oh,haveyou?" Herbert interrupted with violent sarcasm. "Oh, no! Say not so! Florence, say not so!"
At this, Henry Rooter loudly shouted with applausive hilarity; whereupon Herbert, rather surprised at his own effectiveness, naturally repeated his waggery.
"Say not so, Florence! Say not so! Say not so!"
"I'll tell you one thing!" his lady cousin cried, thoroughly infuriated. "I wish to make just one last simple remark that I would care to soil myself with inyourrespects, Mister Herbert Illingsworth Atwater and Mister Henry Rooter!"
"Oh, say not so, Florence!" they both entreated. "Say not so! Say not so!"
"I'll just simply state the simple truth," Florence announced. "In the first place, you're goin' to live to see the day when you'll come and beg me on your bented knees to have me put poems or anything I want to in your ole newspaper, but I'll justlaughat you! 'Indeed?' I'll say! 'So you come beggin' aroundme, do you? Ha, ha!' I'll say! 'I guessit's a little too late for that! Why, I wouldn't——'"
"Oh, say not so, Florence! Say not so!"
"'Meto allow you to have one of my poems?' I'll say, 'Much less thanthat!' I'll say, 'because even if I was wearing the oldest shoes I got in the world I wouldn't take the trouble to——'"
Her conclusion was drowned out. "Oh,Florence, say not so! Say not so, Florence! Say not so!"
The hateful entreaty still murmured in her resentful ears, that night, as she fell asleep; and she passed into the beginnings of a dream with her lips slightly dimpling the surface of her pillow in belated repartee. And upon waking, though it was Sunday, her first words, half slumbrous in the silence of the morning, were, "Vile Things!" Her faculties became more alert during the preparation of a toilet that was to serve not only for breakfast, but with the addition of gloves, a hat, and a blue-velvet coat, for Church and Sunday-school as well; and she planned a hundred vengeances. That is to say, her mind did not occupy itself with plots possible to make real; but rather it dabbled among those fragmentary visions that love to overlap and displace one another upon the changeful retina of the mind's eye.
In all of these pictures, wherein prevailingly she seemed to be some sort of deathly powerful Queen of Poetry, the postures assumed by the figures ofMessrs. Atwater and Rooter (both in an extremity of rags) were miserably suppliant. So she soothed herself a little—but not long. Herbert, in the next pew, in church, and Henry in the next beyond that, were perfect compositions in smugness. They were cold, contented, aristocratic; and had an imperturbable understanding between themselves (even then perceptible to the sensitive Florence) that she was a nuisance now capably disposed of by their beautiful discovery of "Say not so!" Florence's feelings were unbecoming to the place and occasion.
But at four o'clock, that afternoon, she was assuaged into a milder condition by the arrival, according to an agreement made in Sunday-school, of the popular Miss Patty Fairchild.
Patty was thirteen and a half; an exquisite person with gold-dusted hair, eyes of singing blue, and an alluring air of sweet self-consciousness. Henry Rooter and Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr., out gathering news, saw her entering Florence's gate, and immediately forgot that they were reporters. They became silent, gradually moving toward the house of their newspaper's sole poetess.
Florence and Patty occupied themselves indoors for half an hour; then went out in the yard to study amole's tunnel that had interested Florence recently. They followed it across the lawn at the south side of the house, discussing the habits of moles and other matters of zoölogy; and finally lost the track near the fence, which was here the "side fence" and higher than their heads. Patty looked through a knot-hole to see if the tunnel was visible in the next yard, but, without reporting upon her observations, she turned, as if carelessly, and leaned back against the fence, covering the knot-hole.
"Florence," she said, in a tone softer than she had been using heretofore;—"Florence, do you know what I think?"
"No. Could you see any more tracks over there?"
"Florence," said Patty;—"I was just going to tell you something, only maybe I better not."
"Why not?" Florence inquired. "Go on and tell me."
"No," said Patty gently. "You might think it was silly."
"No, I won't."
"Yes, youmight."
"I promise I won't."
"Well, then—oh, Florence I'msureyou'll think it's silly!"
"IpromisedI wouldn't."
"Well—I don't think I better say it."
"Go on," Florence urged. "Patty, yougotto."
"Well, then, if I got to," said Patty. "What I was going to say, Florence: Don't you think your cousin Herbert and Henry Rooter have got the nicest eyes of any boy in town?"
"Who?" Florence was astounded.
"I do," Patty said in her charming voice. "I think Herbert and Henry've got the nicest eyes of any boy in town."
"You do?" Florence cried incredulously.
"Yes, I really do, Florence. I think Herbert Atwater and Henry Rooter have got the nicest eyes of any boy in town."
"Well, I never heard anything likethisbefore!" Florence declared.
"Butdon'tyou think they've got the nicest eyes of any boy in town?" Patty insisted, appealingly.
"I think," said Florence, "their eyes are just horrable!"
"What?"
"Herbert'seyes," continued Florence, ardently, "are the very worst lookin' ole squinty eyes I ever saw, and that nasty little HenryRooter'seyes——"
But Patty had suddenly become fidgety; she hurried away from the fence. "Come over here, Florence," she said. "Let's go over to the other side of the yard and talk."
It was time for her to take some such action. Messrs. Atwater and Rooter, seated quietly together upon a box on the other side of the fence (though with their backs to the knot-hole), were beginning to show signs of inward disturbance. Already flushed with the unexpected ineffabilities overheard, their complexions had grown even pinker upon Florence's open-hearted expressions of opinion. Slowly they turned their heads to look at the fence, upon the other side of which stood the maligner of their eyes. Not that they cared whatthatole girl thought—but she oughtn't to be allowed to go around talking like this and perhaps prejudicing everybody that had a kind word to say for them.
"Come on over here, Florence," called Patty huskily, from the other side of the yard. "Let's talk over here."
Florence was puzzled, but consented. "What you want to talk over here for?" she asked as she came near her friend.
"Oh, I don't know," said Patty. "Let's go out in the front yard."
She led the way round the house, and a moment later uttered a cry of surprise as the firm of Atwater & Rooter, passing along the pavement, hesitated at the gate. Their celebrated eyes showed doubt for a moment, then a brazenness: Herbert and Henry decided to come in.
"Isn't this the funniest thing?" cried Patty. "After what I just said awhile ago—youknow, Florence. Don't you dare to tell 'em!"
"I cert'nly won't!" her hostess promised, and, turning inhospitably to the two callers, "What on earth you want around here?" she inquired.
Herbert chivalrously took upon himself the duty of response. "Look here; this is my own aunt and uncle's yard, isn't it? I guess if I want to come in it I got a perfect right to."
"I should say so," his partner said warmly.
"Why, of course!" the cordial Patty agreed. "We can play some nice Sunday games, or something. Let's sit on the porch steps and think what to do."
"Ijust as soon," said Henry Rooter. "Igot nothin' p'ticular to do."
"I haven't either," said Herbert.
Thereupon, Patty sat between them on the steps.
"This isper-fecklygrand!" she cried. "Come on, Florence, aren't you going to sit down with all the rest of us?"
"Well, pray kindly excuseme!" said Miss Atwater; and she added that she would neither sit on the same steps with Herbert Atwater and Henry Rooter, nor, even if they entreated her with accompanying genuflections, would she have anything else whatever to do with them. She concluded with a reference to the oldest pair of shoes she might ever come to possess; and withdrew to the railing of the veranda at a point farthest from the steps; and, seated there, swinging one foot rhythmically, she sang hymns in a tone at once plaintive and inimical.
It was not lost upon her, however, that her withdrawal had little effect upon her guests. They chattered gaily, and Patty devised, or remembered, harmless little games that could be played by a few people as well as by many; and the three participants were so congenial and noisy and made so merry, that before long Florence was unable to avoid the impressionthat whether she liked it or not she was giving quite a party.
At times the noted eyes of Atwater & Rooter were gentled o'er with the soft cast of enchantment, especially when Patty felt called upon to reprove the two with little coquetries of slaps and pushes. Noted for her sprightliness, she was never sprightlier; her pretty laughter tooted continuously, and the gentlemen accompanied it with doting sounds so repulsive to Florence that without being actively conscious of what she did, she embodied the phrase, "perfeckly sickening," in the hymn she was crooning, and repeated it over and over to the air of "Rock of Ages."
"Now I tell you what let's play," the versatile Patty proposed, after exhausting the pleasures of "Geography," "Ghosts" and other tests of intellect. "Let's play 'Truth.' We'll each take a piece o' paper and a pencil, and then each of us asks the other one some question, and we haf to write down the answer and sign your name and fold it up so nobody can see it except the one that asked the question, and we haf to keep it a secret and never tell as long as we live."
"All right," said Henry Rooter. "I'll be the one to ask you a question, Patty."
"No," Herbert said promptly. "I ought to be the one to ask Patty."
"Why ought you?" Henry demanded. "Why ought you?"
"Listen!" Patty cried, "Iknow the way we'll do. I'll ask each of you a question—we haf to whisper it—and each one of you'll ask me one, and then we'll write it. That'll be simply grand!" She clapped her hands; then checked herself. "Oh, I guess we can't either. We haven't got any paper and pencils unless——" Here she seemed to recall her hostess. "Oh, Florrie, dear! Run in the house and get us some paper and pencils."
Florence gave no sign other than to increase the volume of her voice as she sang: "Perf'ly sick'ning, clef' for me, let meperf'ly sick-kin-ning!"
"We got plenty," said Herbert; whereupon he and Henry produced pencils and their professional note-books, and supplied their fair friend and themselves with material for "Truth." "Come on, Patty, whisper me whatever you want to."
"No; I ought to have her whisperme, first," Henry Rooter objected. "I'll write the answer toanyquestion; I don't care what it's about."
"Well, it's got to be thetruth, you know," Pattywarned them. "We all haf to write down just exackly the truth on our word of honour and sign our name. Promise?"
They promised earnestly.
"All right," said Patty. "Now I'll whisper Henry a question first, and then you can whisper yours to me first, Herbert."
This seemed to fill all needs happily, and the whispering and writing began, and continued with a coziness little to the taste of the piously singing Florence. She altered all previous opinions of her friend Patty, and when the latter finally closed the session on the steps, and announced that she must go home, the hostess declined to accompany her into the house to help her find where she had left her hat and wrap.
"I haven't theleastidea where I took 'em off!" Patty declared in the airiest manner. "If you won't come with me, Florrie, s'pose you just call in the front door and tell your mother to get 'em for me."
"Oh, they'resomewherein there," Florence said coldly, not ceasing to swing her foot, and not turning her head. "You can find 'em by yourself, I presume, or if you can't I'll have our maid throw 'em out in the yard or somep'n to-morrow."
"Well,thankyou!" Miss Fairchild rejoined, as she entered the house.
The two boys stood waiting, having in mind to go with Patty as far as her own gate. "That's aprettyway to speak to company!" Herbert addressed his cousin with heavily marked severity. "Next time you do anything like that I'll march straight in the house and inform your mother of the fact."
Florence still swung her foot and looked dreamily away. She sang, to the air of "Rock of Ages":
"Henry Rooter, Herbert, too—they make me sick, they make me sick, that's what they do."
However, they were only too well prepared with their annihilating response.
"Oh, say not so! Florence, say not so!Florence!Say not so!"
They even sent this same odious refrain back to her from the street, as they departed with their lovely companion; and, so tenuous is feminine loyalty sometimes, under these stresses, Miss Fairchild mingled her sweet, tantalizing young soprano with their changing and cackling falsetto.
"Say not so, Florence! Oh, say not so! Say not so!"
They went satirically down the street, their chumminess with one another bountifully increased by their common derision of the outsider on the porch; and even at a distance they still contrived to make themselves intolerable; looking back over their shoulders, at intervals, with say-not-so expressions on their faces. Even when these faces were far enough away to be but yellowish oval planes, their say-not-so expressions were still bitingly eloquent.
Now a northern breeze chilled the air, as the hateful three became indistinguishable in the haze of autumn dusk, whereupon Florence stopped swinging her foot, left the railing, and went morosely into the house. And here it was her fortune to make two discoveries vital to her present career; the first arising out of a conversation between her father and mother in the library, where a gossipy fire of soft coal encouraged this proper Sunday afternoon entertainment for man and wife.
"Sit down and rest, Florence," said her mother. "I'm afraid you play too hard when Patty and the boys are here. Do sit down quietly and rest yourself a little while." And as Florence obeyed, Mrs. Atwater turned to her husband, resuming: "Well, that's whatIsaid. I told Aunt Carrie I thought the same way about it thatyoudid. Of course nobodyeverknows what Julia's going to do next, and nobody needs to be surprised at anything she does do. Ever since she came home from school, about four-fifths of all the young men in town have been wild about her—and so's every old bachelor, for the matter of that!"
"Yes," Mr. Atwater added. "And every old widower, too."
His wife warmly accepted the amendment. "And every old widower, too," she said, nodding. "Rather! And of course Julia's just done exactly as she pleased about everything, and naturally she's going to do as she pleases aboutthis."
"Well, of course it's her own affair, Mollie," Mr. Atwater said mildly. "She couldn't be expected to consult the whole Atwater family connection before she——"
"Oh, no," she agreed. "I don't say she could.Still, itisrather upsetting, coming so suddenly like this, when not one of the family has ever seen him—never even heard his very name before."
"'Well, men ... I don't want to see any loafin' around here, men. I expect I'll have a pretty good newspaper this week.'""'Well, men ... I don't want to see any loafin' around here, men. I expect I'll have a pretty good newspaper this week.'"
"Well, that part of it isn't especially strange, Mollie. He was born and brought up in a town three hundred miles from here. I don't see just how wecouldhave heard his name unless he visited here or got into the papers in some way."
Mrs. Atwater seemed unwilling to yield a mysterious point. She rocked decorously in her rocking-chair, shook her head, and after setting her lips rigidly, opened them to insist that she could never change her mind: Julia had acted very abruptly. "Why couldn't she have let her poor father know at least afewdays before she did?"
Mr. Atwater sighed. "Why, she explains in her letter that she only knew it, herself, an hour before she wrote."
"Her poor father!" his wife repeated commiseratingly.
"Why, Mollie, I don't see how father's especially to be pitied."
"Don't you?" said Mrs. Atwater. "That old man, to have to live in that big house all alone, except a few negro servants?"
"Why, no! About half the houses in the neighbourhood, up and down the street, are fully occupied by close relatives of his: I doubt if he'll be really as lonely as he'd like to be. And he's often said he'd give a great deal if Julia had been a plain, unpopular girl. I'm strongly of the opinion, myself, that he'll be pleased about this. Of course it may upset him a little at first."
"Yes; I think it will!" Mrs. Atwater shook her head forebodingly. "And he isn't the only one it's going to upset."
"No, he isn't," her husband admitted seriously. "That's always been the trouble with Julia; she never could bear to seem disappointing; and so, of course, I suppose every one of 'em has a special idea that he's really about the top of the list with her."
"Every last one of 'em is positive of it," said Mrs. Atwater. "That was Julia's way with 'em!"
"Yes, Julia's always been much too kind-hearted for other people's good." Thus Mr. Atwater summed up Julia; and he was her brother. Additionally, since he was the older, he had known her since her birth.
"If you askme," said his wife, "I'll really be surprised if it all goes through without a suicide."
"Oh, not quite suicide, perhaps," Mr. Atwater protested. "I'm glad it's a fairly dry town though."
She failed to fathom his simple meaning. "Why?"
"Well, some of 'em might feelthatdesperate at least," he explained. "Prohibition's a safeguard for the disappointed in love."
This phrase and a previous one stirred Florence, who had been sitting quietly, according to request, and "resting", but not resting her curiosity. "Who'sdisappointed in love, papa?" she inquired with an explosive eagerness that slightly startled her preoccupied parents. "Whatisall this about Aunt Julia, and grandpa goin' to live alone, and people committing suicide and prohibition and everything? Whatisall this, mamma?"
"Nothing, Florence."
"Nothing! That's what you always say about the very most inter'sting things that happen in the whole family! Whatisall this, papa?"
"It's nothing that would be interesting to little girls, Florence. Merely some family matters."
"My goodness!" Florence exclaimed. "I'm not a 'little girl' any more, papa! You'realwaysforgetting my age! And if it's a family matter I belong to the family, I guess, about as much as anybody else, don'tI? Grandpa himself isn't anymoreone of the family than I am, I don't carehowold he is!"
This was undeniable, and her father laughed. "It's really nothing you'd care about one way or the other," he said.
"Well, I'd care about it if it's a secret," Florence insisted. "If it's a secret I'd want to know it, whatever it's about."
"Oh, it isn't a secret, particularly, I suppose. At least, it's not to be made public for a time; it's only to be known in the family."
"Well, didn't I justproveI'm as much one o' the family as——"
"Never mind," her father said soothingly. "I don't suppose there's any harm in your knowing it—if you won't go telling everybody. Your Aunt Julia has just written us that she's engaged."
Mrs. Atwater uttered an exclamation, but she was too late to check him.
"I'm afraid you oughtn't to have told Florence. Sheisn'tjust the most discreet——"
"Pshaw!" he laughed. "She certainly is 'one of the family', however, and Julia wrote that all of the family might be told. You'll not speak of it outside the family, will you, Florence?"
But Florence was not yet able to speak of it, even inside the family; so surprising, sometimes, are parents' theories of what will not interest their children. She sat staring, her mouth open, and in the uncertain illumination of the room these symptoms of her emotional condition went unobserved.
"I say, you won't speak of Julia's engagement outside the family, will you, Florence?"
"Papa!" she gasped. "Did Aunt Julia write she wasengaged?"
"Yes."
"To getmarried?"
"It would seem so."
"Towho?"
"'To whom,' Florence," her mother suggested primly.
"Mamma!" the daughter cried. "Who's Aunt Julia engaged to get married to? Noble Dill?"
"Good gracious,no!" Mrs. Atwater exclaimed. "What an absurd idea! It's to a young man in the place she's visiting—a stranger to all of us. Julia only met him a few weeks ago." Here she forgot Florence, and turned again to her husband, wearing her former expression of experienced foreboding.
"It's just as I said. It's exactly like Julia to do such a reckless thing!"
"But as we don't know anything at all about the young man," he remonstrated, "how do you know it's reckless?"
"How do you know he's young?" Mrs. Atwater retorted crisply. "All in the world she said about him was that he's a lawyer. He may be a widower, for all we know, or divorced, with seven or eight children."
"Oh, no, Mollie!"
"Why, hemight!" she insisted. "For all we know, he may be a widower for the third or fourthtime, or divorced, with anynumberof children! If such a person proposed to Julia, you know yourself she'd hate to be disappointing!"
Her husband laughed. "I don't think she'd go so far as to actually accept 'such a person' and write home to announce her engagement to the family. I suppose most of her swains here have been in the habit of proposing to her just as frequently as she was unable to prevent them from going that far; and while I don't think she's been as discouraging with them as she might have been, she's never really accepted any of 'em. She's never been engaged before."
"No," Mrs. Atwater admitted. "Not to this extent! She's never quite announced it to the family before, that is."
"Yes; I'd hate to have Julia's job when she comes back!" Julia's brother admitted ruefully.
"What job?"
"Breaking it to her admirers."
"Oh,sheisn't going to do that!"
"She'll have to, now," he said. "She'll either have to write the news to 'em, or else tell 'em, face to face, when she comes home."
"She won't do either."
"Why, how could she get out of it?"
His wife smiled pityingly. "She hasn't set a time for coming home, has she? Don't you know enough of Julia's ways to see she'll never in the world stand up to the music? She writes that all the family can be told, because she knows the news will leak out, here and there, in confidence, little by little, so by the time she gets home they'll all have been through their first spasms, and after that she hopes they'll just send her some forgiving flowers and greet her with manly hand-clasps—and get ready to usher at the wedding!"
"Well," said Mr. Atwater, "I'm afraid you'reright. It does seem rather like Julia to stay away till the first of the worst is over. I'm really sorry for some of 'em. I suppose itwillget whispered about, and they'll hear it; and there are some of the poor things that might take it pretty hard."
"'Take it pretty hard!'" his wife echoed loudly. "There'soneof 'em, at least, who'll just merely lose his reason!"
"Which one?"
"Noble Dill."
At this, the slender form of Florence underwent a spasmodic seizure in her chair, but as the fit was short and also noiseless, it passed without being noticed.
"Yes," said Mr. Atwater thoughtfully. "I suppose he will."
"He certainly will!" Mrs. Atwater declared. "Noble's mother told me last week that he'd got so he was just as liable to drop a fountain-pen in his coffee as a lump of sugar; and when any one speaks to him he either doesn't know it, or else jumps. When he says anything, himself, she says they can scarcely ever make out what he's talking about. He was trying enough before Julia went away; but since she's been gone Mrs. Dill says he's like nothingin her experience. She says he doesn't inherit it; Mr. Dill wasn't anything like this about her."
Mr. Atwater smiled faintly. "Mrs. Dill wasn't anything like Julia."
"No," said his wife. "She was quite a sensible girl. I'd hate to be in her place now, though, when she tells Noble aboutthis."
"How can Mrs. Dill tell him, since she doesn't know it herself?"
"Well—perhaps she ought to know it, so that shecouldtell him.Somebodyought to tell him, and it ought to be done with the greatest tact. It ought to be broken to him with the most delicate care and sympathy, or the consequences——"
"Nobody could foretell the consequences," her husband interrupted:—"no matter how tactfully it's broken to Noble."
"No," she said, "I suppose that's true. I think the poor thing's likely to lose his reason unless itisdone tactfully, though."
"Do you think we really ought to tell Mrs. Dill, Mollie? I mean, seriously: Do you?"
For some moments she considered his question, then replied, "No. It's possible we'd be following a Christian course in doing it; but still we're ratherbound not to speak of it outside the family, and when it does get outside the family I think we'd better not be the ones responsible—especially since it might easily be traced to us. I think it's usually better to keep out of things when there's any doubt."
"Yes," he said, meditating. "I never knew any harm to come of people's sticking to their own affairs."
But as he and his wife became silent for a time, musing in the firelight, their daughter's special convictions were far from coinciding with theirs, although she, likewise, was silent—a singularity they should have observed. So far were they from a true comprehension of her, they were unaware that she had more than a casual, young-cousinly interest in Julia Atwater's engagement and in those possible consequences to Noble Dill just sketched with some intentional exaggeration. They did not even notice her expression when Mr. Atwater snapped on the light, in order to read; and she went quietly out of the library and up the stairs to her own room.
On the floor, near her bed, where Patty Fairchild had left her coat and hat, Florence made another discovery. Two small, folded slips of paper laythere, dropped by Miss Fairchild when she put on her coat in the darkening room. They were the replies to Patty's whispered questions in the game on the steps—the pledged Truth, written by Henry Rooter and Herbert Atwater on their sacred words and honours. The infatuated pair had either overestimated Patty's caution, or else each had thought she would so prize his little missive that she would treasure it in a tender safety, perhaps pinned upon her blouse (at the first opportunity) over her heart. It is positively safe to say that neither of the two veracities would ever have been set upon paper had Herbert and Henry any foreshadowing that Patty might be careless; and the partners would have been seized with the utmost horror could they have conceived the possibility of their trustful messages ever falling into the hands of the relentless creature who now, without an instant's honourable hesitation, unfolded and read them.
"Yes if I got to tell the truth I know I have got pretty eyes," Herbert had unfortunately written. "Iam glad you think so too Patty because your eyes are too Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr."
And Mr. Henry Rooter had likewise ruined himself in a coincidental manner:
"Well Patty my eyes are pretty but suppose I would like to trade with yours because you have beautiful eyes also, sure as my name is Henry Rooter."
Florence stood close to the pink-shaded electric drop-light over her small white dressing-table, reading again and again these pathetically honest little confidences. Her eyelids were withdrawn to an unprecedented retirement, so remarkably she stared; while her mouth seemed to prepare itself for the attempted reception of a bulk beyond its capacity. And these plastic tokens, so immoderate as to be ordinarily the consequence of nothing short of horror, were overlaid by others, subtler and more gleaming, which wrought the true significance of the contortion—a joy that was dumfounding.
Her thoughts were first of Fortune's kindness in selecting her for a favour so miraculously dovetailing into the precise need of her life; then she considered Henry and Herbert, each at this hour probably brushing his hair in preparation for the Sunday evening meal, and both touchingly unconscious of the calamity now befalling them; but what eventually engrossed her mind was a thought about Wallie Torbin.
This Master Torbin, fourteen years of age, was inall the town the boy most dreaded by his fellow-boys, and also by girls, including many of both sexes who knew him only by sight—and hearing. He had no physical endowment or attainment worth mention; but boys who could "whip him with one hand" became sycophants in his presence; the terror he inspired was moral. He had a special over-development of a faculty exercised clumsily enough by most human beings, especially in their youth; in other words, he had a genius—not, however, a genius having to do with anything generally recognized as art or science. True, if he had been a violinist prodigy or mathematical prodigy, he would have had some respect from his fellows—about equal to that he might have received if he were gifted with some pleasant deformity, such as six toes on a foot—but he would never have enjoyed such deadly prestige as had actually come to be his. In brief, then, Wallie Torbin had a genius for mockery.
Almost from his babyhood he had been a child of one purpose: to increase by burlesques the sufferings of unfortunate friends. If one of them wept, Wallie incessantly pursued him, yelping in horrid mimicry; if one were chastised he could not appear out-of-doors for days except to encounter Wallie and acomplete rehearsal of the recent agony. "Quit, Papa!Pah-puh, quee-yet! I'llneverdo it again, Pah-puh! Oh,lemmealone, Pah-puh!"
As he grew older, his insatiate curiosity enabled him to expose unnumbered weaknesses, indiscretions, and social misfortunes on the part of acquaintances and schoolmates; and to every exposure his noise and energy gave a hideous publicity: the more his victim sought privacy the more persistently he was followed by Wallie, vociferous and attended by hilarious spectators. But above all other things, what most stimulated the demoniac boy to prodigies of satire was a tender episode or any symptom connected with the dawn of love. Florence herself had suffered at intervals throughout her eleventh summer because Wallie discovered that Georgie Beck had sent her a valentine; and the humorist's many, many squealings of that valentine's affectionate quatrain finally left her unable to decide which she hated the more, Wallie or Georgie. That was the worst of Wallie: he never "let up"; and in Florence's circle there was no more sobering threat than, "I'll tell Wallie Torbin!" As for Henry Rooter and Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr., they would as soon have had a Head-hunter on their trail as WallieTorbin in the possession of anything that could incriminate them in an implication of love—or an acknowledgment (in their own handwriting!) of their own beauty.
The fabric of civilized life is interwoven with blackmail: even some of the noblest people do favours for other people who are depended upon not to tell somebody something that the noblest people have done. Blackmail is born into us all, and our nurses teach us more blackmail by threatening to tell our parents if we won't do this and that—and our parents threaten to tell the doctor—and so we learn! Blackmail is part of the daily life of a child. Displeased, his first resort to get his way with other children is a threat to "tell," but by-and-by his experience discovers the mutual benefit of honour among blackmailers. Therefore, at eight it is no longer the ticket to threaten to tell the teacher; and, a little later, threatening to tell any adult at all is considered something of a breakdown in morals. Notoriously, the code is more liable to infraction by people of the physically weaker sex, for the very reason, of course, that their inferiority of muscle so frequently compels such a sin, if they are to have their way. But for Florence there was now no such temptation. Looking to thedemolition of Atwater & Rooter, an exposure before adults of the results of "Truth" would have been an effect of the sickliest pallor compared to what might be accomplished by a careful use of the catastrophic Wallie Torbin.
On Sunday evening it was her privileged custom to go to the house of fat old Great-Uncle Joseph and remain until nine o'clock, in chatty companionship with Uncle Joseph and Aunt Carrie, his wife, and a few other relatives (including Herbert) who were in the habit of dropping in there, on Sunday evenings. In summer, lemonade and cake were frequently provided; in the autumn, one still found cake, and perhaps a pitcher of clear new cider: apples were a certainty.
This evening was glorious: there were apples and cider and cake, with walnuts, perfectly cracked, and a large open-hearted box of candy; for Uncle Joseph and Aunt Carrie had foreseen the coming of several more Atwaters than usual, to talk over the new affairs of their beautiful relative, Julia. Seldom have any relative's new affairs been more thoroughly talked over than were Julia's that evening; though all the time by means of symbols, since it wasthought wiser that Herbert and Florence should not yet be told of Julia's engagement; and Florence's parents were not present to confess their indiscretion. Julia was referred to as "the traveller"; other makeshifts were employed with the most knowing caution, and all the while Florence merely ate inscrutably. The more sincere Herbert was placid; the foods absorbing his attention.
"Well, all I say is, the traveller better enjoy herself on her travels," said Aunt Fanny, finally, as the subject appeared to be wearing toward exhaustion. "She certainly is in for it when the voyaging is over and she arrives in the port she sailed from, and has to show her papers. I agree with the rest of you: she'll have a great deal to answer for, and most of all about the shortest one. My own opinion is that the shortest one is going to burst like a balloon."
"The shortest one," as the demure Florence had understood from the first, was none other than her Very Ideal. Now she looked up from the stool where she sat with her back against a pilaster of the mantelpiece. "Uncle Joseph," she said;—"I was just thinking. What is a person's reason?"
The fat gentleman, rosy with firelight and cider, finished his fifth glass before responding. "Well,therearepersons I never could find any reason for at all. 'A person's reason'? What do you mean, 'a person's reason,' Florence?"
"I mean: like when somebody says, 'They'll lose their reason,'" she explained. "Has everybody got a reason, and if they have, what is it, and how do they lose it, and what would they do then?"
"Oh! I see!" he said. "You needn't worry. I suppose since you heard it you've been hunting all over yourself for your reason and looking to see if there was one hanging out of anybody else, somewhere. No; it's something you can't see, ordinarily, Florence. Losing your reason is just another way of saying, 'going crazy'!"
"Oh!" she murmured, and appeared to be disturbed.
At this, Herbert thought proper to offer a witticism for the pleasure of the company.
"Youknow, Florence," he said, "it only means acting likeyoumost always do." He applauded himself with a burst of changing laughter ranging from a bullfrog croak to a collapsing soprano; then he added: "Espeshually when you come around my and Henry's Newspaper Building! You cert'nly 'lose your reason' every time you come aroundthatole place!"
"Well, course I haf to act like the people that's already there," Florence retorted, not sharply, but in a musing tone that should have warned him. It was not her wont to use a quiet voice for repartee. Thinking her humble, he laughed the more raucously.
"Oh, Florence!" he besought her. "Say not so! Say not so!"
"Children, children!" Uncle Joseph remonstrated.
Herbert changed his tone; he became seriously plaintive. "Well, she does act that way, Uncle Joseph! When she comes around there you'd think we were runnin' a lunatic asylum, the way she takes on. She hollers and bellers and squalls and squawks. The least little teeny thing she don't like about the way we run our paper, she comes flappin' over there and goes to screechin' around you could hear her out at the Poor House Farm!"
"Now, now, Herbert," his Aunt Fanny interposed. "Poor little Florence isn't saying anything impolite to you—not right now, at any rate. Why don't you be a little sweet to her just for once?"
Her unfortunate expression revolted all the manliness in Herbert's bosom. "Be a littlesweetto her?" he echoed with poignant incredulity, and then incandour made plain how poorly Aunt Fanny inspired him. "I just exackly as soon be a little sweet to an alligator," he said.
"Oh, oh!" said Aunt Carrie.
"I would!" Herbert insisted. "Or a mosquito. I'd rather, toeitherof 'em, 'cause anyway they don't make so much noise. Why, you just ought tohearher," 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 anywaysomepeace. 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 thinkssheought 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 anythingmoreto do with my and Henry's newspaper. We wouldn't have another singleone of her ole poems in it, no matter how much she offered to pay us! Uncle Joseph, I think you ought totellher 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. "Itwoo-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 inthereagain!"
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 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 beingpretty, too, and so you're glad she thinks yours are pretty, the wayyoudo—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 thetruth?"
"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 youwrote downhow 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 information 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 Florencetell us. Florence, what was it about Herbert's knowing he had 'pretty eyes'?"
Herbert attempted to continue the drowning out. He bawled. "She made itup! It's somep'n she made up herself! 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: andgratitude 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 Doré, 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 yousaidshe told you."
"I didn't," said Florence. "I didn't say she told me anything at all."
"Well, she did, didn't she?"
"Why, no," Florence replied, lightly. "She didn't say anything tome. Only I'm glad to have youropinionof her, how she's such a story-teller and all—if I ever want to tell her, and everything!"
But Herbert had greater alarms than this, and the greater obscured the lesser. "Look here," he said, "if she didn't tell you, how'd you know it then?"
"How'd I know what?"
"That—that big story about my ever writin' I knew I had"—he gulped again—"pretty eyes."
"Oh, aboutthat!" Florence said, and swung the gate shut between them. "Well, I guess it's too late to tell you to-night, Herbert; but maybe if you and that nasty little Henry Rooter do every single thing I tell you to, and do it justexacklylike I tell you from this time on, why maybe—I only say 'maybe'—well, maybe I'll tell you some day when I feel like it."
She ran up the path and up the veranda steps, but paused before opening the front door, and called back to the waiting Herbert:
"The only person I'd everthinkof tellin' about itbefore I tell you would be a boy I know." She coughed, and added as by an afterthought, "He'd just love to know all about it; I know he would. So, when I tell anybody about it I'll only tell just you and this other boy."
"What other boy?" Herbert demanded.
And her reply, thrilling through the darkness, left him demoralized with horror.
"Wallie Torbin!"
The next afternoon, about four o'clock, Herbert stood gloomily at the main entrance of Atwater & Rooter's Newspaper Building awaiting his partner. The other entrances were not only nailed fast but massively barricaded; and this one (consisting of the ancient carriage-house doors, opening upon a driveway through the yard) had recently been made effective for exclusion. A long and heavy plank leaned against the wall, near by, ready to be set in hook-shaped iron supports fastened to the inner sides of the doors; and when the doors were closed, with this great plank in place, a person inside the building might seem entitled to count upon the enjoyment of privacy, except in case of earthquake, tornado, or fire. In fact, the size of the plank and the substantial quality of the iron fastenings could be looked upon, from a certain viewpoint, as a real compliment to the energy and persistence of Florence Atwater.
Herbert had been in no complimentary frame ofmind, however, when he devised the obstructions, nor was he now in such a frame of mind. He was pessimistic in regard to his future, and also embarrassed in anticipation of some explanations it would be necessary to make to his partner. He strongly hoped that Henry's regular after-school appearance at the Newspaper Building would precede Florence's, because these explanations required both deliberation and tact, and he was convinced that it would be almost impossible to make them at all if Florence got there first.
He understood that he was unfortunately within her power; and he saw that it would be dangerous to place in operation for her exclusion from the Building this new mechanism contrived with such hopeful care, and at a cost of two dollars and twenty-five cents taken from theOriole'streasury. What he wished Henry to believe was that for some good reason, which Herbert had not yet been able to invent, it would be better to show Florence a little politeness. He had a desperate hope that he might find some diplomatic way to prevail on Henry to be as subservient to Florence as she had seemed to demand, and he was determined to touch any extremity of unveracity, rather than permit the details of hisanswer in "Truth" to come to his partner's knowledge. Henry Rooter was not Wallie Torbin; but in possession of material such as this he could easily make himself intolerable.
Therefore, it was in a flurried state of mind that Herbert waited; and when his friend appeared, over the fence, his perturbation was not decreased. He even failed to notice the unusual gravity of Henry's manner.
"Hello, Henry! I thought I wouldn't start in working till you got here. I didn't want to haf to come all the way downstairs again to open the door and hi'st our good ole plank up again."
"I see," said Henry, glancing nervously at their good ole plank. "Well, I guess Florence'll never get inthisgood ole door—that is, she won't if we don't let her, or something."
This final clause would have astonished Herbert if he had been less preoccupied with his troubles. "You bet she won't!" he said mechanically. "She couldn't ever get in here again—if thefamilydidn't go intafering around and give me the dickens and everything, because they think—theysaythey do, anyhow—they say they think—they think——"
He paused, disguising a little choke as a cough of scorn for the family's thinking.
"What did you say your family think?" Henry asked absently.
"Well, they say we ought to let her have a share in our newspaper." Again he paused, afraid to continue lest his hypocrisy appear so bare-faced as to invite suspicion. "Well, maybe weought," he said finally, his eyes guiltily upon his toe, which slowly scuffed the ground. "I don't say we ought, and I don't say we oughtn't."
He expected at the least a sharp protest from his partner, who, on the contrary, surprised him. "Well, that's the wayIlook at it," Henry said. "I don't say we ought and I don't say we oughtn't."
And he, likewise, stared at the toe of a shoe that scuffed the ground. Herbert felt a little better; this particular subdivision of his difficulties seemed to be working out with unexpected ease.
"I don't say we will and I don't say we won't," Henry added. "That's the way I look at it. My father and mother are always talkin' to me: how I got to be polite and everything, and I guess maybe it's time I began to pay some 'tention to what they say. You don't have your father and mother for always, you know, Herbert."
Herbert's mood at once chimed with this unprecedentedfilial melancholy. "No, you don't, Henry. That's what I often think about, myself. No, sir, a fellow doesn't have his father and mother to advise him our whole life, and you ought to do a good deal what they say while they're still alive."
"That's what I say," Henry agreed gloomily; and then, without any alteration of his tone, or of the dejected thoughtfulness of his attitude, he changed the subject in a way that painfully startled his companion. "Have you seen Wallie Torbin to-day, Herbert?"
"What!"
"Have you seen Wallie Torbin to-day?"
Herbert swallowed. "Why, what makes—what makes you ask me that, Henry?" he said.
"Oh, nothin'." Henry still kept his eyes upon his gloomily scuffing toe. "I just wondered, because I didn't happen to see him in school this afternoon when I happened to look in the door of the Eight-A when it was open. I didn't want to know on account of anything particular. I just happened to say that about him because I didn't have anything else to think about just then, so I just happened to think about him, the way you do when you haven't got anything much on your mind and might get tothinkin' about you can't tell what. That's all the way it was; I just happened to kind of wonder if he was around anywhere maybe."
Henry's tone was obviously, even elaborately, sincere; and Herbert was reassured. "Well, I didn't see him," he responded. "Maybe he's sick."
"No, he isn't," his friend said. "Florence said she saw him chasin' his dog down the street about noon."
At this Herbert's uneasiness was uncomfortably renewed. "Florencedid? Where'd you see Florence?"
Mr. Rooter swallowed. "A little while ago," he said, and again swallowed. "On the way home from school."
"Look—look here!" Herbert was flurried to the point of panic. "Henry—did Florence—did she go and tell you—did she tell you——?"
"Ididn't hardly notice what she was talkin' about," Henry said doggedly. "She didn't have anything to say thatI'dever care two cents about. She came up behind me and walked along with me a ways, but I got too many things on my mind to hardly pay the least attention to anythingsheevertalks about. She's a girl what I think about her the less people pay any 'tention to what she says the better off they are."
"That's the way with me, Henry," his partner assured him earnestly. "I never pay any notice to whatshesays. The way I figure it out abouther, Henry, everybody'd be a good deal better off if nobody ever paid the least notice to anything she says. I never even notice what she says, myself."
"I don't either," said Henry. "AllIthink about is what my father and mother say, because I'm not goin' to have their advice all the rest o' my life, after they're dead. If they want me to be polite, why, I'll do it and that's all there is about it."
"It's the same way with me, Henry. If she comes flappin' around here blattin' and blubbin' how she's goin' to have somep'n to do with our newspaper, why, the only reasonI'dever let her would be because myfamilysay I ought to show more politeness to her than up to now. I wouldn't do it on any other account, Henry."