Florence had become an angry pink. "That little Henry Rooter is the worst falsehooder in this town; and I never believed a word he said in his life! Anyway, what affairs is it of yours, I'd like you to please be so kind and obliging for to tell me, Mister Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Exquire!" "What affairs?" Herbert echoed in plaintive satire. "What affairs is it of mine? That's just the trouble! It's _got_ to be my affairs because you're my first-cousin. My goodness _I_ didn't have anything to do with you being my cousin, did I?" "Well, _I_ didn't!" "That's neither here nor there," said Herbert. "What _I_ want to know is, how long you goin' to keep this up?" "Keep what up?" "I mean, how do you think I like havin' somebody like Henry Rooter comin' round me tellin' what they made a cousin of mine believe, and more than thirteen years old, goin' on fourteen ever since about a month ago!" Florence shouted: "Oh, for goodness' _sakes_!" then moderated the volume but not the intensity of her tone. "Kindly reply to _this_. Whoever asked you to come and take a walk with me to-day?" Herbert protested to heaven. "Why, I wouldn't take a walk with you if every policeman in this town tried to make me! I wouldn't take a walk with you if they brought a million horses and--" "I wouldn't take a walk with _you_," Florence interrupted, "if they brought a million million horses and cows and camels and--" "No, you wouldn't," Herbert said. "Not if _I_ could help it!" But by this time Florence had regained her derisive superciliousness. "There's a few things you _could_ help," she said; and the incautious Herbert challenged her with the inquiry she desired. "What could I help?" "I should think you could help bumpin' into me every second when I'm takin' a walk on my own affairs, and walk along on your own side of the sidewalk, anyway, and not be so awkward a person has to keep trippin' over you about every time I try to take a step!" Herbert withdrew temporarily to his own side of the pavement. "Who?" he demanded hotly. "_Who_ says I'm awkward?" "All the fam'ly," Miss Atwater returned, with a light but infuriating laugh. "You bump into 'em sideways and keep gettin' half in front of 'em whenever they try to take a step, and then when it looks as if they'd pretty near fall over you--" "You look here!" "And besides all that," Florence went on, undisturbed, "why, you generally keep kind of snorting, or somep'n, and then making all those noises in your neck. You were doin' it at grandpa's last Sunday dinner because every time there wasn't anybody talking, why, everybody could hear you plain as everything, and you ought to've seen grandpa look at you! He looked as if you'd set him crazy if you didn't quit that chuttering and cluckling!"