"Oh, please, do hush, Bess! You chatter so I can't hear myself think," said Lelia to Bess, one afternoon, about two weeks after their early morning visit to the suffering turtles, as the dear innocent was telling Phil some childish nonsense about a great snake Ben had once seen in the swamp, that was as long as a ship's mast and had a mouth big enough to swallow a giant. "We are going home to-morrow, and I don't see how you can laugh and tell such horrid stories when _that's_ to happen to us so soon." And she sighed dismally and looked out at the sea as if she never expected to behold it again. "But I am not going home," replied Phil. "I'm going to stay with Mr. Herdic, and he has promised to take Thad and me to Key West and the sponging-grounds before we return home, or before Thad does, for _I_ never expect to return to Oakdale." "Then only Uncle Aldis and Aunt Marion and Bess and I have got to go home?" she replied. "That's all," said Phil, cheerfully. "Well, I think you might be sorry, or pretend that you are, anyway, if only for look's sake," tartly rejoined Lelia, with another wandering glance at the sea. "Oh, I am sorry!" said Phil, with honest quickness; "but still I'd rather stay here than go back to Oakdale, where nobody likes me, and I'd never amount to a hill of beans." "But _I_ liked you when you were at Oakdale," gravely reminded Lelia. And the tone in which she said it smote Phil to the heart. "So did I," calmly avowed Bess. "I did really, Phil." "No, you didn't!" sharply contradicted Lelia. "You never liked anybody but yourself and your dear, lovely Rosy!" "I say I did!" stoutly declared Bess. "I liked Phil before I was born." And she nodded her little head complacently, as if this last were a clincher that no one--not even Lelia--could have the hardihood to doubt. Phil burst out laughing, and Lelia flung down the book she was reading, or trying lo read, when Bess began her marvelous "snake-story," and stared at her cousin in speechless disgust. "I never did see such behaviors as those," said Bess, with awful gravity and a marked consideration for the English language not common to her. "Such behaviors as those!" repeated Lelia, with peppery sarcasm. "My goodness, Bess, how finely you talk, and how truthful you are this afternoon!" "You shan't scorn at me," sturdily retorted Bess. "I will cry if you do, and then Phil will take my part, and won't like you one bit." "As if I cared for your crying, or your being 'scorned at,' or Phil's not liking me!" And Lelia sailed out of the room, crossed the piazza and ran down the japonica-bordered path to the garden. Seating herself under a crape-myrtle tree, its pink blossoms glowing amid the deep, glossy green of its leaves, like the blush of the sunset on an April cloud, she rested her chin in the palm of her hand, and looked, half-thoughtfully, half-defiantly, at the ground.