"Of course; every one knows of her." "And now that I think of it, it was she about whom you asked in the Asolando that afternoon. You wanted to know what she said about the tea-room." "I remember perfectly." She was quiet for a moment, then she threw back her head and laughed that rare laugh of hers. "You might let me into the joke." "It would n't mean anything to you. I have a lot of private jokes that are for my own consumption." "Your way of laughing is adorable. I hope to hear more of it. In the Asolando you repulsed me in a manner that won my admiration, but I venture to say now that, if you roam these pastures, I am the grass beneath your feet; and if yonder tuneful water be sacred to you, I sit beside the brook to learn its song." "You talk well, sir, but from your tone I fear you can't forget that we met first in the Asolando. That day of my life is past, and I am by no means what you might call an Asolandad. I don't seem to impress you with that fact. I 'm a human being, not to be picked like a red apple, or trampled upon like grass, or listened to as though I were a foolish little brook. I 'm greatly given to the highway, and I prefer macadam. I like asphalt pavements, too, for the matter of that. I should love a motor, but lacking the coin I pedal a bicycle. My wheel lies down there in the bushes. You see, Mr. Chimney Man, I am a plain-spoken person and have no intention of deceiving you. My name was Francesca for one day only. It may interest you to know that my real name is Hezekiah." "Hezekiah!" I must have shouted it; she seemed startled by my violence. "You have pronounced it correctly," she remarked. "Then you are Cecilia's sister and Miss Hollister's niece." "Guilty." "And you live?"-- "Over there somewhere, beyond that ridge," and she waved her hand vaguely toward the village and laughed again. "Pray tell me what this particular joke is: it must be immensely funny," I urged, struggling with these new facts. "Oh, it's Aunt Octavia! She will be the death of me yet! You know the girl who waited on Aunt Octavia that afternoon took all that artistic nonsense as seriously as a funeral, and she told me after you left, with the greatest horror, that Aunt Octavia had asked for a cocktail!" That laugh rippled off again to carry joy along the planet-trails above us. "But you know," she resumed, "that Aunt Octavia never drank a cocktail in her life,--and would n't! She does n't know a cocktail from soothing syrup! She pines for adventures. She is just like a boarding-school girl who has read her first romance of the young American engineer in a South American republic, shooting the insurgents full of tortillas and marrying the president's dark-eyed daughter. She reads pirate books and is crazy about buried chests and pieces of eight. And they say I 'm just like her! She is the most perfectly killing person in the world!" Hezekiah laughed again.