"Oh, Charles, Charles, Charles," echoed Aunt Hester, but in much different tone; "you'll get your Charles back. Charles-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 shudder. "In other words, my dears," went on the aunt; "in other words, you are _dreadfully_ in love with each other and can't keep apart." "Love!" moaned Dolly. "Love," the aunt repeated firmly. Dolly rocked for a time; tears again were dropping fast from the end of her eye-lashes. "But he _doesn't_ love me," she wailed at length. "And he _isn't_ a, a--that horrid Chinesy word you call him, and he is gone, gone!"