"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 in there again!"
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 being pretty, too, and so you're glad she thinks yours are pretty, the way you do--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?"