"Why, Herbert! Doesn't she always tell the truth?"
"Her? Why, half the time," poor Herbert babbled, "you can't tell whether she's just makin' up what she says or not. If you've gone and believed everything that ole girl told you, you haven't got even what little sense I used to think you had!" So base we are under strain, sometimes--so base when our good name is threatened with the truth of us! "I wouldn't believe anything she said," he added, in a sickish voice, "if she told me fifty times and crossed her heart!"
"Wouldn't you if she said you wrote down how pretty you knew your eyes were, Herbert? Wouldn't you if it was on paper in your own handwriting?"
"What's this about Herbert having 'pretty eyes'?" Uncle Joe inquired, again bringing general attention to the young cousins; and Herbert shuddered. This fat uncle had an unpleasant reputation as a joker.
The nephew desperately fell back upon the hopeless device of attempting to drown out his opponent's voice as she began to reply. He became vociferous with scornful laughter, badly cracked. "Florence got mad!" he shouted, mingling the purported information with hoots and cacklings. "She got mad because I and Henry played some games with Patty and wouldn't let her play! She's tryin' to make up stories on us to get even. She made it up! It's all made up! She----"
"No, no," Mr. Atwater interrupted. "Let Florence tell us. Florence, what was it about Herbert's knowing he had 'pretty eyes'?"
Herbert attempted to continue the drowning out. He bawled. "She made it up! It's somep'n she made up herself! She----"
"Herbert," said Uncle Joseph;--"if you don't keep quiet, I'll take back the printing-press."
Herbert substituted a gulp for the continuation of his noise.
"Now, Florence," said Uncle Joseph, "tell us what you were saying about how Herbert knows he has such 'pretty eyes'."
Then it seemed to Herbert that a miracle befell. Florence looked up, smiling modestly. "Oh, it wasn't anything, Uncle Joseph," she said. "I was Just trying to tease Herbert any way I could think of."
"Oh, was that all?" A hopeful light faded out of Uncle Joseph's large and inexpressive face. "I thought perhaps you'd detected him in some indiscretion."
Florence laughed, "I was just teasin' him. It wasn't anything, Uncle Joseph."
Hereupon, Herbert resumed a confused breathing. Dazed, he remained uneasy, profoundly so: and gratitude was no part of his emotion. He well understood that in conflicts such as these Florence was never susceptible to impulses of compassion; in fact, if there was warfare between them, experience had taught him to be wariest when she seemed kindest. He moved away from her, and went into another room where his condition was one of increasing mental discomfort, though he looked over the pictures in his great-uncle's copy of "Paradise Lost." These illustrations, by M. Gustave Doré, failed to aid in reassuring his troubled mind.