you're my first-cousin. My goodness _I_ didn't have anything to do with
you being my cousin, did I?"

"Well, _I_ didn't!"

"That's neither here nor there," said Herbert. "What _I_ want to know
is, how long you goin' to keep this up?"

"Keep what up?"

"I mean, how do you think I like havin' somebody like Henry Rooter
comin' round me tellin' what they made a cousin of mine believe, and
more than thirteen years old, goin' on fourteen ever since about a month
ago!"

Florence shouted: "Oh, for goodness' _sakes_!" then moderated the volume
but not the intensity of her tone. "Kindly reply to _this_. Whoever
asked you to come and take a walk with me to-day?"

Herbert protested to heaven. "Why, I wouldn't take a walk with you if
every policeman in this town tried to make me! I wouldn't take a walk
with you if they brought a million horses and--"

"I wouldn't take a walk with _you_," Florence interrupted, "if they
brought a million million horses and cows and camels and--"

"No, you wouldn't," Herbert said. "Not if _I_ could help it!"

But by this time Florence had regained her derisive superciliousness.
"There's a few things you _could_ help," she said; and the incautious