“I mean:  like when somebody says, ‘They’ll lose their reason,’” she explained.  “Has everybody got a reason, and if they have, what is it, and how do they lose it, and what would they do then?”

“Oh!  I see!” he said.  “You needn’t worry.  I suppose since you heard it you’ve been hunting all over yourself for your reason and looking to see if there was one hanging out of anybody else, somewhere.  No; it’s something you can’t see, ordinarily, Florence.  Losing your reason is just another way of saying, ’going crazy’!”

“Oh!” she murmured, and appeared to be disturbed.

At this, Herbert thought proper to offer a witticism for the pleasure of the company.

“You know, Florence,” he said, “it only means acting like you most always do.”  He applauded himself with a burst of changing laughter ranging from a bullfrog croak to a collapsing soprano; then he added:  “Espeshually when you come around my and Henry’s Newspaper Building!  You cert’nly ‘lose your reason’ every time you come around that ole place!”

“Well, course I haf to act like the people that’s already there,” Florence retorted, not sharply, but in a musing tone that should have warned him.  It was not her wont to use a quiet voice for repartee.  Thinking her humble, he laughed the more raucously.

“Oh, Florence!” he besought her.  “Say not so!  Say not so!”

“Children, children!” Uncle Joseph remonstrated.

Herbert changed his tone; he became seriously plaintive.  “Well, she does act that way, Uncle Joseph!  When she comes around there you’d think we were runnin’ a lunatic asylum, the way she takes on.  She hollers and bellers and squalls and squawks.  The least little teeny thing she don’t like about the way we run our paper, she comes flappin’ over there and goes to screechin’ around you could hear her out at the Poor House Farm!”

“Now, now, Herbert,” his Aunt Fanny interposed.  “Poor little Florence isn’t saying anything impolite to you—­not right now, at any rate.  Why don’t you be a little sweet to her just for once?”

Her unfortunate expression revolted all the manliness in Herbert’s bosom.  “Be a little sweet to her?” he echoed with poignant incredulity, and then in candour made plain how poorly Aunt Fanny inspired him.  “I just exackly as soon be a little sweet to an alligator,” he said.

“Oh, oh!” said Aunt Carrie.

“I would!” Herbert insisted.  “Or a mosquito.  I’d rather, to either of ’em, ’cause anyway they don’t make so much noise.  Why, you just ought to hear her,” he went on, growing more and more severe.  “You ought to just come around our Newspaper Building any afternoon you please, after school, when Henry and I are tryin’ to do our work in anyway some peace.  Why, she just squawks and squalls and squ——­”

“It must be terrible,” Uncle Joseph interrupted.  “What do you do all that for, Florence, every afternoon?”