“You bet not!” the exuberant Florence thought proper to suggest as a preferable expression.  And then she had an inspiration to enliven his dreamy interest in her conversation.  “Grandpa, he’s the one I kind of run most of all of ’em.  He’s about fifty or sixty, and so he hasn’t got too much sense.  What I mean, he hasn’t got too much sense left, you know.  So I haf to sort of take holt every now and then.”  She lowered her voice a little, some faint whisper of discretion reaching her inward ear.  “Aunt Julia can’t do a thing with him.  I guess that’s maybe the reason she kind of depen’s on me so much; or anyway somep’n like that.  You know, f’r instance, I had to help talk grandpa into lettin’ her send to New York for her things.  Aunt Julia gets all her things in New York.”

Undeniably, Mr. Dill’s interest flickered up. “Things?” he repeated inquiringly.  “Her things?”

“Yes.  Everything she wears, you know.”

“Oh, yes.”

“What I was goin’ to tell you,” Florence continued, “you know grandpa just about hates everybody.  Anyhow, he’d like to have some peace and quiet once in a while in his own house, he says, instead of all this moil and turmoil, and because the doctor said all the matter with her was she eats too much candy, and they keep sendin’ more all the time—­and there’s somep’n the trouble with grandpa:  it makes him sick to smell violets:  he had it ever since he was a little boy, and he can’t help it; and he hates animals, and they keep sendin’ her Airedales and Persian kittens, and then there was that alligator came from Florida and upset Kitty Silver terribly—­and so, you see, grandpa just hates the whole everlasting business.”

Mr. Dill nodded and spoke with conviction:  “He’s absolutely right; absolutely!”

“Well, some ways he is,” said Florence; and she added confidentially:  “The trouble is, he seems to think you’re about as bad as any of ’em.”

“What?”

“Well!” Florence exclaimed, with upward gestures both of eye and of hand, to signify what she left untold of Mr. Atwater’s orations upon his favourite subject:  Noble Dill.  “It’s torrable!” she added.

Noble breathed heavily, but a thought struggled in him and a brightening appeared upon him.  “You mean——­” he began.  “Do you mean it’s terrible for your Aunt Julia?  Do you mean his injustice about me makes her feel terribly?”

“No,” said Florence.  “No:  I mean the way he goes on about everybody.  But Aunt Julia’s kind of used to it.  And anyhow you needn’t worry about him ’long as I’m on your side.  He won’t do anything much to you if I say not to.  Hardly anything at all.”  And then, with almost a tenderness, as she marked the visibly insufficient reassurance of her companion, she said handsomely:  “He won’t say a word.  I’ll tell him not to.”