“Vile thieves!” she panted.

“Who?” Noble asked, brushing at his knees, while Florence made some really necessary adjustments of her own attire.  “Who were they?”

“It was my own cousin, Herbert, and that nasty little Henry Rooter and their gang.  Herbert thinks he hass to act perfectly horrable all the time, now his voice is changing!” said Florence, her emotion not abated.  “Tried to steal this whole ice-cream freezer off the back porch and sneak it over the fence and eat it!  I stuck a pretty long pin in Herbert and two more of ’em, every bit as far as it would go.”  And in the extremity of her indignation, she added:  “The dirty robbers!”

“Did they hurt you?”

“You bet your life they didn’t!” the child responded.  “Tried to drag me back to the house!  By the feet!  I guess I gave ’em enough o’ that!”

Then, tugging the prostrate freezer into an upright position, she exclaimed darkly:  “I expect I gave ole Mister Herbert and some of the others of ’em just a few kicks they won’t be in such a hurry to forget!” And in spite of his own gloomy condition, Noble was able, upon thinking over matters, to spare some commiseration for Herbert and his friend, that nasty little Henry Rooter and their gang.  They seemed to have been at a disadvantage.

“I suppose I’d better carry the freezer back to the kitchen porch,” he said.  “Somebody may want it.”

“’Somebody’!” Florence exclaimed.  “Why, there’s only two of these big freezers, and if I hadn’t happened to suspeck somep’n and be layin’ for those vile thieves, half the party wouldn’t get any!” And as an afterthought, when Noble had pantingly restored the heavy freezer to its place by the kitchen door, she said:  “Or else they’d had to have such little saucers of it nobody would of been any way like satisfied, and prob’ly all the fam’ly that’s here assisting would of had to go without any at all.  That’d ‘a’ been the worst of it!”

She opened the kitchen door, and to those within explained loudly what dangers had been averted, directing that both freezers be placed indoors under guard; then she rejoined Noble, who was walking slowly back to the front yard.

“I guess it’s pretty lucky you happened to be hangin’ around out here,” she said.  “I guess that’s about the luckiest thing ever happened to me.  The way it looks to me, I guess you saved my life.  If you hadn’t chased ’em away, I wouldn’t been a bit surprised if that gang would killed me!”

“Oh, no!” said Noble.  “They wouldn’t——­”

“You don’t know ’em like I do,” the romantic child assured him.  “I know that gang pretty well, and I wouldn’t been a bit surprised.  I wouldn’t been!”

“But——­”

She tossed her head, signifying recklessness.

“Guess ’twouldn’t make much difference to anybody particular, whether they did or not,” said this strange Florence.

Noble regarded her with astonishment; they had reached the front yard, and paused under the trees where the darkness was mitigated by the light from the shining windows.  “Why, you oughtn’t to talk that way, Florence,” he said.  “Think of your mamma and papa and your—­and your Aunt Julia.”