Herbert looked desperate, but was unable to form a reply consistent with a few new rules of etiquette and gallantry that he had begun to observe during the past year or so.  “Now, see here, Florence,” he said.  “You’re old enough to know when people tell you to keep out of a place, why, it means they want you to stay away from there.”

Florence remained cold to this reasoning.  “Oh, Poot!” she said.

“Now, look here!” her cousin remonstrated, and went on with his argument.  “We got our newspaper work to do, and you ought to have sense enough to know newspaper work like this newspaper work we got on our hands here isn’t—­well, it ain’t any child’s play.”

His partner appeared to approve of the expression, for he nodded severely and then used it himself.  “No, you bet it isn’t any child’s play!” he said.

“No, sir,” Herbert continued.  “This newspaper work we got on our hands here isn’t any child’s play.”

“No, sir,” Henry Rooter again agreed.  “Newspaper work like this isn’t any child’s play at all!”

“It isn’t any child’s play, Florence,” said Herbert.  “It ain’t any child’s play at all, Florence.  If it was just child’s play or something like that, why, it wouldn’t matter so much your always pokin’ up here, and——­”

“Well,” his partner interrupted judicially;—­“we wouldn’t want her around, even if it was child’s play.”

“No, we wouldn’t; that’s so,” Herbert agreed.  “We wouldn’t want you around, anyhow, Florence.”  Here his tone became more plaintive.  “So, for mercy’s sakes can’t you go on home and give us a little rest?  What you want, anyhow?”

“Well, I guess it’s about time you was askin’ me that,” she said, not unreasonably.  “If you’d asked me that in the first place, instead of actin’ like you’d never been taught anything, and was only fit to associate with hoodlums, perhaps my time is of some value, myself!”

Here the lack of rhetorical cohesion was largely counteracted by the strong expressiveness of her tone and manner, which made clear her position as a person of worth, dealing with the lowest of her inferiors.  She went on, not pausing: 

“I thought being as I was related to you, and all the family and everybody else is goin’ to haf to read your ole newspaper, anyway it’d be a good thing if what was printed in it wasn’t all a disgrace to the family, because the name of our family’s got mixed up with this newspaper;—­so here!”

Thus speaking, she took the poem from her pocket and with dignity held it forth to her cousin.

“What’s that?” Herbert inquired, not moving a hand.  He was but an amateur, yet already enough of an editor to be suspicious.

“It’s a poem,” Florence said.  “I don’t know whether I exackly ought to have it in your ole newspaper or not, but on account of the family’s sake I guess I better.  Here, take it.”