ence?"

"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, yo