ve been all up with my
takin' charge of you."

"And you knew it all the time?" said Clyde to Margery, speaking so that
she only could hear.

"I knew it," she said, "but I didn't think it worth talking about. Do you
know Mr. Raybold's sister? Do you like her?"

"I have met her," said Clyde; "but she is too lofty for me."

"What is there lofty about her?" said Margery.

"Well," said he, "she is lofty because she has elevated ideas. She goes in
for reform; and for pretty much all kinds, from what I have heard."

"I think she is lofty," remarked Margery, "because she is stuck-up. I
don't like her."

"It is so seldom," Corona now continued, "that we find people who are
willing to assert their individuality, and when they are found I always
want to talk to them. I suppose, Mr. Matlack, that your life is one long
assertion of individuality?"

"What, ma'am?" asked the guide.

"I mean," said she, "that when you are out alone in the wild forest,
holding in your hand the weapon which decides the question of life or
death for any living creature over whom you may choose to exercise your
jurisdiction, absolutely independent of every social trammel, every bond
of conventionalism, you must feel that you are a predominant whole and not
a mere integral part."

"Well," said Matlack, speaking slowly, "I may have had them feelin's, but
if I did they must have struck in, and not come out on the skin, like
measles, where I could see 'em."

"Corona," said her brother, in a peevish undertone, "what is the good of
all that? You're wasting your words on such a man."

His sister turned a mild steady gaze upon him. "I don't know any man but
you," she said, "on whom I waste my words."

"Is assertin' like persistin'?" inquired Mrs. Perkenpine at this point.

"The two actions are somewhat alike," said Corona.

"Well, then," said the she-guide, "I'm in for assertin'. When my husband
was alive there was a good many things I wanted to do, and when I wanted
to do a thing or get a thing I kept on sayin' so; and one day, after I'd
been keepin' on sayin' so a good while, he says to me, 'Jane,' says he,
'it seems to me that you're persistin'.' 'Yes,' says I, 'I am, and I
intend to be.' 'Then you are goin' to keep on insistin' on persistin'?'
says he. 'Yes,' says I; and then says he, 'If you keep on insistin' on
persistin' I'll be thinkin' of 'listin'.' By which he meant goin' into the
army as a regular, and gettin' rid of me; and as I didn'