Gentle Julia | Page 4

Herbert echoed in plaintive satire. "What affairs is it of
mine? That's just the trouble! It's got to be my affairs because you're
my first-cousin. My goodness I didn't have anything to do with you
being my cousin, did I?"
"Well, I didn't!"

"That's neither here nor there," said Herbert. "What I want to know is,
how long you goin' to keep this up?"
"Keep what up?"
"I mean, how do you think I like havin' somebody like Henry Rooter
comin' round me tellin' what they made a cousin of mine believe, and
more than thirteen years old, goin' on fourteen ever since about a month
ago!"
Florence shouted: "Oh, for goodness' sakes!" then moderated the
volume but not the intensity of her tone. "Kindly reply to this. Whoever
asked you to come and take a walk with me to-day?"
Herbert protested to heaven. "Why, I wouldn't take a walk with you if
every policeman in this town tried to make me! I wouldn't take a walk
with you if they brought a million horses and--"
"I wouldn't take a walk with you," Florence interrupted, "if they
brought a million million horses and cows and camels and--"
"No, you wouldn't," Herbert said. "Not if I could help it!"
But by this time Florence had regained her derisive superciliousness.
"There's a few things you could help," she said; and the incautious
Herbert challenged her with the inquiry she desired.
"What could I help?"
"I should think you could help bumpin' into me every second when I'm
takin' a walk on my own affairs, and walk along on your own side of
the sidewalk, anyway, and not be so awkward a person has to keep
trippin' over you about every time I try to take a step!"
Herbert withdrew temporarily to his own side of the pavement. "Who?"
he demanded hotly. "Who says I'm awkward?"
"All the fam'ly," Miss Atwater returned, with a light but infuriating
laugh. "You bump into 'em sideways and keep gettin' half in front of

'em whenever they try to take a step, and then when it looks as if they'd
pretty near fall over you--"
"You look here!"
"And besides all that," Florence went on, undisturbed, "why, you
generally keep kind of snorting, or somep'n, and then making all those
noises in your neck. You were doin' it at grandpa's last Sunday dinner
because every time there wasn't anybody talking, why, everybody
could hear you plain as everything, and you ought to've seen grandpa
look at you! He looked as if you'd set him crazy if you didn't quit that
chuttering and cluckling!"
Herbert's expression partook of a furious astonishment. "I don't any
such thing!" he burst out. "I guess I wouldn't talk much about last
Sunday dinner, if I was you neither. Who got caught eatin' off the ice
cream freezer spoon out on the back porch, if you please? Yes, and I
guess you better study a little grammar, while you're about it. There's
no such words in the English language as 'cluckling' and 'chuttering.'"
"I don't care what language they're in," the stubborn Florence insisted.
"It's what you do, just the same: cluckling and chuttering!"
Herbert's manners went to pieces. "Oh, dry up!" he bellowed.
"That's a nice way to talk! So gentlemanly----"
"Well, you try be a lady, then!"
"'Try!'" Florence echoed. "Well, after that, I'll just politely thank you to
dry up, yourself, Mister Herbert Atwater!"
At this Herbert became moody. "Oh, pfuff!" he said; and for some
moments walked in silence. Then he asked: "Where you goin',
Florence?"
The damsel paused at a gate opening upon a broad lawn evenly divided
by a brick walk that led to the white-painted wooden veranda of an

ample and honest old brick house. "Righ' there to grandpa's, since you
haf to know!" she said. "And thank you for your delightful comp'ny
which I never asked for, if you care to hear the truth for once in your
life!"
Herbert meditated. "Well, I got nothin' else to do, as I know of," he said.
"Let's go around to the back door so's to see if Kitty Silver's got
anything."
Then, not amiably, but at least inconsequently, they passed inside the
gate together. Their brows were fairly unclouded; no special marks of
conflict remained; for they had met and conversed in a manner
customary rather than unusual.
They followed a branch of the brick walk and passed round the south
side of the house, where a small orchard of apple-trees showed
generous promise. Hundreds of gay little round apples among the
leaves glanced the high lights to and fro on their polished green cheeks
as a breeze hopped through the yard, while the shade beneath trembled
with coquettishly moving disks of sunshine like golden plates. A
pattern of orange