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."

She tossed her head again. "Pooh! They'd all of 'em just say: 'Good ribbons to bad rubbish,' I guess!" However, she seemed far from despondent about this; in fact, she was naturally pleased with her position as a young girl saved from the power of ruffians by a rescuer who was her Very Ideal. "I bet if I died, they wouldn't even have a funeral," she said cheerfully. "They'd proba'ly just leave me lay."

The curiosities of the human mind are found not in high adventure: they are everywhere in the commonplace. Never for a moment did it strike Noble Dill that Florence's turn to the morbid bore any resemblance to his recent visions of his own funeral. He failed to perceive that the two phenomena were produced out of the same laboratory jar and were probably largely chemical, at that.

"Why, Florence!" he exclaimed. "That's a dreadful way to feel. I'm sure your--your Aunt Julia loves you."

"Oh, well," Florence returned lightly;--"maybe she does. I don't care whether she does or not." And now she made a deduction, the profundity of which his condition made him unable to perceive. "It makes less difference to anybody whether their aunts love 'em or not than whether pretty near anybody else at all does."




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