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Barton," she added with sudden wistfulness, "there's almost nothing on the face of the globe that I couldn't have if I only had some place to put it." Without further parleying she proffered the roll of bills to him. "Miss Edgarton! Are you crazy?" Barton asked again quite precipitously. Again the girl answered his question equally frankly, and without offense. "Oh, no," she said.
"There will surely be a thunder-storm," protested her father. "There will surely be a thunder-storm," acquiesced Eve Edgarton. Without further parleying she turned and strolled off again. Just for an instant the Older Man's glance followed her. Just for an instant with quizzically twisted eyebrows his glance flashed back sardonically to Barton's suffering face.
Every other word or phrase in the English language seemed to be stricken suddenly from his lips. "Your your daughter?" he began all over again. "Why I I didn't know your name was Edgarton!" he managed finally to articulate. An expression of ineffable triumph, and of triumph only, flickered in the Older Man's face. "Why, that's just what I've been saying," he reiterated amiably.
And I'm a fool and a slob and a mutt-head even when I'm not chock-full of lightning, as you call it! But if there's ever anything I can do for you!" "What did you say?" muttered little Eve Edgarton. "I said you were a brick!" repeated Barton a bit irritably. "Oh, no, I didn't mean that," mused the girl. "But what was the last thing you said?" "Oh!" grinned Barton more cheerfully.
For the first time in Barton's knowledge of little Eve Edgarton she lifted her eyes to him great hazel eyes, great bored, dreary, hazel eyes set broadly in a too narrow olive face. "My father is generally conceded to be something of a joker, I believe," she said dully. "But it would never have occurred to me to call him a particularly practical one.
Oh, you've saved mine all right!" he acknowledged soberly. "And all this black, blasted night you've nursed me and fed me and jollied me without a whimper about yourself without a " Impulsively he reached out his numb-palmed hand to her, and her own hand came so cold to it that it might have been the caress of one ghost to another. "Eve Edgarton," he reiterated, "I tell you you're a brick!
Of such a physical delicacy! Like a rose," he mused, "like a rose that should refuse to bloom for any but the hand that gathered it." Languorously from some good practical pocket little Eve Edgarton extracted a much be-frilled chocolate bonbon and sat there munching it with extreme thoughtfulness. Then, "Father," she whispered, "I wish I was like Mother." "Why?" asked Edgarton, wincing.
"Why, of course I know it by heart!" cried little Eve Edgarton almost eagerly. "My mother whispered it to me, I tell you! The things that people shout at you you forget in half a night. But the things that people whisper to you, you remember to your dying day!" "If I whisper something to you," said Barton quite impulsively, "will you promise to remember it to your dying day?" "Oh, yes, Mr.
"Eve!" summoned her father. "What an idler you are! Can't you see how worried I am over this specimen here? My eyes, I tell you, aren't what they used to be." Then, patiently, little Eve Edgarton scrambled to her feet and, crossing over to her father's table, pushed his head mechanically aside and, bending down, squinted her own eye close to his magnifying glass. "Bell-shaped calyx?" she began.
Then startlingly into his stare, into his amazement, broke a great white glare through the opening of the cave. "My God!" he winced, with his elbow across his eyes. "Why, it isn't lightning!" laughed little Eve Edgarton. "It's the moon!" Quick as a sprite she flashed to her feet and ran out into the moonlight. "We can go home now!" she called back triumphantly over her shoulder.