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Updated: May 8, 2025
"Oh, what oh, what will your father say, Miss Edgarton?" "What will Father say?" drawled little Eve Edgarton. Thuddingly she set down the empty beef-jar. "Oh, Father'll say: What in creation is Eve out trying to save to-night? A dog? A cat? A three-legged deer?" "Well, what do you expect to save?" quizzed Barton a bit tartly. "Just you," acknowledged little Eve Edgarton without enthusiasm.
With her fingers groping at last into the actual shutters of that coveted ballroom window, she scrunched her eyes up perfectly tight for an instant and then opened them, staring wide at the entrancing scene before her. "O h!" said little Eve Edgarton. "O h!" The scene was certainly the scene of a most madcap summer carnival. Palms of the far December desert were there!
Then so quietly that it scarcely seemed abrupt, "Father," she asked, "was my mother beautiful?" "What?" gasped Edgarton. "What?" Bristling with a grave sort of astonishment he reached up nervously and stroked his daughter's hair. "Your mother," he winced. "Your mother was to me the most beautiful woman that ever lived! Such expression!" he glowed. "Such fire! But of such a spiritual modesty!
Already we ceased to ramble by river and through wood. Already the pencil was discarded. We could no longer enjoy the things which so lately made us happy, because we no longer entertained the same confidence in one another. Without this confidence there is no communion sweet. And all this had been the work of that letter. The name of William Edgarton had done it all his name and threatened visit!
"So taken all in all," he drawled still beamingly, "there's nothing in the world at this particular moment, Mr. Barton that could amuse me more than to have you join my daughter in her ride this afternoon!" "Ride with me?" gasped little Eve Edgarton. "This afternoon?" floundered Barton. "Oh why yes of course! I'd be delighted! I'd be be! Only ! Only I'm afraid that !"
Already Dawn was more than half a hint in the sky, and in the ghastly mixture of real and artificial light the girl's doom looked already sealed. Then very suddenly she opened her eyes and stared around. "Eve!" gasped her father, "what have you been doing?" Vaguely the troubled eyes closed, and then opened again. "I was trying to show people that I was a rose," mumbled little Eve Edgarton.
Very slowly, very sluggishly, as his circulation quickened again, a horrid suspicion began to stir in Barton's mind; but it took him a long time to voice the suspicion in anything as loud and public as words. "Miss Edgarton!" he plunged at last quite precipitately. "Miss Edgarton! Do I seem to have any shirt on?" "No, you don't seem to, exactly, Mr. Barton," conceded little Eve Edgarton.
With satirical courtesy he bowed first to Eve, then to Barton, dallied an instant on the threshold to repeat both bows, and went out, slamming the door behind him. "A nervous man, isn't he?" suggested Barton. Gravely little Eve Edgarton considered the thought. "Trionychoidea," she prompted quite irrelevantly. "Oh, yes of course," conceded Barton. "But do you mind if I smoke?"
Precipitately he shifted his knees and jostled his daughter to her feet. "Eve," he said, "you're awfully spleeny to-night! I'm going to bed." And he stalked off into his own room, slamming the door behind him. Once again from the middle of the floor little Eve Edgarton stood staring blankly after her father.
"Why, Eve, you astonish me! Why, I'm surprised at you! Why what do you mean?" The girl sagged back into her cushions. "Oh, Father," she faltered, "don't you know anything? That was just 'small talk." With perfunctory courtesy Edgarton turned to young Barton. "Pray be seated," he said; "take take a chair." It was the chair closest to little Eve Edgarton that Barton took.
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