"Eh?" snapped her father.
Ting-a-ling-ling-ling-ling! trilled the telephone from the farther side of the room.
Impatiently Edgarton came back and lifted the receiver from its hook. "Hello?" he growled. "Who? What? Eh?"
With quite unnecessary vehemence he rammed the palm of his hand against the mouth-piece and glared back over his shoulder at his daughter. "It's that-that Barton!" he said. "The impudence of him! He wants to know if you are receiving visitors to-day! He wants to know if he can come up! The-"
"Yes-isn't it-awful?" stammered little Eve Edgarton.
Imperiously her father turned back to the telephone. Ting-a-ling-ling-ling-ling, chirped the bell right in his face. As if he were fairly trying to bite the transmitter, he thrust his lips and teeth into the mouth-piece.
"My daughter," he enunciated with extreme distinctness, "is feeling quite exhausted-exhausted-this afternoon. We appreciate, of course Mr. Barton, your-What? Hello there!" he interrupted himself sharply. "Mr. Barton? Barton? Now what in the deuce?" he called back appealingly toward the bed. "Why, he's rung off! The fool!" Quite accidentally then his glance lighted on his daughter. "Why, what are you smoothing your hair for?" he called out accusingly.
"Oh, just to put it on," acknowledged little Eve Edgarton.
"But what in creation are you putting on your coat for?" he demanded tartly.
"Oh, just to smooth it," acknowledged little Eve Edgarton.
With a sniff of disgust Edgarton turned on his heel and strode off into his own room.
For five minutes by the little traveling-clock, she heard him pacing monotonously up and down-up and down. Then very softly at last she summoned him back to her.
"Father," she whispered, "I think there's some one knocking at the outside door."
"What?" called Edgarton. Incredulously he came back through his daughter's room and, crossing over to the hall door, yanked it open abruptly on the intruder.
"Why-good afternoon!" grinned Barton above the extravagantly large and languorous bunch of pale lavender orchids that he clutched in his hand.
"Good afternoon!" said Edgarton without enthusiasm.
"Er-orchids!" persisted Barton still grinningly. Across the unfriendly hunch of the older man's shoulder he caught a disquieting glimpse of a girl's unduly speculative eyes. In sudden impulsive league with her against this, their apparent common enemy, Age, he thrust the orchids into the older man's astonished hands.
"For me?" questioned Edgarton icily.
"Why, yes-certainly!" beamed Barton. "Orchids, you know! Hothouse orchids!" he explained painstakingly.
"So I-judged," admitted Edgarton. With extreme distaste he began to untie the soft flimsy lavender ribbon that encompassed them. "In their native state, you know," he confided, "one very seldom finds them growing with-sashes on them." From her nest of cushions across the room little Eve Edgarton loomed up suddenly into definite prominence.
"What did you bring me, Mr. Barton?" she asked.
"Why, Eve!" cried 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. "How do you do, Miss Edgarton?" he ventured.
"How do you do, Mr. Barton?" said little Eve Edgarton.
From the splashy wash-stand somewhere beyond them, they heard Edgarton fussing with the orchids and mumbling vague Latin imprecations-or endearments-over them. A trifle surreptitiously Barton smiled at Eve. A trifle surreptitiously Eve smiled back at Barton.
In this perfectly amiable exchange of smiles the girl reached up suddenly to the sides of her head. "Is my-is my bandage on straight?" she asked worriedly.
"Why, no," admitted Barton; "it ought not to be, ought it?"
Again for no special reason whatsoever they both smiled.
"Oh, I say," stammered Barton. "How you can dance!"
Across the girl's olive cheeks her heavy eyelashes shadowed down like a fringe of black ferns. "Yes-how I can dance," she murmured almost inaudibly.
"Why didn't you let anybody know?" demanded Barton.
"Yes-why didn't I let anybody know?" repeated the girl in an utter panic of bashfulness.
"Oh, I say," whispered Barton, "won't you even look at me?"
Mechanically the girl opened her eyes and stared at him fixedly until his own eyes fell.
"Eve!" called her father sharply from the next room, "where in creation is my data concerning North American orchids?"
"In my steamer-trunk," began the girl. "On the left hand side. Tucked in between your riding-boots and my best hat."
"O-h," called her father.
Barton edged forward in his chair and touched the girl's brown, boyish little hand.
"Really, Miss Eve," he stammered, "I'm awfully sorry you got hurt! Truly I am! Truly it made me feel awfully squeamish! Really I've been thinking a lot about you these last few days! Honestly I have! Never in all my life did I ever carry any one as little and hurt as you were! It sort of haunts me, I tell you. Isn't there something I could do for you?"
"Something you could do for me?" said little Eve Edgarton, staring. Then again the heavy lashes came shadowing down across her cheeks.
"I haven't had any very great luck," she said, "in finding you ready to do things for me."
"What?" gasped Barton.
The big eyes lifted and fell again. "There was the attic," she whispered a bit huskily. "You wouldn't rent me your attic!"
"Oh, but-I say!" grinned Barton. "Some real thing, I mean! Couldn't I-couldn't I-read aloud to you?" he articulated quite distinctly, as Edgarton came rustling back into the room with his arms full of papers.
"Read aloud?" gibed Edgarton across the top of his spectacles. "It's a daring man, in this unexpurgated day and generation, who offers to read aloud to a lady."
"He might read me my geology notes," suggested little Eve Edgarton blandly.
"Your geology notes?" hooted her father. "What's this? Some more of your new-fangled 'small talk'? Your geology notes?" Still chuckling mirthlessly, he strode over to the big table by the window and, spreading out his orchid data over every conceivable inch of space, settled himself down serenely to compare one "flower of mystery" with another.
Furtively for a moment Barton sat studying the gaunt, graceful figure. Then quite impulsively he turned back to little Eve Edgarton's scowling face.
"Nevertheless, Miss Eve," he grinned, "I should be perfectly delighted to read your geology notes to you. Where are they?"
"Here," droned little Eve Edgarton, slapping listlessly at the loose pile of pages beside her.
Conscientiously Barton reached out and gathered the flimsy papers into one trim handful. "Where shall I begin?" he asked.
"It doesn't matter," murmured little Eve Edgarton.
"What?" said Barton. Nervously he began to fumble through the pages. "Isn't there any beginning?" he demanded.
"No," moped little Eve Edgarton.
"Nor any end?" he insisted. "Nor any middle?"
"N-o," sighed little Eve Edgarton.
Helplessly Barton plunged into the unhappy task before him. On page nine there were perhaps the fewest blots. He decided to begin there.
"Paleontologically,"
the first sentence smote him-
"Paleontologically the periods are characterized by absence of
the large marine saurians, Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs-"
"eh?" gasped Barton.
"Why, of course!" called Edgarton, a bit impatiently, from the window.
Laboriously Barton went back and reread the phrase to himself. "Oh-oh, yes," he conceded lamely.
"Paleontologically,"
he began all over again. "Oh, dear, no!" he interrupted himself. "I was farther along than that!-Absence of marine saurians? Oh, yes!