"I always-do, Mr. Barton," singsonged the girl monotonously.
"But the extra horse?" cried Barton. With a sudden little chuckle of relief he pointed to the chunky gray. There was a side-saddle on the chunky gray. "Who's going with us?"
Almost insolently little Eve Edgarton narrowed her sleepy eyes.
"I always taken an extra horse with me, Mr. Barton-Thank you!" she yawned, with the very faintest possible tinge of asperity.
"Oh!" stammered Barton quite helplessly. "O-h!" Heavily, as he spoke, he lifted one foot to his stirrup and swung up into his saddle. Through all his mental misery, through all his physical discomfort, a single lovely thought sustained him. There was only one really good riding road in that vicinity! And it was shady! And, thank Heaven, it was most inordinately short!
But Eve Edgarton falsified the thought before he was half through thinking it.
She swung her horse around, reared him to almost a perpendicular height, merged herself like so much fluid khaki into his great, towering, threatening neck, reacted almost instantly to her own balance again, and went plunging off toward the wild, rough, untraveled foot-hills and-certain destruction, any unbiased onlooker would have been free to affirm!
Snortingly the chunky gray went tearing after her. A trifle sulkily Barton's roan took up the chase.
Shade? Oh, ye gods! If Eve Edgarton knew shade when she saw it she certainly gave no possible sign of such intelligence. Wherever the galloping, grass-grown road hesitated between green-roofed forest and devastated wood-lot, she chose the devastated wood-lot! Wherever the trotting, treacherous pasture faltered between hobbly, rock-strewn glare and soft, lush-carpeted spots of shade, she chose the hobbly, rock-strewn glare! On and on and on! Till dust turned sweat! And sweat turned dust again! On and on and on! With the riderless gray thudding madly after her! And Barton's sulky roan balking frenziedly at each new swerve and turn!
It must have been almost three miles before Barton quite overtook her. Then in the scudding, transitory shadow of a growly thunder-cloud she reined in suddenly, waited patiently till Barton's panting horse was nose and nose with hers, and then, pushing her slouch hat back from her low, curl-fringed forehead, jogged listlessly along beside him with her pale olive face turned inquiringly to his drenched, beet-colored visage.
"What was it that you wanted me to do for you, Mr. Barton?" she asked with a laborious sort of courtesy. "Are you writing a book or something that you wanted me to help you about? Is that it? Is that what Father meant?"
"Am I writing a-book?" gasped Barton. Desperately he began to mop his forehead. "Writing a book? Am-I-writing-a-book? Heaven forbid!"
"What are you doing?" persisted the girl bluntly.
"What am I doing?" repeated Barton. "Why, riding with you! Trying to ride with you!" he called out grimly as, taking the lead impetuously again, Eve Edgarton's horse shied off at a rabbit and went sidling down a sand-bank into a brand-new area of rocks and stubble and breast-high blueberry bushes.
Barton liked to ride and he rode fairly well, but he was by no means an equestrian acrobat, and, quite apart from the girl's unquestionably disconcerting mannerisms, the foolish floppity presence of the riderless gray rattled him more than he could possibly account for. Yet to save his life he could not have told which would seem more childish-to turn back in temper, or to follow on-in the same.
More in helplessness than anything else he decided to follow on.
"On and on and on," would have described it more adequately.
Blacker and blacker the huddling thunder-caps spotted across the brilliant, sunny sky. Gaspier and gaspier in each lulling tree-top, in each hushing bird-song, in each drooping grass-blade, the whole torrid earth seemed to be sucking in its breath as if it meant never, never to exhale it again.
Once more in the midst of a particularly hideous glare the girl took occasion to rein in and wait for him, turning once more to his flushed, miserable countenance a little face inordinately pale and serene.
"If you're not writing a book, what would you like to talk about, Mr. Barton?" she asked conscientiously. "Would you like to talk about peat-bog fossils?"
"What?" gasped Barton.
"Peat-bog fossils," repeated the mild little voice. "Are you interested in peat-bog fossils? Or would you rather talk about the Mississippi River pearl fisheries? Or do you care more perhaps for politics? Would you like to discuss the relative financial conditions of the South American republics?"
Before the expression of blank despair in Barton's face, her own face fell a trifle. "No?" she ventured worriedly. "No? Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Barton, but you see-you see-I've never been out before with anybody-my own age. So I don't know at all what you would be interested in!"
"Never been out before with any one her own age?" gasped Barton to himself. Merciful Heavens! what was her "own age"? There in her little khaki Norfolk and old slouch hat she looked about fifteen years old-and a boy, at that. Altogether wretchedly he turned and grinned at her.
"Miss Edgarton," he said, "believe me, there's not one thing to-day under God's heaven that does interest me-except the weather!"
"The weather?" mused little Eve Edgarton thoughtfully. Casually, as she spoke, she glanced down across the horses' lathered sides and up into Barton's crimson face. "The weather? Oh!" she hastened anxiously to affirm. "Oh, yes! The meteorological conditions certainly are interesting this summer. Do you yourself think that it's a shifting of the Gulf Stream? Or just a-just a change in the paths of the cyclonic areas of low pressure?" she persisted drearily.
"Eh?" gasped Barton. "The weather? Heat was what I meant, Miss Edgarton! Just plain heat!-DAMNED HEAT-was what I meant-if I may be so explicit, Miss Edgarton."
"It is hot," conceded Eve apologetically.
"In fact," snapped Barton, "I think it's the hottest day I ever knew!"
"Really?" droned Eve Edgarton.
"Really!" snapped Barton.
It must have been almost half an hour before anybody spoke again. Then, "Pretty hot, isn't it?" Barton began all over again.
"Yes," said Eve Edgarton.
"In fact," hissed Barton through clenched teeth, "in fact I know it's the hottest day I ever knew!"
"Really?" droned Eve Edgarton.
"Really!" choked Barton.
Creakily under their hot, chafing saddles the sweltering roans lurched off suddenly through a great snarl of bushes into a fern-shaded spring-hole and stood ankle-deep in the boggy grass, guzzling noisily at food and drink, with the chunky gray crowding greedily against first one rider and then the other.
Quite against all intention Barton groaned aloud. His sun-scorched eyes seemed fairly shriveling with the glare. His wilted linen collar slopped like a stale poultice around his tortured neck. In his sticky fingers the bridle-rein itched like so much poisoned ribbon.
Reaching up one small hand to drag the soft flannel collar of her shirt a little farther down from her slim throat, Eve Edgarton rested her chin on her knuckles for an instant and surveyed him plaintively. "Aren't-we-having-an-awful time?" she whispered.
Even then if she had looked woman-y, girl-y, even remotely, affectedly feminine, Barton would doubtless have floundered heroically through some protesting lie. But to the frank, blunt, little-boyishness of her he succumbed suddenly with a beatific grin of relief. "Yes, we certainly are!" he acknowledged ruthlessly.
"And what good is it?" questioned the girl most unexpectedly.
"Not any good!" grunted Barton.
"To any one?" persisted the girl.
"Not to any one!" exploded Barton.
With an odd little gasp of joy the girl reached out dartingly and touched Barton on his sleeve. Her face was suddenly eager, active, transcendently vital.
"Then oh-won't you please-please-turn round-and go home-and leave me alone?" she pleaded astonishingly.