"Your PAPER-DOLL BOOK?" stammered Barton. With another racking effort he edged himself even farther forward. "Miss Edgarton!" he asked quite frankly, "are you-crazy?"
[Illustration: "Your PAPER-DOLL BOOK?" stammered Barton]
"N-o! But-very determined," drawled little Eve Edgarton. With unruffled serenity she picked up a pulpy magazine-page from the ground in front of her and handed it to him. "And it-would greatly facilitate matters, Mr. Barton," she confided, "if you would kindly begin drying out some papers against your side of the lantern."
"What?" gasped Barton.
Very gingerly he took the pulpy sheet between his thumb and forefinger. It was a full-page picture of a big gas-range, and slowly, as he scanned it for some hidden charm or value, it split in two and fell soggily back to its mates. Once again for sheer nervous relief he burst out laughing.
Out of her diminutiveness, out of her leanness, out of her extraordinary litheness, little Eve Edgarton stared up speculatively at Barton's great hulking helplessness. Her hat looked humorous. Her hair looked humorous. Her tattered flannel shirt was distinctly humorous. But there was nothing humorous about her set little mouth.
"If you-laugh," she threatened, "I'll tip you over backward again-and-trample on you."
"I believe you would!" said Barton with a sudden sobriety more packed with mirth than any laugh he had ever laughed.
"Well, I don't care," conceded the girl a bit sheepishly. "Everybody laughs at my paper-doll book! Father does! Everybody does! When I'm rearranging their old mummy collections-and cataloguing their old South American birds-or shining up their old geological specimens-they think I'm wonderful. But when I try to do the teeniest-tiniest thing that happens to interest me-they call me 'crazy'! So that's why I come 'way out here to this cave-to play," she whispered with a flicker of real shyness. "In all the world," she confided, "this cave is the only place I've ever found where there wasn't anybody to laugh at me."
Between her placid brows a vindictive little frown blackened suddenly. "That's why it wasn't specially convenient, Mr. Barton-to have you ride with me this afternoon," she affirmed. "That's why it wasn't specially convenient to-to have you struck by lightning this afternoon!" Tragically, with one small brown hand, she pointed toward the great water-soaked mess of magazines that surrounded her. "You see," she mourned, "I've been saving them up all summer-to cut out-to-day! And now?-Now-? We're sailing for Melbourne Saturday!" she added conclusively.
"Well-really!" stammered Barton. "Well-truly!-Well, of all-damned things! Why-what do you want me to do? Apologize to you for having been struck by lightning?" His voice was fairly riotous with astonishment and indignation. Then quite unexpectedly one side of his mouth began to twist upward in the faintest perceptible sort of a real grin.
"When you smile like that you're-quite pleasant," murmured little Eve Edgarton.
"Is that so?" grinned Barton. "Well, it wouldn't hurt you to smile just a tiny bit now and then!"
"Wouldn't it?" said little Eve Edgarton. Thoughtfully for a moment, with her scissors poised high in the air, she seemed to be considering the suggestion. Then quite abruptly again she resumed her task of prying some pasted object out of her scrap-book. "Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Barton," she decided. "I'm much too bored-all the while-to do any smiling."
"Bored?" snapped Barton. Staring perplexedly into her dreary, meek little face, something deeper, something infinitely subtler than mere curiosity, wakened precipitately in his consciousness. "For Heaven's sake, Miss Edgarton!" he stammered. "From the Arctic Ocean to the South Seas, if you've seen all the things that you must have seen, if you've done all the things that you must have done-WHY SHOULD YOU LOOK SO BORED?"
Flutteringly the girl's eyes lifted and fell. "Why, I'm bored, Mr. Barton," drawled little Eve Edgarton, "I'm bored because-I'm sick to death-of seeing all the things I've seen. I'm sick to death of-doing all the things I've done." With little metallic snips of sound she concentrated herself and her scissors suddenly upon the mahogany-colored picture of a pianola.
"Well, what do you want?" quizzed Barton.
In a sullen, turgid sort of defiance the girl lifted her somber eyes to his. "I want to stay home-like other people-and have a house," she wailed. "I want a house-and-the things that go with a house: a cat, and the things that go with a cat; kittens, and the things that go with kittens; saucers of cream, and the things that go with saucers of cream; ice-chests, and-and-" Surprisingly into her languid, sing-song tone broke a sudden note of passion. "Bah!" she snapped. "Think of going all the way to India just to plunge your arms into the spooky, foamy Ganges and 'make a wish'! 'What do you wish?' asks Father, pleased-as a Chessy-puss. Humph! I wish it was the soap-suds in my own wash-tub!-Or gallivanting down to British Guiana just to smell the great blowsy water-lilies in the canals! I'd rather smell burned crackers in my own cook stove!"
"But you'll surely have a house-some time," argued Barton with real sympathy. Quite against all intention the girl's unexpected emotion disturbed him a little. "Every girl gets a house-some time!" he insisted resolutely.
"N-o, I don't-think so," mused Eve Edgarton judicially. "You see," she explained with soft, slow deliberation, "you see, Mr. Barton, only people who live in houses know people who live in houses! If you're a nomad you meet-only nomads! Campers mate just naturally with campers, and ocean-travelers with ocean-travelers-and red-velvet hotel-dwellers with red-velvet hotel-dwellers. Oh, of course, if Mother had lived it might have been different," she added a trifle more cheerfully. "For, of course, if Mother had lived I should have been-pretty," she asserted calmly, "or interesting-looking, anyway. Mother would surely have managed it-somehow; and I should have had a lot of beaux-young men beaux I mean, like you. Father's friends are all so gray!-Oh, of course, I shall marry-some time," she continued evenly. "Probably I'm going to marry the British consul at Nunko-Nono. He's a great friend of Father's-and he wants me to help him write a book on 'The Geologic Relationship of Melanesia to the Australian Continent'!"
Dully her voice rose to its monotone: "But I don't suppose-we shall live in a-house," she moaned apathetically. "At the best it will probably be only a musty room or two up over the consulate-and more likely than not it won't be anything at all except a nipa hut and a typewriter-table."
As if some mote of dust disturbed her, suddenly she rubbed the knuckles of one hand across her eyes. "But maybe we'll have-daughters," she persisted undauntedly. "And maybe they'll have houses!"
"Oh, shucks!" said Barton uneasily. "A-a house isn't so much!"
"It-isn't?" asked little Eve Edgarton incredulously. "Why-why-you don't mean-"
"Don't mean-what?" puzzled Barton.
"Do-you-live-in-a-house?" asked little Eve Edgarton abruptly. Her hands were suddenly quiet in her lap, her tousled head cocked ever so slightly to one side, her sluggish eyes incredibly dilated.
"Why, of course I live in a house," laughed Barton.
"O-h," breathed little Eve Edgarton. "Re-ally? It must be wonderful." Wiltingly her eyes, her hands, drooped back to her scrap-book again. "In-all-my-life," she resumed monotonously, "I've never spent a single night-in a real house."
"What?" questioned Barton.
"Oh, of course," explained the girl dully, "of course I've spent no end of nights in hotels and camps and huts and trains and steamers and-But-What color is your house?" she asked casually.
"Why, brown, I guess," said Barton.
"Brown, you 'guess'?" whispered the girl pitifully. "Don't you-know?"
"No, I wouldn't exactly like to swear to it," grinned Barton a bit sheepishly.
Again the girl's eyes lifted just a bit over-intently from the work in her lap.
"What color is the wall-paper-in your own room?" she asked casually. "Is it-is it a-dear pinkie-posie sort of effect? Or just plain-shaded stripes?"