derloin! Eh?"

"Oh, Lordy! You can't tell me anything!" snapped the other voice more
incisively. "Houses? I've had four! First it was the cellar my wife
wanted to eliminate! Then it was the attic! Then it was--We're living
in an apartment now!" he finished abruptly. "An apartment, mind you!
One of those blankety--blank--blank--blank apartments!"

"Humph!" wailed the first voice again. "There's hardly a woman you
meet these days who hasn't got rouge on her cheeks, but a man's got to
go back--two generations, I guess, if he wants to find one that's got
any flour on her nose!"

"Flour on her nose?" interrupted the sharper voice. "Flour on her
nose? Oh, ye gods! I don't believe there's a woman in this whole hotel
who'd know flour if she saw it! Women don't care any more, I tell you!
They don't care!"

Just as a mere bit of physical stimulus the crescendoish stridency of
the speech roused Barton to a lazy smile. Then, altogether
unexpectedly, across indifference, across drowsiness, across absolute
physical and mental non-concern, the idea behind the speech came
hurtling to him and started him bolt upright in his chair.

"Ha!" he thought. "I know a girl that cares!" From head to foot a
sudden warm sense of satisfaction glowed through him, a throb of
pride, a puffiness of the chest. "Ha!" he gloated. "H--"

Then interruptingly from outside the window he heard the click of
chairs hitching a bit nearer together.

"Sst!" whispered one voice. "Who's the freak in the 1830 clothes?"

"Why, that? Why, that's the little Edgarton girl," piped the other
voice cautiously. "It isn't so much the '1830 clothes' as the 1830
expression that gets me! Where in creation--"

"Oh, upon my soul," groaned the man whose wife "would live in a
hotel." "Oh, upon my soul--if there's one thing that I can't stand
it's a woman who hasn't any style! If I had my way," he threatened
with hissing emphasis, "if I had my way, I tell you, I'd have every
homely looking woman in the world put out of her misery! Put out of my
misery--is what I mean!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" chuckled the other voice.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" gibed both voices ecstatically together.

With quite unnecessary haste Barton sprang to the window and looked
out.

It was Eve Edgarton! And she did look funny! Not especially funny, but
just plain, every-day little-Eve-Edgarton funny, in a shabby old
English tramping suit, with a knapsack slung askew across one
shoulder, a faded Alpine hat yanked d