wolf, shall tear down every fresh talent, every fresh treasure, they
lift to their aching backs. And from the latter--Brutal Neglect shall
ravage away even the charm that they thought they had!

"It's a--a rotten world, Eve, I tell you," he began all over again, a
bit plaintively. "A rotten world! And the pains in my arms, I tell
you, are not--nice! Distinctly not nice! Sometimes, Eve, you think I'm
making faces at you! But, believe me, it isn't faces that I'm making!
It's my--heart that I'm making at you! And believe me, the pain is
not--nice!"

Before the sudden wince in his daughter's eyes he reverted instantly
to an air of semi-jocosity. "So, under all existing circumstances,
little girl," he hastened to affirm, "you can hardly blame a crusty
old codger of a father for preferring to leave his daughter in the
hands of a man whom he positively knows to be good, than in the hands
of some casual stranger who, just in a negative way, he merely can't
prove isn't good? Oh, Eve--Eve," he pleaded sharply, "you'll be so
much better off--out of the world! You've got infinitely too much
money and infinitely too little--self-conceit--to be happy here! They
would break your heart in a year! But at Nunko-Nono!" he cried
eagerly. "Oh, Eve! Think of the peace of it! Just white beach, and a
blue sea, and the long, low, endless horizon. And John will make you a
garden! And women--I have often heard--are very happy in a garden!
And--"

Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes again to his. "Has John got
a beard?" she asked.

"Why--why, I'm sure I don't remember," stammered her father. "Why,
yes, I think so--why, yes, indeed--I dare say!"

"Is it a grayish beard?" asked little Eve Edgarton.

"Why--why, yes--I shouldn't wonder," admitted her father.

"And reddish?" persisted little Eve Edgarton. "And longish? As long
as--?" Illustratively with her hands she stretched to her full arm's
length.

"Yes, I think perhaps it is reddish," conceded her father. "But why?"

"Oh--nothing," mused little Eve Edgarton. "Only sometimes at night I
dream about you and me landing at Nunko-Nono. And John in a great big,
long, reddish-gray beard always comes crunching down at full speed
across the hermit-crabs to meet us. And always just before he reaches
us, he--he trips on his beard--and falls headlong into the ocean--and
is--drowned."

"Why--what an awful dream!" deprecated her father.

"Awful?" queried little Eve Edgarton. "Ha! It makes