u
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