ng-clock told her it was a quarter
of three.

"Whew!" she said. Just "Whew!" Very furiously at the big porcelain
washbowl she began to splash and splash and splash. "If I've got to
make four hundred muffins," she said, "I surely have got to be whiter
than snow!"

Roused by the racket, her father came irritably and stood in the
doorway.

"Oh, my dear Eve!" he complained, "didn't you get wet enough in the
storm? And for mercy's sake where have you been?"

Out of the depths of her dripping hair and her big plushy bath-towel
little Eve Edgarton considered her father only casually.

[Illustration: "Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four
hundred muffins."]

"Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four hundred muffins!
And I'm so late I haven't even time to change my clothes! We got
struck by lightning," she added purely incidentally. "That is--sort of
struck by lightning. That is, Mr. Barton got sort of struck by
lightning. And oh, glory, Father!" her voice kindled a little. "And,
oh, glory, Father, I thought he was gone! Twice in the hours I was
working over him he stopped breathing altogether!"

Palpably the vigor died out of her voice again. "Father," she drawled
mumblingly through intermittent flops of bath-towel; "Father--you said
I could keep the next thing I--saved. Do you think I could--keep him?"

CHAPTER III

"What?" demanded her father.

Altogether unexpectedly little Eve Edgarton threw back her tousled
head and burst out laughing.

"Oh, Father!" she jeered. "Can't you take a joke?"

"I don't know as you ever offered me one before," growled her father a
bit ungraciously.

"All the same," asserted little Eve Edgarton with sudden
seriousness--"all the same, Father, he did stop breathing twice. And I
worked and I worked and I worked over him!" Slowly her great eyes
widened.

"And oh, Father, his skin!" she whispered simply.

"Hush!" snapped her father with a great gust of resentment that he
took to be a gust of propriety. "Hush, I say! I tell you it isn't
delicate for a--for a girl to talk about a man's skin!"

"Oh--but his skin was very delicate," mused little Eve Edgarton
persistently. "There in the lantern light--"

"What lantern light?" demanded her father.

"And the moonlight," murmured little Eve Edgarton.

"What moonlight?" demanded her father. A trifle quizzically he stepped
forward and peered into his daughter's face. "Personally, Eve," he
said, "I don't car