concerned himself at all with the accident to his plans. But by the
end of the third twenty-four hours, with his first two worries
reasonably eliminated, it was the accident to his plans that smote
upon him with the fiercest poignancy. Let a man's clothes and togs
vacillate as they will between his trunk and his bureau--once that
man's spirit is packed for a journey nothing but journey's end can
ever unpack it again!

With his own heart tuned already to the heart-throb of an engine, his
pale eyes focused squintingly toward expected novelties, his thin
nostrils half a-sniff with the first salty scent of the Far-Away, Mr.
Edgarton, whatever his intentions, was not the most ideal of sick-room
companions. Too conscientious to leave his daughter, too unhappy to
stay with her, he spent the larger part of his days and nights pacing
up and down like a caged beast between the two bedrooms.

It was not till the fifth day, however, that his impatience actually
burst the bounds he had set for it. Somewhere between his maple bureau
and Eve's mahogany bed the actual explosion took place, and in that
explosion every single infinitesimal wrinkle of brow, cheek, chin,
nose, was called into play, as if here at last was a man who intended
once and for all time to wring his face perfectly dry of all human
expression.

"Eve!" hissed her father. "I hate this place! I loathe this place! I
abominate it! I despise it! The flora is--execrable! The fauna? Nil!
And as to the coffee--the breakfast coffee? Oh, ye gods! Eve, if we're
delayed here another week--I shall die! Die, mind you, at sixty-two!
With my life-work just begun, Eve! I hate this place! I abominate it!
I de--"

"Really?" mused little Eve Edgarton from her white pillows. "Why--I
think it's lovely."

"Eh?" demanded her father. "What? Eh?"

"It's so social," said little Eve Edgarton.

"Social?" choked her father.

As bereft of expression as if robbed of both inner and outer vision,
little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes to his. "Why--two of the hotel
ladies have almost been to see me," she confided listlessly. "And the
chambermaid brought me the picture of her beau. And the hotel
proprietor lent me a story-book. And Mr.--"

"Social?" snapped her father.

"Oh, of course--if you got killed in a fire or anything, saving
people's lives, you'd sort of expect them to--send you candy--or make
you some sort of a memorial," conceded little Eve Edgarton
unemotionally. "But when you br