e in Barton's knowledge of little Eve Edgarton she
lifted her eyes to him--great hazel eyes, great bored, dreary, hazel
eyes set broadly in a too narrow olive face.

"My father is generally conceded to be something of a joker, I
believe," she said dully. "But it would never have occurred to me to
call him a particularly practical one. I don't like him," she added
without a flicker of expression.

"I don't either!" snapped Barton.

A trifle uneasily little Eve Edgarton went on. "Why--once when I was a
tiny child--" she droned.

"I don't know anything about when you were a tiny child," affirmed
Barton with some vehemence. "But just this afternoon--!"

In striking contrast to the cool placidity of her face one of Eve
Edgarton's boot-toes began to tap-tap-tap against the piazza floor.
When she lifted her eyes again to Barton their sleepy sullenness was
shot through suddenly with an unmistakable flash of temper.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Mr. Barton!" she cried out. "If you insist
upon riding with me, couldn't you please hurry? The afternoons are so
short!"

"If I 'insist' upon riding with you?" gasped Barton.

Disconcertingly from an upper window the Older Man's face beamed
suddenly down upon him. "Oh, don't mind anything she says," drawled
the Older Man. "It's just her cunning, 'meek' little ways."

Precipitately Barton bolted for his room.

Once safely ensconced behind his closed door a dozen different
decisions, a dozen different indecisions, rioted tempestuously through
his mind. To go was just as awkward as not to go! Not to go was just
as awkward as to go! Over and over and over one silly alternative
chased the other through his addled senses. Then just as precipitately
as he had bolted to his room he began suddenly to hurl himself into
his riding-clothes, yanking out a bureau drawer here, slamming back a
closet door there, rummaging through a box, tipping over a trunk, yet
in all his fuming haste, his raging irritability, showing the same
fastidious choice of shirt, tie, collar, that characterized his every
public appearance.

Immaculate at last as a tailor's equestrian advertisement he came
striding down again into the hotel office, only to plunge most
inopportunely into Miss Von Eaton's languorous presence.

"Why, Jim!" gasped Miss Von Eaton. Exquisitely white and cool and
fluffy and dainty, she glanced up perplexedly at him from her lazy,
deep-seated chair. "Why, Jim!" she repeated, just a little bit