self grinning into
that honest little face, and answering comfortably:

"Why, no, Miss Edgarton, I hadn't the slightest idea in the world of
wanting to marry you."

"Thank God for that!" gasped little Eve Edgarton. "So many of Father's
friends do want to marry me," she confided plaintively, still driving
Barton back through that horrid scratchy thicket. "I'm so rich, you
see," she confided with equal simplicity, "and I know so
much--there's almost always somebody in Petrozavodsk or Broken Hill
or Bashukulumbwe who wants to marry me."

"In--where?" stammered Barton.

"Why--in Russia!" said little Eve Edgarton with some surprise. "And
Australia! And Africa! Were you never there?"

"I've been in Jersey City," babbled Barton with a desperate attempt at
facetiousness.

"I was never there!" admitted little Eve Edgarton regretfully.

Vehemently with one hand she lunged forward and tried with her tiny
open palm to push Barton's horse a trifle faster back through the
intricate thicket. Then once in the open again she drew herself up
with an absurd air of dignity and finality and bowed him from her
presence.

"Good-by, Mr. Barton," she said. "Good-by, Mr. Barton."

"But Miss Edgarton--" stammered Barton perplexedly. Whatever his own
personal joy and relief might be, the surrounding country
nevertheless was exceedingly wild, and the girl an extravagantly long
distance from home. "But Miss Edgarton--" he began all over again.

"Good-by, Mr. Barton! And thank you for going home!" she added
conscientiously.

"But what will I tell your father?" worried Barton.

"Oh--hang Father," drawled the indifferent little voice.

"But the extra horse?" argued Barton with increasing perplexity. "The
gray? If you've got some date up your sleeve, don't you want me to
take the gray home with me, and get him out of your way?"

With sluggish resentment little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes to his.
"What would the gray go home with you for?" she asked tersely. "Why,
how silly! Why, it's my--mother's horse! That is, we call it my
mother's horse," she hastened to explain. "My mother's dead, you know.
She's almost always been dead, I mean. So Father always makes me buy
an extra place for my mother. It's just a trick of ours, a sort of a
custom. I play around alone so much you know. And we live in such wild
places!"

Casually she bent over and pushed the protruding butt of her revolver
a trifle farther down into her riding boot. "S'long--M