of cream, and the things that go with saucers
of cream; ice-chests, and--and--" Surprisingly into her languid,
sing-song tone broke a sudden note of passion. "Bah!" she snapped.
"Think of going all the way to India just to plunge your arms into the
spooky, foamy Ganges and 'make a wish'! 'What do you wish?' asks
Father, pleased-as a Chessy-puss. Humph! I wish it was the soap-suds
in my own wash-tub!--Or gallivanting down to British Guiana just to
smell the great blowsy water-lilies in the canals! I'd rather smell
burned crackers in my own cook stove!"

"But you'll surely have a house--some time," argued Barton with real
sympathy. Quite against all intention the girl's unexpected emotion
disturbed him a little. "Every girl gets a house--some time!" he
insisted resolutely.

"N--o, I don't--think so," mused Eve Edgarton judicially. "You see,"
she explained with soft, slow deliberation, "you see, Mr. Barton, only
people who live in houses know people who live in houses! If you're a
nomad you meet--only nomads! Campers mate just naturally with campers,
and ocean-travelers with ocean-travelers--and red-velvet
hotel-dwellers with red-velvet hotel-dwellers. Oh, of course, if
Mother had lived it might have been different," she added a trifle
more cheerfully. "For, of course, if Mother had lived I should have
been--pretty," she asserted calmly, "or interesting-looking, anyway.
Mother would surely have managed it--somehow; and I should have had a
lot of beaux--young men beaux I mean, like you. Father's friends are
all so gray!--Oh, of course, I shall marry--some time," she continued
evenly. "Probably I'm going to marry the British consul at Nunko-Nono.
He's a great friend of Father's--and he wants me to help him write a
book on 'The Geologic Relationship of Melanesia to the Australian
Continent'!"

Dully her voice rose to its monotone: "But I don't suppose--we shall
live in a--house," she moaned apathetically. "At the best it will
probably be only a musty room or two up over the consulate--and more
likely than not it won't be anything at all except a nipa hut and a
typewriter-table."

As if some mote of dust disturbed her, suddenly she rubbed the knuckles
of one hand across her eyes. "But maybe we'll have--daughters,"
she persisted undauntedly. "And maybe they'll have houses!"

"Oh, shucks!" said Barton uneasily. "A--a house isn't so much!"

"It--isn't?" asked little Eve Edgarton incredulously. "Why--why--you
don't mean--"