"Don't mean--what?" puzzled Barton.

"Do--you--live--in--a--house?" asked little Eve Edgarton abruptly. Her
hands were suddenly quiet in her lap, her tousled head cocked ever so
slightly to one side, her sluggish eyes incredibly dilated.

"Why, of course I live in a house," laughed Barton.

"O--h," breathed little Eve Edgarton. "Re--ally? It must be
wonderful." Wiltingly her eyes, her hands, drooped back to her
scrap-book again. "In--all--my--life," she resumed monotonously, "I've
never spent a single night--in a real house."

"What?" questioned Barton.

"Oh, of course," explained the girl dully, "of course I've spent no
end of nights in hotels and camps and huts and trains and steamers
and--But--What color is your house?" she asked casually.

"Why, brown, I guess," said Barton.

"Brown, you 'guess'?" whispered the girl pitifully. "Don't you--know?"

"No, I wouldn't exactly like to swear to it," grinned Barton a bit
sheepishly.

Again the girl's eyes lifted just a bit over-intently from the work in
her lap.

"What color is the wall-paper--in your own room?" she asked casually.
"Is it--is it a--dear pinkie-posie sort of effect? Or just
plain--shaded stripes?"

"Why, I'm sure I don't remember," acknowledged Barton worriedly. "Why,
it's just paper, you know--paper," he floundered helplessly. "Red,
green, brown, white--maybe it's white," he asserted experimentally.
"Oh, for goodness' sake--how should I know!" he collapsed at last.
"When my sisters were home from Europe last year, they fixed the whole
blooming place over for--some kind of a party. But I don't know that I
ever specially noticed just what it was that they did to it. Oh, it's
all right, you know!" he attested with some emphasis. "Oh, it's all
right enough--early Jacobean, or something like that--'perfectly
corking,' everybody calls it! But it's so everlasting big, and it
costs so much to run it, and I've lost such a wicked lot of money this
year, that I'm not going to keep it after this autumn--if my sisters
ever send me their Paris address so I'll know what to do with their
things."

Frowningly little Eve Edgarton bent forward.

"'Some kind of a party?'" she repeated in unconscious mimicry. "You
mean you gave a party? A real Christian party? As recently as last
winter? And you can't even remember what kind of a party it was?"
Something in her slender brown throat fluttered ever so slightly.
"Why, I've never even been to a Christian party--