in all my life!" she
said. "Though I can dance in every language of Asia!

"And you've got sisters?" she stammered. "Live silk-and-muslin
sisters? And you don't even know where they are? Why, I've never even
had a girl friend in all my life!"

Incredulously she lifted her puzzled eyes to his. "And you've got a
house?" she faltered. "And you're not going to keep it? A real--truly
house? And you don't even know what color it is? You don't even know
what color your own room is? And I know the name of every house-paint
there is in the world," she muttered, "and the name of every
wall-paper there is in the world, and the name of every carpet, and
the name of every curtain, and the name of--everything. And I haven't
got any house at all--"

Then startlingly, without the slightest warning, she pitched forward
suddenly on her face and lay clutching into the turf--a little
dust-colored wisp of a boyish figure sobbing its starved heart out
against a dust-colored earth.

"Why--what's the matter!" gasped Barton. "Why!--Why--Kid!" Very
laboriously with his numbed hands, with his strange, unresponsive
legs, he edged himself forward a little till he could just reach her
shoulder. "Why--Kid!" he patted her rather clumsily. "Why, Kid--do you
mean--"

Slowly through the darkness Eve Edgarton came crawling to his side.
Solemnly she lifted her eyes to Barton's. "I'll tell you something
that Mother told me," she murmured. "This is it: 'Your father is the
most wonderful man that ever lived,' my mother whispered to me quite
distinctly. 'But he'll never make any home for you--except in his
arms; and that is plenty Home-Enough for a wife--but not nearly
Home-Enough for a daughter! And--and--"

"Why, you say it as if you knew it by heart," interrupted Barton.

"Why, of course I know it by heart!" cried little Eve Edgarton almost
eagerly. "My mother whispered it to me, I tell you! The things that
people shout at you--you forget in half a night. But the things that
people whisper to you, you remember to your dying day!"

"If I whisper something to you," said Barton quite impulsively, "will
you promise to remember it to your dying day?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Barton," droned little Eve Edgarton.

Abruptly Barton reached out and tilted her chin up whitely toward him.
"In this light," he whispered, "with your hat pushed back
like--that!--and your hair fluffed up like--that!--and the little
laugh in your eyes!--and the flush!--and the quiver!--yo