im. "I don't know whether I should ever specially like you--or not,
Mr. Barton," she drawled. "But you are certainly very beautiful!"

"Oh, I say!" cried Barton wretchedly. With a really desperate effort
he struggled almost to his feet, tottered for an instant, and then
came sagging down to the soft earth again--a great, sprawling,
spineless heap, at little Eve Edgarton's feet.

Unflinchingly, as if her wrists were built of steel wires, the girl
jumped up and pulled and tugged and yanked his almost dead weight into
a sitting posture again.

"My! But you're chock-full of lightning!" she commiserated with him.

Out of the utter rage and mortification of his helplessness Barton
could almost have cursed her for her sympathy. Then suddenly, without
warning, a little gasp of sheer tenderness escaped him.

"Eve Edgarton," he stammered, "you're--a--brick! You--you must have
been invented just for the sole purpose of saving people's lives. Oh,
you've saved mine all right!" he acknowledged soberly. "And all this
black, blasted night you've nursed me--and fed me--and jollied
me--without a whimper about yourself--without--a--" Impulsively he
reached out his numb-palmed hand to her, and her own hand came so cold
to it that it might have been the caress of one ghost to another. "Eve
Edgarton," he reiterated, "I tell you--you're a brick! And I'm a
fool--and a slob--and a mutt-head--even when I'm not chock-full of
lightning, as you call it! But if there's ever anything I can do for
you!"

"What did you say?" muttered little Eve Edgarton.

"I said you were a brick!" repeated Barton a bit irritably.

"Oh, no, I didn't mean--that," mused the girl. "But what was the--last
thing you said?"

"Oh!" grinned Barton more cheerfully. "I said--if there was ever
anything that I could do for you, anything--"

"Would you rent me your attic?" asked little Eve Edgarton.

"Would I rent you my attic?" stammered Barton. "Why in the world
should you want to hire my attic?"

"So I could buy pretty things in Siam--or Ceylon--or any other queer
country--and have some place to send them," said little Eve Edgarton.
"Oh, I'd pay the express, Mr. Barton," she hastened to assure him.
"Oh, I promise you there never would be any trouble about the express!
Or about the rent!" Expeditiously as she spoke she reached for her hip
pocket and brought out a roll of bills that fairly took Barton's
breath away. "If there's one thing in the world, you know, that