ust to study glaze--if you
don't own a china-closet in any city on the face of the earth?
Why--sometimes, Mr. Barton," she confided, "it seems as if I'd die a
horrible death if I couldn't buy things the way other people do--and
send them somewhere--even if it wasn't 'home'! The world is so full of
beautiful things," she mused. "White enamel bath-tubs--and Persian
rugs--and the most ingenious little egg-beaters--and--"

"Eh?" stammered Barton. Quite desperately he rummaged his brain for
some sane-sounding expression of understanding and sympathy.

"You could, I suppose," he ventured, not too intelligently, "buy the
things and give them to other people."

"Oh, yes, of course," conceded little Eve Edgarton without
enthusiasm. "Oh, yes, of course, you can always buy people the things
they want. But understand," she said, "there's very little
satisfaction in buying the things you want to give to people who don't
want them. I tried it once," she confided, "and it didn't work.

"The winter we were in Paraguay," she went on, "in some stale old
English newspaper I saw an advertisement of a white bedroom set. There
were eleven pieces, and it was adorable, and it cost eighty-two
pounds--and I thought after I'd had the fun of unpacking it, I could
give it to a woman I knew who had a tea plantation. But the instant
she got it--she painted it--green! Now when you send to England for
eleven pieces of furniture because they are white," sighed little Eve
Edgarton, "and have them crated--because they're white--and sent to
sea because they're white--and then carried overland--miles and miles
and miles--on Indians' heads--because they're white, you sort of want
'em to stay white. Oh, of course it's all right," she acknowledged
patiently. "The Tea Woman was nice, and the green paint by no
means--altogether bad. Only, looking back now on our winter in
Paraguay, I seem to have missed somehow the particular thrill that I
paid eighty-two pounds and all that freightage for."

"Yes, of course," agreed Barton. He could see that.

"So if you could rent me your attic--" she resumed almost blithely.

"But my dear child," interrupted Barton, "what possible--"

"Why--I'd have a place then to send things to," argued little Eve
Edgarton.

"But you're off on the high seas Saturday, you say," laughed Barton.

"Yes, I know," explained little Eve Edgarton just a bit impatiently.
"But the high seas are so dull, Mr. Barton. And then we sail so long!