already."

"Oh, fine!" smiled Barton. "Fine! Fine! Fi--" Abruptly the word broke
in his throat. "What?" he cried. His hand--the steadiest hand among
all his chums--began to shake like an aspen. "WHAT?" he cried. His
heart, the steadiest heart among all his chums, began to pitch and
lurch in his breast. "Why, Eve! Eve!" he stammered. "You don't mean
you like me--like that?"

"Yes--I do," nodded the little white-capped head. There was much
shyness of flesh in the statement, but not a flicker of spiritual
self-consciousness or fear.

"But--Eve!" protested Barton. Already he felt the goose-flesh rising
on his arms. Once before a girl had told him that she--liked him. In
the middle of a silly summer flirtation it had been, and the scene had
been mawkish, awful, a mess of tears and kisses and endless
recriminations. But this girl? Before the utter simplicity of this
girl's statement, the unruffled dignity, the mere acknowledgment, as
it were, of an interesting historical fact, all his trifling,
preconceived ideas went tumbling down before his eyes like a flimsy
house of cards. Pang after pang of regret for the girl, of regret for
himself, went surging hotly through him. "Oh, but--Eve!" he began all
over again. His voice was raw with misery.

"Why, there's nothing to make a fuss about," drawled little Eve
Edgarton. "You've probably liked a thousand people, but I--you
see?--I've never had the fun of liking--any one--before!"

"Fun?" tortured Barton. "Yes, that's just it! If you'd ever had the