again--and--trample on you."

"I believe you would!" said Barton with a sudden sobriety more packed
with mirth than any laugh he had ever laughed.

"Well, I don't care," conceded the girl a bit sheepishly. "Everybody
laughs at my paper-doll book! Father does! Everybody does! When I'm
rearranging their old mummy collections--and cataloguing their old
South American birds--or shining up their old geological
specimens--they think I'm wonderful. But when I try to do the
teeniest--tiniest thing that happens to interest me--they call me
'crazy'! So that's why I come 'way out here to this cave--to play,"
she whispered with a flicker of real shyness. "In all the world," she
confided, "this cave is the only place I've ever found where there
wasn't anybody to laugh at me."

Between her placid brows a vindictive little frown blackened suddenly.
"That's why it wasn't specially convenient, Mr. Barton--to have you
ride with me this afternoon," she affirmed. "That's why it wasn't
specially convenient to--to have you struck by lightning this
afternoon!" Tragically, with one small brown hand, she pointed toward
the great water-soaked mess of magazines that surrounded her. "You
see," she mourned, "I've been saving them up all summer--to cut
out--to-day! And now?--Now--? We're sailing for Melbourne Saturday!"
she added conclusively.

"Well--really!" stammered Barton. "Well--truly!--Well, of all--damned
things! Why--what do you want me to do? Apologize to you for having
been struck by lightning?" His voice was fairly riotous with
astonishment and indignation. Then quite unexpectedly one side of his