"Oh, my dear Eve!" he complained, "didn't you get wet enough in the
storm? And for mercy's sake where have you been?"

Out of the depths of her dripping hair and her big plushy bath-towel
little Eve Edgarton considered her father only casually.

[Illustration: "Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four
hundred muffins."]

"Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four hundred muffins!
And I'm so late I haven't even time to change my clothes! We got
struck by lightning," she added purely incidentally. "That is--sort of
struck by lightning. That is, Mr. Barton got sort of struck by
lightning. And oh, glory, Father!" her voice kindled a little. "And,
oh, glory, Father, I thought he was gone! Twice in the hours I was
working over him he stopped breathing altogether!"

Palpably the vigor died out of her voice again. "Father," she drawled
mumblingly through intermittent flops of bath-towel; "Father--you said
I could keep the next thing I--saved. Do you think I could--keep him?"




CHAPTER III


"What?" demanded her father.