Then like the dart of a bird, she flashed to her father's door and
opened it.

"Father!" she whispered. "Father!"

"Yes," answered the half-muffled, pillowy voice. "What is it?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you something that happened once--down in
Indo-China," whispered little Eve Edgarton. "Once when you were away,"
she confided breathlessly, "I pulled a half-drowned coolie out of a
canal."

"Well, what of it?" asked her father a bit tartly.

"Oh, nothing special," said little Eve Edgarton, "except that his skin
was like yellow parchment! And sand-paper! And old plaster!"

Without further ado then, she turned away, and, except for the single
ecstatic episode of making the four hundred muffins for breakfast,
resumed her pulseless role of being just--little Eve Edgarton.

As for Barton, the subsequent morning hours brought sleep and sleep
only--the sort of sleep that fairly souses the senses in oblivion,
weighing the limbs with lead, the brain with stupor, till the sleeper
rolls out from under the load at last like one half paralyzed with
cramp and helplessness.

Certainly it was long after noon-time before Barton actually rallied
his aching bones, his dizzy head, his refractory inclinations, to meet
the fluctuant sympathy and chaff that awaited him down-stairs in every