just plain, every-day little-Eve-Edgarton funny, in a shabby old
English tramping suit, with a knapsack slung askew across one
shoulder, a faded Alpine hat yanked down across her eyes, and one
steel-wristed little hand dragging a mountain laurel bush almost as
big as herself. Close behind her followed her father, equally shabby,
his shapeless pockets fairly bulging with rocks, a battered tin botany
kit in one hand, a dingy black camera-box in the other.

Impulsively Barton started out to meet them, but just a step from the
threshold of the piazza door he sensed for the first time the long
line of smokers watching the two figures grinningly above their puffy
brown pipes and cigars.

"What is it?" called one smoker to another. "Moving Day in Jungle
Town?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" tittered the whole line of smokers. "Ha!--Ha! Ha!
Ha!--Ha!"

So, because he belonged, not so much to the type of person that can't
stand having its friends laughed at, as to the type that can't stand
having friends who are liable to be laughed at, Barton changed his
mind quite precipitately about identifying himself at that particular
moment with the Edgarton family, and whirled back instead to the
writing-room. There, by the aid of the hotel clerk, and two bell-boys,
and three new blotters, and a different pen, and an entirely fresh
bottle of ink, and just exactly the right-sized, the right-tinted sort
of letter paper, he concocted a perfectly charming note to little Eve
Edgarton--a note full of compliment, of gratitude, of sincere
appreciation, a note reiterating even once more his persistent