"Really?" mused little Eve Edgarton from her white pillows. "Why--I
think it's lovely."

"Eh?" demanded her father. "What? Eh?"

"It's so social," said little Eve Edgarton.

"Social?" choked her father.

As bereft of expression as if robbed of both inner and outer vision,
little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes to his. "Why--two of the hotel
ladies have almost been to see me," she confided listlessly. "And the
chambermaid brought me the picture of her beau. And the hotel
proprietor lent me a story-book. And Mr.--"

"Social?" snapped her father.

"Oh, of course--if you got killed in a fire or anything, saving
people's lives, you'd sort of expect them to--send you candy--or make
you some sort of a memorial," conceded little Eve Edgarton
unemotionally. "But when you break your head--just amusing yourself?
Why, I thought it was nice for the hotel ladies to almost come to see
me," she finished, without even so much as a flicker of the eyelids.

Disgustedly her father started for his own room, then whirled abruptly
in his tracks and glanced back at that imperturbable little figure in
the big white bed. Except for the scarcely perceptible hound-like
flicker of his nostrils, his own face held not a whit more expression
than the girl's.