"Bored?" snapped Barton. Staring perplexedly into her dreary, meek little face, something deeper, something infinitely subtler than mere curiosity, wakened precipitately in his consciousness. "For Heaven's sake, Miss Edgarton!" he stammered. "From the Arctic Ocean to the South Seas, if you've seen all the things that you must have seen, if you've done all the things that you must have done--WHY SHOULD YOU LOOK SO BORED?"
Flutteringly the girl's eyes lifted and fell. "Why, I'm bored, Mr.
Barton," drawled little Eve Edgarton, "I'm bored because--I'm sick to death--of seeing all the things I've seen. I'm sick to death of--doing all the things I've done." With little metallic snips of sound she concentrated herself and her scissors suddenly upon the mahogany-colored picture of a pianola.
"Well, what do you want?" quizzed Barton.
In a sullen, turgid sort of defiance the girl lifted her somber eyes to his. "I want to stay home--like other people--and have a house,"
she wailed. "I want a house--and--the things that go with a house: a cat, and the things that go with a cat; kittens, and the things that go with kittens; saucers of cream, and the things that go with saucers of cream; ice-chests, and--and--" Surprisingly into her languid, sing-song tone broke a sudden note of passion. "Bah!" she snapped.
"Think of going all the way to India just to plunge your arms into the spooky, foamy Ganges and 'make a wish'! 'What do you wish?' asks Father, pleased-as a Chessy-puss. Humph! I wish it was the soap-suds in my own wash-tub!--Or gallivanting down to British Guiana just to smell the great blowsy water-lilies in the canals! I'd rather smell burned crackers in my own cook stove!"
"But you'll surely have a house--some time," argued Barton with real sympathy. Quite against all intention the girl's unexpected emotion disturbed him a little. "Every girl gets a house--some time!" he insisted resolutely.
"N--o, I don't--think so," mused Eve Edgarton judicially. "You see,"
she explained with soft, slow deliberation, "you see, Mr. Barton, only people who live in houses know people who live in houses! If you're a nomad you meet--only nomads! Campers mate just naturally with campers, and ocean-travelers with ocean-travelers--and red-velvet hotel-dwellers with red-velvet hotel-dwellers. Oh, of course, if Mother had lived it might have been different," she added a trifle more cheerfully. "For, of course, if Mother had lived I should have been--pretty," she asserted calmly, "or interesting-looking, anyway.
Mother would surely have managed it--somehow; and I should have had a lot of beaux--young men beaux I mean, like you. Father's friends are all so gray!--Oh, of course, I shall marry--some time," she continued evenly. "Probably I'm going to marry the British consul at Nunko-Nono.
He's a great friend of Father's--and he wants me to help him write a book on 'The Geologic Relationship of Melanesia to the Australian Continent'!"
Dully her voice rose to its monotone: "But I don't suppose--we shall live in a--house," she moaned apathetically. "At the best it will probably be only a musty room or two up over the consulate--and more likely than not it won't be anything at all except a nipa hut and a typewriter-table."
As if some mote of dust disturbed her, suddenly she rubbed the knuckles of one hand across her eyes. "But maybe we'll have--daughters,"
she persisted undauntedly. "And maybe they'll have houses!"
"Oh, shucks!" said Barton uneasily. "A--a house isn't so much!"
"It--isn't?" asked little Eve Edgarton incredulously. "Why--why--you don't mean--"
"Don't mean--what?" puzzled Barton.
"Do--you--live--in--a--house?" asked little Eve Edgarton abruptly. Her hands were suddenly quiet in her lap, her tousled head cocked ever so slightly to one side, her sluggish eyes incredibly dilated.
"Why, of course I live in a house," laughed Barton.
"O--h," breathed little Eve Edgarton. "Re--ally? It must be wonderful." Wiltingly her eyes, her hands, drooped back to her scrap-book again. "In--all--my--life," she resumed monotonously, "I've never spent a single night--in a real house."
"What?" questioned Barton.
"Oh, of course," explained the girl dully, "of course I've spent no end of nights in hotels and camps and huts and trains and steamers and--But--What color is your house?" she asked casually.
"Why, brown, I guess," said Barton.
"Brown, you 'guess'?" whispered the girl pitifully. "Don't you--know?"
"No, I wouldn't exactly like to swear to it," grinned Barton a bit sheepishly.
Again the girl's eyes lifted just a bit over-intently from the work in her lap.
"What color is the wall-paper--in your own room?" she asked casually.
"Is it--is it a--dear pinkie-posie sort of effect? Or just plain--shaded stripes?"
"Why, I'm sure I don't remember," acknowledged Barton worriedly. "Why, it's just paper, you know--paper," he floundered helplessly. "Red, green, brown, white--maybe it's white," he asserted experimentally.
"Oh, for goodness' sake--how should I know!" he collapsed at last.
"When my sisters were home from Europe last year, they fixed the whole blooming place over for--some kind of a party. But I don't know that I ever specially noticed just what it was that they did to it. Oh, it's all right, you know!" he attested with some emphasis. "Oh, it's all right enough--early Jacobean, or something like that--'perfectly corking,' everybody calls it! But it's so everlasting big, and it costs so much to run it, and I've lost such a wicked lot of money this year, that I'm not going to keep it after this autumn--if my sisters ever send me their Paris address so I'll know what to do with their things."
Frowningly little Eve Edgarton bent forward.
"'Some kind of a party?'" she repeated in unconscious mimicry. "You mean you gave a party? A real Christian party? As recently as last winter? And you can't even remember what kind of a party it was?"
Something in her slender brown throat fluttered ever so slightly.
"Why, I've never even been to a Christian party--in all my life!" she said. "Though I can dance in every language of Asia!
"And you've got sisters?" she stammered. "Live silk-and-muslin sisters? And you don't even know where they are? Why, I've never even had a girl friend in all my life!"
Incredulously she lifted her puzzled eyes to his. "And you've got a house?" she faltered. "And you're not going to keep it? A real--truly house? And you don't even know what color it is? You don't even know what color your own room is? And I know the name of every house-paint there is in the world," she muttered, "and the name of every wall-paper there is in the world, and the name of every carpet, and the name of every curtain, and the name of--everything. And I haven't got any house at all--"
Then startlingly, without the slightest warning, she pitched forward suddenly on her face and lay clutching into the turf--a little dust-colored wisp of a boyish figure sobbing its starved heart out against a dust-colored earth.
"Why--what's the matter!" gasped Barton. "Why!--Why--Kid!" Very laboriously with his numbed hands, with his strange, unresponsive legs, he edged himself forward a little till he could just reach her shoulder. "Why--Kid!" he patted her rather clumsily. "Why, Kid--do you mean--"
Slowly through the darkness Eve Edgarton came crawling to his side.
Solemnly she lifted her eyes to Barton's. "I'll tell you something that Mother told me," she murmured. "This is it: 'Your father is the most wonderful man that ever lived,' my mother whispered to me quite distinctly. 'But he'll never make any home for you--except in his arms; and that is plenty Home-Enough for a wife--but not nearly Home-Enough for a daughter! And--and--"
"Why, you say it as if you knew it by heart," interrupted Barton.
"Why, of course I know it by heart!" cried little Eve Edgarton almost eagerly. "My mother whispered it to me, I tell you! The things that people shout at you--you forget in half a night. But the things that people whisper to you, you remember to your dying day!"
"If I whisper something to you," said Barton quite impulsively, "will you promise to remember it to your dying day?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Barton," droned little Eve Edgarton.
Abruptly Barton reached out and tilted her chin up whitely toward him.
"In this light," he whispered, "with your hat pushed back like--that!--and your hair fluffed up like--that!--and the little laugh in your eyes!--and the flush!--and the quiver!--you look like an--elf! A bronze and gold elf! You're wonderful! You're magical! You ought always to dress like that! Somebody ought to tell you about it!
Woodsy, storm-colored clothes with little quick glints of light in them! Paquin or some of those people could make you famous!"
As spontaneously as he had touched her he jerked his hand away, and, snatching up the lantern, flashed it bluntly on her astonished face.
For one brief instant her hand went creeping up to the tip of her chin. Then very soberly, like a child with a lesson, she began to repeat Barton's impulsive phrases.
"'In this light,'" she droned, "'with your hat pushed back like that--and your hair fluffed up like that--and the--the--'" More unexpectedly then than anything that could possibly have happened she burst out laughing--a little low, giggly, school-girlish sort of laugh. "Oh, that's easy to remember!" she announced. Then, all one narrow black silhouette again, she crouched down into the semi-darkness.
"For a lady," she resumed listlessly, "who rode side-saddle and really enjoyed hiking 'round all over the sticky face of the globe, my mother certainly did guess pretty keenly just how things were going to be with me. I'll tell you what she said to sustain me," she repeated dreamily, "'Any foolish woman can keep house, but the woman who travels with your father has got to be able to keep the whole wide world for him! It's nations that you'll have to put to bed! And suns and moons and stars that you'll have to keep scoured and bright! But with the whole green earth for your carpet, and shining heaven for your roof-tree, and God Himself for your landlord, now wouldn't you be a fool, if you weren't quite satisfied?'"
"'If--you--weren't--quite satisfied,'" finished Barton mumblingly.
Little Eve Edgarton lifted her great eyes, soft with sorrow, sharp with tears, almost defiantly to Barton's.
"That's--what--Mother said," she faltered. "But all the same--I'd RATHER HAVE A HOUSE!"
"Why, you poor kid!" said Barton. "You ought to have a house! It's a shame! It's a beastly shame! It's a--"