Part 11 (1/2)

Palms! Catering! Everything! It's going to be the biggest little dancing party that this slice of North American scenery ever saw!

And--”

Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her great solemn eyes to the newcomer's face.

”A party?” she drawled. ”A--a--dancing party--you mean? A real--Christian--dancing party?”

Dully the big eyes drooped again, and as if in mere casual mannerism her little brown hands went creeping up to the white breast of her gown. Then just as startling, just-as unprovable as the flash of a shooting star, her glance flashed up at Barton.

”O--h!” gasped little Eve Edgarton.

”O--h!” said Barton.

Astoundingly in his ears bells seemed suddenly to be ringing. His head was awhirl, his pulses fairly pounding with the weird, quixotic purport of his impulse.

”Miss Edgarton,” he began. ”Miss--”

Then right behind him two older men joggled him awkwardly in pa.s.sing.

”--and that Miss Von Eaton,” chuckled one man to another. ”Lordy!

There'll be more than forty men after her for to-morrow night! Smith!

Arnold! Hudson! Hazeltine! Who are you betting will get her?”

”I'M BETTING THAT I WILL!” crashed every brutally compet.i.tive male instinct in Barton's body. Impetuously he broke away from the Edgartons and darted off to find Miss Von Eaton before ”Smith--Arnold--Hudson--Hazeltine”--or any other man should find her!

So he sent little Eve Edgarton a great, gorgeous box of candy instead, wonderful candy, pounds and pounds of it, fine, fluted chocolates, and rose-pink bonbons, and fat, sugared violets, and all sorts of tin-foiled mysteries of fruit and spice.

And when the night of the party came he strutted triumphantly to it with Helene Von Eaton, who already at twenty was beginning to be just a little bit bored with parties; and together through all that riot of music and flowers and rainbow colors and dazzling lights they trotted and tangoed with monotonous perfection--the envied and admired of all beholders; two superbly physical young specimens of manhood and womanhood, desperately condoning each other's dullnesses for the sake of each other's good looks.

And while Youth and its Laughter--a chaos of color and shrill crescendos--was surging back and forth across the flower-wreathed piazzas, and violins were wheedling, and j.a.panese lanterns drunk with candle light were bobbing gaily in the balsam-scented breeze, little Eve Edgarton, up-stairs in her own room, was kneeling crampishly on the floor by the open window, with her chin on the window-sill, staring quizzically down--down--down on all that joy and novelty, till her father called her a trifle impatiently at last from his microscope table on the other side of the room.

”Eve!” summoned her father. ”What an idler you are! Can't you see how worried I am over this specimen here? My eyes, I tell you, aren't what they used to be.”

Then, patiently, little Eve Edgarton scrambled to her feet and, crossing over to her father's table, pushed his head mechanically aside and, bending down, squinted her own eye close to his magnifying gla.s.s.

”Bell-shaped calyx?” she began. ”Five petals of the corollary partly united? Why, it must be some relation to the Mexican rain-tree,” she mumbled without enthusiasm. ”Leaves--alternate, bi-pinnate, very typically--few foliate,” she continued. ”Why, it's a--a Pithecolobium.”

”Sure enough,” said Edgarton. ”That's what I thought all the time.”

As one eminently relieved of all future worry in the matter, he jumped up, pushed away his microscopic work, and, grabbing up the biggest book on the table, bolted unceremoniously for an easy chair.

Indifferently for a moment little Eve Edgarton stood watching him.

Then heavily, like a sleepy, insistent puppy dog, she shambled across the room and, climbing up into her father's lap, shoved aside her father's book, and burrowed her head triumphantly back into the lean, bony curve of his shoulder, her whole yawning interest centered apparently in the toes of her father's slippers.

Then so quietly that it scarcely seemed abrupt, ”Father,” she asked, ”was my mother--beautiful?”

”What?” gasped Edgarton. ”What?”

Bristling with a grave sort of astonishment he reached up nervously and stroked his daughter's hair. ”Your mother,” he winced. ”Your mother was--to me--the most beautiful woman that ever lived! Such expression!” he glowed. ”Such fire! But of such a spiritual modesty!

Of such a physical delicacy! Like a rose,” he mused, ”like a rose--that should refuse to bloom for any but the hand that gathered it.”