Part 13 (2/2)

”Surely nothing has happened to make you change your mind about Nunko-Nono? And good old John Ellbertson?”

”Oh--no--Father,” said little Eve Edgarton. Indolently she withdrew her eyes from her father's and stared off Nunko-Nonoward--in a hazy, geographical sort of a dream. ”Good old John Ellbertson--good old John Ellbertson,” she began to croon very softly to herself. ”Good old John Ellbertson. How I do love his kind brown eyes--how I do--”

”Brown eyes?” snapped her father. ”Brown? John Ellbertson's got the grayest eyes that I ever saw in my life!”

Without the slightest ruffle of composure little Eve Edgarton accepted the correction. ”Oh, has he?” she conceded amiably. ”Well, then, good old John Ellbertson--good old John Ellbertson--how I do love his kind--gray eyes,” she began all over again.

Palpably Edgarton s.h.i.+fted his standing weight from one foot to the other. ”I understood--your mother,” he a.s.serted a bit defiantly.

”Did you, dear? I wonder?” mused little Eve Edgarton.

”Eh?” jerked her father.

Still with the vague geographical dream in her eyes, little Eve Edgarton pointed off suddenly toward the open lid of her steamer trunk.

”Oh--my ma.n.u.script notes, Father, please!” she ordered almost peremptorily, ”John's notes, you know? I might as well be working on them while I'm lying here.”

Obediently from the tousled top of the steamer trunk her father returned with the great batch of rough ma.n.u.script. ”And my pencil, please,” persisted little Eve Edgarton. ”And my eraser. And my writing-board. And my ruler. And my--”

Absent-mindedly, one by one, Edgarton handed the articles to her, and then sank down on the foot of her bed with his thin-lipped mouth contorted into a rather mirthless grin. ”Don't care much for your old father, do you?” he asked trenchantly.

Gravely for a moment the girl sat studying her father's weather-beaten features, the thin hair, the pale, shrewd eyes, the gaunt cheeks, the indomitable old-young mouth. Then a little shy smile flickered across her face and was gone again.

”As a parent, dear,” she drawled, ”I love you to distraction! But as a daily companion?” Vaguely her eyebrows lifted. ”As a real playmate?”

Against the starch-white of her pillows the sudden flutter of her small brown throat showed with almost startling distinctness. ”But as a real playmate,” she persisted evenly, ”you are so--intelligent--and you travel so fast--it tires me.”

”Whom do you like?” asked her father sharply.

The girl's eyes were suddenly sullen again--bored, distrait, inestimably dreary. ”That's the whole trouble,” she said. ”You've never given me time--to like anybody.”

”Oh, but--Eve,” pleaded her father. Awkward as any schoolboy, he sat there, fuming and twisting before this absurd little bunch of nerve and nerves that he himself had begotten. ”Oh, but Eve,” he deprecated helplessly, ”it's the deuce of a job for a--for a man to be left all alone in the world with a--with a daughter! Really it is!”

Already the sweat had started on his forehead, and across one cheek the old gray fretwork of wrinkles began to shadow suddenly. ”I've done my best!” he pleaded. ”I swear I have! Only I've never known how!

With a mother, now,” he stammered, ”with a wife, with a sister, with your best friend's sister, you know just what to do! It's a definite relation! Prescribed by a definite emotion! But a daughter? Oh, ye G.o.ds! Your whole s.e.xual angle of vision changed! A creature neither fish, flesh, nor fowl! Non-superior, non-contemporaneous, non-subservient! Just a lady! A strange lady! Yes, that's exactly it, Eve--a strange lady--growing eternally just a little bit more strange--just a little bit more remote--every minute of her life! Yet it's so--d.a.m.ned intimate all the time!” he blurted out pa.s.sionately.

”All the time she's rowing you about your manners and your morals, all the time she's laying down the law to you about the tariff or the turnips, you're remembering--how you used to--scrub her--in her first little blue-lined tin bath-tub!”

Once again the flickering smile flared up in little Eve Edgarton's eyes and was gone again. A trifle self-consciously she burrowed back into her pillows. When she spoke her voice was scarcely audible. ”Oh, I know I'm funny,” she admitted conscientiously.

”You're not funny!” snapped her father.

”Yes, I am,” whispered the girl.

”No, you're not!” rea.s.serted her father with increasing vehemence.

”You're not! It's I who am funny! It's I who--” In a chaos of emotion he slid along the edge of the bed and clasped her in his arms. Just for an instant his wet cheek grazed hers, then: ”All the same, you know,” he insisted awkwardly, ”I hate this place!”

Surprisingly little Eve Edgarton reached up and kissed him full on the mouth. They were both very much embarra.s.sed.

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