Part 14 (1/2)

”Why--why, Eve!” stammered her father. ”Why, my little--little girl!

Why, you haven't kissed me--before--since you were a baby!”

”Yes, I have!” nodded little Eve Edgarton.

”No, you haven't!” snapped her father.

”Yes, I have!” insisted Eve.

Tighter and tighter their arms clasped round each other. ”You're all I've got,” faltered the man brokenly.

”You're all I've ever had,” whispered little Eve Edgarton.

Silently for a moment each according to his thoughts sat staring off into far places. Then without any warning whatsoever, the man reached out suddenly and tipped his daughter's face up abruptly into the light.

”Eve!” he demanded. ”Surely you're not blaming me any in your heart because I want to see you safely married and settled with--with John Ellbertson?”

Vaguely, like a child repeating a dimly understood lesson, little Eve Edgarton repeated the phrases after him. ”Oh, no, Father,” she said, ”I surely am not blaming you--in my heart--for wanting to see me married and settled with--John Ellbertson. Good old John Ellbertson,”

she corrected painstakingly.

With his hand still holding her little chin like a vise, the man's eyes narrowed to his further probing. ”Eve,” he frowned, ”I'm not as well as I used to be! I've got pains in my arms! And they're not good pains! I shall live to be a thousand! But I--I might not! It's a--rotten world, Eve,” he brooded, ”and quite unnecessarily crowded--it seems to me--with essentially rotten people. Toward the starving and the crippled and the hideously distorted, the world, having no envy of them, shows always an amazing mercy; and Beauty, whatever its sorrows, can always retreat to the thick protecting wall of its own conceit. But as for the rest of us?” he grinned with a sudden convulsive twist of the eyebrow, ”G.o.d help the unduly prosperous--and the merely plain! From the former--always, Envy, like a wolf, shall tear down every fresh talent, every fresh treasure, they lift to their aching backs. And from the latter--Brutal Neglect shall ravage away even the charm that they thought they had!

”It's a--a rotten world, Eve, I tell you,” he began all over again, a bit plaintively. ”A rotten world! And the pains in my arms, I tell you, are not--nice! Distinctly not nice! Sometimes, Eve, you think I'm making faces at you! But, believe me, it isn't faces that I'm making!

It's my--heart that I'm making at you! And believe me, the pain is not--nice!”

Before the sudden wince in his daughter's eyes he reverted instantly to an air of semi-jocosity. ”So, under all existing circ.u.mstances, little girl,” he hastened to affirm, ”you can hardly blame a crusty old codger of a father for preferring to leave his daughter in the hands of a man whom he positively knows to be good, than in the hands of some casual stranger who, just in a negative way, he merely can't prove isn't good? Oh, Eve--Eve,” he pleaded sharply, ”you'll be so much better off--out of the world! You've got infinitely too much money and infinitely too little--self-conceit--to be happy here! They would break your heart in a year! But at Nunko-Nono!” he cried eagerly. ”Oh, Eve! Think of the peace of it! Just white beach, and a blue sea, and the long, low, endless horizon. And John will make you a garden! And women--I have often heard--are very happy in a garden!

And--”

Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes again to his. ”Has John got a beard?” she asked.

”Why--why, I'm sure I don't remember,” stammered her father. ”Why, yes, I think so--why, yes, indeed--I dare say!”

”Is it a grayish beard?” asked little Eve Edgarton.

”Why--why, yes--I shouldn't wonder,” admitted her father.

”And reddish?” persisted little Eve Edgarton. ”And longish? As long as--?” Ill.u.s.tratively with her hands she stretched to her full arm's length.

”Yes, I think perhaps it is reddish,” conceded her father. ”But why?”

”Oh--nothing,” mused little Eve Edgarton. ”Only sometimes at night I dream about you and me landing at Nunko-Nono. And John in a great big, long, reddish-gray beard always comes crunching down at full speed across the hermit-crabs to meet us. And always just before he reaches us, he--he trips on his beard--and falls headlong into the ocean--and is--drowned.”

”Why--what an awful dream!” deprecated her father.

”Awful?” queried little Eve Edgarton. ”Ha! It makes me--laugh. All the same,” she affirmed definitely, ”good old John Ellbertson will have to have his beard cut.” Quizzically for an instant she stared off into s.p.a.ce, then quite abruptly she gave a quick, funny little sniff.

”Anyway, I'll have a garden, won't I?” she said. ”And always, of course, there will be--Henrietta.”

”Henrietta?” frowned her father.

”My daughter!” explained little Eve Edgarton with dignity.

”Your daughter?” snapped Edgarton.

”Oh, of course there may be several,” conceded little Eve Edgarton.