“Why, Jim!” gasped Miss Von Eaton.  Exquisitely white and cool and fluffy and dainty, she glanced up perplexedly at him from her lazy, deep-seated chair.  “Why, Jim!” she repeated, just a little bit edgily.  “Riding?  Riding?  Well, of all things!  You who wouldn’t even play bridge with us this afternoon on account of the heat!  Well, who in the world—­who can it be that has cut us all out?”

Teasingly she jumped up and walked to the door with him, and stood there peering out beyond the cool shadow of his dark-blue shoulder into the dazzling road where, like so many figures thrust forth all unwittingly into the merciless flare of a spot-light, little shabby Eve Edgarton and three sweating horses waited squintingly in the dust.

“Oh!” cried Miss Von Eaton.  “W-hy!” stammered Miss Von Eaton.  “Good gracious!” giggled Miss Von Eaton.  Then hysterically, with her hand clapped over her mouth, she turned and fled up the stairs to confide the absurd news to her mates.

With a face like a graven image Barton went on down the steps into the road.  In one of his thirty-dollar riding-boots a disconcerting two-cent sort of squeak merely intensified his unhappy sensation of being motivated purely mechanically like a doll.

Two of the horses that whinnied cordially at his approach were rusty roans.  The third was a chunky gray.  Already on one of the roans Eve Edgarton sat perched with her bridle-rein oddly slashed in two, and knotted, each raw end to a stirrup, leaving her hands and arms still perfectly free to hug her mysterious books and papers to her breast.

“Good afternoon again, Miss Edgarton,” smiled Barton conscientiously.

“Good afternoon again, Mr. Barton,” echoed Eve Edgarton listlessly.

With frank curiosity he nodded toward her armful of papers.  “Surely you’re not going to carry—­all that stuff with you?” he questioned.

“Yes, I am, Mr. Barton,” drawled Eve Edgarton, scarcely above a whisper.

Worriedly he pointed to her stirrups.  “But Great Scott, Miss Edgarton!” he protested.  “Surely you’re not reckless enough to ride like that?  Just guiding with your feet?”

“I always—­do, Mr. Barton,” singsonged the girl monotonously.

“But the extra horse?” cried Barton.  With a sudden little chuckle of relief he pointed to the chunky gray.  There was a side-saddle on the chunky gray.  “Who’s going with us?”

Almost insolently little Eve Edgarton narrowed her sleepy eyes.

“I always taken an extra horse with me, Mr. Barton—­Thank you!” she yawned, with the very faintest possible tinge of asperity.

“Oh!” stammered Barton quite helplessly.  “O—­h!” Heavily, as he spoke, he lifted one foot to his stirrup and swung up into his saddle.  Through all his mental misery, through all his physical discomfort, a single lovely thought sustained him.  There was only one really good riding road in that vicinity!  And it was shady!  And, thank Heaven, it was most inordinately short!