Creakily under their hot, chafing saddles the sweltering roans lurched off suddenly through a great snarl of bushes into a fern-shaded spring-hole and stood ankle-deep in the boggy grass, guzzling noisily at food and drink, with the chunky gray crowding greedily against first one rider and then the other.

Quite against all intention Barton groaned aloud.  His sun-scorched eyes seemed fairly shriveling with the glare.  His wilted linen collar slopped like a stale poultice around his tortured neck.  In his sticky fingers the bridle-rein itched like so much poisoned ribbon.

Reaching up one small hand to drag the soft flannel collar of her shirt a little farther down from her slim throat, Eve Edgarton rested her chin on her knuckles for an instant and surveyed him plaintively.  “Aren’t—­we—­having—­an—­awful time?” she whispered.

Even then if she had looked woman-y, girl-y, even remotely, affectedly feminine, Barton would doubtless have floundered heroically through some protesting lie.  But to the frank, blunt, little-boyishness of her he succumbed suddenly with a beatific grin of relief.  “Yes, we certainly are!” he acknowledged ruthlessly.

“And what good is it?” questioned the girl most unexpectedly.

“Not any good!” grunted Barton.

“To any one?” persisted the girl.

“Not to any one!” exploded Barton.

With an odd little gasp of joy the girl reached out dartingly and touched Barton on his sleeve.  Her face was suddenly eager, active, transcendently vital.

“Then oh—­won’t you please—­please—­turn round—­and go home—­and leave me alone?” she pleaded astonishingly.

“Turn round and go home?” stammered Barton.

The touch on his sleeve quickened a little.  “Oh, yes—­please, Mr. Barton!” insisted the tremulous voice.

“You—­you mean I’m in your way?” stammered Barton.

Very gravely the girl nodded her head.  “Oh, yes, Mr. Barton—­you’re terribly in my way,” she acknowledged quite frankly.

“Good Heavens,” thought Barton, “is there a man in this?  Is it a tryst?  Well, of all things!”

Jerkily he began to back his horse out of the spring-hole, back—­back—­back through the intricate, overgrown pathway of flapping leaves and sharp, scratchy twigs.

“I am very sorry, Miss Edgarton, to have forced my presence on you so!” he murmured ironically.

“Oh, it isn’t just you!” said little Eve Edgarton quite frankly.  “It’s all Father’s friends.”  Almost threateningly as she spoke she jerked up her own horse’s drizzling mouth and rode right at Barton as if to force him back even faster through the great snarl of underbrush.  “I hate clever people!” she asserted passionately.  “I hate them—­hate them—­hate them!  I hate all Father’s clever friends!  I hate—­”

“But you see I’m not clever,” grinned Barton in spite of himself.  “Oh, not clever at all,” he reiterated with some grimness as an alder branch slapped him stingingly across one eye.  “Indeed—­” he dodged and ducked and floundered, still backing, backing, everlastingly backing—­“indeed, your father has spent quite a lot of his valuable time this afternoon assuring me—­and reassuring me—­that—­that I’m altogether a fool!”