Once again the girl threw out her hand in an incongruous gesture of appeal.

“The things that Father thinks are necessary!” she exclaimed softly.  Noiselessly as a shadow she edged herself forward into the light till she faced Barton almost squarely.  “Maybe you think it’s fun, Mr. Barton,” she whispered.  “Maybe you think it’s fun—­at thirty years of age—­with all your faculties intact—­to own nothing in the world except—­except a steamer trunkful of the things that Father thinks are necessary!”

Very painstakingly on the fingers of one hand she began to enumerate the articles in question.  “Just your riding togs,” she said, “and six suits of underwear—­and all the United States consular reports—­and two or three wash dresses and two ‘good enough’ dresses—­and a lot of quinine—­and—­a squashed hat—­and—­and—­” Very faintly the ghost of a smile went flickering over her lips—­“and whatever microscopes and specimen-cases get crowded out of Father’s trunk.  What’s the use, Mr. Barton,” she questioned, “of spending a whole year investigating the silk industry of China—­if you can’t take any of the silks home?  What’s the use, Mr. Barton, of rolling up your sleeves and working six months in a heathen porcelain factory—­just to study glaze—­if you don’t own a china-closet in any city on the face of the earth?  Why—­sometimes, Mr. Barton,” she confided, “it seems as if I’d die a horrible death if I couldn’t buy things the way other people do—­and send them somewhere—­even if it wasn’t ‘home’!  The world is so full of beautiful things,” she mused.  “White enamel bath-tubs—­and Persian rugs—­and the most ingenious little egg-beaters—­and—­”

“Eh?” stammered Barton.  Quite desperately he rummaged his brain for some sane-sounding expression of understanding and sympathy.

“You could, I suppose,” he ventured, not too intelligently, “buy the things and give them to other people.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” conceded little Eve Edgarton without enthusiasm.  “Oh, yes, of course, you can always buy people the things they want.  But understand,” she said, “there’s very little satisfaction in buying the things you want to give to people who don’t want them.  I tried it once,” she confided, “and it didn’t work.

“The winter we were in Paraguay,” she went on, “in some stale old English newspaper I saw an advertisement of a white bedroom set.  There were eleven pieces, and it was adorable, and it cost eighty-two pounds—­and I thought after I’d had the fun of unpacking it, I could give it to a woman I knew who had a tea plantation.  But the instant she got it—­she painted it—­green!  Now when you send to England for eleven pieces of furniture because they are white,” sighed little Eve Edgarton, “and have them crated—­because they’re white—­and sent to sea because they’re white—­and then carried overland—­miles and miles and miles—­on Indians’ heads—­because they’re white, you sort of want ’em to stay white.  Oh, of course it’s all right,” she acknowledged patiently.  “The Tea Woman was nice, and the green paint by no means—­altogether bad.  Only, looking back now on our winter in Paraguay, I seem to have missed somehow the particular thrill that I paid eighty-two pounds and all that freightage for.”