It was not till the fifth day, however, that his impatience actually burst the bounds he had set for it.  Somewhere between his maple bureau and Eve’s mahogany bed the actual explosion took place, and in that explosion every single infinitesimal wrinkle of brow, cheek, chin, nose, was called into play, as if here at last was a man who intended once and for all time to wring his face perfectly dry of all human expression.

“Eve!” hissed her father.  “I hate this place!  I loathe this place!  I abominate it!  I despise it!  The flora is—­execrable!  The fauna?  Nil!  And as to the coffee—­the breakfast coffee?  Oh, ye gods!  Eve, if we’re delayed here another week—­I shall die!  Die, mind you, at sixty-two!  With my life-work just begun, Eve!  I hate this place!  I abominate it!  I de—­”

“Really?” mused little Eve Edgarton from her white pillows.  “Why—­I think it’s lovely.”

“Eh?” demanded her father.  “What?  Eh?”

“It’s so social,” said little Eve Edgarton.

“Social?” choked her father.

As bereft of expression as if robbed of both inner and outer vision, little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes to his.  “Why—­two of the hotel ladies have almost been to see me,” she confided listlessly.  “And the chambermaid brought me the picture of her beau.  And the hotel proprietor lent me a story-book.  And Mr.—­”

“Social?” snapped her father.

“Oh, of course—­if you got killed in a fire or anything, saving people’s lives, you’d sort of expect them to—­send you candy—­or make you some sort of a memorial,” conceded little Eve Edgarton unemotionally.  “But when you break your head—­just amusing yourself?  Why, I thought it was nice for the hotel ladies to almost come to see me,” she finished, without even so much as a flicker of the eyelids.

Disgustedly her father started for his own room, then whirled abruptly in his tracks and glanced back at that imperturbable little figure in the big white bed.  Except for the scarcely perceptible hound-like flicker of his nostrils, his own face held not a whit more expression than the girl’s.

“Eve,” he asked casually, “Eve, you’re not changing your mind, are you, about Nunko-Nono?  And John Ellbertson?  Good old John Ellbertson,” he repeated feelingly.  “Eve!” he quickened with sudden sharpness.  “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.