For five minutes by the little traveling-clock, she heard him pacing monotonously up and down—­up and down.  Then very softly at last she summoned him back to her.

“Father,” she whispered, “I think there’s some one knocking at the outside door.”

“What?” called Edgarton.  Incredulously he came back through his daughter’s room and, crossing over to the hall door, yanked it open abruptly on the intruder.

“Why—­good afternoon!” grinned Barton above the extravagantly large and languorous bunch of pale lavender orchids that he clutched in his hand.

“Good afternoon!” said Edgarton without enthusiasm.

“Er—­orchids!” persisted Barton still grinningly.  Across the unfriendly hunch of the older man’s shoulder he caught a disquieting glimpse of a girl’s unduly speculative eyes.  In sudden impulsive league with her against this, their apparent common enemy, Age, he thrust the orchids into the older man’s astonished hands.

“For me?” questioned Edgarton icily.

“Why, yes—­certainly!” beamed Barton.  “Orchids, you know!  Hothouse orchids!” he explained painstakingly.

“So I—­judged,” admitted Edgarton.  With extreme distaste he began to untie the soft flimsy lavender ribbon that encompassed them.  “In their native state, you know,” he confided, “one very seldom finds them growing with—­sashes on them.”  From her nest of cushions across the room little Eve Edgarton loomed up suddenly into definite prominence.

“What did you bring me, Mr. Barton?” she asked.

“Why, Eve!” cried her father.  “Why, Eve, you astonish me!  Why, I’m surprised at you!  Why—­what do you mean?”

The girl sagged back into her cushions.  “Oh, Father,” she faltered, “don’t you know—­anything?  That was just ‘small talk.’”

With perfunctory courtesy Edgarton turned to young Barton.  “Pray be seated,” he said; “take—­take a chair.”

It was the chair closest to little Eve Edgarton that Barton took.  “How do you do, Miss Edgarton?” he ventured.

“How do you do, Mr. Barton?” said little Eve Edgarton.

From the splashy wash-stand somewhere beyond them, they heard Edgarton fussing with the orchids and mumbling vague Latin imprecations—­or endearments—­over them.  A trifle surreptitiously Barton smiled at Eve.  A trifle surreptitiously Eve smiled back at Barton.

In this perfectly amiable exchange of smiles the girl reached up suddenly to the sides of her head.  “Is my—­is my bandage on straight?” she asked worriedly.

“Why, no,” admitted Barton; “it ought not to be, ought it?”

Again for no special reason whatsoever they both smiled.

“Oh, I say,” stammered Barton.  “How you can dance!”

Across the girl’s olive cheeks her heavy eyelashes shadowed down like a fringe of black ferns.  “Yes—­how I can dance,” she murmured almost inaudibly.

“Why didn’t you let anybody know?” demanded Barton.