“A face isn’t meant to be a living-room, anyway, Barton, but just a piazza where the seething, preoccupied soul can dash out now and then to bask in the breeze and refreshment of sympathy and appreciation.  Surely then—­it’s no particular personal glory to you that your friend Miss Von Eaton’s energy cavorts perpetually in the gold of her hair or the blue of her eyes, because rain or shine, congeniality or noncongeniality, her energy hasn’t any other place to go.  But I tell you it means some compliment to a man when in a bleak, dour, work-worn personality like the old Botany dame’s for instance he finds himself able to lure out into occasional facial ecstasy the amazing vitality which has been slaving for Science alone these past fifty years.  Mushrooms are what the old Botany dame is interested in, Barton.  Really, Barton, I think you’d be surprised to see how extraordinarily beautiful the old Botany dame can be about mushrooms!  Gleam of the first faint streak of dawn, freshness of the wildest woodland dell, verve of the long day’s strenuous effort, flush of sunset and triumph, zeal of the student’s evening lamp, puckering, daredevil smile of reckless experiment—­”

“Say!  Are you a preacher?” mocked the Younger Man sarcastically.

“No more than any old man,” conceded the Older Man with unruffled good-nature.

“Old man?” repeated Barton, skeptically.  In honest if reluctant admiration for an instant, he sat appraising his companion’s extraordinary litheness and agility.  “Ha!” he laughed.  “It would take a good deal older head than yours to discover what that Miss Edgarton’s beauty is!”

“Or a good deal younger one, perhaps,” suggested the Older Man judicially.  “But—­but speaking of Miss Edgarton—­” he began all over again.

“Oh—­drat Miss Edgarton!” snarled the Younger Man viciously.  “You’ve got Miss Edgarton on the brain!  Miss Edgarton this!  Miss Edgarton that!  Miss Edgarton!  Who in blazes is Miss Edgarton, anyway?”

“Miss Edgarton?  Miss Edgarton?” mused the Older Man thoughtfully.  “Who is she?  Miss Edgarton?  Why—­no one special—­except—­just my daughter.”

Like a fly plunged all unwittingly upon a sheet of sticky paper the Younger Man’s hands and feet seemed to shoot out suddenly in every direction.

“Good Heavens!” he gasped.  “Your daughter?” he mumbled.  “Your daughter?” Every other word or phrase in the English language seemed to be stricken suddenly from his lips.  “Your—­your—­daughter?” he began all over again.  “Why—­I—­I—­didn’t know your name was Edgarton!” he managed finally to articulate.

An expression of ineffable triumph, and of triumph only, flickered in the Older Man’s face.

“Why, that’s just what I’ve been saying,” he reiterated amiably.  “You don’t know anything!”

Fatuously the Younger Man rose to his feet, still struggling for speech—­any old speech—­a sentence, a word, a cough, anything, in fact, that would make a noise.