"Yes, I know it," mused little Eve Edgarton.
"Why--if we"d have had half a chance--" began Barton, and then didn"t know at all how to finish it. "Why, you"re so plucky--and so odd--and so interesting!" he began all over again. "Oh, of course, I"m an awful duffer and all that! But if we"d had half a chance, I say, you and I would have been great pals in another fortnight!"
"Even so," murmured little Eve Edgarton, "there are yet--fifty-two hours before I go."
"What are fifty-two hours?" laughed Barton.
Listlessly like a wilting flower little Eve Edgarton slid down a trifle farther into her pillows. "If you"d have an early supper," she whispered, "and then come right up here afterward, why, there would be two or three hours. And then to-morrow if you got up quite early, there would be a long, long morning, and--we--could get acquainted--some," she insisted.
"Why, Eve!" said Barton, "do you really mean that you would like to be friends with me?"
"Yes--I do," nodded the crown of the white-bandaged head.
"But I"m so stupid," confided Barton, with astonishing humility. "All these botany things--and geology--and--"
"Yes, I know it," mumbled little Eve Edgarton. "That"s what makes you so restful."
"What?" queried Barton a bit sharply. Then very absent-mindedly for a moment he sat staring off into s.p.a.ce through a gray, pungent haze of cigarette smoke.
"Eve," he ventured at last.
"What?" mumbled little Eve Edgarton.
"Nothing," said Barton.
"Mr. Jim Barton," ventured Eve.
"What?" asked Barton.
"Nothing," mumbled little Eve Edgarton.
Out of some emotional or purely social tensities of life it seems rather that Time strikes the clock than that anything so small as a clock should dare strike the Time. One--two--three--four--five! winced the poor little frightened traveling-clock on the mantelpiece.
Then quite abruptly little Eve Edgarton emerged from her cozy cushions, sitting bolt upright like a doughty little warrior.
"Mr. Jim Barton!" said little Eve Edgarton. "If I stayed here two weeks longer--I know you"d like me! I know it! I just know it!"
Quizzically for an instant, as if to acc.u.mulate further courage, she c.o.c.ked her little head on one side and stared blankly into Barton"s astonished eyes. "But you see I"m not going to be here two weeks!" she resumed hurriedly. Again the little head c.o.c.ked appealingly to one side. "You--you wouldn"t be willing to take my word for it, would you?
And like me--now?"
"Why--why, what do you mean?" stammered Barton.
"What do I mean?" quizzed little Eve Edgarton. "Why, I mean--that just once before I go off to Nunko-Nono--I"d like to be--attractive!"
"Attractive?" stammered Barton helplessly.
With all the desperate, indomitable frankness of a child, the girl"s chin thrust itself forward.
"I could be attractive!" she said. "I could! I know I could! If I"d ever let go just the teeniest--tiniest bit--I could have--beaux!" she a.s.serted triumphantly. "A thousand beaux!" she added more explicitly.
"Only--"
"Only what?" laughed Barton.
"Only one doesn"t let go," said little Eve Edgarton.
"Why not?" persisted Barton.
"Why, you just--couldn"t--with strangers," said little Eve Edgarton.
"That"s the bewitchment of it."
"The bewitchment?" puzzled Barton.
Nervously the girl crossed her hands in her lap. She suddenly didn"t look like a doughty little soldier any more, but just like a worried little girl.
"Did you ever read any fairy stories?" she asked with apparent irrelevance.
"Why, of course," said Barton. "Millions of them when I was a kid."
"I read one--once," said little Eve Edgarton. "It was about a person, a sleeping person, a lady, I mean, who couldn"t wake up until a prince kissed her. Well, that was all right, of course," conceded little Eve Edgarton, "because, of course, any prince would have been willing to kiss the lady just as a mere matter of accommodation. But suppose,"
fretted little Eve Edgarton, "suppose the bewitchment also ran that no prince would kiss the lady until she had waked up? Now there!" said little Eve Edgarton, "is a situation that I should call completely stalled."
"But what"s all this got to do with you?" grinned Barton.
"Nothing at all to do with me!" said little Eve Edgarton. "It is me!
That"s just exactly the way I"m fixed. I can"t be attractive--out loud--until some one likes me! But no one, of course, will ever like me until I am already attractive--out loud! So that"s why I wondered,"
she said, "if just as a mere matter of accommodation, you wouldn"t be willing to be friends with me now? So that for at least the fifty-two hours that remain, I could be released--from my most unhappy enchantment."
Astonishingly across that frank, perfectly outspoken little face, the frightened eyelashes came flickering suddenly down. "Because,"
whispered little Eve Edgarton, "because--you see--I happen to like you already."
"Oh, fine!" smiled Barton. "Fine! Fine! Fi--" Abruptly the word broke in his throat. "What?" he cried. His hand--the steadiest hand among all his chums--began to shake like an aspen. "WHAT?" he cried. His heart, the steadiest heart among all his chums, began to pitch and lurch in his breast. "Why, Eve! Eve!" he stammered. "You don"t mean you like me--like that?"
"Yes--I do," nodded the little white-capped head. There was much shyness of flesh in the statement, but not a flicker of spiritual self-consciousness or fear.
"But--Eve!" protested Barton. Already he felt the goose-flesh rising on his arms. Once before a girl had told him that she--liked him. In the middle of a silly summer flirtation it had been, and the scene had been mawkish, awful, a mess of tears and kisses and endless recriminations. But this girl? Before the utter simplicity of this girl"s statement, the unruffled dignity, the mere acknowledgment, as it were, of an interesting historical fact, all his trifling, preconceived ideas went tumbling down before his eyes like a flimsy house of cards. Pang after pang of regret for the girl, of regret for himself, went surging hotly through him. "Oh, but--Eve!" he began all over again. His voice was raw with misery.
"Why, there"s nothing to make a fuss about," drawled little Eve Edgarton. "You"ve probably liked a thousand people, but I--you see?--I"ve never had the fun of liking--any one--before!"
"Fun?" tortured Barton. "Yes, that"s just it! If you"d ever had the fun of liking anything it wouldn"t seem half so brutal--now!"
"Brutal?" mused little Eve Edgarton. "Oh, really, Mr. Jim Barton, I a.s.sure you," she said, "there"s nothing brutal at all in my liking--for you."
With a gasp of despair Barton stumbled across the rug to the bed, and with a shaky hand thrust under Eve Edgarton"s chin, turned her little face bluntly up to him to tell her--how proud he felt, but--to tell her how sorry he was, but--
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Any time that you people want me," suggested Edgarton"s icy voice, "I am standing here--in about the middle of the floor!"]
And as he turned that little face up to his,--inconceivably--incomprehensively--to his utter consternation and rout--he saw that it was a stranger"s little face that he held. Gone was the sullen frown, the indifferent glance, the bitter smile, and in that sudden, amazing, wild, sweet transfiguration of brow, eyes, mouth, that met his astonished eyes, he felt his whole mean, supercilious world slip out from under his feet! And just as precipitously, just as inexplainably, as ten days before he had seen a Great Light that had knocked all consciousness out of him, he experienced now a second Great Light that knocked him back into the first full consciousness that he had ever known!
"Why, Eve!" he stammered. "Why, you--mischief! Why, you little--cheeky darling! Why, my own--darned little Story Book Girl!" And gathered her into his arms.