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. Palpably Edgarton shifted his standing weight from one foot to the other. "I understood--your mother," he asserted a bit defiantly. "Did you, dear? I wonder?" mused little Eve Edgarton. "Eh?" jerked her father. Still with the vague geographical dream in her eyes, little Eve Edgarton pointed off suddenly toward the open lid of her steamer trunk. "Oh--my manuscript notes, Father, please!" she ordered almost peremptorily, "John's notes, you know? I might as well be working on them while I'm lying here." Obediently from the tousled top of the steamer trunk her father returned with the great batch of rough manuscript. "And my pencil, please," persisted little Eve Edgarton. "And my eraser. And my writing-board. And my ruler. And my--" Absent-mindedly, one by one, Edgarton handed the articles to her, and then sank down on the foot of her bed with his thin-lipped mouth contorted into a rather mirthless grin. "Don't care much for your old father, do you?" he asked trenchantly. Gravely for a moment the girl sat studying her father's weather-beaten features, the thin hair, the pale, shrewd eyes, the gaunt cheeks, the indomitable old-young mouth. Then a little shy smile flickered across her face and was gone again. "As a parent, dear," she drawled, "I love you to distraction! But as a daily companion?" Vaguely her eyebrows lifted. "As a real playmate?" Against the starch-white of her pillows the sudden flutter of her small brown throat showed with almost startling distinctness. "But as a real playmate," she persisted evenly, "you are so--intelligent--and you travel so fast--it tires me." "Whom do you like?" asked her father sharply.