"Eve," he frowned. "That was a joke—wasn't it?—what you said about wanting to keep that young man?"
"Why, of course!" said little Eve Edgarton.
"Well, I must say—it was an exceedingly clumsy one!" growled her father irritably.
"Maybe so," droned little Eve Edgarton with unruffled serenity. "It was the first joke, you see, that I ever made." Slowly again her eyes began to widen. "All the same, Father," she said, "his—"
"Hush!" he ordered, and slammed the door conclusively behind him.
Very thoughtfully for a moment little Eve Edgarton kept right on standing there in the middle of the room. In her eyes was just the faintest possible suggestion of a smile. But there was no smile whatsoever about her lips. Her lips indeed were quite drawn and most flagrantly set with the expression of one who, having something determinate to say, will—yet—say it, somewhere, sometime, somehow, though the skies fall and all the waters of the earth dry up.
Then like the dart of a bird, she flashed to her father's door and opened it.
"Father!" she whispered. "Father!"
"Yes," answered the half-muffled, pillowy voice. "What is it?"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you something that happened once—down in Indo-China," whispered little Eve Edgarton. "Once when you were away," she confided breathlessly, "I pulled a half-drowned coolie out of a canal."