Listlessly the girl came forward and proffered her hand to the Younger Man. It was a very little hand. More than that, it was an exceedingly cold little hand.
"How do you do, sir?" she murmured almost inaudibly.
With an expression of ineffable joy the Older Man reached out and tapped his daughter on the shoulder.
"It has just transpired, my dear Eve," he beamed, "that you can do this young man here an inestimable service-tell him something-teach him something, I mean-that he very specially needs to know!"
As one fairly teeming with benevolence he stood there smiling blandly into Barton's astonished face. "Next to the pleasure of bringing together two people who like each other," he persisted, "I know of nothing more poignantly diverting than the bringing together of people who-who-" Mockingly across his daughter's unconscious head, malevolently through his mask of utter guilelessness and peace, he challenged Barton's staring helplessness. "So-taken all in all," he drawled still beamingly, "there's nothing in the world-at this particular moment, Mr. Barton-that could amuse me more than to have you join my daughter in her ride this afternoon!"
"Ride with me?" gasped little Eve Edgarton.
"This afternoon?" floundered Barton.
"Oh-why-yes-of course! I'd be delighted! I'd be-be! Only-! Only I'm afraid that-!"
Deprecatingly with uplifted hand the Older Man refuted every protest. "No, indeed, Mr. Barton," he insisted. "Oh, no-no indeed-I assure you it won't inconvenience my daughter in the slightest! My daughter is very obliging! My daughter, indeed-if I may say so in all modesty-my daughter indeed is always a good deal of a-philanthropist!"
Then very grandiloquently, like a man in an old-fashioned picture, he began to back away from them, bowing low all the time, very, very low, first to Barton, then to his daughter, then to Barton again.
"I wish you both a very good afternoon!" he said. "Really, I see no reason why either of you should expect a single dull moment!"
[Illustration: "I would therefore respectfully suggest as a special topic of conversation the consummate cheek of-yours truly, Paul Reymouth Edgarton"]
Before the sickly grin on Barton's face his own smile deepened into actual unctuousness. But before the sudden woodeny set of his daughter's placid mouth his unctuousness twisted just a little bit wryly on his lips.
"After all, my dear young people," he asserted hurriedly, "there's just one thing in the world, you know, that makes two people congenial, and that is-that they both shall have arrived at exactly the same conclusion-by two totally different routes. It's got to be exactly the same conclusion, else there isn't any sympathy in it. But it's got to be by two totally different routes, you understand, else there isn't any talky-talk to it!"
Laboriously one eyebrow began to jerk its way up his forehead, and with a purely mechanical instinct he reached up drolly and pulled it down again. "So-as the initial test of your mutual congeniality this afternoon," he resumed, "I would therefore respectfully suggest as a special topic of conversation the consummate cheek of-yours truly, Paul Reymouth Edgarton!"
Starting to bow once more, he backed instead into the screen of the office window. Without even an expletive he turned, pushed in the screen, clambered adroitly through the aperture, and disappeared almost instantly from sight.
Very faintly from some far up-stairs region the thin, faint, single syllable of a laugh came floating down into the piazza corner.
Then just as precipitous as a man steps into any other hole, Barton stepped into the conversational topic that had just been so aptly provided for him.
"Is your father something of a-of a practical joker, Miss Edgarton?" he demanded with the slightest possible tinge of shrillness.
For the first time in Barton's knowledge of little Eve Edgarton she lifted her eyes to him-great hazel eyes, great bored, dreary, hazel eyes set broadly in a too narrow olive face.
"My father is generally conceded to be something of a joker, I believe," she said dully. "But it would never have occurred to me to call him a particularly practical one. I don't like him," she added without a flicker of expression.
"I don't either!" snapped Barton.
A trifle uneasily little Eve Edgarton went on. "Why-once when I was a tiny child-" she droned.
"I don't know anything about when you were a tiny child," affirmed Barton with some vehemence. "But just this afternoon-!"
In striking contrast to the cool placidity of her face one of Eve Edgarton's boot-toes began to tap-tap-tap against the piazza floor. When she lifted her eyes again to Barton their sleepy sullenness was shot through suddenly with an unmistakable flash of temper.
"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Mr. Barton!" she cried out. "If you insist upon riding with me, couldn't you please hurry? The afternoons are so short!"
"If I 'insist' upon riding with you?" gasped Barton.
Disconcertingly from an upper window the Older Man's face beamed suddenly down upon him. "Oh, don't mind anything she says," drawled the Older Man. "It's just her cunning, 'meek' little ways."
Precipitately Barton bolted for his room.
Once safely ensconced behind his closed door a dozen different decisions, a dozen different indecisions, rioted tempestuously through his mind. To go was just as awkward as not to go! Not to go was just as awkward as to go! Over and over and over one silly alternative chased the other through his addled senses. Then just as precipitately as he had bolted to his room he began suddenly to hurl himself into his riding-clothes, yanking out a bureau drawer here, slamming back a closet door there, rummaging through a box, tipping over a trunk, yet in all his fuming haste, his raging irritability, showing the same fastidious choice of shirt, tie, collar, that characterized his every public appearance.
Immaculate at last as a tailor's equestrian advertisement he came striding down again into the hotel office, only to plunge most inopportunely into Miss Von Eaton's languorous presence.
"Why, Jim!" gasped Miss Von Eaton. Exquisitely white and cool and fluffy and dainty, she glanced up perplexedly at him from her lazy, deep-seated chair. "Why, Jim!" she repeated, just a little bit edgily. "Riding? Riding? Well, of all things! You who wouldn't even play bridge with us this afternoon on account of the heat! Well, who in the world-who can it be that has cut us all out?"
Teasingly she jumped up and walked to the door with him, and stood there peering out beyond the cool shadow of his dark-blue shoulder into the dazzling road where, like so many figures thrust forth all unwittingly into the merciless flare of a spot-light, little shabby Eve Edgarton and three sweating horses waited squintingly in the dust.
"Oh!" cried Miss Von Eaton. "W-hy!" stammered Miss Von Eaton. "Good gracious!" giggled Miss Von Eaton. Then hysterically, with her hand clapped over her mouth, she turned and fled up the stairs to confide the absurd news to her mates.
With a face like a graven image Barton went on down the steps into the road. In one of his thirty-dollar riding-boots a disconcerting two-cent sort of squeak merely intensified his unhappy sensation of being motivated purely mechanically like a doll.
Two of the horses that whinnied cordially at his approach were rusty roans. The third was a chunky gray. Already on one of the roans Eve Edgarton sat perched with her bridle-rein oddly slashed in two, and knotted, each raw end to a stirrup, leaving her hands and arms still perfectly free to hug her mysterious books and papers to her breast.
"Good afternoon again, Miss Edgarton," smiled Barton conscientiously.
"Good afternoon again, Mr. Barton," echoed Eve Edgarton listlessly.
With frank curiosity he nodded toward her armful of papers. "Surely you're not going to carry-all that stuff with you?" he questioned.
"Yes, I am, Mr. Barton," drawled Eve Edgarton, scarcely above a whisper.
Worriedly he pointed to her stirrups. "But Great Scott, Miss Edgarton!" he protested. "Surely you're not reckless enough to ride like that? Just guiding with your feet?"