having no envy of them, shows always an amazing mercy; and Beauty, whatever its sorrows, can always retreat to the thick protecting wall of its own conceit. But as for the rest of us?" he grinned with a sudden convulsive twist of the eyebrow, "God help the unduly prosperous--and the merely plain! From the former--always, Envy, like a wolf, shall tear down every fresh talent, every fresh treasure, they lift to their aching backs. And from the latter--Brutal Neglect shall ravage away even the charm that they thought they had! "It's a--a rotten world, Eve, I tell you," he began all over again, a bit plaintively. "A rotten world! And the pains in my arms, I tell you, are not--nice! Distinctly not nice! Sometimes, Eve, you think I'm making faces at you! But, believe me, it isn't faces that I'm making! It's my--heart that I'm making at you! And believe me, the pain is not--nice!" Before the sudden wince in his daughter's eyes he reverted instantly to an air of semi-jocosity. "So, under all existing circumstances, little girl," he hastened to affirm, "you can hardly blame a crusty old codger of a father for preferring to leave his daughter in the hands of a man whom he positively knows to be good, than in the hands of some casual stranger who, just in a negative way, he merely can't prove isn't good? Oh, Eve--Eve," he pleaded sharply, "you'll be so much better off--out of the world! You've got infinitely too much money and infinitely too little--self-conceit--to be happy here! They would break your heart in a year! But at Nunko-Nono!" he cried eagerly. "Oh, Eve! Think of the peace of it! Just white beach, and a blue sea, and the long, low, endless horizon. And John will make you a garden! And women--I have often heard--are very happy in a garden! And--" Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes again to his. "Has John got a beard?" she asked. "Why--why, I'm sure I don't remember," stammered her father. "Why, yes, I think so--why, yes, indeed--I dare say!" "Is it a grayish beard?" asked little Eve Edgarton. "Why--why, yes--I shouldn't wonder," admitted her father. "And reddish?" persisted little Eve Edgarton. "And longish? As long as--?" Illustratively with her hands she stretched to her full arm's length. "Yes, I think perhaps it is reddish," conceded her father. "But why?" "Oh--nothing," mused little Eve Edgarton. "Only sometimes at night I dream about you and me landing at Nunko-Nono. And John in a great big, long, reddish-gray beard always comes crunching down at full speed across the hermit-crabs to meet us. And always just before he reaches