"Seriously—are you having a pretty bad time?"

"I am having the time of my life—seriously—the time that lucky men always have once in their lives."

"Are you very impatient for the morphine?"

"I shall not take it when it comes. It is far better knowing what one knows, remembering what one remembers, and looking forward to what a presumptuous fool cannot help but look forward to—it is far better to keep awake; to lie peacefully in the dark, knowing, remembering, and looking forward."

"And just what are you looking forward to?"

"To a long life and a happy one; to the sounds of a voice; to a sudden coming to life of the whole 'Oxford Book of Verse'; to seeing a face."

There was a long silence.

"Are you there?"

"Yes; but you mustn't talk."

"I think you are tired. Please don't stay any more if you are tired."

"I'm not tired."

"Then perhaps you are bored."

"I'm not bored."

"Then what are you?"

"You keep quiet."

When, at last, Colonel Meredith came, important with morphine and the doctor's instructions, he found his cousin Mr. Bob Jonstone sleeping very quietly and peacefully, a much dog-eared copy of the "Oxford Book of Verse" clasped to his breast.

Unfortunately the colonel, after putting out the light again, bumped into a table, and Mr. Jonstone waked.

"That you, Mel?"

"Yes, Bob; sorry I waked you. Did Miss Darling send word explaining that I should be quite a while coming back?"

"Which Miss Darling?"

"Which? Why, Miss Eve."

"Yes, she sent word."

"And how have you been?"

"I took a turn for the better shortly after you left. A little while ago I lighted a candle, and read a little and got sleepy. And now I think I'll go to sleep again."

"You don't need the morphine?"

"No, Mel. Thank you. Good-night."

"Good-night."

"Mel?"

"What is it?"

"Isn't Eve about the oldest name you know?"

"Oldest, I guess, except Adam and Lilith. You go to sleep."

And Colonel Meredith tiptoed out of the room, murmuring: "Seems to be a little shaky in his upper stories."

Chapter XXVIII

*

A point of land just across the lake from the camp belonged to the Darlings' mother, the Princess Oducalchi. One night the light of fires and lanterns appeared on this point and the next morning it was seen to be studded here and there with pale-brown tents. The Darlings were annoyed to think that any one should trespass on so large a scale on some one else's land. In a code of laws shot to pieces with class legislation, trespassers are, of course, exempt from punishment; their presence and depredations in one's private melon-patch are none the less disagreeable, and Arthur Darling, as his mother's representative, was peculiarly enraged.

Arthur, in his idle moments, when, for instance, he was not studying the webs of spiders or classifying the cries of frogs, sometimes let his mind run on politics and the whole state of the Union. In such matters, of course, he was only a tyro. Why should the puny and prejudiced population of Texas have two votes in the Senate when the hordes of New York have but two? Why, in a popular form of government, should the minority do the ruling? Why should not a hard-working rich man have an equal place in the sun with a man who, through laziness and a moral nature twisted like a pretzel, remains poor? Why should education be forced on children in a country where education, which means good manners and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, amounts practically to disfranchisement?