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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Her Father's Daughter, by Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Her Father's Daughter
+
+Author: Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #904]
+Release Date: May, 1997
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianne Bean
+
+
+
+
+
+HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER
+
+By Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+          I. “What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?”
+          II. Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
+        III. The House of Dreams
+         IV. Linda Starts a Revolution
+          V. The Smoke of Battle
+         VI. Jane Meredith
+        VII. Trying Yucca
+       VIII. The Bear Cat
+         IX. One Hundred Per Cent Plus
+          X. Katy to the Rescue
+         XI. Assisting Providence
+        XII. The Lay of the Land
+       XIII. Leavening the Bread of Life
+        XIV. Saturday's Child
+         XV. Linda's Hearthstone
+        XVI. Producing the Evidence
+       XVII. A Rock and a Flame
+      XVIII. Spanish Iris
+        XIX. The Official Bug-Catcher
+         XX. The Cap Sheaf
+        XXI. Shifting the Responsibility
+       XXII. The End of Marian's Contest
+      XXIII. The Day of Jubilee
+       XXIV. Linda's First Party
+        XXV. Buena Moza
+       XXVI. A Mouse Nest
+      XXVII. The Straight and Narrow
+     XXVIII. Putting It Up to Peter
+       XXIX. Katy Unburdens Her Mind
+        XXX. Peter's Release
+       XXXI. The End of Donald's Contest
+      XXXII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest
+     XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris
+
+
+
+
+List of Characters
+
+     LINDA STRONG, Her Father's Daughter
+     DR. ALEXANDER STRONG, a Great Nerve Specialist
+     MRS. STRONG, His Wife
+     EILEEN STRONG, Having
+     Social Aspirations
+     MR. AND MRS. THORNE, Neighbors of the Strongs
+     MARIAN THORNE, a Dreamer of Houses
+     JOHN GILMAN, a Man of Law
+     PETER MORRISON, an Author
+     HENRY ANDERSON, an Architect
+     DONALD WHITING, a High School Senior
+     MARY LOUISE WHITING, His Sister
+     JUDGE AND MRS. WHITING, a Man of Law and a Woman of Culture
+     KATHERINE O' DONOVAN, the Strong Cook
+     OKA SAYYE, a High School Senior
+     JAMES HEITMAN, Accidentally Rich
+     MRS. CAROLINE HEITMAN, His Wife
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. “What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?”
+
+“What makes you wear such funny shoes?”
+
+Linda Strong thrust forward a foot and critically examined the narrow
+vamp, the projecting sole, the broad, low heel of her well-worn brown
+calfskin shoe. Then her glance lifted to the face of Donald Whiting, one
+of the most brilliant and popular seniors of the high school. Her eyes
+narrowed in a manner habitual to her when thinking intently.
+
+“Never you mind my shoes,” she said deliberately. “Kindly fix your
+attention on my head piece. When you see me allowing any Jap in my class
+to make higher grades than I do, then I give you leave to say anything
+you please concerning my head.”
+
+An angry red rushed to the boy's face. It was an irritating fact that in
+the senior class of that particular Los Angeles high school a Japanese
+boy stood at the head. This was embarrassing to every senior.
+
+“I say,” said Donald Whiting, “I call that a mean thrust.”
+
+“I have a particular reason,” said Linda.
+
+“And I have 'a particular reason',” said Donald, “for being interested
+in your shoes.”
+
+Linda laughed suddenly. When Linda laughed, which was very seldom, those
+within hearing turned to look at her. Hers was not a laugh that can be
+achieved. There were a few high places on the peak of Linda's soul, and
+on one of them homed a small flock of notes of rapture; notes as sweet
+as the voice of the white-banded mockingbird of Argentina.
+
+“How surprising!” exclaimed Linda. “We have been attending the same
+school for three years; now, you stop me suddenly to tell me that you
+are interested in the shape of my shoes.”
+
+“I have been watching them all the time,” said Donald. “Can't understand
+why any girl wants to be so different. Why don't you dress your hair the
+same as the other girls and wear the same kind of clothes and shoes?”
+
+“Now look here,” interposed Linda “You are flying the track.I am willing
+to justify my shoes, if I can, but here you go including my dress and a
+big psychological problem, as well; but I think perhaps the why of the
+shoes will explain the remainder. Does the name 'Alexander Strong' mean
+anything to you?”
+
+“The great nerve specialist?” asked Donald.
+
+“Yes,” said Linda. “The man who was the author of half-dozen books
+that have been translated into many foreign tongue' and are used as
+authorities all over the world. He happened to be my father There are
+two children in our family. I have a sister four years older than I am
+who is exactly like Mother, and she and Mother were inseparable. I am
+exactly like Father; because we understood each other, and because both
+of us always new, although we never mentioned it; that Mother preferred
+my sister Eileen to me, Father tried to make it up to me, so from the
+time I can remember I was at his heels. It never bothered him to have me
+playing around in the library while he was writing his most complicated
+treatise. I have waited in his car half a day at a time, playing or
+reading, while he watched a patient or delivered a lecture at some
+medical college. His mental relaxation was to hike or to motor to the
+sea, to the mountains, to the canyons or the desert, and he very seldom
+went without me even on long trips when he was fishing or hunting with
+other men. There was not much to know concerning a woman's frame or he
+psychology that Father did not know, so there were two reason why he
+selected my footwear as he did. One was because he be believed high
+heels and pointed toes an outrage against the nervous province, and the
+other was that I could not possibly have kept pace with him except in
+shoes like these. No doubt, they are the same kind I shall wear all my
+life, for walking. You probably don't know it, but my home lies near the
+middle of Lilac Valley and I walk over a mile each morning and evening
+to and from the cars. Does this sufficiently explain my shoes?”
+
+“I should think you'd feel queer,” said Donald.
+
+“I suspect I would if I had time to brood over it,” Linda replied, “but
+I haven't. I must hustle to get to school on time in the morning. It's
+nearly or quite dark before I reach home in the evening. My father
+believed in having a good time. He had superb health, so he spent most
+of what he made as it came to him. He counted on a long life. It never
+occurred to him that a little piece of machinery going wrong would
+plunge him into Eternity in a second.”
+
+“Oh, I remember!” cried the boy.
+
+Linda's face paled slightly.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “it happened four years ago and I haven't gotten away
+from the horror of it yet, enough ever to step inside of a motor car;
+but I am going to get over that one of these days. Brakes are not all
+defective, and one must take one's risks.”
+
+“You just bet I would,” said Donald. “Motoring is one of the greatest
+pleasures of modern life. I'll wager it makes some of the gay old boys,
+like Marcus Aurelius for example, want to turn over in their graves when
+they see us flying along the roads of California the way we do.”
+
+“What I was getting at,” said Linda, “was a word of reply to the
+remainder of your indictment against me. Dad's income stopped with him,
+and household expenses went on, and war came, so there isn't enough
+money to dress two of us as most of the high school girls are dressed.
+Eileen is so much older that it's her turn first, and I must say she is
+not at all backward about exercising her rights. I think that will
+have to suffice for the question of dress but you may be sure that I am
+capable of wearing the loveliest dress imaginable, that would be for a
+school girl, if I had it to wear.”
+
+“Ah, there's the little 'fly in your ointment'--'dress that would be
+suitable.' I bet in your heart you think the dresses that half the girls
+in high school are wearing are NOT SUITABLE!”
+
+“Commendable perspicacity, O learned senior,” said Linda, “and amazingly
+true. In the few short years I had with Daddy I acquired a fixed idea as
+to what kind of dress is suitable and sufficiently durable to wear while
+walking my daily two miles. I can't seem to become reconciled to the
+custom of dressing the same for school as for a party. You get my idea?”
+
+“I get it all right enough,” said Donald, “but I must think awhile
+before I decide whether I agree with you. Why should you be right, and
+hundreds of other girls be wrong?”
+
+“I'll wager your mother would agree with me,” suggested Linda.
+
+“Did yours?” asked Donald.
+
+“Halfway,” answered Linda. “She agreed with me for me, but not for
+Eileen.”
+
+“And not for my sister,” said Donald. “She wears the very foxiest
+clothes that Father can afford to pay for, and when she was going to
+school she wore them without the least regard as to whether she was
+going to school or to a tea party or a matinee. For that matter she
+frequently went to all three the same day.
+
+“And that brings us straight to the point concerning you,” said Linda.
+
+“Sure enough!” said Donald. “There is me to be considered! What is it
+you have against me?”
+
+Linda looked at him meditatively.
+
+“You SEEM exceptionally strong,” she said. “No doubt are good in
+athletics. Your head looks all right; it indicates brains. What I want
+to know is why in the world you don't us them.”
+
+“What are you getting at, anyway?” asked Donald, with more than a hint
+of asperity in his voice.
+
+“I am getting at the fact,” said Linda, “that a boy as big as you and as
+strong as you and with as good brain and your opportunity has allowed
+a little brown Jap to cross the Pacific Ocean and a totally strange
+country to learn a language foreign to him, and, and, with the same
+books and the same chances, to beat you at your own game. You and every
+other boy in your classes ought to thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.
+Before I would let a Jap, either boy or girl, lead in my class, I would
+give up going to school and go out and see if I could beat him growing
+lettuce and spinach.”
+
+“It's all very well to talk,” said Donald hotly.
+
+“And it's better to make good what you say,” broke in Linda, with equal
+heat. “There are half a dozen Japs in my classes but no one of them is
+leading, you will notice, if I do wear peculiar shoes.”
+
+“Well, you would be going some if you beat the leading Jap in the senior
+class,” said Donald.
+
+“Then I would go some,” said Linda. “I'd beat him, or I'd go straight up
+trying. You could do it if you'd make up your mind to. The trouble with
+you is that you're wasting your brain on speeding an automobile, on
+dances, and all sorts of foolishness that is not doing you any good in
+any particular way. Bet you are developing nerves smoking cigarettes.
+You are not concentrating. Oka Sayye is not thinking of a thing except
+the triumph of proving to California that he is head man in one of the
+Los Angeles high schools. That's what I have got against you, and every
+other white boy in your class, and in the long run it stacks up bigger
+than your arraignment of my shoes.”
+
+“Oh, darn your shoes!” cried Donald hotly. “Forget 'em! I've got to move
+on or I'll be late for trigonometry, but I don't know when I've had such
+a tidy little fight with a girl, and I don't enjoy feeling that I have
+been worsted. I propose another session. May I come out to Lilac
+Valley Saturday afternoon and flay you alive to pay up for my present
+humiliation?”
+
+“Why, if your mother happened to be motoring that way and would care to
+call, I think that would be fine,” said Linda.
+
+“Well, for the Lord's sake!” exclaimed the irate senior. “Can't a fellow
+come and fight with you without being refereed by his mother? Shall I
+bring Father too?”
+
+“I only thought,” said Linda quietly, “that you would like your mother
+to see the home and environment of any girl whose acquaintance you made,
+but the fight we have coming will in all probability be such a pitched
+battle that when I go over the top, you won't ever care to follow me and
+start another issue on the other side. You're dying right now to ask why
+I wear my hair in braids down my back instead of in cootie coops over my
+ears.”
+
+“I don't give a hang,” said Donald ungallantly, “as to how you; wear
+your hair, but I am coming Saturday to fight, and I don't think Mother
+will take any greater interest in the matter than to know that I am
+going to do battle with a daughter of Doctor I Strong.”
+
+“That is a very nice compliment to my daddy, thank you, said Linda,
+turning away and proceeding in the direction of her own classrooms.
+There was a brilliant sparkle in her eyes and she sang in a muffled
+voice, yet distinctly enough to be heard:
+
+“The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes, And you may wear them if you
+choose.”
+
+“By gracious! She's no fool,” he said to himself. In three minutes'
+unpremeditated talk the “Junior Freak,” as he mentally denominated her,
+had managed to irritate him, to puncture his pride, to entertain and
+amuse him.
+
+“I wonder--” he said as he went his way; and all day he kept on
+wondering, when he was not studying harder than ever before in all his
+life.
+
+That night Linda walked slowly along the road toward home. She was
+not seeing the broad stretch of Lilac Valley, on every hand green with
+spring, odorous with citrus and wild bloom, blue walled with lacy lilacs
+veiling the mountain face on either side; and she was not thinking
+of her plain, well-worn dress or her common-sense shoes. What she was
+thinking was of every flaying, scathing, solidly based argument she
+could produce the following Saturday to spur Donald Whiting in some way
+to surpass Oka Sayye. His chance remark that morning, as they stood near
+each other waiting a few minutes in the hall, had ended in his asking to
+come to see her, and she decided as she walked homeward that his first
+visit in all probability would be his last, since she had not time to
+spare for boys, when she had so many different interests involved; but
+she did decide very finely in her own mind that the would make that
+visit a memorable one for him.
+
+In arriving at this decision her mind traveled a number of devious
+roads. The thought that she had been criticized did not annoy her as to
+the kind of criticism, but she did resent the quality of truth about it.
+She was right in following the rules her father had laid down for her
+health and physical well-being, but was it right that she should wear
+shoes scuffed, resoled, and even patched, when there was money enough
+for Eileen to have many pairs of expensive laced boots, walking shoes,
+and fancy slippers? She was sure she was right in wearing dresses
+suitable for school, but was it right that she must wear them until
+they were sunfaded, stained, and disreputable? Was it right that Eileen
+should occupy their father and mother's suite, redecorated and daintily
+furnished according to her own taste, to keep the parts of the house
+that she cared to use decorated with flowers and beautifully appointed,
+while Linda must lock herself in a small stuffy bedroom room, dingy and
+none too comfortable, when in deference to her pride she wished to work
+in secret until she learned whether she could succeed.
+
+Then she began thinking, and decided that the only available place in
+the house for her use was the billiard room. She made up her mind that
+she would demand the sole right to this big attic room. She would sell
+the table and use the money to buy herself a suitable worktable and
+a rug. She would demand that Eileen produce enough money for better
+clothing for her, and then she remembered what she had said to Donald
+Whiting about conquering her horror for a motor car. Linda turned in
+at the walk leading to her home, but she passed the front entrance and
+followed around to the side. As she went she could hear voices in the
+living room and she knew that Eileen was entertaining some of her
+many friends; for Eileen was that peculiar creature known as a social
+butterfly. Each day of her life friends came; or Eileen went--mostly
+the latter, for Eileen had a knack of management and she so managed
+her friends that, without their realizing it, they entertained her many
+times while she entertained them once. Linda went to the kitchen, Laid
+her books and package of mail on the table, and, walking over to the
+stove, she proceeded deliberately and heartily to kiss the cook.
+
+“Katy, me darlin',” she said, “look upon your only child. Do you notice
+a 'lean and hungry look' on her classic features?”
+
+Katy turned adoring eyes to the young girl.
+
+“It's growing so fast ye are, childie,” she said. “It's only a little
+while to dinner, and there's company tonight, so hadn't ye better wait
+and not spoil your appetite with piecing?”
+
+“Is there going to be anything 'jarvis'?” inquired Linda.
+
+'“I'd say there is,” said Katy. “John Gilman is here and two friends of
+Eileen's. It's a near banquet, lassie.”
+
+“Then I'll wait,” said Linda. “I want the keys to the garage.”
+
+Katy handed them to her and Linda went down the back walk beneath an
+arch of tropical foliage, between blazing walls of brilliant flower
+faces, unlocked the garage, and stood looking at her father's runabout.
+
+In the revolution that had taken place in their home after the passing
+of their father and mother, Eileen had dominated the situation and done
+as she pleased, with the exception of two instances. Linda had shown
+both temper and determination at the proposal to dismantle the library
+and dispose of the cars. She had told Eileen that she might take the
+touring car and do as she pleased with it. For her share she wanted
+her father's roadster, and she meant to have it. She took the same firm
+stand concerning the Library. With the rest of the house Eileen might do
+as she would. The library was to remain absolutely untouched and what it
+contained was Linda's. To this Eileen had agreed, but so far Linda had
+been content merely to possess her property.
+
+Lately, driven by the feeling that she must find a way in which she
+could earn money, she had been secretly working on some plans that she
+hoped might soon yield her small returns. As for the roadster, she as
+well as Eileen had been horror-stricken when the car containing their
+father and mother and their adjoining neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Thorne,
+driven by Marian Thorne, the playmate and companion from childhood
+of the Strong girls, had become uncontrollable and plunged down the
+mountain in a disaster that had left only Marian, protected by the
+steering gear, alive. They had simply by mutual agreement begun using
+the street cars when they wanted to reach the city.
+
+Linda stood looking at the roadster, jacked up and tucked under a
+heavy canvas tent that she and her father had used on their hunting and
+fishing trips. After a long time she laid strong hands on the canvas and
+dragged it to one side. She looked the car over carefully and then, her
+face very white and her hands trembling, she climbed into it and slowly
+and mechanically went through the motions of starting it. For another
+intent period she sat with her hands on the steering gear, staring
+straight ahead, and then she said slowly: “Something has got to be done.
+It's not going to be very agreeable, but I am going to do it. Eileen:
+has had things all her own way long enough. I am getting such a big girl
+I ought to have a few things in my life as I want them. Something must
+be done.”
+
+Then Linda proceeded to do something. What she did was to lean forward,
+rest her head upon the steering wheel and fight to keep down deep,
+pitiful sobbing until her whole slender body twisted in the effort.
+
+She was yielding to a breaking up after four years of endurance, for the
+greater part in silence. As the months of the past year had rolled their
+deliberate way, Linda had begun to realize that the course her elder
+sister had taken was wholly unfair to her, and slowly a tumult of revolt
+was growing in her soul. Without a doubt the culmination had resulted
+from her few minutes' talk with Donald Whiting in the hall that morning.
+It had started Linda to thinking deeply, and the more deeply she thought
+the clearly she saw the situation. Linda was a loyal soul and her heart
+was honest. She was quite willing that Eileen should: exercise her
+rights as head of the family, that she should take the precedence to
+which she was entitled by her four years' seniority, that she should
+spend the money which accrued monthly from their father's estate as she
+saw fit, up to a certain point. That point was where things ceased to
+be fair or to be just. If there had been money to do no more for Eileen
+than had been done for Linda, it would not have been in Linda's heart
+to utter a complaint. She could have worn scuffed shoes and old dresses,
+and gone her way with her proud young head held very high and a jest on
+her lips; but when her mind really fastened on the problem and she began
+to reason, she could not feel that Eileen was just to her or that she
+was fair in her administration of the money which should have been
+divided more nearly equally between them, after the household expenses
+had been paid. Once rebellion burned in her heart the flames leaped
+rapidly, and Linda began to remember a thousand small things that she
+had scarcely noted at the time of their occurrence.
+
+She was leaning on the steering wheel, tired with nerve strain, when she
+heard Katy calling her, and realized that she was needed in the kitchen.
+As a matter of economy Eileen, after her parents' passing, had dismissed
+the housemaid, and when there were guests before whom she wished to make
+a nice appearance Linda had been impressed either to wait on the table
+or to help in the kitchen in order that Katy might attend the dining
+room, so Linda understood what was wanted when Katy called her. She ran
+her fingers over the steering wheel, worn bright by the touch of her
+father's and her own hands, and with the buoyancy of youth, found
+comfort. Once more she mechanically went through the motions of starting
+the car, then she stepped down, closed the door, and stood an instant
+thinking.
+
+“You're four years behind the times,” she said slowly. “No doubt there's
+a newer and a better model; I suspect the tires are rotten, but the
+last day I drove you for Daddy you purred like a kitten, and ran like
+a clock, and if you were cleaned and oiled and put in proper shape,
+there's no reason in the world why I should not drive you again, as I
+have driven you hundreds of miles when Daddy was tired or when he wanted
+to teach me the rules of good motoring, and the laws of the road. I can
+do it all right. I have got to do it, but it will be some time before
+I'll care to tackle the mountains.”
+
+Leaving the cover on the floor, she locked the door and returned to the
+kitchen.
+
+“All right, Katy, what is the programme?” she inquired as lightly as she
+could.
+
+Katy had been cook in the Strong family ever since they had moved to
+Lilac Valley. She had obeyed Mrs. Strong and Eileen. She had worshiped
+the Doctor and Linda It always had been patent to her eyes that Mrs.
+Strong was extremely partial to Eileen, so Katy had joined forces with
+the Doctor in surreptitiously doing everything her warm Irish heart
+prompted to prevent Linda from feeling neglected. Her quick eyes saw the
+traces of tears on Linda's face, and she instantly knew that the trip
+the girl had made to the garage was in some way connected with some
+belongings of her father's, so she said: “I am serving tonight but I
+want you to keep things smoking hot and to have them dished up ready for
+me so that everything will go smoothly.”
+
+“What would happen,” inquired Linda, “if everything did NOT go smoothly?
+Katy, do you think the roof would blow straight up if I had MY way about
+something, just for a change?”
+
+“No, I think the roof would stay right where it belongs,” said Katy with
+a chuckle, “but I do think its staying there would not be because Miss
+Eileen wanted it to.”
+
+“Well,” said Linda deliberately, “we won't waste any time on thinking
+We are going to have some positive knowledge on the subject pretty
+immediately. I don't feel equal to starting any domestic santana today,
+but the forces are gathering and the blow is coming soon. To that I have
+firmly made up my mind.”
+
+“It's not the least mite I'm blaming you, honey,” said Katy.
+
+“Ye've got to be such a big girl that it's only fair things in this
+house should go a good deal different.”
+
+“Is Marian to be here?” asked Linda as she stood beside the stove
+peering into pans and kettles.
+
+“Miss Eileen didn't say,” replied Katy.
+
+Linda's eyes reddened suddenly. She slammed down a lid with vicious
+emphasis.
+
+“That is another deal Eileen's engineered,” she said, “that is just
+about as wrong as anything possibly can be. What makes me the maddest
+about it is that John Gilman will let Eileen take him by the nose and
+lead him around like a ringed calf. Where is his common sense? Where is
+his perception? Where is his honor?”
+
+“Now wait, dearie,” said Katy soothingly, “wait. John Gilman is a mighty
+fine man. Ye know how your father loved him and trusted him and gave
+him charge of all his business affairs. Ye mustn't go so far as to be
+insinuating that he is lacking in honor.”
+
+“No,” said Linda, “that was not fair. I don't in the least know that he
+ever ASKED Marian to marry him; but I do know that as long as he was a
+struggling, threadbare young lawyer Marian was welcome to him, and they
+had grand times together. The minute he won the big Bailey suit and came
+into public notice and his practice increased until he was independent,
+that minute Eileen began to take notice, and it looks to me now as if
+she very nearly had him.”
+
+“And so far as I can see,” said Katy, “Miss Marian is taking it without
+a struggle. She is not lifting a finger or making a move to win him
+back.”
+
+“Of course she isn't!” said Linda indignantly. “If she thought he
+preferred some other girl to her, she would merely say: 'If John has
+discovered that he likes Eileen the better, why, that is all right;
+but there wouldn't be anything to prevent seeing Eileen take John from
+hurting like the deuce. Did you ever lose a man you loved, Katy?”
+
+“That I did not!” said Katy emphatically. “We didn't do any four or
+five years' philanderin' to see if a man 'could make good' when I was a
+youngster. When a girl and her laddie stood up to each other and looked
+each other straight in the eye and had the great understanding, there
+weren't no question of whether he could do for her what her father and
+mither had been doing, nor of how much he had to earn before they would
+be able to begin life together. They just caught hands and hot-footed it
+to the praste and told him to read the banns the next Sunday, and when
+the law allowed they was man and wife and taking what life had for them
+the way it came, and together. All this philanderin' that young folks do
+nowadays is just pure nonsense, and waste of time.”
+
+“Sure!” laughed Linda. “When my brave comes along with his blanket I'll
+just step under, and then if anybody tries to take my man I'll have the
+right to go on the warpath and have a scalping party that would be some
+satisfaction to the soul.”
+
+Then they served the dinner, and when the guests had left the dining
+room, Katy closed the doors, and brought on the delicacies she had
+hidden for Linda and patted and cajoled her while she ate like any
+healthy, hungry young creature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
+
+“'Ave, atque vale!' Cotyledon!”
+
+Linda slid down the side of the canyon with the deftness of the expert.
+At the first available crevice she thrust in her Alpine stick, and
+bracing herself, gained a footing. Then she turned and by use of her
+fingers and toes worked her way back to the plan, she had passed. She
+was familiar with many members of she family, but such a fine specimen
+she seldom had found and she could not recall having seen it in all of
+her botanies. Opposite the plant she worked out a footing, drove her
+stick deep at the base of a rock to brace herself, and from the knapsack
+on her back took a sketchbook and pencil and began rapidly copying the
+thick fleshy leaves of the flattened rosette, sitting securely at the
+edge of a rock. She worked swiftly and with breathless interest. When
+she had finished the flower she began sketching in the moss-covered face
+of the boulder against which it grew, and other bits of vegetation near.
+
+“I think, Coty,” she said, “it is very probable that I can come a few
+simoleons with you. You are becoming better looking ever minute.”
+
+For a touch of color she margined one side of her drawing with a little
+spray of Pentstemon whose bright tubular flower the canyon knew as
+“hummingbird's dinner horn.” That gave, her the idea of introducing
+a touch of living interest, so bearing down upon the flowers from
+the upper right-hand corner of her drawing she deftly sketched in a
+ruby-throated hummingbird, and across the bottom of the sheet the lace
+of a few leaves of fern. Then she returned the drawing and pencil to her
+knapsack, and making sure of her footing, worked her way forward. With
+her long slender fingers she began teasing the plant loose from the
+rock and the surrounding soil. The roots penetrated deeper than she
+had supposed and in her interest she forgot her precarious footing and
+pulled hard. The plant gave way unexpectedly, and losing her balance,
+Linda plunged down the side of the canyon catching wildly at shrubs and
+bushes and bruising herself severely on stones, finally landing in a
+sitting posture on the road that traversed the canyon.
+
+She was not seriously hurt, but she did not present a picturesque figure
+as she sprawled in the road, her booted feet thrust straight before her,
+one of her long black braids caught on a bush at her back, her blouse
+pulled above her breeches, the contents of her knapsack decorating the
+canyon side and the road around her; but high in one hand, without break
+or blemish, she triumphantly held aloft the rare Cotyledon. She shrugged
+her shoulders, wiggled her toes, and moved her arms to assure herself
+that no bones were broken; then she glanced at her drawings and the
+fruits of her day's collecting scattered on the roadside around her. She
+was in the act of rising when a motor car containing two young men shot
+around a curve of the canyon, swerved to avoid running over her, and
+stopped as abruptly as possible.
+
+“It's a girl!” cried the driver, and both men sprang to the road
+and hurried to Linda's assistance. Her dark cheeks were red with
+mortification, but she managed to recover her feet and tuck in her
+blouse before they reached her.
+
+“We heard you coming down,” said the elder of the young men, “and we
+thought you might be a bear. Are you sure you're not hurt?”
+
+Linda stood before them, a lithe slender figure, vivid with youth and
+vitality.
+
+“I am able to stand,” she said, “so of course I haven't broken any
+bones. I think I am fairly well battered, but you will please to observe
+that there isn't a scratch on Cotyledon, and I brought her down--at
+least I think it's she--from the edge of that boulder away up there.
+Isn't she a beauty? Only notice the delicate frosty 'bloom' on her
+leaves!”
+
+“I should prefer,” said the younger of the men, “to know whether you have
+any broken bones.”
+
+“I'm sure I am all right,” answered Linda. “I have falling down
+mountains reduced to an exact science. I'll bet you couldn't slide that
+far and bring down Coty without a scratch.”
+
+“Well, which is the more precious,” said the young man. “Yourself or
+the specimen?”
+
+“Why, the specimen!” answered Linda in impatience. “California is full
+of girls; but this is the finest Cotyledon of this family I have ever
+seen. Don't mistake this for any common stonecrop. It looks to me like
+an Echeveria. I know what I mean to do with the picture I have made of
+her, and I know exactly where she is going to grow from this day on.”
+
+“Is there any way we can help you?” inquired the elder of the two men.
+
+For the first time Linda glanced at him, and her impression was that he
+was decidedly attractive.
+
+“No, thank you!” she answered briskly. “I am going to climb back up to
+the boulder and collect the belongings I spilled on the way down. Then
+I am going to carry Coty to the car line in a kind of triumphal march,
+because she is the rarest find that I have ever made. I hope you have
+no dark designs on Coty, because this is 'what the owner had to do to
+redeem her.'”
+
+Linda indicated her trail down the canyon side, brushed soil and twigs
+from her trousers, turned her straight young back, carefully set down
+her specimen, and by the aid of her recovered stick began expertly
+making her way up the canyon side. “Here, let me do that,” offered the
+younger man. “You rest until I collect your belongings.” Linda glanced
+back over her shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. “I have a mental inventory
+of all the pencils and knives and trowels I must find. You might
+overlook the most important part of my paraphernalia; and really I am
+not damaged. I'm merely hurt. Good-bye!”
+
+Linda started back up the side of the canyon, leaving the young men to
+enter their car and drive away. For a minute both of them stood watching
+her.
+
+“What will girls be wearing and doing next?” asked the elder of the two
+as he started his car.
+
+“What would you have a girl wear when she is occupied with coasting down
+canyons?” said his friend. “And as for what she is doing, it's probable
+that every high-school girl in Los Angeles has a botanical collection to
+make before she graduates.”
+
+“I see!” said the man driving. “She is only a high-school kid, but
+did you notice that she is going to make an extremely attractive young
+woman?”
+
+“Yes, I noticed just that; I noticed it very particularly,” answered
+the younger man. “And I noticed also that she either doesn't know it, or
+doesn't give a flip.”
+
+  Linda collected her belongings, straightened her hair and
+clothing, and, with her knapsack in place, and leaning rather on heavily
+on her walking stick, made her way down the road to the abutment of a
+small rustic bridge where she stopped to rest. The stream at her feet
+was noisy and icy cold. It rushed through narrow defiles in the rock,
+beat itself to foam against the faces a of the big stones, fell over
+jutting cliffs, spread in whispering pools, wound back and forth
+across the road at its will, singing every foot of its downward way
+and watering beds of crisp, cool miners' lettuce, great ferns, and
+heliotrope, climbing clematis, soil and blue-eyed grass. All along
+its length grew willows, and in a few places white-bodied sycamores.
+Everywhere over the walls red above it that vegetation could find a
+footing grew mosses, vines, flowers, and shrubs. On the shadiest side
+homed most of the ferns and the Cotyledon. In the sun, larkspur, lupin,
+and monkey flower; everywhere wild rose, holly, mahogany, gooseberry,
+and bayoneted yucca all intermingling in a curtain of variegated greens,
+brocaded with flower arabesques of vivid red, white, yellow, and blue.
+Canyon wrens and vireos sang as they nested. The air was clear, cool,
+and salty from the near-by sea. Myriad leaf shadows danced on the black
+roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed the wavering
+image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea swallow. Linda studied the
+canyon with intent eyes, but bruised flesh pleaded, so reluctantly she
+arose, shouldered her belongings, and slowly followed the road out to
+the car line that passed through Lilac Valley, still carefully bearing
+in triumph the precious Cotyledon. An hour later she entered the
+driveway of her home. She stopped to set her plant carefully in the wild
+garden she and her father had worked all her life at collecting, then
+followed the back porch and kitchen route.
+
+“Whatever have ye been doing to yourself, honey?” cried Katy.
+
+“I came a cropper down Multiflores Canyon where it is so steep that it
+leans the other way. I pretty well pulverized myself for a pulverulent,
+Katy, which is a poor joke.”
+
+“Now ain't that just my luck!” wailed Katy, snatching a cake cutter and
+beginning hurriedly to stamp out little cakes from the dough before her.
+
+“Well, I don't understand in exactly what way,” said Linda, absently
+rubbing her elbows and her knees. “Seems to me it's my promontories that
+have been knocked off, not yours, Katy.”
+
+“Yes, and ain't it just like ye,” said Katy, “to be coming in late, and
+all banged up when Miss Eileen has got sudden notice that there is going
+to be company again and I have an especial dinner to serve, and never in
+the world can I manage if ye don't help me!”
+
+“Why, who is coming now?” asked Linda, seating herself on the nearest
+chair and beginning to unfasten her boots slowly.
+
+“Well, first of all, there is Mr. Gilman, of course.”
+
+“'Of course,'” conceded Linda. “If he tried to get past our house,
+Eileen is perfectly capable of setting it on fire to stop him. She's got
+him 'vamped' properly.”
+
+“Oh I don't know that ye should say just that,” said Katy “Eileen is a
+mighty pretty girl, and she is SOME manager.”
+
+“You can stake your hilarious life she is,” said Linda, viciously
+kicking a boot to the center of the kitchen. “She can manage to go
+downtown for lunch and be invited out to dinner thirteen times a week,
+and leave us at home to eat bread and milk, bread heavily stressed.
+She can manage to get every cent of the income from the property in her
+fingers, and a great big girl like me has to go to high school looking
+so tacky that even the boys are beginning to comment on it. Manage, I'll
+say she can manage, not to mention managing to snake John Gilman right
+out of Marian's fingers. I doubt if Marian fully realizes yet that she's
+lost her man; and I happen to know that she just plain loved John!”
+
+The second boot landed beside the first, then Linda picked them both up
+and started toward the back hall.
+
+“Honey, are ye too bad hurt to help me any?” asked Katy, as she passed
+her.
+
+“Of course not,” said Linda. “Give me a few minutes to take a bath and
+step into my clothes and then I'll be on the job.”
+
+With a black scowl on her face, Linda climbed the dingy back stairway
+in her stocking-feet. At the head of the stairs she paused one minute,
+glanced at the gloom of her end of the house, then she turned and walked
+to the front of the hall where there were potted ferns, dainty white
+curtains, and bright rugs. The door of the guest room stood open and she
+could see that it was filled with fresh flowers and ready for occupancy.
+The door of her sister's room was slightly ajar and she pushed it open
+and stood looking inside. In her state of disarray she made a shocking
+contrast to the flowerlike figure busy before a dressing table. Linda
+was dark, narrow, rawboned, overgrown in height, and forthright of
+disposition. Eileen was a tiny woman, delicately moulded, exquisitely
+colored, and one of the most perfectly successful tendrils from the
+original clinging vine in her intercourse with men, and with such women
+as would tolerate the clinging-vine idea in the present forthright days.
+With a strand of softly curled hair in one hand and a fancy pin in the
+other, Eileen turned a disapproving look upon her sister.
+
+“What's the great idea?” demanded Linda shortly.
+
+“Oh, it's perfectly splendid,” answered Eileen. “John Gilman's best
+friend is motoring around here looking for a location to build a home.
+He is an author and young and good looking and not married, and he
+thinks he would like to settle somewhere near Los Angeles. Of course
+John would love to have him in Lilac Valley because he hopes to build a
+home here some day for himself. His name is Peter Morrison and John says
+that his articles and stories have horse sense, logic, and humor, and he
+is making a lot of money.”
+
+“Then God help John Gilman, if he thinks now that he is in love with
+you,” said Linda dryly.
+
+Eileen arched her eyebrows, thinned to a hair line, and her lips drew
+together in disapproval.
+
+“What I can't understand,” she said, “is how you can be so unspeakably
+vulgar, Linda.”
+
+Linda laughed sharply.
+
+“And this Peter Morrison and John are our guests for dinner?”
+
+“Yes,” said Eileen. “I am going to show them this valley inside and out.
+I'm so glad it's spring. We're at our very best. It would be perfectly
+wonderful to have an author for a neighbor, and he must be going to
+build a real house, because he has his architect with him; and John says
+that while he is young, he has done several awfully good houses. He has
+seen a couple of them in in San Francisco.”
+
+Linda shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“Up the flue goes Marian's chance of drawing the plans for John Gilman's
+house,” she said. “I have heard him say a dozen times he would not build
+a house unless Marian made the plans.”
+
+Eileen deftly placed the strand of hair and set the jewelled pin with
+precision.
+
+“Just possibly things have changed slightly,” she suggested.
+
+“Yes,” said Linda, “I observe that they have. Marian has sold the home
+she adored. She is leaving friends she loved and trusted, and who were
+particularly bound to her by a common grief without realizing exactly
+how it is happening. She certainly must know that you have taken her
+lover, and I have not a doubt but that is the reason she has discovered
+she can no longer work at home, that she must sell her property and
+spend the money cooped up in a city, to study her profession further.”
+
+“Linda,” said Eileen, her face pale with anger, “you are positively
+insufferable. Will you leave my room and close the door after you?”
+
+“Well, Katy has just informed me,” said Linda, “that this dinner party
+doesn't come off without my valued assistance, and before I agree to
+assist, I'll know ONE thing. Are you proposing to entertain these three
+men yourself, or have you asked Marian?”
+
+Eileen indicated an open note lying on her dressing table.
+
+“I did not know they were coming until an hour ago,” she said. “_I_
+barely had time to fill the vases and dust, and then I ran up to dress
+so that there would be someone presentable when they arrive.”
+
+“All right then, we'll agree that this is a surprise party, but if John
+Gilman has told you so much about them, you must have been expecting
+them, and in a measure prepared for them at any time. Haven't you talked
+it over with Marian, and told her that you would want her when they
+came?”
+
+Eileen was extremely busy with another wave of hair. She turned her back
+and her voice was not quite steady as she answered. “Ever since Marian
+got this 'going to the city to study' idea in her head I have scarcely
+seen her. She had an awful job to empty the house, and pack such things
+as she wants to keep, and she is working overtime on a very special plan
+that she thinks maybe she'll submit in a prize competition offered by
+a big firm of San Francisco architects, so I have scarcely seen her for
+six weeks.”
+
+“And you never once went over to help her with her work, or to encourage
+her or to comfort her? You can't think Marian can leave this valley and
+not be almost heartbroken,” said Linda. “You just make me almost wonder
+at you. When you think of the kind of friends that Marian Thorne's
+father and mother, and our father and mother were, and how we children
+were reared together, and the good times we have had in these two
+houses--and then the awful day when the car went over the cliff, and
+how Marian clung to us and tried to comfort us, when her own health was
+broken--and Marian's the same Marian she has always been, only nicer
+every day--how you can sit there and say you have scarcely seen her in
+six of the hardest weeks of her life, certainly surprises me. I'll tell
+you this: I told Katy I would help her, but I won't do it if you don't
+go over and make Marian come tonight.”
+
+Eileen turned to her sister and looked at her keenly. Linda's brow was
+sullen, and her jaw set.
+
+“A bed would look mighty good to me and I will go and get into mine this
+minute if you don't say you will go and ask her, in such a way that she
+comes,” she threatened.
+
+Eileen hesitated a second and then said: “All right, since you make such
+a point of it I will ask her.”
+
+“Very well,” said Linda. “Then I'll help Katy the very best I can.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. The House of Dreams
+
+In less than an hour, Linda was in the kitchen, dressed in an old green
+skirt and an orange blouse. Katy pinned one of her aprons on the girl
+and told her that her first job was to set the table.
+
+“And Miss Eileen has given most particular orders that I use the very
+best of everything. Lay the table for four, and you are to be extremely
+careful in serving not to spill the soup.”
+
+Linda stood very quietly for a second, her heavy black brows drawn
+together in deep thought.
+
+“When did Eileen issue these instructions?” she inquired.
+
+“Not five minutes ago,” said Katy. “She just left me kitchen and I'll
+say I never saw her lookin' such a perfect picture. That new dress of
+hers is the most becoming one she has ever had.”
+
+Almost unconsciously, Linda's hand reached to the front of her well-worn
+blouse, and she glanced downward at her skirt and shoes.
+
+“Um-hm,” she said meditatively, “another new dress for Eileen, which
+means that I will get nothing until next month's allowance comes in, if
+I do then. The table set for four, which, interpreted, signifies that
+she has asked Marian in such a way that Marian won't come. And the
+caution as to care with the soup means that I am to serve my father's
+table like a paid waitress. Katy, I have run for over three years on
+Eileen's schedule, but this past year I am beginning to use my brains
+and I am reaching the place of self-assertion. That programme won't do,
+Katy. It's got to be completely revised. You just watch me and see how I
+follow those instructions.”
+
+Then Linda marched out of the kitchen door and started across the lawn
+in the direction of a big brown house dimly outlined through widely
+spreading branches of ancient live oaks, palm, and bamboo thickets.
+She entered the house without knocking and in the hall uttered a low
+penetrating whistle. It was instantly answered from upstairs. Linda
+began climbing, and met Marian at the top.
+
+“Why, Marian,” she cried, “I had no idea you were so far along. The
+house is actually empty.”
+
+“Practically everything went yesterday,” answered Marian. “Those things
+of Father's and Mother's and my own that I wish to keep I have put in
+storage, and the remainder went to James's Auction Rooms. The house is
+sold, and I am leaving in the morning.”
+
+“Then that explains,” questioned Linda, “why you refused Eileen's
+invitation to dinner tonight?”
+
+“On the contrary,” answered Marian, “an invitation to dinner tonight
+would be particularly and peculiarly acceptable to me, since the kitchen
+is barren as the remainder of the house, and I was intending to slip
+over when your room was lighted to ask if I might spend the night with
+you.”
+
+Linda suddenly gathered her friend in her arms and held her tight.
+
+“Well, thank heaven that you felt sufficiently sure of me to come to me
+when you needed me. Of course you shall spend the night with me; and I
+must have been mistaken in thinking Eileen had been here. She probably
+will come any minute. There are guests for the night. John is bringing
+that writer friend of his. Of course you know about him. It's Peter
+Morrison.”
+
+Marian nodded her head. “Of course! John has always talked of him. He
+had some extremely clever articles in The Post lately.”
+
+“Well, he is one,” said Linda, “and an architect who is touring with him
+is two; they are looking for a location to build a house for the writer.
+You can see that it would be a particularly attractive feather in our
+cap if he would endorse our valley sufficiently to home in it. So
+Eileen has invited them to sample our brand of entertainment, and in the
+morning no doubt she will be delighted to accompany them and show them
+all the beautiful spots not yet preempted.”
+
+“Oh, heavens,” cried Marian, “I'm glad I never showed her my spot!”
+
+“Well, if you are particular about wanting a certain place I sincerely
+hope you did not,” said Linda.
+
+“I am sure I never did,” answered Marian. “I so love one spot that I
+have been most secretive about it. I am certain I never went further
+than to say there was a place on which I would love to build for myself
+the house of my dreams. I have just about finished getting that home
+on paper, and I truly have high hopes that I may stand at least a fair
+chance of winning with it the prize Nicholson and Snow are offering.
+That is one of the reasons why I am hurrying on my way to San Francisco
+much sooner than I had expected to go. I haven't a suitable dinner dress
+because my trunks have gone, but among such old friends it won't matter.
+I have one fussy blouse in my bag, and I'll be over as soon as I can see
+to closing up the house and dressing.”
+
+Linda hurried home, and going to the dining room, she laid the table for
+six in a deft and artistic manner. She filled a basket with beautiful
+flowers of her own growing for a centerpiece, and carefully followed
+Eileen's instruction to use the best of everything. When she had
+finished she went to the kitchen.
+
+“Katy,” she said, “take a look at my handiwork.”
+
+“It's just lovely,” said Katy heartily.
+
+“I quite agree with you,” answered Linda, “and now in pursuance of a
+recently arrived at decision, I have resigned, vamoosed, quit, dead
+stopped being waitress for Eileen. I was seventeen my last birthday.
+Hereafter when there are guests I sit at my father's table, and you will
+have to do the best you can with serving, Katy.”
+
+“And it's just exactly right ye are,” said Katy. “I'll do my best, and
+if that's not good enough, Miss Eileen knows what she can do.”
+
+“Now listen to you,” laughed Linda. “Katy, you couldn't be driven to
+leave me, by anything on this earth that Eileen could do; you know you
+couldn't.”
+
+Katy chuckled quietly. “Sure, I wouldn't be leaving ye, lambie,” she
+said. “We'll get everything ready, and I can serve I six as nicely as
+anyone. But you're not forgetting that Miss Eileen said most explicit to
+lay the table for FOUR?'
+
+“I am not forgetting,” said Linda. “For Eileen's sake I am I sorry
+to say that her ship is on the shoals. She is not going to have clear
+sailing with little sister Linda any longer. This is the year of woman's
+rights, you know, Katy, and I am beginning to realize that my rights
+have been badly infringed upon for lo these many years. If Eileen
+chooses to make a scene before guests, that is strictly up to Eileen.
+Now what is it you want me to do?”
+
+Katy directed and Linda worked swiftly. Soon they heard a motor stop,
+and laughing voices told them that the guests had arrived.
+
+“Now I wonder,” said Linda, “whether Marian is here yet.”
+
+At that minute Marian appeared at the kitchen door.
+
+“Linda,” she said breathlessly, “I am feeling queer about this. Eileen
+hasn't been over.”
+
+“Oh, that's all right,” said Linda casually. “The folks have come, and
+she was only waiting to make them a bit at home before she ran after
+you.”
+
+Marian hesitated.
+
+“She was not allowing me much time to dress.”
+
+“That's 'cause she knew you did not need it,” retorted Linda. “The more
+you fuss up, the less handsome you are, and you never owned anything in
+your life so becoming as that old red blouse. So farewell, Katy, we're
+due to burst into high society tonight. We're going to help Eileen vamp
+a lawyer, and an author, and an architect, one apiece. Which do you
+prefer, Marian?”
+
+“I'll take the architect,” said Marian. “We should have something in
+common since I am going to be a great architect myself one of these
+days.”
+
+“Why, that is too bad,” said Linda. “I'll have to rearrange the table if
+you insist, because I took him, and left you the author, and it was for
+love of you I did it. I truly wanted him myself, all the time.”
+
+They stopped in the dining room and Marian praised Linda's work in
+laying the table; and then, together they entered the living room.
+
+At the moment of their entrance, Eileen was talking animatedly about the
+beauties of the valley as a location for a happy home. When she saw the
+two girls she paused, the color swiftly faded from her face, and Linda,
+who was watching to see what would happen, noticed the effort she made
+at self-control, but she was very sure that their guests did not.
+
+It never occurred to Linda that anyone would consider good looks in
+connection with her overgrown, rawboned frame and lean face, but she was
+accustomed to seeing people admire Marian, for Marian was a perfectly
+modeled woman with peach bloom cheeks, deep, dark eyes, her face framed
+in a waving mass of hair whose whiteness dated from the day that the
+brakes of her car failed and she plunged down the mountain with her
+father beside her, and her mother and Doctor and Mrs. Strong in the back
+seat. Ten days afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin
+white. Now it framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos.
+“Striking” was perhaps the one adjective which would best describe her.
+
+John Gilman came hastily to greet them. Linda, after a swift glance
+at Eileen, turned astonished eyes on their guests. For one second
+she looked at the elder of them, then at the younger. There was no
+recognition in her eyes, and there was a decided negative in a swift
+movement of her head. Both men understood that she did not wish them to
+mention that they ever had seen her previously. For an instant there
+was a strained situation. Eileen was white with anger. John Gilman was
+looking straight at Marian, and in his soul he must have wondered if
+he had been wise in neglecting her for Eileen. Peter Morrison and his
+architect, Henry Anderson, had two things to think about. One was the
+stunning beauty of Marian Thorne as she paused in the doorway, the light
+misting her white hair and deepening the tints of her red waist The
+other was why the young girl facing them had forbidden them to reveal
+that two hours before they had seen her in the canyon. Katy, the
+efficient life-saver of the Strong family, announced dinner, and Linda
+drew back the curtains and led the way to the dining room, saying
+when they had arrived: “I didn't have time in my hour's notice to make
+elaborate place cards as I should have liked to do, so these little pen
+sketches will have to serve.”
+
+To cover his embarrassment and to satisfy his legal mind, John Gilman
+turned to Linda, asking: “Why 'an hour'? I told Eileen a week ago I was
+expecting the boys today.”
+
+“But that does not prove that Eileen mentioned it to me,” answered Linda
+quietly; “so you must find your places from the cards I could prepare in
+a hurry.”
+
+This same preparation of cards at the round table placed Eileen between
+the architect and the author, Marian between the author and John Gilman,
+and Linda between Gilman and the architect, which added one more tiny
+gale to the storm of fury that was raging in the breast of white-faced
+Eileen. The situation was so strained that without fully understanding
+it, Marian, who was several years older than either of the Strong
+sisters, knew that although she was tired to the point of exhaustion
+she should muster what reserve force she could to the end of making the
+dinner party particularly attractive, because she was deeply interested
+in drawing to the valley every suitable home seeker it was possible
+to locate there. It was the unwritten law of the valley that whenever
+a home seeker passed through, every soul who belonged exerted the
+strongest influence to prove that the stars hung lower and shone bigger
+and in bluer heavens than anywhere else on earth; that nowhere could
+be found air to equal the energizing salt breezes from the sea, snow
+chilled, perfumed with almond and orange; that the sun shone brighter
+more days in the year, and the soil produced a greater variety of
+vegetables and fruits than any other spot of the same size on God's
+wonderful footstool. This could be done with unanimity and enthusiasm
+by every resident of Lilac Valley for the very simple reason that it was
+the truth. The valley stood with its steep sides raying blue from myriad
+wild lilacs; olives and oranges sloped down to the flat floor, where
+cultivated ranches and gardens were so screened by eucalyptus and pepper
+trees, palm and live oak, myriads of roses of every color and variety,
+and gaudy plants gathered there from the entire girth of the
+tropical world, that to the traveler on the highway trees and flowers
+predominated. The greatest treasure of the valley was the enthusiastic
+stream of icy mountain water that wandered through the near-by canyon
+and followed the length of the valley on its singing, chuckling way
+to the ocean. All the residents of Lilac Valley had to do to entrance
+strangers with the location was to show any one of a dozen vantage
+points, and let visitors test for themselves the quality of the sunshine
+and air, and study the picture made by the broad stretch of intensively
+cultivated valley, walled on either side by mountains whose highest
+peaks were often cloud-draped and for ever shifting their delicate
+pastel shades from gray to blue, from lavender to purple, from tawny
+yellow to sepia, under the play of the sun and clouds.
+
+They had not been seated three minutes before Linda realized from her
+knowledge of Eileen that the shock had been too great, if such a thing
+might be said of so resourceful a creature as Eileen. Evidently she was
+going to sulk in the hope that this would prove that any party was a
+failure at which she did not exert herself to be gracious. It had not
+been in Linda's heart to do more than sit quietly in the place belonging
+by right to her, but when she realized what was going to happen, she
+sent Marian one swift appealing glance, and then desperately plunged
+into conversation to cover Eileen's defection.
+
+“I have been told,” she said, addressing the author, “that you are
+looking for a home in California. Is this true, or is it merely that
+every good Californian hopes this will happen when any distinguished
+Easterner comes our way?”
+
+“I can scarcely answer you,” said Peter Morrison, “because my ideas on
+the subject are still slightly nebulous, but I am only too willing to
+see them become concrete.”
+
+“You have struck exactly the right place,” said Linda. “We have concrete
+by the wagon load in this valley and we are perfectly willing to donate
+the amount required to materialize your ideas. Do you dream of a whole
+ranch or only a nest?”
+
+“Well, the fact is,” answered Peter Morrison with a most attractive
+drawl in his slow speech, “the fact is the dimensions of my dream must
+fit my purse. Ever since I finished college I have been in newspaper
+work and I have lived in an apartment in New York except while I was
+abroad. When I came back my paper sent me to San Francisco and from
+there I motored down to see for myself if the wonderful things that are
+written about Los Angeles County are true.”
+
+“That is not much of a compliment to us,” said Linda slowly. “How do you
+think we would dare write them if they were not true?”
+
+This caused such a laugh that everyone felt much easier. Marian turned
+her dark eyes toward Peter Morrison.
+
+“Linda and I are busy people,” she said. “We waste little time
+in indirections, so I hope it's not out of the way for me to ask
+straightforwardly if you are truly in earnest, about wanting a home in
+Lilac Valley?”
+
+“Then I'll have to answer you,” said Peter, “that I have an attractive
+part of the 'makin's' and I am in deadly earnest about wanting a home
+somewhere. I am sick in my soul of narrow apartments and wheels and the
+rush and roar of the city. There was a time when I ate and drank it.
+It was the very breath of life to me. I charged on Broadway like a
+caterpillar tank charging in battle; but it is very remarkable how
+quickly one changes in this world. I have had some success in my work,
+and the higher I go, the better work I feel I can do in a quiet place
+and among less enervating surroundings. John and I were in college
+together, roommates, and no doubt he has told you that we graduated with
+the same class. He has found his location here and I would particularly
+enjoy having a home near him. They tell me there are well-trained
+servants to look after a house and care for a bachelor, so I truly feel
+that if I can find a location I would like, and if Henry can plan me a
+house, and I can stretch my purse to cover the investment, that there
+is a very large possibility that somewhere within twenty miles of Los
+Angeles I may find the home of my dreams.”
+
+“One would almost expect,” said Marian, “that a writer would say
+something more original. This valley is filled with people who came here
+saying precisely what you have said; and the lure of the land won them
+and here they are, shameless boosters of California.”
+
+“Why shameless?” inquired Henry Anderson.
+
+“Because California so verifies the wildest statement that can be made
+concerning her that one may go the limit of imagination without shame,”
+ laughed Marian. “I try in all my dealings to stick to the straight and
+narrow path.”
+
+“Oh, kid, don't stick to the straight and narrow,” broke in Linda,
+“there's no scenery.”
+
+Eileen laid down her fork and stared in white-lipped amazement at the
+two girls, but she was utterly incapable of forgetting herself and her
+neatly arranged plans to have the three cultivated and attractive
+young men all to herself for the evening. She realized too, from the
+satisfaction betrayed in the glances these men were exchanging among
+each other, the ease with which they sat, and the gusto with which they
+ate the food Katy was deftly serving them, that something was happening
+which never had happened at the Strong table since she had presided
+as its head, her sole endeavor having been to flatter her guests or to
+extract flattery for herself from them.
+
+“That is what makes this valley so adorable,” said Marian when at last
+she could make herself heard. “It is neither straight nor narrow. The
+wing of a white sea swallow never swept a lovelier curve on the breast
+of the ocean than the line of this valley. My mother was the dearest
+little woman, and she used to say that this valley was outlined by a
+gracious gesture from the hand of God in the dawn of Creation.”
+
+Peter Morrison deliberately turned in his chair, his eyes intent on
+Marian's earnest face.
+
+“You almost make me want to say, in the language of an old hymn I used
+to hear my mother sing, 'Here will I set up my rest.' With such a name
+as Lilac Valley and with such a thought in the heart concerning it, I
+scarcely feel that there is any use in looking further. How about it,
+Henry? Doesn't it sound conclusive to you?”
+
+“It certainly does,” answered Henry Anderson, “and from what I could see
+as we drove in, it looks as well as it sounds.”
+
+Peter Morrison turned to his friend.
+
+“Gilman,” he said, “you're a lawyer; you should know the things I'd like
+to. Are there desirable homesites still to be found in the valley,
+and does the inflation of land at the present minute put it out of my
+reach?”
+
+“Well, that is on a par with the average question asked a lawyer,”
+ answered Gilman, “but part of it I can answer definitely and at once.
+I think every acre of land suitable for garden or field cultivation is
+taken. I doubt if there is much of the orchard land higher up remaining
+and what there is would command a rather stiff price; but if you would
+be content with some small plateau at the base of a mountain where you
+could set any sort of a house and have--say two or three acres, mostly
+of sage and boulders and greasewood and yucca around it.”
+
+“Why in this world are you talking about stones and sage and
+greasewood?” cried Linda. “Next thing they'll be asking about mountain
+lions and rattlesnakes.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Gilman, “I fear none of us has remembered to
+present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist. She got her start from her
+father, who was one of the greatest nerve specialists the world ever
+has known. She knows every inch of the mountains, the canyons and the
+desert. She always says that she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe,
+while her father hunted the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland.
+What should I have said when describing a suitable homesite for Peter,
+Linda?”
+
+“You should have assumed that immediately, Peter,”--Linda lifted her
+eyes to Morrison's face with a sparkle of gay challenge, and by way of
+apology interjected--“I am only a kid, you know, so I may call John's
+friend Peter--you should have assumed that sage and greasewood would
+simply have vanished from any home location chosen by Peter, leaving it
+all lacy blue with lilac, and misty white with lemonade bush, and lovely
+gold with monkey flower, and purple with lupin, and painted blood red
+with broad strokes of Indian paint brush, and beautifully lighted with
+feathery flames from Our Lord's Candles, and perfumy as altar incense
+with wild almond.”
+
+“Oh, my soul,” said Peter Morrison. “Good people, I have located. I have
+come to stay. I would like three acres but I could exist with two; an
+acre would seem an estate to me, and my ideas of a house, Henry, are
+shriveling. I did have a dream of something that must have been precious
+near a home. There might have been an evanescent hint of flitting
+draperies and inexperienced feet in it, but for the sake of living and
+working in such a location as Miss Linda describes, I would gladly cut
+my residence to a workroom and a sleeping room and kitchen.”
+
+“Won't do,” said Linda. “A house is not a house in California without
+a furnace and a bathroom. We are cold as blue blazes here when the sun
+goes down and the salty fog creeps up from the sea, and the icy mist
+rolls down from the mountains to chill our bones; and when it has not
+rained for six months at a stretch, your own private swimming pool is
+a comfort. This to add verisimilitude to what everyone else in Lilac
+Valley is going to tell you.”
+
+“I hadn't thought I would need a fire,” said Peter, “and I was depending
+on the ocean for my bathtub. I am particularly fond of a salt rub.”
+
+So far, Eileen had not deigned to enter the conversation. It was all so
+human, so far from her ideas of entertaining that the disapproval on her
+lips was not sufficiently veiled to be invisible, and John Gilman,
+glancing in her direction, realized that he was having the best time he
+had ever had in the Strong household since the passing of his friends,
+Doctor and Mrs. Strong, vaguely wondered why. And it occurred to him
+that Linda and Marian were dominating the party. He said the most
+irritating thing possible in the circumstances: “I am afraid you are not
+feeling well this evening, Eileen.”
+
+Eileen laughed shortly.
+
+“The one perfect thing about me,” she said with closely cut precision,
+“is my health. I haven't the faintest notion what it means to be ill. I
+am merely waiting for the conversation to take a I turn where I can join
+in it intelligently.”
+
+“Why, bless the child!” exclaimed Linda. “Can't you talk intelligently
+about a suitable location for a home? On what subject is a woman
+supposed to be intelligent if she is not at her best on the theme of
+home. If you really are not interested you had better begin to polish
+up, because it appeals to me that the world goes just so far in one
+direction, and then it whirls to the right-about and goes equally as far
+in the opposite direction. If Daddy were living I think he would say we
+have reached the limit with apartment house homes minus fireplaces, with
+restaurant dining minus a blessing, with jazz music minus melody, with
+jazz dancing minus grace, with national progress minus cradles.”
+
+“Linda!” cried Eileen indignantly.
+
+“Good gracious!” cried Linda. “Do I get the shillalah for that? Weren't
+all of us rocked in cradles? I think that the pendulum has swung far
+and it is time to swing back to where one man and one woman choose any
+little spot on God's footstool, build a nest and plan their lives in
+accord with personal desire and inclination instead of aping their
+neighbors.”
+
+“Bravo!” cried Henry Anderson. “Miss Linda, if you see any suitable
+spot, and you think I would serve for a bug-catcher, won't you please
+stake the location?”
+
+“Well, I don't know about that,” said Linda. “Would it be the old case
+of 'I furnish the bread and you furnish the water'?”
+
+“No,” said Peter Morrison, “it would not. Henry is doing mighty well. I
+guarantee that he would furnish a cow that would produce real cream.”
+
+“How joyous!” said Linda. “I feel quite competent to manage the bread
+question. We'll call that settled then. When I next cast an appraising
+eye over my beloved valley, I shan't select the choicest spot in it for
+Peter Morrison to write a book in; and I want to warn you people when
+you go hunting to keep a mile away from Marian's plot. She has had her
+location staked from childhood and has worked on her dream house until
+she has it all ready to put the ice in the chest and scratch the match
+for the living room fire-logs. The one thing she won't ever tell is
+where her location is, but wherever it is, Peter Morrison, don't you
+dare take it.”
+
+“I wouldn't for the world,” said Peter Morrison gravely. “If Miss Thorne
+will tell me even on which side of the valley her location lies, I will
+agree to stay on the other side.”
+
+“Well there is one thing you can depend upon,” said the irrepressible
+Linda before Marian had time to speak. “It is sure to be on the sunny
+side. Every living soul in California is looking for a place in the
+sun.”
+
+“Then I will make a note of it,” said Peter Morrison. “But isn't there
+enough sun in all this lovely valley that I may have a place in it too?”
+
+“You go straight ahead and select any location you like,” said Marian.
+“I give you the freedom of the valley. There's not one chance in ten
+thousand that you would find or see anything attractive about the one
+secluded spot I have always hoped I might some day own.”
+
+“This is not fooling, then?” asked Peter Morrison. “You truly have a
+place selected where you would like to live?”
+
+“She truly has the spot selected and she truly has the house on paper
+and it truly is a house of dreams,” said Linda. “I dream about it
+myself. When she builds it and lives in it awhile and finds out all the
+things that are wrong with it, then I am going to build one like it,
+only I shall eliminate all the mistakes she has made.”
+
+“I have often wondered,” said Henry Anderson, “if such a thing ever
+happened as that people built a house and lived in it, say ten years,
+and did not find one single thing about it that they would change if
+they had it to build over again. I never have heard of such a case. Have
+any of you?”
+
+“I am sure no one has,” said John Gilman meditatively, “and it's a queer
+thing. I can't see why people don't plan a house the way they want it
+before they build.”
+
+Marian turned to him--the same Marian he had fallen in love with when
+they were children.
+
+“Mightn't it be,” she asked, “that it is due to changing conditions
+caused by the rapid development of science and invention? If one had
+built the most perfect house possible five years ago and learned today
+that infinitely superior lighting and heating and living facilities
+could be installed at much less expense and far greater convenience,
+don't you think that one would want to change? Isn't life a series of
+changes? Mustn't one be changing constantly to keep abreast of one's day
+and age?”
+
+“Why, surely,” answered Gilman, “and no doubt therein lies at least part
+of the answer to Anderson's question.”
+
+“And then,” added Marian, “things happen in families. Sometimes more
+babies than they expect come to newly married people and they require
+more room.”
+
+“My goodness, yes!” broke in Linda. “Just look at Sylvia Townsend--twins
+to begin with.”
+
+“Linda!” breathed Eileen, aghast.
+
+“So glad you like my name, dear,” murmured Linda sweetly.
+
+“And then,” continued Marian, “changes come to other people as they have
+to me. I can't say that I had any fault to find with either the comforts
+or the conveniences of Hawthorne House until Daddy and Mother were swept
+from it at one cruel sweep; and after that it was nothing to me but
+a haunted house, and I don't feel that I can be blamed for wanting to
+leave it. I will be glad to know that there are people living in it who
+won't see a big strong figure meditatively smoking before the fireplace
+and a gray dove of a woman sitting on the arm of his chair. I will be
+glad, if Fate is kind to me and people like my houses, to come back
+to the valley when I can afford to and build myself a home that has no
+past--a place, in fact, where I can furnish my own ghost, and if I meet
+myself on the stairs then I won't be shocked by me.
+
+“I don't think there is a soul in the valley who blames you for selling
+your home and going, Marian,” said Linda soberly. “I think it would be
+foolish if you did not.”
+
+The return to the living room brought no change. Eileen pouted while
+Linda and Marian thoroughly enjoyed themselves and gave the guests a
+most entertaining evening. So disgruntled was Eileen, when the young
+men had gone, that she immediately went to her room, leaving Linda and
+Marian to close the house and make their own arrangements for the night.
+Whereupon Linda deliberately led Marian to the carefully dusted and
+flower-garnished guest room and installed her with every comfort and
+convenience that the house afforded. Then bringing her brushes from her
+own room, she and Marian made themselves comfortable, visiting far into
+the night.
+
+“I wonder,” said Linda, “if Peter Morrison will go to a real estate man
+in the morning and look over the locations remaining in Lilac Valley.”
+
+“Yes, I think he will,” said Marian conclusively.
+
+“It seems to me,” said Linda, “that we did a whole lot of talking about
+homes tonight; which reminds me, Marian, in packing have you put in your
+plans? Have you got your last draft with you?”
+
+“No,” answered Marian, “it's in one of the cases. I haven't anything but
+two or three pencil sketches from which I drew the final plans as I now
+think I'll submit them for the contest. Wouldn't it be a tall feather in
+my cap, Linda, if by any chance l I should win that prize?”
+
+“It would be more than a feather,” said Linda. “It would be a whole cap,
+and a coat to wear with it, and a dress to match the coat, and slippers
+to match the dress, and so forth just like 'The House That Jack Built.'
+Have you those sketches, Marian?”
+
+Opening her case, Marian slid from underneath the garments folded in it,
+several sheets on which were roughly penciled sketches of the exterior
+of a house--on the reverse, the upstairs and downstairs floor plans; and
+sitting down, she explained these to Linda. Then she left them lying
+on a table, waiting to be returned to her case before she replaced her
+clothes in the morning. Both girls were fast asleep when a mischievous
+wind slipped down the valley, and lightly lifting the top sheet, carried
+it through the window, across the garden, and dropped it at the foot of
+a honey-dripping loquat.
+
+Because they had talked until late in the night of Marian's plans and
+prospects in the city, of Peter Morrison's proposed residence in the
+valley, of how lonely Linda would be without Marian, of everything
+concerning their lives except the change in Eileen and John Gilman, the
+two girls slept until late in the morning, so that there were but a few
+minutes remaining in which Marian might dress, have a hasty breakfast
+and make her train. In helping her, it fell to Linda to pack Marian's
+case. She put the drawings she found on the table in the bottom, the
+clothing and brushes on top of them, and closing the case, carried it
+herself until she delivered it into the porter's hands as Marian boarded
+her train.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. Linda Starts a Revolution
+
+The last glimpse Marian Thorne had of Linda was as she stood alone,
+waving her hand, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, her final word
+cheery and encouraging. Marian smiled and waved in return until the
+train bore her away. Then she sat down wearily and stared unseeingly
+from a window. Life did such very dreadful things to people. Her
+girlhood had been so happy. Then came the day of the Black Shadow, but
+in her blackest hour she had not felt alone. She had supposed she was
+leaning on John Gilman as securely as she had leaned on her father. She
+had learned, with the loss of her father, that one cannot be sure of
+anything in this world least of all of human life. Yet in her darkest
+days she had depended on John Gilman. She had every reason to believe
+that it was for her that he struggled daily to gain a footing in his
+chosen profession. When success came, when there was no reason that
+Marian could see why they might not have begun life together, there had
+come a subtle change in John, and that change had developed so
+rapidly that in a few weeks' time, she was forced to admit that the
+companionship and loving attentions that once had been all hers were now
+all Eileen's.
+
+She sat in the train, steadily carrying her mile after mile farther from
+her home, and tried to think what had happened and how and why it had
+happened. She could not feel that she had been wrong in her estimate of
+John Gilman. Her valuation of him had been taught her by her father and
+mother and by Doctor and Mrs. Strong and by John Gilman himself. Dating
+from the time that Doctor Strong had purchased the property and built a
+home in Lilac Valley beside Hawthorne House, Marian had admired Eileen
+and had loved her. She was several years older than the beautiful girl
+she had grown up beside. Age had not mattered; Eileen's beauty had not
+mattered. Marian was good looking herself.
+
+She always had known that Eileen had imposed upon her and was selfish
+with her, but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully maneuvered,
+her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in
+retrospection felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a
+small part of it. She never had been able to see the inner workings
+of Eileen's heart. She was not capable of understanding that when
+John Gilman was poor and struggling Eileen had ignored him. It had not
+occurred to Marian that when the success for which he struggled began to
+come generously, Eileen would begin to covet the man she had previously
+disdained. She had always striven to find friends among people of wealth
+and distinction. How was Marian to know that when John began to achieve
+wealth and distinction, Eileen would covet him also?
+
+Marian could not know that Eileen had studied her harder than she ever
+studied any book, that she had deliberately set herself to make the most
+of every defect or idiosyncrasy in Marian, at the same time offering
+herself as a charming substitute. Marian was prepared to be the mental,
+the spiritual, and the physical mate of a man.
+
+Eileen was not prepared to be in truth and honor any of these. She was
+prepared to make any emergency of life subservient to her own selfish
+desires. She was prepared to use any man with whom she came in contact
+for the furtherance of any whim that at the hour possessed her. What she
+wanted was unbridled personal liberty, unlimited financial resources.
+
+Marian, almost numbed with physical fatigue and weeks of mental strain,
+came repeatedly against the dead wall of ignorance when she tried to
+fathom the change that had taken place between herself and John Gilman
+and between herself and Eileen. Daniel Thorne was an older man than
+Doctor Strong. He had accumulated more property. Marian had sufficient
+means at her command to make it unnecessary for her to acquire a
+profession or work for her living, but she had always been interested in
+and loved to plan houses and help her friends with buildings they
+were erecting. When the silence and the loneliness of her empty home
+enveloped her, she had begun, at first as a distraction, to work on the
+drawings for a home that an architect had made for one of her neighbors.
+She had been able to suggest so many comforts and conveniences, and so
+to revise these plans that, at first in a desultory way, later in
+real earnest, she had begun to draw plans for houses. Then, being of
+methodical habit and mathematical mind, she began scaling up the plans
+and figuring on the cost of building, and so she had worked until she
+felt that she was evolving homes that could be built for the same amount
+of money and lived in with more comfort and convenience than the homes
+that many of her friends were having planned for them by architects of
+the city.
+
+To one spot in the valley she had gone from childhood as a secret place
+in which to dream and study. She had loved that retreat until it had
+become a living passion with her. The more John Gilman neglected her,
+the more she concentrated upon her plans, and when the hour came in
+which she realized what she had lost and what Eileen had won, she
+reached the decision to sell her home, go to the city, and study until
+she knew whether she really could succeed at her chosen profession.
+
+Then she would come back to the valley, buy the spot she coveted, build
+the house of which she dreamed, and in it she would spend the remainder
+of her life making homes for the women who knew how to hold the love
+of men. When she reached the city she had decided that if one could not
+have the best in life, one must be content with the next best, and for
+her the next best would be homes for other people, since she might not
+materialize the home she had dreamed for John Gilman and herself. She
+had not wanted to leave the valley. She had not wanted to lose John
+Gilman. She had not wanted to part with the home she had been reared in.
+Yet all of these things seemed to have been forced upon her. All Marian
+knew to do was to square her shoulders, take a deep breath, put regrets
+behind her, and move steadily toward the best future she could devise
+for herself.
+
+She carried letters of introduction to the San Francisco architects,
+Nicholson and Snow, who had offered a prize for the best house that
+could be built in a reasonable time for fifteen thousand dollars. She
+meant to offer her plans in this competition. Through friends she had
+secured a comfortable place in which to live and work. She need undergo
+no hardships in searching for a home, in clothing herself, in paying for
+instruction in the course in architecture she meant to pursue.
+
+Concerning Linda she could not resist a feeling of exultation. Linda
+was one of the friends in Lilac Valley about whom Marian could think
+wholeheartedly and lovingly. Sometimes she had been on the point of
+making a suggestion to Linda, and then she had contented herself with
+waiting in the thought that very soon there must come to the girl a
+proper sense of her position and her rights. The experience of the
+previous night taught Marian that Linda had arrived. She would no longer
+be the compliant little sister who would run Eileen's errands, wait upon
+her guests and wear disreputable clothing. When Linda reached a point
+where she was capable of the performance of the previous night, Marian
+knew that she would proceed to live up to her blue china in every
+ramification of life. She did not know exactly how Linda would follow up
+the assertion of her rights that she had made, but she did know that
+in some way she would follow it up, because Linda was a very close
+reproduction of her father.
+
+She had been almost constantly with him during his life, very much alone
+since his death. She was a busy young person. From Marian's windows
+she had watched the business of carrying on the wild-flower garden that
+Linda and her father had begun. What the occupation was that kept the
+light burning in Linda's room far into the night Marian did not know.
+For a long time she had supposed that her studies were difficult for
+her, and when she had asked Linda if it were not possible for her to
+prepare her lessons without so many hours of midnight study she had
+caught the stare of frank amazement with which the girl regarded her
+and in that surprised, almost grieved look she had realized that very
+probably a daughter of Alexander Strong, who resembled him as Linda
+resembled him, would not be compelled to overwork to master the
+prescribed course of any city high school. What Linda was doing during
+those midnight hours Marian did not know, but she did know that she was
+not wrestling with mathematics and languages--at least not all of the
+time. So Marian knowing Linda's gift with a pencil, had come to the
+conclusion that she was drawing pictures; but circumstantial evidence
+was all she had as a basis for her conviction. Linda went her way
+silently and alone. She was acquainted with everyone living in Lilac
+Valley, frank and friendly with all of them; aside from Marian she
+had no intimate friend. Not another girl in the valley cared to follow
+Linda's pursuits or to cultivate the acquaintance of the breeched,
+booted girl, constantly devoting herself to outdoor study with her
+father during his lifetime, afterward alone.
+
+For an instant after Marian had boarded her train Linda stood looking at
+it, her heart so heavy that it pained acutely. She had not said one word
+to make Marian feel that she did not want her to go. Not once had she
+put forward the argument that Marian's going would leave her to depend
+entirely for human sympathy upon the cook, and her guardian, also
+administrator of the Strong estate, John Gilman. So long as he was
+Marian's friend Linda had admired John Gilman. She had gone to him for
+some measure of the companionship she had missed in losing her father.
+Since Gilman had allowed himself to be captivated by Eileen, Linda
+had harbored a feeling concerning him almost of contempt. Linda was so
+familiar with every move that Eileen made, so thoroughly understood that
+there was a motive back of her every action, that she could not see why
+John Gilman, having known her from childhood, should not understand her
+also.
+
+She had decided that the time had come when she would force Eileen to
+give her an allowance, however small, for her own personal expenses,
+that she must in some way manage to be clothed so that she was not a
+matter of comment even among the boys of her school, and she could see
+no reason why the absolute personal liberty she always had enjoyed so
+long as she disappeared when Eileen did not want her and appeared when
+she did, should not extend to her own convenience as well as Eileen's.
+
+Life was a busy affair for Linda. She had not time to watch Marian's
+train from sight. She must hurry to the nearest street car and make all
+possible haste or she would be late for her classes. Throughout the day
+she worked with the deepest concentration, but she could not keep down
+the knowledge that Eileen would have things to say, possibly things to
+do, when they met that evening, for Eileen was capable of disconcerting
+hysteria. Previously Linda had remained stubbornly silent during any
+tirade in which Eileen chose to indulge. She had allowed herself to be
+nagged into doing many things that she despised, because she would not
+assert herself against apparent injustice. But since she had come fully
+to realize the results of Eileen's course of action for Marian and for
+herself, she was deliberately arriving at the conclusion that hereafter
+she would speak when she had a defense, and she would make it her
+business to let the sun shine on any dark spot that she discovered in
+Eileen.
+
+Linda knew that if John Gilman were well acquainted with Eileen, he
+could not come any nearer to loving her than she did. Such an idea as
+loving Eileen never had entered Linda's thoughts. To Linda, Eileen was
+not lovable. That she should be expected to love her because they had
+the same parents and lived in the same home seemed absurd. She was
+slightly disappointed, on reaching home, to find that Eileen was not
+there.
+
+“Will the lady of the house dine with us this evening? she asked as she
+stood eating an apple in the kitchen.
+
+“She didn't say,” answered Katy. “Have ye had it out about last night
+yet?”
+
+“No,” answered Linda. “That is why I was asking about her. I want to
+clear the atmosphere before I make my new start in life.”
+
+“Now, don't ye be going too far, lambie,” cautioned Katy “Ye young
+things make such an awful serious business of life these days. In your
+scramble to wring artificial joy out of it you miss all the natural joy
+the good God provided ye.”
+
+“It seems to me, Katy,” said Linda slowly, “that you should put that
+statement the other way round. It seems that life makes a mighty serious
+business for us young things, and it seems to me that if we don't get
+the right start and have a proper foundation life Is going to be spoiled
+for us. One life is all I've got to live in this world, and I would
+like it to be the interesting and the beautiful kind of life that Father
+lived.”
+
+Linda dropped to a chair.
+
+“Katy,” she said, leaning forward and looking intently into the earnest
+face of the woman before her, “Katy, I have been thinking an awful lot
+lately. There is a question you could answer for me if you wanted to.”
+
+“Well, I don't see any raison,” said Katy, “why I shouldn't answer ye
+any question ye'd be asking me.”
+
+Linda's eyes narrowed as they did habitually in deep thought She was
+looking past Katy down the sunlit spaces of the wild garden that was her
+dearest possession, and then her eyes strayed higher to where the blue
+walls that shut in Lilac Valley ranged their peaks against the sky.
+“Katy,” she said, scarcely above her breath, “was Mother like Eileen?”
+
+Katy stiffened. Her red face paled slightly. She turned her back and
+slowly slid into the oven the pie she was carrying. She closed the door
+with more force than was necessary and then turned and deliberately
+studied Linda from the top of her shining black head to the tip of her
+shoe.
+
+“Some,” she said tersely.
+
+“Yes, I know 'some',” said Linda, “but you know I was too young to pay
+much attention, and Daddy managed always to make me so happy that I
+never realized until he was gone that he not only had been my father but
+my mother as well. You know what I mean, Katy.”
+
+“Yes,” said Katy deliberately, “I know what ye mean, lambie, and I'll
+tell ye the truth as far as I know it. She managed your father, she
+pampered him, but she deceived him every day, just about little things.
+She always made the household accounts bigger than they were, and used
+the extra money for Miss Eileen and herself--things like that. I'm
+thinkin' he never knew it. I'm thinking he loved her deeply and trusted
+her complete. I know what ye're getting at. She was not enough like
+Eileen to make him unhappy with her. He might have been if he had known
+all there was to know, but for his own sake I was not the one to give
+her away, though she constantly made him think that I was extravagant
+and wasteful in me work.” Linda's eyes came back from the mountains and
+met Katy's straightly.
+
+“Katy,” she said, “did you ever see sisters as different as Eileen and I
+are?”
+
+“No, I don't think I ever did,” said Katy.
+
+“It puzzles me,” said Linda slowly. “The more I think about it, the
+less I can understand why, if we are sisters, we would not accidentally
+resemble each other a tiny bit in some way, and I must say I can't see
+that we do physically or mentally.”
+
+“No,” said Katy, “ye were just as different as ye are now when I came to
+this house new and ye were both little things.”
+
+“And we are going to be as different and to keep on growing more
+different every day of our lives, because red war breaks out the minute
+Eileen comes home. I haven't a notion what she will say to me for what
+I did last night and what I am going to do in the future, but I have a
+definite idea as to what I am going to say to her.”
+
+“Now, easy; ye go easy, lambie,” cautioned Katy.
+
+“I wouldn't regret it,” said Linda, “if I took Eileen by the shoulders
+and shook her till I shook the rouge off her cheek, and the brilliantine
+off her hair, and a million mean little subterfuges out of her soul.
+You know Eileen is lovely when she is natural, and if she would be
+straight-off-the-bat square, I would be proud to be her sister. As it
+is, I have my doubts, even about this sister business.”
+
+“Why, Linda, child, ye are just plain crazy,” said Katy. “What kind of
+notions are you getting into your head?”
+
+“I hear the front door,” said Linda, “and I am going to march straight
+to battle. She's going up the front stairs. I did mean to short-cut up
+the back, but, come to think of it, I have served my apprenticeship
+on the back stairs. I believe I'll ascend the front myself. Good-bye,
+darlin', wish me luck.”
+
+Linda swung Katy around, hugged her tight, and dropped a kiss on the top
+of her faithful head.
+
+“Ye just stick right up for your rights,” Katy advised her. “Ye're a
+great big girl. 'Tain't going to be long till ye're eighteen. But mind
+your old Katy about going too far. If ye lose your temper and cat-spit,
+it won't get ye anywhere. The fellow that keeps the coolest can always
+do the best headwork.”
+
+“I get you,” said Linda, “and that is good advice for which I thank
+you.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. The Smoke of Battle
+
+Then Linda walked down the hall, climbed the front stairs, and presented
+herself at Eileen's door, there to receive one of the severest shocks of
+her young life. Eileen had tossed her hat and fur upon a couch, seated
+herself at her dressing table, and was studying her hair in the effort
+to decide whether she could fluff it up sufficiently to serve for the
+evening or whether she must take it down and redress it. At Linda's step
+in the doorway she turned a smiling face upon her and cried: “Hello,
+little sister, come in and tell me the news.”
+
+Linda stopped as if dazed. The wonderment in which she looked at Eileen
+was stamped all over her. A surprised braid of hair hung over one of her
+shoulders. Her hands were surprised, and the skirt of her dress, and her
+shoes flatly set on the floor.
+
+“Well, I'll be darned!” she ejaculated, and then walked to where she
+could face Eileen, and seated herself without making any attempt to
+conceal her amazement.
+
+“Linda,” said Eileen sweetly, “you would stand far better chance of
+being popular and making a host of friends if you would not be
+so coarse. I am quite sure you never heard Mama or me use such an
+expression.”
+
+For one long instant Linda was too amazed to speak. Then she recovered
+herself.
+
+“Look here, Eileen, you needn't try any 'perfect lady' business on me,”
+ she said shortly. “Do you think I have forgotten the extent of your
+vocabulary when the curling iron gets too hot or you fail to receive an
+invitation to the Bachelors' Ball?”
+
+Linda never had been capable of understanding Eileen. At that minute she
+could not know that Eileen had been facing facts through the long hours
+of the night and all through the day, and that she had reached the
+decision that for the future her only hope of working Linda to her will
+was to conciliate her, to ignore the previous night, to try to put their
+relationship upon the old basis by pretending that there never had been
+a break. She laughed softly.
+
+“On rare occasions, I grant it. Of course a little swear slips out
+sometimes. What I am trying to point out is that you do too much of it.”
+
+“How did you ever get the idea,” said Linda, “that I wanted to be
+popular and have hosts of friends? What would I do with them if I had
+them?”
+
+“Why, use them, my child, use them,” answered Eileen promptly.
+
+“Let's cut this,” said Linda tersely. “I am not your child. I'm getting
+to the place where I have serious doubt as to whether I am your sister
+or not. If I am, it's not my fault, and the same clay never made two
+objects quite so different. I came up here to fight, and I'm going
+to see it through. I'm on the warpath, so you may take your club and
+proceed to battle.”
+
+“What have we to fight about?” inquired Eileen.
+
+“Every single thing that you have done that was unfair to me all my
+life,” said Linda. “Since all of it has been deliberate you probably
+know more about the details than I do, so I'll just content myself
+with telling you that for the future, last night marked a change in the
+relations between us. I am going to be eighteen before so very long, and
+I have ceased to be your maid or your waitress or your dupe. You are not
+going to work me one single time when I have got brains to see through
+your schemes after this. Hereafter I take my place in my father's house
+and at my father's table on an equality with you.”
+
+Eileen looked at Linda steadily, trying to see to the depths of her
+soul. She saw enough to convince her that the young creature in front of
+her was in earnest.
+
+“Hm,” she said, “have I been so busy that I have failed to notice what a
+great girl you are getting?”
+
+“Busy!” scoffed Linda. “Tell that to Katy. It's a kumquat!”
+
+“Perhaps you are too big,” continued Eileen, “to be asked to wait on the
+table any more.”
+
+“I certainly am,” retorted Linda, “and I am also too big to wear such
+shoes or such a dress as I have on at the present min. ute. I know all
+about the war and the inflation of prices and the reduction in income,
+but I know also that if there is enough to run the house, and dress
+you, and furnish you such a suite of rooms as you're enjoying right now,
+there is enough to furnish me suitable clothes, a comfortable bedroom
+and a place where I can leave my work without putting away everything I
+am doing each time I step from the room. I told you four years ago that
+you might take the touring car and do what you pleased with it. I have
+never asked what you did or what you got out of it, so I'll thank you
+to observe equal silence about anything I choose to do now with the
+runabout, which I reserved for myself. I told you to take this suite,
+and this is the first time that I have ever mentioned to you what you
+spent on it.”
+
+Linda waved an inclusive hand toward the fully equipped, dainty
+dressing table, over rugs of pale blue, and beautifully decorated walls,
+including the sleeping room and bath adjoining.
+
+“So now I'll ask you to keep off while I do what I please about the
+library and the billiard room. I'll try to get along without much money
+in doing what I desire there, but I must have some new clothes. I want
+money to buy me a pair of new shoes for school. I want a pair of pumps
+suitable for evenings when there are guests to dinner. I want a couple
+of attractive school dresses. This old serge is getting too hot and too
+worn for common decency. And I also want a couple of dresses something
+like you are wearing, for afternoons and evenings.”
+
+Eileen stared aghast at Linda.
+
+“Where,” she inquired politely, “is the money for all this to come
+from?”
+
+“Eileen,” said Linda in a low tense voice, “I have reached the place
+where even the BOYS of the high school are twitting me about how I am
+dressed, and that is the limit. I have stood it for three years from the
+girls. I am an adept in pretending that I don't see, and I don't hear. I
+have got to the point where I am perfectly capable of walking into your
+wardrobe and taking out enough of the clothes there and selling them at
+a second-hand store to buy me what I require to dress me just plainly
+and decently. So take warning. I don't know where you are going to
+get the money, but you are going to get it. If you would welcome a
+suggestion from me, come home only half the times you dine yourself and
+your girl friends at tearooms and cafes in the city, and you will save
+my share that way. I am going to give you a chance to total your budget,
+and then I demand one half of the income from Father's estate above
+household expenses; and if I don't get it, on the day I am eighteen I
+shall go to John Gilman and say to him what I have said to you, and I
+shall go to the bank and demand that a division be made there, and that
+a separate bank book be started for me.”
+
+Linda's amazement on entering the room had been worthy of note.
+Eileen's at the present minute was beyond description. Dumbfounded was a
+colorless word to describe her state of mind.
+
+“You don't mean that,” she gasped in a quivering voice when at last she
+could speak.
+
+“I can see, Eileen, that you are taken unawares,” said Linda. “I have
+had four long years to work up to this hour. Hasn't it even dawned on
+you that this worm was ever going to turn? You know exquisite moths and
+butterflies evolve in the canyons from very unprepossessing and lowly
+living worms. You are spending your life on the butterfly stunt. Have I
+been such a weak worm that it hasn't ever occurred to you that I might
+want to try a plain, everyday pair of wings sometime myself?”
+
+Eileen's face was an ugly red, her hands were shaking, her voice was
+unnatural, but she controlled her temper.
+
+“Of course,” she said, “I have always known that the time would come,
+after you finished school and were of a proper age, when you would want
+to enter society.”
+
+“No, you never knew anything of the kind,” said Linda bluntly, “because
+I have not the slightest ambition to enter society either now or then.
+All I am asking is to enter the high school in a commonly decent,
+suitable dress; to enter our dining room as a daughter; to enter a
+workroom decently equipped for my convenience. You needn't be surprised
+if you hear some changes going on in the billiard room and see some
+changes going on in the library. And if I feel that I can muster the
+nerve to drive the runabout, it's my car, it's up to me.”
+
+“Linda!” wailed Eileen, “how can you think of such a thing? You wouldn't
+dare.”
+
+“Because I haven't dared till the present is no reason why I should
+deprive myself of every single pleasure in life,” said Linda. “You
+spend your days doing exactly what you please; driving that runabout
+for Father was my one soul-satisfying diversion. Why shouldn't I do the
+thing I love most, if I can muster the nerve?”
+
+Linda arose, and walking over to a table, picked up a magazine lying
+among some small packages that Eileen evidently had placed there on
+entering her room.
+
+“Are you subscribing to this?” she asked.
+
+She turned in her hands and leafed through the pages of a most
+attractive magazine, Everybody's Home. It was devoted to poetry, good
+fiction, and everything concerning home life from beef to biscuits, and
+from rugs to roses.
+
+“I saw it on a newsstand,” said Eileen. “I was at lunch with some girls
+who had a copy and they were talking about some articles by somebody
+named something--Meredith, I think it was--Jane Meredith, maybe she's
+a Californian, and she is advocating the queer idea that we go back to
+nature by trying modern cooking on the food the aborigines ate. If we
+find it good then she recommends that we specialize on the growing of
+these native vegetables for home use and for export--as a new industry.”
+
+“I see,” said Linda. “Out-Burbanking Burbank, as it were.”
+
+“No, not that,” said Eileen. “She is not proposing to evolve new forms.
+She is proposing to show us how to make delicious dishes for luncheon or
+dinner from wild things now going to waste. What the girls said was so
+interesting that I thought I'd get a copy and if I see anything good
+I'll turn it over to Katy.”
+
+“And where's Katy going to get the wild vegetables?” asked Linda
+sceptically.
+
+“Why you might have some of them in your wild garden, or you could
+easily find enough to try--all the prowling the canyons you do ought to
+result in something.”
+
+“So it should,” said Linda. “I quite agree with you. Did I understand
+you to say that I should be ready to go to the bank with you to arrange
+about my income next week?”
+
+Again the color deepened in Eileen's face, again she made a visible
+effort at self-control.
+
+“Oh, Linda,” she said, “what is the use of being so hard? You will make
+them think at the bank that I have not treated you fairly.”
+
+“_I_?” said Linda, “_I_ will make them think? Don't you think it is YOU
+who will make them think? Will you kindly answer my question?”
+
+“If I show you the books,” said Eileen, “if I divide what is left after
+the bills are paid so that you say yourself that it is fair, what more
+can you ask?”
+
+Linda hesitated.
+
+“What I ought to do is exactly what I have said I would do,” she said
+tersely, “but if you are going to put it on that basis I have no desire
+to hurt you or humiliate you in public. If you do that, I can't see that
+I have any reason to complain, so we'll call it a bargain and we'll say
+no more about it until the first of the month, unless the spirit moves
+you, after taking a good square look at me, to produce some shoes and a
+school dress instanter.”
+
+“I'll see what I can do,” answered Eileen.
+
+“All right then,” said Linda. “See you at dinner.”
+
+She went to her own room, slipped off her school dress, brushed her
+hair, and put on the skirt and blouse she had worn the previous evening,
+these being the only extra clothing she possessed. As she straightened
+her hair she looked at herself intently.
+
+“My, aren't you coming on!” she said to the figure in the glass.
+“Dressing for dinner! First thing you know you'll be a perfect lady.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. Jane Meredith
+
+When Eileen came down to dinner that evening Linda understood at a
+glance that an effort was to be made to efface thoroughly from the mind
+of John Gilman all memory of the Eileen of the previous evening. She had
+decided on redressing her hair, while she wore one of her most becoming
+and attractive gowns. To Linda and Katy during the dinner she was simply
+charming. Having said what she wanted to say and received the assurance
+she desired, Linda accepted her advances cordially and displayed such
+charming proclivities herself that Eileen began covertly to watch her,
+and as she watched there slowly grew in her brain the conviction that
+something had happened to Linda. At once she began studying deeply in an
+effort to learn what it might be. There were three paramount things
+in Eileen's cosmos that could happen to a girl: She could have lovely
+clothing. Linda did not have it. She could have money and influential
+friends. Since Marian's going Linda had practically no friend; she was
+merely acquainted with almost everyone living in Lilac Valley. She could
+have a lover. Linda had none. But stay! Eileen's thought halted at the
+suggestion. Maybe she had! She had been left completely, to her own
+devices when she was not wanted about the house. She had been mingling
+with hundreds of boys and girls in high school. She might have met some
+man repeatedly on the street cars, going to and from school. In school
+she might have attracted the son of some wealthy and influential family;
+which was the only kind of son Eileen chose to consider in connection
+with Linda. Through Eileen's brain ran bits of the conversation of the
+previous evening. She recalled that the men she had intended should
+spend the evening waiting on her and paying her pretty compliments had
+spent it eating like hungry men, laughing and jesting with Linda and
+Marian, giving every evidence of a satisfaction with their entertainment
+that never had been evinced with the best brand of attractions she had
+to offer.
+
+Eileen was willing to concede that Marian Thorne had been a beautiful
+girl, and she had known, previous to the disaster, that it was quite as
+likely that any man might admire Marian's flashing dark beauty as
+her blonde loveliness. Between them then it would have been merely a
+question of taste on the part of the man. Since Marian's dark head had
+turned ashen, Eileen had simply eliminated her at one sweep. That white
+hair would brand Marian anywhere as an old woman. Very likely no man
+ever would want to marry her. Eileen was sure she would not want to if
+she were a man. No wonder John Gilman had ceased to be attracted by a
+girl's face with a grandmother setting.
+
+As for Linda, Eileen never had considered her at all except as a
+convenience to serve her own purposes. Last night she had learned that
+Linda had a brain, that she had wit, that she could say things to which
+men of the world listened with interest. She began to watch Linda.
+She appraised with deepest envy the dark hair curling naturally on her
+temples. She wondered how hair that curled naturally could be so thick
+and heavy, and she thought what a crown of glory would adorn Linda's
+head when the day came to coil those long dark braids around it and
+fasten them with flashing pins. She drew some satisfaction from the
+sunburned face and lean figure before her, but it was not satisfaction
+of soul-sustaining quality. There was beginning to be something
+disquieting about Linda. A roundness was creeping over her lean frame; a
+glow was beginning to color her lips and cheek bones; a dewy look could
+be surprised in her dark eyes occasionally. She had the effect of a
+creature with something yeasty bottled inside it that was beginning to
+ferment and might effervesce at any minute. Eileen had been so surprised
+the previous evening and again before dinner, that she made up her mind
+that hereafter one might expect almost anything from Linda. She would no
+longer follow a suggestion unless the suggestion accorded with her sense
+of right and justice. It was barely possible that it might be required
+to please her inclinations. Eileen's mind worked with unbelievable
+swiftness. She tore at her subject like a vulture tearing at a feast,
+and like a vulture she reached the vitals swiftly. She prefaced her
+question with a dry laugh. Then she leaned forward and asked softly:
+“Linda, dear, why haven't you told me?”
+
+Linda's eyes were so clear and honest as they met Eileen's that she
+almost hesitated.
+
+“A little more explicit, please,” said the girl quietly.
+
+“WHO IS HE?” asked Eileen abruptly.
+
+“Oh, I haven't narrowed to an individual,” said Linda largely “You have
+noticed a flock of boys following me from school and hanging around the
+front door? I have such hosts to choose from that it's going to take a
+particularly splendid knight on a snow-white charger--I think 'charger'
+is the proper word--to capture my young affections.”
+
+Eileen was satisfied. There wasn't any he. She might for a short time
+yet cut Linda's finances to the extreme limit. Whenever a man appeared
+on the horizon she would be forced to make a division at least
+approaching equality.
+
+Linda followed Eileen to the living room and sat down with a book until
+John Gilman arrived. She had a desire to study him for a few minutes.
+She was going to write Marian a letter that night. She wanted to know
+if she could honestly tell her that Gilman appeared lonely and seemed to
+miss her. Katy had no chance to answer the bell when it rang. Eileen was
+in the hall. Linda could not tell what was happening from the murmur of
+voices. Presently John and Eileen entered the room, and as Linda greeted
+him she did have the impression that he appeared unusually thoughtful
+and worried. She sat for half an hour, taking slight part in the
+conversation. Then she excused herself and went to her room, and as
+she went she knew that she could not honestly write Marian what she had
+hoped, for in thirty minutes by the clock Eileen's blandishments had
+worked, and John Gilman was looking at her as if she were the most
+exquisite and desirable creature in existence.
+
+Slowly Linda climbed the stairs and entered her room. She slid the bolt
+of her door behind her, turned on the lights, unlocked a drawer, and
+taking from it a heap of materials she scattered them over a small
+table, and picking up her pencil, she sat gazing at the sheet before her
+for some time. Then slowly she began writing:
+
+It appeals to me that, far as modern civilization has gone in culinary
+efforts, we have not nearly reached the limits available to us as I
+pointed out last month. We consider ourselves capable of preparing and
+producing elaborate banquets, yet at no time are we approaching anything
+even to compare in lavishness and delicacy with the days of Lucullus.
+We are not feasting on baked swans, peacock tongues and drinking our
+pearls. I am not recommending that we should revive the indulgence of
+such lavish and useless expenditure, but I would suggest that if we tire
+with the sameness of our culinary efforts, we at least try some of
+the new dishes described in this department, established for the sole
+purpose of their introduction. In so doing we accomplish a multiple
+purpose. We enlarge the resources of the southwest. We tease stale
+appetites with a new tang. We offer the world something different, yet
+native to us. We use modern methods on Indian material and the results
+are most surprising. In trying these dishes I would remind you that few
+of us cared for oysters, olives, celery--almost any fruit or vegetable
+one could mention on first trial. Try several times and be sure you
+prepare dishes exactly right before condemning them as either fad or
+fancy. These are very real, nourishing and delicious foods that are
+being offered you. Here is a salad that would have intrigued the palate
+of Lucullus, himself. If you do not believe me, try it. The vegetable
+is slightly known by a few native mountaineers and ranchers. Botanists
+carried it abroad where under the name of winter-purslane it is used
+in France and England for greens or salad, while remaining practically
+unknown at home. Boiled and seasoned as spinach it makes equally good
+greens. But it is in salad that it stands pre-eminent.
+
+Go to any canyon--I shall not reveal the name of my particular
+canyon--and locate a bed of miner's lettuce (Montia perfoliata). Growing
+in rank beds beside a cold, clean stream, you will find these pulpy,
+exquisitely shaped, pungent round leaves from the center of which lifts
+a tiny head of misty white lace, sending up a palate-teasing, spicy
+perfume. The crisp, pinkish stems snap in the fingers. Be sure that you
+wash the leaves carefully so that no lurking germs cling to them. Fill
+your salad bowl with the crisp leaves, from which the flowerhead has
+been plucked. For dressing, dice a teacup of the most delicious bacon
+you can obtain and fry it to a crisp brown together with a small sliced
+onion. Add to the fat two tablespoons of sugar, half a teaspoon of
+mustard; salt will scarcely be necessary the bacon will furnish that.
+Blend the fat, sugar, and mustard, and pour in a measure of the best
+apple vinegar, diluted to taste. Bring this mixture to the boiling
+point, and when it has cooled slightly pour it over the lettuce leaves,
+lightly turning with a silver fork. Garnish the edge of the dish with
+a deep border of the fresh leaves bearing their lace of white bloom
+intact, around the edge of the bowl, and sprinkle on top the sifted
+yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, heaping the diced whites in the center.
+
+Linda paused and read this over carefully.
+
+“That is all right,” she said. “I couldn't make that much better.”
+
+She made a few corrections here and there, and picking up a colored
+pencil, she deftly sketched in a head piece of delicate sprays of
+miners' lettuce tipped at differing angles, fringy white with bloom.
+Below she printed: “A delicious Indian salad. The second of a series
+of new dishes to be offered made from materials used by the Indians.
+Compounded and tested in her own diet kitchen by the author.”
+
+Swiftly she sketched a tail piece representing a table top upon which
+sat a tempting-looking big salad bowl filled with fresh green leaves,
+rimmed with a row of delicate white flowers, from which you could almost
+scent a teasing delicate fragrance arising; and beneath, in a clear,
+firm hand, she stroked in the name, Jane Meredith. She went over her
+work carefully, then laid it flat on a piece of cardboard, shoved it
+into an envelope, directed it to the editor of Everybody's Home, laid it
+inside her geometry, and wrote her letter to Marian before going to bed.
+
+In the morning on her way to the street car she gaily waved to a passing
+automobile going down Lilac Valley, in which sat John Gilman and Peter
+Morrison and his architect, and as they were driving in the direction
+from which she had come, Linda very rightly surmised that they were
+going to pick up Eileen and make a tour of the valley, looking for
+available building locations; and she wondered why Eileen had not told
+her that they were coming. Linda had been right about the destination
+of the car. It turned in at the Strong driveway and stopped at the door.
+John Gilman went to ring the bell and learn if Eileen were ready. Peter
+followed him. Henry Anderson stepped from the car and wandered over the
+lawn, looking at the astonishing array of bushes, vines, flowers, and
+trees.
+
+From one to another he went, fingering the waxy leaves, studying the
+brilliant flower faces. Finally turning a corner and crossing the wild
+garden, to which he paid slight attention, he started down the other
+side of the house. Here an almost overpowering odor greeted his
+nostrils, and he went over to a large tree covered with rough, dark
+green, almost brownish, lance-shaped leaves, each branch terminating
+in a heavy spray of yellowish-green flowers, whose odor was of cloying
+sweetness. The bees were buzzing over it. It was not a tree with which
+he was familiar, and stepping back, he looked at it carefully. Then at
+its base, wind-driven into a crevice between the roots, his attention
+was attracted to a crumpled sheet of paper, upon which he could see
+lines that would have attracted the attention of any architect. He went
+forward instantly, picked up the sheet, and straightening it out he
+stood looking at it.
+
+“Holy smoke!” he breathed softly. “What a find!”
+
+He looked at the reverse of the sheet, his face becoming more intent
+every minute. When he heard Peter Morrison's voice calling him he
+hastily thrust the paper into his coat pocket; but he had gone only
+a few steps when he stopped, glanced keenly over the house and lawn,
+turned his back, and taking the sheet from his pocket, he smoothed it
+out, folded it carefully, and put it in an inside pocket. Then he joined
+the party.
+
+At once they set out to examine the available locations that yet
+remained in Lilac Valley. Nature provided them a wonderful day of snappy
+sunshine and heady sea air. Spring favored them with lilac walls at
+their bluest, broken here and there with the rose-misted white mahogany.
+The violet nightshade was beginning to add deeper color to the hills
+in the sunniest wild spots. The panicles of mahonia bloom were showing
+their gold color. Wild flowers were lifting leaves of feather and lace
+everywhere, and most agreeable on the cool morning air was a faint
+breath of California sage. Up one side of the valley, weaving in and
+out, up and down, over the foothills they worked their way. They stopped
+for dinner at one of the beautiful big hotels, practically filled with
+Eastern tourists. Eileen never had known a prouder moment than when she
+took her place at the head of the table and presided over the dinner
+which was served to three most attractive specimens of physical manhood,
+each of whom was unusually well endowed with brain, all flattering her
+with the most devoted attention. This triumph she achieved in a dining
+room seating hundreds of people, its mirror-lined walls reflecting
+her exquisite image from many angles, to the click of silver, and
+the running accompaniment of many voices. What she had expected to
+accomplish in her own dining room had come to her before a large
+audience, in which, she had no doubt, there were many envious women.
+Eileen rayed loveliness like a Mariposa lily, and purred in utter
+contentment like a deftly stroked kitten.
+
+When they parted in the evening Peter Morrison had memoranda of three
+locations that he wished to consider. That he might not seem to be
+unduly influenced or to be giving the remainder of Los Angeles County
+its just due, he proposed to motor around for a week before reaching
+an ultimate decision, but in his heart he already had decided that
+somewhere near Los Angeles he would build his home, and as yet he had
+seen nothing nearly so attractive as Lilac Valley.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. Trying Yucca
+
+On her way to school that morning Linda stopped at the post office
+and pasted the required amount of stamps upon the package that she was
+mailing to New York. She hurried from her last class that afternoon
+to the city directory to find the street and number of James Brothers,
+figuring that the firm with whom Marian dealt would be the proper people
+for her to consult. She had no difficulty in finding the place for which
+she was searching, and she was rather agreeably impressed with the men
+to whom she talked. She made arrangements with their buyer to call at
+her home in Lilac Valley at nine o'clock the following Saturday morning
+to appraise the articles with which she wished to part.
+
+Then she went to one of the leading book stores of the city and made
+inquiries which guided her to a reliable second-hand book dealer, and
+she arranged to be ready to receive his representative at ten o'clock on
+Saturday.
+
+Reaching home she took a note book and pencil, and studied the billiard
+room and the library, making a list of the furniture which she did not
+actually need. After that she began on the library shelves, listing such
+medical works as were of a technical nature. Books of fiction, history,
+art, and biography, and those books written by her father she did not
+include. She found that she had a long task which would occupy several
+evenings. Her mind was methodical and she had been with her father
+through sufficient business transactions to understand that in order to
+drive a good bargain she must know how many volumes she had to offer and
+the importance of their authors as medical authorities; she should also
+know the exact condition of each set of books. Since she had made up
+her mind to let them go, and she knew the value of many of the big,
+leather-bound volumes, she determined that she would not sell them until
+she could secure the highest possible price for them.
+
+Two months previously she would have consulted John Gilman and asked him
+to arrange the transaction for her. Since he had allowed himself to be
+duped so easily--or at least it had seemed easy to Linda; for, much
+as she knew of Eileen, she could not possibly know the weeks of secret
+plotting, the plans for unexpected meetings, the trumped-up business
+problems necessary to discuss, the deliberate flaunting of her physical
+charms before him, all of which had made his conquest extremely hard
+for Eileen, but Linda, seeing only results, had thought it contemptibly
+easy--she would not ask John Gilman anything. She would go ahead on the
+basis of her agreement with Eileen and do the best she could alone.
+
+She counted on Saturday to dispose of the furniture. The books might
+go at her leisure. Then the first of the week she could select such
+furniture as she desired in order to arrange the billiard room for her
+study. If she had a suitable place in which to work in seclusion, there
+need be no hurry about the library. She conscientiously prepared all
+the lessons required in her school course for the next day and then,
+stacking her books, she again unlocked the drawer opened the previous
+evening, and taking from it the same materials, set to work. She wrote:
+
+Botanists have failed to mention that there is any connection between
+asparagus, originally a product of salt marshes, and Yucca, a product of
+the alkaline desert. Very probably there is no botanical relationship,
+but these two plants are alike in flavor. From the alkaline, sunbeaten
+desert where the bayonet plant thrusts up a tender bloom head six inches
+in height, it slowly increases in stature as it travels across country
+more frequently rain washed, and winds its way beside mountain streams
+to where in more fertile soil and the same sunshine it develops
+magnificent specimens from ten to fifteen and more feet in height.
+The plant grows a number of years before it decides to flower. When it
+reaches maturity it throws up a bloom stem as tender as the delicate
+head of asparagus, thick as one's upper arm, and running to twice one's
+height. This bloom stem in its early stages is colored the pale pink of
+asparagus, with faint touches of yellow, and hints of blue. At maturity
+it breaks into a gorgeous head of lavender-tinted, creamy pendent
+flowers covering the upper third of its height, billowing out slightly
+in the center, so that from a distance the waxen torch takes on very
+much the appearance of a flaming candle. For this reason, in Mexico,
+where the plant flourishes in even greater abundance than in California,
+with the exquisite poetry common to the tongue and heart of the
+Spaniard, Yucca Whipplei has been commonly named “Our Lord's Candle.” At
+the most delicate time of their growth these candlesticks were roasted
+and eaten by the Indians. Based upon this knowledge, I would recommend
+two dishes, almost equally delicious, which may be prepared from this
+plant.
+
+Take the most succulent young bloom stems when they have exactly the
+appearance of an asparagus head at its moment of delicious perfection.
+With a sharp knife, cut them in circles an inch in depth. Arrange these
+in a shallow porcelain baking dish, sprinkle with salt, dot them with
+butter, add enough water to keep them from sticking and burning. Bake
+until thoroughly tender. Use a pancake turner to slide the rings to a
+hot platter, and garnish with circles of hard-boiled egg. This you will
+find an extremely delicate and appetizing dish.
+
+The second recipe I would offer is to treat this vegetable precisely as
+you would creamed asparagus. Cut the stalks in six-inch lengths, quarter
+them to facilitate cooking and handling, and boil in salted water.
+Drain, arrange in a hot dish, and pour over a carefully made cream
+sauce. I might add that one stalk would furnish sufficient material for
+several families. This dish should be popular in southwestern states
+where the plant grows profusely; and to cultivate these plants for
+shipping to Eastern markets would be quite as feasible as the shipping
+of asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes, or lettuce.
+
+I have found both these dishes peculiarly appetizing, but I should be
+sorry if, in introducing Yucca as a food, I became instrumental in the
+extermination of this universal and wonderfully beautiful plant. For
+this reason I have hesitated about including Yucca among these articles;
+but when I see the bloom destroyed ruthlessly by thousands who cut it to
+decorate touring automobiles and fruit and vegetable stands beside the
+highways, who carry it from its native location and stick it in the
+parching sun of the seashore as a temporary shelter, I feel that the
+bloom stems might as well be used for food as to be so ruthlessly
+wasted.
+
+The plant is hardy in the extreme, growing in the most unfavorable
+places, clinging tenaciously to sheer mountain and canyon walls. After
+blooming and seeding the plant seems to have thrown every particle of
+nourishment it contains into its development, it dries out and dies (the
+spongy wood is made into pincushions for the art stores); but from the
+roots there spring a number of young plants, which, after a few years
+of growth, mature and repeat their life cycle, while other young plants
+develop from the widely scattered seeds. The Spaniards at times call the
+plant Quiota. This word seems to be derived from quiotl, which is
+the Aztec name for Agave, from which plant a drink not unlike beer is
+produced, and suggests the possibility that there might have been a time
+when the succulent flower stem of the Yucca furnished drink as well as
+food for the Indians.
+
+After carefully re-reading and making several minor corrections, Linda
+picked up her pencil, and across the top of a sheet of heavy paper
+sketched the peaks of a chain of mountains. Across the base she drew
+a stretch of desert floor, bristling with the thorns of many different
+cacti brilliant with their gold, pink, and red bloom, intermingled with
+fine grasses and desert flower faces.
+
+At the left she painstakingly drew a huge plant of yucca with a perfect
+circle of bayonets, from the center of which uprose the gigantic flower
+stem the length of her page, and on the misty bloom of the flaming
+tongue she worked quite as late as Marian Thorne had ever seen a light
+burning in her window. When she had finished her drawing she studied it
+carefully a long time, adding a touch here and there, and then she said
+softly: “There, Daddy, I feel that even you would think that a faithful
+reproduction Tomorrow night I'll paint it.”
+
+John Gilman saw the light from Linda's window when he brought Eileen
+home that night, and when he left he glanced that way again, and was
+surprised to see the room still lighted, and the young figure bending
+over a worktable. He stood very still for a few minutes, wondering what
+could keep Linda awake so far into the night, and while his thoughts
+were upon her he wondered, too, why she did not care to have beautiful
+clothes such as Eileen wore; and then he went further and wondered why,
+when she could be as entertaining as she had been the night she joined
+them at dinner, she did not make her appearance oftener; and then,
+because the mind is a queer thing, and he had wondered about a given
+state of affairs, he went a step further, and wondered whether the
+explanation lay in Linda's inclinations or in Eileen's management,
+and then his thought fastened tenaciously upon the subject of Eileen's
+management.
+
+He was a patient man. He had allowed his reason and better judgment to
+be swayed by Eileen's exquisite beauty and her blandishments. He did not
+regret having discovered before it was too late that Marian Thorne
+was not the girl he had thought her. He wanted a wife cut after the
+clinging-vine pattern. He wanted to be the dominating figure in
+his home. It had not taken Eileen long to teach him that Marian was
+self-assertive and would do a large share of dominating herself. He had
+thought that he was perfectly satisfied and very happy with Eileen; yet
+that day he repeatedly had felt piqued and annoyed with her. She had
+openly cajoled and flirted with Henry Anderson past a point which was
+agreeable for any man to see his sweetheart go with another man With
+Peter Morrison she had been unspeakably charming in a manner with which
+John was very familiar.
+
+He turned up his coat collar, thrust his hands in his pockets, and swore
+softly. Looking straight ahead of him, he should have seen a stretch of
+level sidewalk, bordered on one hand by lacy, tropical foliage, on the
+other, by sheets of level green lawn, broken everywhere by the uprising
+boles of great trees, clumps of rare vines, and rows of darkened homes,
+attractive in architectural 'design' vine covered, hushed for the night.
+What he really saw was a small plateau, sun illumined, at the foot of a
+mountain across the valley, where the lilac wall was the bluest, where
+the sun shone slightly more golden than anywhere else in the valley,
+where huge live oaks outstretched rugged arms, where the air had a tang
+of salt, a tinge of sage, an odor of orange, shot through with snowy
+coolness, thrilled with bird song, and the laughing chuckle of a big
+spring breaking from the foot of the mountain. They had left the road
+and followed a narrow, screened path by which they came unexpectedly
+into this opening. They had stood upon it in wordless enchantment,
+looking down the slope beneath it, across the peace of the valley, to
+the blue ranges beyond.
+
+“Just where are we?” Peter Morrison had asked at last.
+
+John Gilman had been looking at a view which included Eileen. She lifted
+her face, flushed and exquisite, to Peter Morrison and answered in a
+breathless undertone, yet John had distinctly heard her:
+
+“How wonderful it would be if we were at your house. Oh, I envy the
+woman who shares this with you!”
+
+It had not been anything in particular, yet all day it had teased John
+Gilman's sensibilities. He felt ashamed of himself for not being more
+enthusiastic as he searched records and helped to locate the owner of
+that particular spot. To John, there was a new tone in Peter's voice,
+a possessive light in his eyes as he studied the location, and made
+excursions in several directions, to fix in his mind the exact position
+of the land.
+
+He had indicated what he considered the topographical location for a
+house--stood on it facing the valley, and stepped the distance suitably
+far away to set a garage and figured on a short private road down to the
+highway. He very plainly was deeply prepossessed with a location John
+Gilman blamed himself for not having found first. Certainly nature had
+here grown and walled a dream garden in which to set a house of dreams.
+So, past midnight, Gilman stood in the sunshine, looking at the face of
+the girl he had asked to marry him and who had said that she would;
+and a small doubt crept into his heart, and a feeling that perhaps life
+might be different for him if Peter Morrison decided to come to Lilac
+Valley to build his home. Then the sunlight faded, night closed in, but
+as he went his homeward way John Gilman was thinking, thinking deeply
+and not at all happily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. The Bear Cat
+
+     “Friday's child is loving and giving,
+     But Saturday's child must work for a living,”
+
+Linda was chanting happily as she entered the kitchen early Saturday
+morning.
+
+“Katy, me blessing,” she said gaily, “did I ever point out to you the
+interesting fact that I was born on Saturday? And a devilish piece of
+luck it was, for I have been hustling ever since. It's bad enough to
+have been born on Monday and spoiled wash day, but I call Saturday the
+vanishing point, the end of the extreme limit.”
+
+Katy laughed, and, as always, turned adoring eyes on Linda.
+
+“I am not needing ye, lambie,” she said. “Is it big business in the
+canyon ye're having today? Shall I be ready to be cooking up one of them
+God-forsaken Red Indian messes for ye when ye come back?”
+
+Linda held up a warning finger.
+
+“Hiss, Katy,” she said. “That is a dark secret. Don't you be forgetting
+yourself and saying anything like that before anyone, or I would be
+ruined entirely.”
+
+“Well, I did think when ye began it,” said Katy, “that of all the wild
+foolishness ye and your pa had ever gone through with, that was the
+worst, but that last mess ye worked out was so tasty to the tongue that
+I thought of it a lot, and I'm kind o' hankering for more.”
+
+Linda caught Katy and swung her around the kitchen in a wild war dance.
+Her gayest laugh bubbled clear from the joy peak of her soul.
+
+“Katy,” she said, “if you had lain awake all night trying to say
+something that would particularly please me, you couldn't have done
+better. That was a quaint little phrase and a true little phrase, and
+I know a little spot that it will fit exactly. What am I doing today?
+Well, several things, Katy. First, anything you need about the house.
+Next, I am going to empty the billiard room and sell some of the excess
+furniture of the library, and with the returns I am going to buy me a
+rug and a table and some tools to work with, so I won't have to clutter
+up my bedroom with my lessons and things I bring in that I want to save.
+And then I am going to sell the technical stuff from the library and use
+that money where it will be of greatest advantage to me. And then, Katy,
+I am going to manicure the Bear Cat and I am going to drive it again.”
+
+Linda hesitated. Katy stood very still, thinking intently, but finally
+she said: “That's all right; ye have got good common sense; your nerves
+are steady; your pa drilled ye fine. Many's the time he has bragged to
+me behind your back what a fine little driver he was making of ye. I
+don't know a girl of your age anywhere that has less enjoyment than ye.
+If it would be giving ye any happiness to be driving that car, ye just
+go ahead and drive it, lambie, but ye promise me here and now that
+ye will be mortal careful. In all my days I don't think I have seen a
+meaner-looking little baste of a car.”
+
+“Of course I'll be careful, Katy,” said Linda. “That car was not bought
+for its beauty. Its primal object in this world was to arrive. Gee, how
+we shot curves, and coasted down the canyons, and gassed up on the level
+when some poor soul went batty from nerve strain! The truth is, Katy,
+that you can't drive very slowly. You have got to go the speed for which
+it was built. But I have had my training. I won't forget. I adore that
+car, Katy, and I don't know how I have ever kept my fingers off it
+this long. Today it gets a bath and a facial treatment, and when I have
+thought up some way to meet my big problem, you're going to have a ride,
+Katy, that will quite uplift your soul. We'll go scooting through the
+canyons, and whizzing around the mountains, and roaring along the beach,
+as slick as a white sea swallow.”
+
+“Now, easy, lambie, easy,” said Katy. “Ye're planning to speed that
+thing before ye've got it off the jacks.”
+
+“No, that was mere talk,” said Linda. “But, Katy, this is my great day.
+I feel in my bones that I shall have enough money by night to get me
+some new tires, which I must have before I can start out in safety.”
+
+“Of course ye must, honey. I would just be tickled to pieces to let ye
+have what ye need.”
+
+Linda slid her hand across Katy's lips and gathered her close in her
+arms.
+
+“You blessed old darling,” she said. “Of course you would, but I don't
+need it, Katy. I can sit on the floor to work, if I must, and instead of
+taking the money from the billiard table to buy a worktable, I can buy
+tires with that. But here's another thing I want to tell you, Katy. This
+afternoon a male biped is coming to this house, and he's not coming to
+see Eileen. His name is Donald Whiting, and when he tells you it is, and
+stands very straight and takes off his hat, and looks you in the eye
+and says, 'Calling on Miss Linda Strong,' walk him into the living room,
+Katy, and seat him in the best chair and put a book beside him and the
+morning paper; and don't you forget to do it with a flourish. He is
+nothing but a high-school kid, but he's the first boy that ever in all
+my days asked to come to see me so it's a big event; and I wish to my
+soul I had something decent to wear.”
+
+“Well, with all the clothes in this house,” said Katy; and then she
+stopped and shut her lips tight and looked at Linda with belligerent
+Irish eyes.
+
+“I know it,” nodded Linda in acquiescence; “I know what you think; but
+never mind. Eileen has agreed to make me a fair allowance the first of
+the month, and if that isn't sufficient, I may possibly figure up some
+way to do some extra work that will bring me a few honest pennies, so
+I can fuss up enough to look feminine at times, Katy. In the meantime,
+farewell, oh, my belovedest. Call me at half-past eight, so I will be
+ready for business at nine.”
+
+Then Linda went to the garage and began operations. She turned the hose
+on the car and washed the dust from it carefully. Then she dried it with
+the chamois skins as she often had done before. She carefully examined
+the cushioning, and finding it dry and hard, she gave it a bath of olive
+oil and wiped and manipulated it. She cleaned the engine with extreme
+care. At one minute she was running to Katy for kerosene to pour through
+the engine to loosen the carbon. At another she was telephoning for the
+delivery of oil, gasoline, and batteries for which she had no money to
+pay, so she charged them to Eileen, ordering the bill to be sent on the
+first of the month. It seemed to her that she had only a good start when
+Katy came after her.
+
+The business of appraising the furniture was short, and Linda was well
+satisfied with the price she was offered for it. After the man had gone
+she showed Katy the pieces she had marked to dispose of, and told
+her when they would be called for. She ate a few bites of lunch while
+waiting for the book man, and the results of her business with him quite
+delighted Linda. She had not known that the value of books had risen
+with the price of everything else. The man with whom she dealt had known
+her father. He had appreciated the strain in her nature which made her
+suggest that he should number and appraise the books, but she must be
+allowed time to go through each volume in order to remove any scraps of
+paper or memoranda which her father so frequently left in books to which
+he was referring. He had figured carefully and he had made Linda a far
+higher price than could have been secured by a man. As the girl went
+back to her absorbing task in the garage, she could see her way clear to
+the comforts and conveniences and the material that she needed for her
+work. When she reached the car she patted it as if it had been a living
+creature.
+
+“Cheer up, nice old thing,” she said gaily. “I know how to get new tires
+for you, and you shall drink all the gasoline and oil your tummy can
+hold. Now let me see. What must I do next? I must get you off your
+jacks; and oh, my gracious there are the grease cups, and that's a nasty
+job, but it must be done; and what is the use of Saturday if I can't do
+it? Daddy often did.”
+
+Linda began work in utter absorption. She succeeded in getting the car
+off the jacks. She was lying on her back under it, filling some of the
+most inaccessible grease cups, and she was softly singing as she worked:
+
+“The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes--”
+
+At that minute Donald Whiting swung down the street, turned in at the
+Strong residence, and rang the bell. Eileen was coming down the stairs,
+dressed for the street. She had inquired for Linda, and Katy had told
+her that she thought Miss Linda had decided to begin using her car, and
+that she was in the garage working on it. To Eileen's credit it may be
+said that she had not been told that a caller was expected. Linda never
+before had had a caller and, as always, Eileen was absorbed in her own
+concerns. Had she got the rouge a trifle brighter on one cheek than on
+the other? Was the powder evenly distributed? Would the veil hold the
+handmade curls in exactly the proper place? When the bell rang her one
+thought might have been that some of her friends were calling for her.
+She opened the door, and when she learned that Linda was being asked
+for, it is possible that she mistook the clean, interesting, and
+well-dressed youngster standing before her for a mechanic. What she said
+was: “Linda's working on her car. Go around to the left and you will
+find her in the garage, and for heaven's sake, get it right before you
+let her start out, for we've had enough horror in this family from motor
+accidents.”
+
+Then she closed the door before him and stood buttoning her gloves; a
+wicked and malicious smile spreading over her face.
+
+“Just possibly,” she said, “that youngster is from a garage, but if he
+is, he's the best imitation of the real thing that I have seen in these
+chaotic days.”
+
+Donald Whiting stopped at the garage door and looked in, before Linda
+had finished her grease cups, and in time to be informed that he might
+wear common-sense shoes if he chose. At his step, Linda rolled her black
+head on the cement floor and raised her eyes. She dropped the grease
+cup, and her face reddened deeply.
+
+“Oh, my Lord!” she gasped breathlessly. “I forgot to tell Katy when to
+call me!”
+
+In that instant she also forgot that the stress of the previous four
+years had accustomed men to seeing women do any kind of work in any kind
+of costume; but soon Linda realized that Donald Whiting was not paying
+any particular attention either to her or to her occupation. He was
+leaning forward, gazing at the car with positively an enraptured
+expression on his eager young face.
+
+“Shades of Jehu!” he cried. “It's a Bear Cat!”
+
+Linda felt around her head for the grease cup.
+
+“Why, sure it's a Bear Cat,” she said with the calmness of complete
+recovery. “And it's just about ready to start for its very own cave in
+the canyon.”
+
+Donald Whiting pitched his hat upon the seat, shook off his coat, and
+sent it flying after the hat. Then he began unbuttoning and turning back
+his sleeves.
+
+“Here, let me do that,” he said authoritatively. “Gee! I have never yet
+ridden in a Bear Cat. Take me with you, will you, Linda?”
+
+“Sure,” said Linda, pressing the grease into the cup with a little
+paddle and holding it up to see if she had it well filled. “Sure, but
+there's no use in you getting into this mess, because I have only got
+two more. You look over the engine. Did you ever grind valves, and do
+you think these need it?”
+
+“Why, they don't need it,” said Donald, “if they were all right when it
+was jacked up.”
+
+“Well, they were,” said Linda. “It was running like a watch when it went
+to sleep. But do we dare take it out on these tires?”
+
+“How long has it been?” asked Donald, busy at the engine.
+
+“All of four years,” answered Linda.
+
+Donald whistled softly and started a circuit of the car, kicking the
+tires and feeling them.
+
+“Have you filled them?” he asked.
+
+“No,” said Linda. “I did not want to start the engine until I had
+finished everything else.”
+
+“All right,” he said, “I'll look at the valves first and then, if it is
+all ready, there ought to be a garage near that we can run to carefully,
+and get tuned up.”
+
+“There is,” said Linda. “There is one only a few blocks down the street
+where Dad always had anything done that he did not want to do himself.”
+
+“That's that, then,” said Donald.
+
+Linda crawled from under the car and stood up, wiping her hands on a bit
+of waste.
+
+“Do you know what tires cost now?” she asked anxiously.
+
+“They have 'em at the garage,” answered Donald, “and if I were you,
+I wouldn't get a set; I would get two. I would-put them on the rear
+wheels. You might be surprised at how long some of these will last.
+Anyway, that would be the thing to do.”
+
+“Of course,” said Linda, in a relieved tone. “That would be the thing to
+do.”
+
+“Now,” she said, “I must be excused a few minutes till I clean up so I
+am fit to go on the streets. I hope you won't think I forgot you were
+coming.”
+
+
+
+Donald laughed drily.
+
+“When 'shoes' was the first word I heard,” he said, “I did not for a
+minute think you had forgotten.”
+
+“No, I didn't forget,” said Linda. “What I did do was to become so
+excited about cleaning up the car that I let time go faster than I
+thought it could. That was what made me late.”
+
+“Well, forget it!” said Donald. “Run along and jump into something, and
+let us get our tires and try Kitty out.”
+
+Linda reached up and released the brakes. She stepped to one side of the
+car and laid her hands on it.
+
+“Let us run it down opposite the kitchen door,” she said, “then you go
+around to the front, and I'll let you in, and you can read something a
+few minutes till I make myself presentable.”
+
+“Oh, I'll stay out here and look around the yard and go over the car
+again,” said the boy. “What a bunch of stuff you have got growing here;
+I don't believe I ever saw half of it before.” “It's Daddy's and my
+collection,” said Linda. “Some day I'll show you some of the things, and
+tell you how we got them, and why they are rare. Today I just naturally
+can't wait a minute until I try my car.”
+
+“Is it really yours?” asked Donald enviously.
+
+“Yes,” said Linda. “It's about the only thing on earth that is
+peculiarly and particularly mine. I haven't a doubt there are improved
+models, but Daddy had driven this car only about nine months. It was
+going smooth as velvet, and there's no reason why it should not keep it
+up, though I suspect that by this time there are later models that could
+outrun it.”
+
+“Oh, I don't know,” said the boy. “It looks like some little old car to
+me. I bet it can just skate.”
+
+“I know it can,” said Linda, “if I haven't neglected something. We'll
+start carefully, and we'll have the inspector at the salesrooms look it
+over.”
+
+Then Linda entered the kitchen door to find Katy with everything edible
+that the house afforded spread before her on the table.
+
+“Why, Katy, what are you doing?” she asked.
+
+“I was makin' ready,” explained Katy, “to fix ye the same kind of lunch
+I would for Miss Eileen. Will ye have it under the live oak, or in the
+living room?”
+
+“Neither,” said Linda. “Come upstairs with me, and in the storeroom
+you'll find the lunch case and the thermos bottles and don't stint
+yourself, Katy. This is a rare occasion. It never happened before.
+Probably it will never happen again. Let's make it high altitude while
+we are at it.”
+
+“I'll do my very best with what I happen to have,” said Katy; “but I
+warn you right now I am making a good big hole in the Sunday dinner.”
+
+“I don't give two whoops,” said Linda, “if there isn't any Sunday
+dinner. In memory of hundreds of times that we have eaten bread and
+milk, make it a banquet, Katy, and we'll eat bread and milk tomorrow.”
+
+Then she took the stairway at a bound, and ran to her room. In a
+very short time she emerged, clad in a clean blouse and breeches' her
+climbing boots, her black hair freshly brushed and braided.
+
+“I ought to have something,” said Linda, “to shade my eyes. The
+glare's hard on them facing the sun.”
+
+Going down the hall she came to the storeroom, opened a drawer' and
+picked out a fine black felt Alpine hat that had belonged to her father.
+She carried it back to her room and, standing at the glass, tried it on,
+pulling it down on one side, turning it up at the other, and striking
+a deep cleft across the crown. She looked at herself intently for a
+minute, and then she reached up and deliberately loosened the hair at
+her temples.
+
+“Not half bad, all things considered, Linda,” she said. “But, oh, how
+you do need a tich of color.”
+
+She ran down the hall and opened the door to Eileen's room, and going
+to her chiffonier, pulled out a drawer containing an array of gloves,
+veils, and ribbons. At the bottom of the ribbon stack, her eye caught
+the gleam of color for which she was searching, and she deftly slipped
+out a narrow scarf of Roman stripes with a deep black fringe at the
+end. Sitting down, she fitted the hat over her knee, picked up the
+dressing-table scissors, and ripped off the band. In its place she
+fitted the ribbon, pinning it securely and knotting the ends so that the
+fringe reached her shoulder. Then she tried the hat again. The result
+was blissfully satisfactory. The flash of orange, the blaze of red, the
+gleam of green, were what she needed.
+
+“Thank you very much, sister mine,” she said, “I know you I would be
+perfectly delighted to loan me this.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. One Hundred Per Cent Plus
+
+Then she went downstairs and walked into the kitchen, prepared for what
+she would see, by what she heard as she approached.
+
+With Katy's apron tied around his waist, Donald Whiting was occupied in
+squeezing orange, lemon, and pineapple juice over a cake of ice in a big
+bowl, preparatory to the compounding of Katy's most delicious brand of
+fruit punch. Without a word, Linda stepped to the bread board and
+began slicing the bread and building sandwiches, while Katy hurried her
+preparations for filling the lunch box. A few minutes later Katy packed
+them in the car, kissed Linda good-bye, and repeatedly cautioned Donald
+to make her be careful.
+
+As the car rolled down the driveway and into the street, Donald looked
+appraisingly at the girl beside him.
+
+“Is it the prevailing custom in Lilac Valley for young ladies to kiss
+the cook?” inquired Donald laughingly.
+
+“Now, you just hush,” said Linda. “Katy is NOT the cook, alone. Katy's
+my father, and my mother, and my family, and my best friend--”
+
+“Stop right there,” interposed Donald. “That is quite enough for any
+human to be. Katy's a multitude. She came out to the car with the
+canteen, and when I offered to help her, without any 'polly foxin',' she
+just said: 'Sure. Come in and make yourself useful.' So I went, and I am
+expecting amazing results from the job she gave me.”
+
+“Come to think of it,” said Linda, “I have small experience with
+anybody's cooking except Katy's and my own, but so far as I know, she
+can't very well be beaten.”
+
+Carefully she headed the car into the garage adjoining the salesrooms.
+There she had an ovation. The manager and several of the men remembered
+her. The whole force clustered around the Bear Cat and began to examine
+it, and comment on it, and Linda climbed out and asked to have the
+carburetor adjusted, while the mechanic put on a pair of tires. When
+everything was satisfactory, she backed to the street, and after a few
+blocks of experimental driving, she headed for the Automobile Club to
+arrange for her license and then turned straight toward Multiflores
+Canyon, but she did not fail to call Donald Whiting's attention to every
+beauty of Lilac Valley as they passed through. When they had reached
+a long level stretch of roadway leading to the canyon, Linda glanced
+obliquely at the boy beside her.
+
+“It all comes back as natural as breathing,” she said. “I couldn't
+forget it any more than I could forget how to walk, or to swim. Sit
+tight. I am going to step on the gas for a bit, just for old sake's
+sake.”
+
+“That's all right,” said Donald, taking off his hat and giving his head
+a toss so that the wind might have full play through his hair. “But
+remember our tires are not safe. Better not go the limit until we get
+rid of these old ones, and have a new set all around.”
+
+Linda settled back in her seat, took a firm grip on the wheel, and
+started down the broad, smooth highway, gradually increasing the speed.
+The color rushed to her cheeks. Her eyes were gleaming.
+
+“Listen to it purr!” she cried to Donald. “If you hear it begin to
+growl, tell me.”
+
+And then for a few minutes they rode like birds on the path of the wind.
+When they approached the entrance to the canyon, gradually Linda slowed
+down. She turned an exultant flashing face to Donald Whiting.
+
+“That was a whizzer,” said the boy. “I'll tell you I don't know what I'd
+give to have a car like this for my very own. I'll bet not another girl
+in Los Angeles has a car that can go like that.”
+
+“And I don't believe I have any business with it,” said Linda; “but
+since circumstances make it mine, I am going to keep it and I am going
+to drive it.”
+
+“Of course you are,” said Donald emphatically. “Don't you ever let
+anybody fool you out of this car, because if they wanted to, it would be
+just because they are jealous to think they haven't one that will go as
+fast.”
+
+“There's not the slightest possibility of my giving it up so long as I
+can make the engine turn over,” she said. “I told you how Father always
+took me around with him, and there's nothing in this world I am so sure
+of as I am sure that I am spoiled for a house cat. I have probably less
+feminine sophistication than any girl of my age in the world, and I
+probably know more about camping and fishing and the scientific why and
+wherefore of all outdoors than most of them. I just naturally had such
+a heavenly time with Daddy that it never has hurt my feelings to be left
+out of any dance or party that ever was given. The one thing that has
+hurt is the isolation. Since I lost Daddy I haven't anyone but Katy.
+Sometimes, when I see a couple of nice, interesting girls visiting with
+their heads together, a great feeling of envy wells up in my soul, and I
+wish with all my heart that I had such a friend.”
+
+“Ever try to make one?” asked Donald. “There are mighty fine girls in
+the high school.”
+
+“I have seen several that I thought I would like to be friends with,”
+ said Linda, “but I am so lacking in feminine graces that I haven't known
+how to make advances, in the first place, and I haven't had the courage,
+in the second.”
+
+“I wish my sister were not so much older than you,” said Donald.
+
+“How old is your sister?” inquired Linda.
+
+“She will be twenty-three next birthday,” said Donald; “and of all the
+nice girls you ever saw, she is the queen.”
+
+“Yes,” she assented, “I am sure I have heard your sister mentioned. But
+didn't you tell me she had been reared for society?”
+
+“No, I did not,” said Donald emphatically. “I told you Mother j believed
+in dressing her as the majority of other girls were dressed, but I
+didn't say she had been reared for society. She has been reared with an
+eye single to making a well-dressed, cultured, and gracious woman.”
+
+“I call that fine,” said Linda. “Makes me envious of you. Now forget
+everything except your eyes and tell me what you see. Have you ever been
+here before?”
+
+“I have been through a few times before, but seems to me I | never saw
+it looking quite so pretty.”
+
+Linda drove carefully, but presently Donald uttered an exclamation as
+she swerved from the road and started down what appeared to be quite a
+steep embankment and headed straight for the stream.
+
+“Sit tight,” she said tersely. “The Bear Cat just loves its cave. It
+knows where it is going.”
+
+She broke through a group of young willows and ran the car! into a tiny
+plateau, walled in a circle by the sheer sides of the! canyon reaching
+upward almost out of sight, topped with great jagged overhanging
+boulders. Crowded to one side, she stopped the car and sat quietly,
+smiling at Donald Whiting.
+
+“How about it?” she asked in a low voice.
+
+The boy looked around him, carefully examining the canyon walls, and
+then at the level, odorous floor where one could not step without
+crushing tiny flowers of white, cerise, blue, and yellow. Big ferns grew
+along the walls, here and there “Our Lord's Candles” lifted high torches
+not yet lighted, the ambitious mountain stream skipped and circled and
+fell over its rocky bed, while many canyon wrens were singing.
+
+“Do you think,” she said, “that anyone driving along here at an ordinary
+rate of speed would see that car?”
+
+“No,” said Donald, getting her idea, “I don't believe they would.”
+
+
+
+“All right, then,” said Linda. “Toe up even and I'll race YoU to the
+third curve where you see the big white sycamore.”
+
+Donald had a fleeting impression of a flash of khaki, a gleam of red,
+and a wave of black as they started. He ran with all the speed he had
+ever attained at a track meet. He ran with all his might. He ran until
+his sides strained and his breath came short; but the creature beside
+him was not running; she was flying; and long before they neared the
+sycamore he knew he was beaten, so he laughingly cried to her to stop
+it. Linda turned to him panting and laughing.
+
+“I make that dash every time I come to the canyon, to keep my muscle
+up, but this is the first time I have had anyone to race with in a long
+time.”
+
+Then together they slowly walked down the smooth black floor between
+the canyon walls. As they crossed a small bridge Linda leaned over and
+looked down.
+
+“Anyone at your house care about 'nose twister'?” she asked lightly.
+
+“Why, isn't that watercress?” asked Donald.
+
+“Sure it is,” said Linda. “Anyone at your house like it?”
+
+“Every one of us,” answered Donald. “We're all batty about cress
+salad--and, say, that reminds me of something! If you know so much
+about this canyon and everything in it, is there any place in it where
+a fellow could find a plant, a kind of salad lettuce, that the Indians
+used to use?”
+
+“Might be,” said Linda carelessly. “For why?”
+
+“Haven't you heard of the big sensation that is being made in feminine
+circles by the new department in Everybody's Home?” inquired Donald.
+“Mother and Mary Louise were discussing it the other day at lunch, and
+they said that some of the recipes for dishes to be made from stuff the
+Indians used sounded delicious. One reminded them of cress, and when we
+saw the cress I wondered if I could get them some of the other.”
+
+“Might,” said Linda drily, “if you could give me a pretty good idea of
+what it is that you want.”
+
+“When you know cress, it's queer that you wouldn't know other things in
+your own particular canyon,” said Donald.
+
+Linda realized that she had overdone her disinterestedness a trifle.
+
+“I suspect it's miners' lettuce you want,” she said. “Of course I know
+where there's some, but you will want it as fresh as possible if you
+take any, so we'll finish our day first and gather it the last thing
+before we leave.”
+
+How it started neither of them noticed, but they had not gone far before
+they were climbing the walls and hanging to precarious footings. Her
+cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant, her lips laughing, Linda was
+showing Donald thrifty specimens of that Cotyledon known as “old hen and
+chickens,” telling him of the rare Echeveria of the same family, and her
+plunge down the canyon side while trying to uproot it, exulting that she
+had brought down the plant without a rift in the exquisite bloom on its
+leaves.
+
+Linda told about her fall, and the two men who had passed at that
+instant, and how she had met them later, and who they were, and what
+they were doing. Then Donald climbed high for a bunch of larkspur, and
+Linda showed him how to turn his back to the canyon wall and come down
+with the least possible damage to his person and clothing. When at last
+both of them were tired they went back to the car. Linda spread an
+old Indian blanket over the least flower-grown spot she could select,
+brought out the thermos bottles and lunch case, and served their lunch.
+With a glass of fruit punch in one hand and a lettuce sandwich in the
+other, Donald smiled at Linda.
+
+“I'll agree about Katy. She knows how,” he said appreciatively.
+
+“Katy is more than a cook,” said Linda quietly. “She is a human being.
+She has the biggest, kindest heart. When anybody's sick or in trouble
+she's the greatest help. She is honest; she has principles; she is
+intelligent. In her spare time she reads good books and magazines.
+She knows what is going on in the world. She can talk intelligently
+on almost any subject. It's no disgrace to be a cook. If it were, Katy
+would be unspeakable. Fact is, at the present minute there's no one in
+all the world so dear to me as Katy. I always talk Irish with her.”
+
+“Well, I call that rough on your sister,” said Donald.
+
+“Maybe it is,” conceded Linda. “I suspect a lady wouldn't have i
+said that, but Eileen and I are so different. She never has made the
+slightest effort to prove herself lovable to me, and so I have never
+learned to love her. Which reminds me--how did you happen to come to the
+garage?”
+
+“The very beautiful young lady who opened the door mistook me for a
+mechanic. She told me I would find you working on your car and for
+goodness' sake to see that it was in proper condition before you drove
+it.”
+
+Linda looked at him with wide, surprised eyes in which a trace of
+indignation was plainly discernible.
+
+“Now listen to me,” she said deliberately. “Eileen is a most
+sophisticated young lady. If she saw you, she never in this world,
+thought you were a mechanic sent from a garage presenting yourself at
+our front door.”
+
+“There might have been a spark of malice in the big blue-gray I eyes
+that carefully appraised me,” said Donald.
+
+“Your choice of words is good,” said Linda, refilling the punch glass.
+“'Appraise' fits Eileen like her glove. She appraises every thing on a
+monetary basis, and when she can't figure that it's going to be worth an
+appreciable number of dollars and cents to her--'to the garage wid it,'
+as Katy would say.”
+
+When they had finished their lunch Linda began packing the box and
+Donald sat watching her.
+
+“At this point,” said Linda, “Daddy always smoked. Do you smoke?”
+
+There was a hint of deeper color in the boy's cheeks.
+
+“I did smoke an occasional cigarette,” he said lightly, “up to the day,
+not a thousand years ago, when a very emphatic young lady who should
+have known, insinuated that it was bad for the nerves, and going on the
+presumption that she knew, I haven't smoked a cigarette since and I'm
+not going to until I find out whether I can do better work without
+them.”
+
+Linda folded napkins and packed away accessories thoughtfully. Then she
+looked into the boy's eyes.
+
+“Now we reach the point of our being here together,” she said. “It's
+time to fight, and I am sorry we didn't go at it gas and bomb the minute
+we met.  You're so different from what I thought you were. If anyone had
+told me a week ago that you would take off your coat and mess with my
+automobile engine, or wear Katy's apron and squeeze lemons in our
+kitchen I would have looked him over for Daddy's high sign of hysteria,
+at least. It's too bad to I have such a good time as I have had this
+afternoon, and then end with a fight.”
+
+“That's nothing,” said Donald. “You couldn't have had as good a time as
+I have had. You're like another boy. A fellow can be just a fellow with
+you, and somehow you make everything you touch mean something it never
+meant before. You have made me feel that I would be about twice the man
+I am if I had spent the time I have wasted in plain jazzing around,
+hunting Cotyledon or trap-door spiders' nests.”
+
+“I get you,” said Linda. “It's the difference between a girl reared in
+an atmosphere of georgette and rouge, and one who has grown up in the
+canyons with the oaks and sycamores. One is natural and the other is
+artificial. Most boys prefer the artificial.”
+
+“I thought I did myself,” said Donald, “but today has taught me that I
+don't. I think, Linda, that you would make the finest friend a fellow
+ever had. I firmly and finally decline to fight with you; but for God's
+sake, Linda, tell me how I can beat that little cocoanut-headed Jap.”
+
+Linda slammed down the lid to the lunch box. Her voice was smooth and
+even but there was battle in her eyes and she answered decisively:
+“Well, you can't beat him calling him names. There is only one way on
+God's footstool that you can beat him. You can't beat him legislating
+against him. You can't beat him boycotting him. You can't beat him with
+any tricks. He is as sly as a cat and he has got a whole bag full of
+tricks of his own, and he has proved right here in Los Angeles that
+he has got a brain that is hard to beat. All you can do, and be a man
+commendable to your own soul, is to take his subject and put your brain
+on it to such purpose that you cut pigeon wings around him. What are you
+studying in your classes, anyway?”
+
+“Trigonometry, Rhetoric, Ancient History, Astronomy,” answered Donald.
+
+“And is your course the same as his?” inquired Linda.
+
+“Strangely enough it is,” answered Donald. “We have been in the same
+classes all through high school. I think the little monkey--”
+
+“Man, you mean,” interposed Linda.
+
+“'Man,'” conceded Donald. “Has waited until I selected my course all the
+way through, and then he has announced what he would take. He probably
+figured that I had somebody with brains back of the course I selected,
+and that whatever I studied would be suitable for him.”
+
+“I haven't a doubt of it,” said Linda. “They are quick; oh! they are
+quick; and they know from their cradles what it is that they have in
+the backs of their heads. We are not going to beat them driving them to
+Mexico or to Canada, or letting them monopolize China. That is merely
+temporizing. That is giving them fertile soil on which to take the best
+of their own and the level best of ours, and by amalgamating the two,
+build higher than we ever have. There is just one way in all this world
+that we can beat Eastern civilization and all that it intends to do to
+us eventually. The white man has dominated by his color so far in the
+history of the world, but it is written in the Books that when the men
+of color acquire our culture and combine it with their own methods of
+living and rate of production, they are going to bring forth greater
+numbers, better equipped for the battle of life, than we are. When they
+have got our last secret, constructive or scientific, they will take it,
+and living in a way that we would not, reproducing in numbers we don't,
+they will beat us at any game we start, if we don't take warning while
+we are in the ascendancy, and keep there.”
+
+“Well, there is something to think about,” said Donald Whiting,
+staring past Linda at the side of the canyon as if he had seen the
+same handwriting on the wall that dismayed Belshazzar at the feast that
+preceded his downfall.
+
+“I see what you're getting at,” he said. “I had thought that there might
+be some way to circumvent him.”
+
+“There is!” broke in Linda hastily. “There is. You can beat him, but you
+have got to beat him in an honorable way and in a way that is open to
+him as it is to you.”
+
+“I'll do anything in the world if you will only tell me how,” said
+Donald. “Maybe you think it isn't grinding me and humiliating me
+properly. Maybe you think Father and Mother haven't warned me. Maybe
+you think Mary Louise isn't secretly ashamed of me. How can I beat him,
+Linda?”
+
+Linda's eyes were narrowed to a mere line. She was staring at the wall
+back of Donald as if she hoped that Heaven would intercede in her favor
+and write thereon a line that she might translate to the boy's benefit.
+
+“I have been watching pretty sharply,” she said. “Take them as a race,
+as a unit--of course there are exceptions, there always are--but the
+great body of them are mechanical. They are imitative. They are not
+developing anything great of their own in their own country. They are
+spreading all over the world and carrying home sewing machines and
+threshing machines and automobiles and cantilever bridges and submarines
+and aeroplanes--anything from eggbeaters to telescopes. They are not
+creating one single thing. They are not missing imitating everything
+that the white man can do anywhere else on earth. They are just like the
+Germans so far as that is concerned.”
+
+“I get that, all right enough,” said Donald. “Now go on. What is your
+deduction? How the devil am I to beat the best? He is perfect, right
+straight along in everything.”
+
+The red in Linda's cheeks deepened. Her eyes opened their widest. She
+leaned forward, and with her closed fist, pounded the blanket before
+him.
+
+“Then, by gracious,” she said sternly, “you have got to do something
+new. You have got to be perfect, PLUS.”
+
+“'Perfect, plus?'” gasped Donald.
+
+“Yes, sir!” said Linda emphatically. “You have got to be perfect, plus.
+If he can take his little mechanical brain and work a thing out till he
+has got it absolutely right, you have got to go further than that and
+discover something pertaining to it not hitherto thought of and start
+something NEW. I tell you you must use your brains. You should be more
+than an imitator. You must be a creator!”
+
+Donald started up and drew a deep breath.
+
+“Well, some job I call that,” he said. “Who do you think I am, the
+Almighty?”
+
+“No,” said Linda quietly, “you are not. You are merely His son, created
+in His own image, like Him, according to the Book, and you have got to
+your advantage the benefit of all that has been learned down the ages.
+We have got to take up each subject in your course, and to find some
+different books treating this same subject. We have got to get at it
+from a new angle. We must dig into higher authorities. We have got to
+coach you till, when you reach the highest note possible for the parrot,
+you can go ahead and embellish it with a few mocking-bird flourishes.
+All Oka Sayye knows how to do is to learn the lesson in his book
+perfectly, and he is 100 per cent. I have told you what you must do
+to add the plus, and you can do it if you are the boy I take you for.
+People have talked about the 'yellow peril' till it's got to be a
+meaningless phrase. Somebody must wake up to the realization that
+it's the deadliest peril that ever has menaced white civilization. Why
+shouldn't you have your hand in such wonderful work?”
+
+“Linda,” said the boy breathlessly, “do you realize that you have been
+saying 'we'? Can you help me? Will you help me?”
+
+“No,” said Linda, “I didn't realize that I had said 'we.' I didn't mean
+two people, just you and me. I meant all the white boys and girls of the
+high school and the city and the state and the whole world. If we are
+going to combat the 'yellow peril' we must combine against it. We have
+got to curb our appetites and train our brains and enlarge our hearts
+till we are something bigger and finer and numerically greater than this
+yellow peril. We can't take it and pick it up and push it into the sea.
+We are not Germans and we are not Turks. I never wanted anything in all
+this world worse than I want to see you graduate ahead of Oka Sayye. And
+then I want to see the white boys and girls of Canada and of England and
+of Norway and Sweden and Australia, and of the whole world doing exactly
+what I am recommending that you do in your class and what I am doing
+personally in my own. I have had Japs in my classes ever since I have
+been in school, but Father always told me to study them, to play the
+game fairly, but to BEAT them in some way, in some fair way, to beat
+them at the game they are undertaking.”
+
+“Well, there is one thing you don't take into consideration,” said
+Donald. “All of us did not happen to be fathered by Alexander Strong.
+Maybe we haven't all got your brains.”
+
+“Oh, posher!” said Linda. “I know of a case where a little Indian was
+picked up from a tribal battlefield in South America and brought to this
+country and put into our schools, and there was nothing that any
+white pupil in the school could do that he couldn't, so long as it was
+imitative work. You have got to be constructive. You have got to work
+out some way to get ahead of them; and if you will take the history
+of the white races and go over their great achievements in mechanics,
+science, art, literature--anything you choose--when a white man is
+constructive, when he does create, he can simply cut circles around
+the colored races. The thing is to get the boys and girls of today to
+understand what is going on in the world, what they must do as their
+share in making the world safe for their grandchildren. Life is a
+struggle. It always has been. It always will be. There is no better
+study than to go into the canyons or the deserts and efface yourself
+and watch life. It's an all-day process of the stronger annihilating
+the weaker. The one inexorable thing in the world is Nature. The eagle
+dominates the hawk; the hawk, the falcon; the falcon, the raven; and
+so on down to the place where the hummingbird drives the moth from his
+particular trumpet flower. The big snake swallows the little one. The
+big bear appropriates the desirable cave.”
+
+“And is that what you are recommending people to do?”
+
+“No,” said Linda, “it is not. That is wild. We go a step ahead of the
+wild, or we ourselves become wild. We have brains, and with our brains
+we must do in a scientific way what Nature does with tooth and claw.
+In other words, and to be concrete, put these things in the car while
+I fold the blanket. We'll gather our miners' lettuce and then we'll go
+home and search Daddy's library and see if there is anything bearing in
+a higher way on any subject you are taking, so that you can get from it
+some new ideas, some different angle, some higher light, something
+that will end in speedily prefacing Oka Sayye's perfect with your
+pluperfect!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. Katy to the Rescue
+
+Linda delivered Donald Whiting at his door with an armload of books
+and a bundle of miners' lettuce and then drove to her home in Lilac
+Valley--in the eye of the beholder on the floor-level macadam road; in
+her own eye she scarcely grazed it. The smooth, easy motion of the car,
+the softly purring engine were thrilling. The speed at which she was
+going was like having wings on her body. The mental stimulus she had
+experienced in concentrating her brain on Donald Whiting's problem had
+stimulated her imagination. The radiant color of spring; the chilled,
+perfumed, golden air; the sure sense of having found a friend, had
+ruffled the plumes of her spirit. On the home road Donald had plainly
+indicated that he would enjoy spending the morrow with her, and she had
+advised him to take the books she had provided and lock himself in his
+room and sweat out some information about Monday's lessons which would
+at least arrest his professor's attention, and lead his mind to the
+fact that something was beginning to happen. And then she had laughingly
+added: “Tomorrow is Katy's turn. I told the old dear I would take her as
+soon as I felt the car was safe. Every day she does many things that she
+hopes will give me pleasure. This is one thing I can do that I know will
+delight her.”
+
+“Next Saturday, then?” questioned Donald. And Linda nodded.
+
+
+
+“Sure thing. I'll be thinking up some place extra interesting. Come
+in the morning if you want, and we'll take a lunch and go for the day.
+Which do you like best, mountains or canyons or desert or sea?”
+
+“I like it best wherever what you're interested in takes you,” said
+Donald simply.
+
+“All right, then,” answered Linda, “we'll combine business and
+pleasure.”
+
+So they parted with another meeting arranged.
+
+When she reached home she found Katy tearfully rejoicing, plainly
+revealing how intensely anxious she had been. But when Linda told
+her that the old tires had held, that the car ran wonderfully, that
+everything was perfectly safe, that she drove as unconsciously as she
+breathed, and that tomorrow Katy was to go for a long ride, her joy was
+incoherent.
+
+Linda laughed. She patted Katy and started down the hallway, when she
+called back: “What is this package?”
+
+“A delivery boy left it special only a few minutes ago. Must be
+something Miss Eileen bought and thought she would want tomorrow, and
+then afterward she got this invitation and went on as she was.”
+
+Linda stood gazing at the box. It did look so suspiciously like a dress
+box.
+
+“Katy,” she said, “I have just about got an irresistible impulse to
+peep. I was telling Eileen last night of a dress I saw that I thought
+perfect. It suited me better than any other dress I ever did see. It was
+at 'The Mode.' This box is from 'The Mode.' Could there be a possibility
+that she sent it up specially for me?”
+
+“I think she would put your name on it if she meant it for ye,” said
+Katy.
+
+“One peep would show me whether it is my dress or not,” said Linda, “and
+peep I'm going to.”
+
+She began untying the string.
+
+“There's one thing,” said Katy, “Miss Eileen's sizes would never fit
+ye.”
+
+“Might,” conceded Linda. “I am taller than she is, but I could wear her
+waists if I wanted to, and she always alters her skirts herself to save
+the fees. Glory be! This is my dress, and there's a petticoat and
+stockings to match it. Why, the nice old thing! I suggested hard enough,
+but in my heart I hardly thought she would do it. Oh, dear, now if I
+only had some shoes, and a hat.”
+
+Linda was standing holding the jacket in one hand, the stockings in the
+other, her face flaming. Katy drew herself to full height. She reached
+over and picked the things from Linda's fingers.
+
+“If ye know that is your dress, lambie,” she said authoritatively, “ye
+go right out and get into that car and run to town and buy ye a pair of
+shoes.”
+
+“But I have no credit anywhere and I have no money, yet,” said Linda.
+
+“Well, I have,” said Katy, “and this time ye're going to stop your
+stubbornness and take enough to get ye what you need. Ye go to the best
+store in Los Angeles and come back here with a pair of shoes that just
+match those stockings, and ye go fast, before the stores close. If ye've
+got to speed a little, do it in the country and do it judacious.”
+
+“Katy, you're arriving!” cried Linda. “'Judicious speeding' is one thing
+I learned better than any other lesson about driving a motor car. Three
+fourths of the driving Father and I did we were speeding judiciously.”
+
+Katy held the skirt to Linda's waist.
+
+“Well, maybe it's a little shorter than any you have been wearing, but
+it ain't as short as Eileen and all the rest of the girls your age have
+them, so that's all right, honey. Slip on your coat.”
+
+Katy's fingers were shaking as she lifted the jacket and Linda slipped
+into it.
+
+“Oh, Lord,” she groaned, “ye can't be wearing that! The sleeves don't
+come much below your elbows.”
+
+“You will please to observe,” said Linda, “that they are flowing sleeves
+and they are not intended to come below the elbows; but it's a piece of
+luck I tried it on, for it reminds me that it's a jacket suit and I
+must have a blouse. When you get the shoe money, make it enough for
+a blouse--two blouses, Katy, one for school and one to fuss up in a
+little.”
+
+Without stopping to change her clothing, Linda ran to the garage and
+hurried back to the city. It was less than an hour's run, but she made
+it in ample time to park her car and buy the shoes. She selected a pair
+of low oxfords of beautiful color, matching the stockings. Then she
+hurried to one of the big drygoods stores and bought the two waists and
+an inexpensive straw hat that would harmonize with the suit; a hat small
+enough to stick, in the wind, with brim enough to shade her eyes. In
+about two hours she was back with Katy and they were in her room trying
+on the new clothing.
+
+“It dumbfounds me,” said Linda, “to have Eileen do this for me.”
+
+She had put on the shoes and stockings, a plain georgette blouse of
+a soft, brownish wood-gray, with a bit of heavy brown silk embroidery
+decorating the front, and the jacket. The dress was of silky changeable
+tricolette, the skirt plain. Where a fold lifted and was strongly
+lighted, it was an exquisite silver-gray; where a shadow fell deeply
+it was gray-brown. The coat reached half way to the knees. It had a
+rippling skirt with a row of brown embroidery around it, a deep belt
+with double buttoning at the waistline, and collar and sleeves in a more
+elaborate pattern of the same embroidery as the skirt. Linda perched the
+hat on her head, pulled it down securely, and faced Katy.
+
+“Now then!” she challenged.
+
+“And it's a perfect dress!” said Katy proudly, “and you're just the
+colleen to wear it. My, but I wisht your father could be seeing ye the
+now.”
+
+With almost reverent hands Linda removed the clothing and laid it away.
+Then she read a letter from Marian that was waiting for her, telling
+Katy scraps of it in running comment as she scanned the sheets.
+
+“She likes her boarding place. There are nice people in it. She has got
+a wonderful view from the windows of her room. She is making friends.
+She thinks one of the men at Nicholson and Snow's is just fine; he is
+helping her all he can, on the course she is taking. And she wants us
+to look carefully everywhere for any scrap of paper along the hedge or
+around the shrubbery on the north side of the house. One of her three
+sheets of plans is missing. I don't see where in the world it could have
+gone, Katy.”
+
+Katy spread out her hands in despair.
+
+“There was not a scrap of a sheet of paper in the room when I cleaned
+it,” she said, “not a scrap. And if I had seen a sheet flying around the
+yard I would have picked it up. She just must be mistaken about having
+lost it here. She must have opened her case on the train and lost it
+there.”
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+“I put that stuff in the case myself,” she said, “and the clothes on top
+of it, and she wouldn't have any reason for taking those things out on
+the train. I can't understand, but she did have three rough sketches.
+She had her heart set on winning that prize and it would be a great help
+to her, and certainly it was the most comprehensive and convenient plan
+for a house of that class that I ever have seen. If I ever have a house,
+she is going to plan it, even if she doesn't get to plan John Gilman's
+as he always used to say that she should. And by the way, Katy, isn't
+it kind of funny for Eileen to go away over Sunday when it's his only
+holiday?”
+
+“Oh, she'll telephone him,” said Katy, “and very like, he'll go down, or
+maybe he is with her. Ye needn't waste any sympathy on him. Eileen will
+take care that she has him so long as she thinks she wants him.”
+
+Later it developed that Eileen had secured the invitation because she
+was able to produce three most eligible men. Not only was John Gilman
+with the party, but Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson were there as
+well. It was in the nature of a hastily arranged celebration, because
+the deal for three acres of land that Peter Morrison most coveted on the
+small plateau, mountain walled, in Lilac Valley, was in escrow. He had
+made a payment on it. Anderson was working on his plans. Contractors had
+been engaged, and on Monday work would begin. The house was to be built
+as soon as possible, and Peter Morrison had arranged that the garage was
+to be built first. This he meant to occupy as a residence so that he
+could be on hand to superintend the construction of the new home and to
+protect, as far as possible, the natural beauty and the natural growth
+of the location.
+
+Early Sunday morning Linda and Katy, with a full lunch box and a full
+gasoline tank, slid from the driveway and rolled down the main street of
+Lilac Valley toward the desert.
+
+“We'll switch over and strike San Fernando Road,” said Linda, “and I'll
+scout around Sunland a bit and see if I can find anything that will
+furnish material for another new dish.”
+
+That day was wonderful for Katy. She trotted after Linda over sandy
+desert reaches, along the seashore, up mountain trails, and through
+canyons connected by long stretches of motoring that was more like
+flying than riding. She was tired but happy when she went to bed. Monday
+morning she was an interested spectator as Linda dressed for school.
+
+“Sure, and hasn't the old chrysalis opened up and let out the nicest
+little lady-bird moth, Katy?” inquired Linda as she smoothed her
+gray-gold skirts. “I think myself that this dress is a trifle too good
+for school. When I get my allowance next week I think I'll buy me a
+cloth skirt and a couple of wash waists and save this for better; but it
+really was good of Eileen to take so much pains and send it to me, when
+she was busy planning a trip.”
+
+Katy watched Linda go, and she noted the new light in her eyes, the new
+lift of her head, and the proud sureness of her step, and she wondered
+if a new dress could do all that for a girl, she scarcely believed that
+it could. And, too, she had very serious doubts about the dress. She
+kept thinking of it during the day, and when Eileen came, in the middle
+of the afternoon, at the first words on her lips: “Has my dress come?”
+ Katy felt a wave of illness surge through her. She looked at Eileen so
+helplessly that that astute reader of human nature immediately Suspected
+something.
+
+“I sent it special,” she said, “because I didn't know at the time that I
+was going to Riverside and I wanted to work on it. Isn't it here yet?”
+
+Then Katy prepared to do battle for the child of her heart.
+
+“Was the dress ye ordered sent the one Miss Linda was telling ye about?”
+ she asked tersely.
+
+“Yes, it was,” said Eileen. “Linda has got mighty good taste. Any dress
+she admired was sure to be right. She said there was a beautiful dress
+at 'The Mode'. I went and looked, and sure enough there was, a perfect
+beauty.”
+
+“But she wanted the dress for herself,” said Katy.
+
+“It was not a suitable dress for school,” said Eileen.
+
+“Well, it strikes me,” said Katy, “that it was just the spittin' image
+of fifty dresses I've seen ye wear to school.
+
+“What do you know about it?” demanded Eileen.
+
+“I know just this,” said Katy with determination. “Ye've had one new
+dress in the last few days and you're not needin' another. The blessed
+Virgin only knows when Miss Linda's had a dress. She thought ye'd done
+yourself proud and sent it for her, and she put it on, and a becoming
+and a proper thing it was too! I advanced her the money myself and sent
+her to get some shoes to match it since she had her car fixed and could
+go in a hurry. A beautiful dress it is, and on her back this minute it
+is!”
+
+Eileen was speechless with anger. Her face was a sickly white and the
+rouge spots on her cheeks stood a glaring admission.
+
+“Do you mean to tell me--” she gasped.
+
+“Not again,” said the daughter of Erin firmly, “because I have already
+told ye wance. Linda's gone like a rag bag since the Lord knows when.
+She had a right to the dress, and she thought it was hers, and she took
+it. And if ye ever want any more respect or obedience or love from the
+kiddie, ye better never let her know that ye didn't intend it for her,
+for nothing was ever quite so fair and right as that she should have it;
+and while you're about it you'd better go straight to the store and get
+her what she is needin' to go with it, or better still, ye had better
+give her a fair share of the money of which there used to be such a
+plenty, and let her get her things herself, for she's that tasty nobody
+can beat her when she's got anything to do with.”
+
+Eileen turned on Katy in a gust of fury.
+
+“Katherine O'Donovan,” she said shrilly, “pack your trunk and see how
+quick you can get out of this house. I have stood your insolence for
+years, and I won't endure it a minute longer!”
+
+Katy folded her red arms and lifted her red chin, and a steel-blue light
+flashed from her steel-gray eyes.
+
+“Humph!” she said, “I'll do nothing of the sort. I ain't working for ye
+and I never have been no more than I ever worked for your mother. Every
+lick I ever done in this house I done for Linda and Doctor Strong and
+for nobody else. Half of this house and everything in it belongs to
+Linda, and it's a mortal short time till she's of age to claim it.
+Whichever is her half, that half I'll be staying in, and if ye manage so
+as she's got nothing to pay me, I'll take care of her without pay till
+the day comes when she can take care of me. Go to wid ye, ye triflin',
+lazy, self-possessed creature. Ten years I have itched to tell ye what I
+thought of ye, and now ye know it.”
+
+As Katy's rage increased, Eileen became intimidated. Like every
+extremely selfish person she was a coward in her soul.
+
+“If you refuse to go on my orders,” she said, “I'll have John Gilman
+issue his.”
+
+Then Katy set her left hand on her left hip, her lower jaw shot past the
+upper, her doubled right fist shook precious near the tip of Eileen's
+exquisite little nose.
+
+“I'm darin' ye,” she shouted. “I'm just darin' ye to send John Gilman
+in the sound of my voice. If ye do, I'll tell him every mean and selfish
+thing ye've done to me poor lambie since the day of the Black Shadow.
+Send him to me? Holy Mither, I wish ye would! If ever I get my chance at
+him, don't ye think I won't be tellin' him what he has lost, and what he
+has got? And as for taking orders from him, I am taking my orders from
+the person I am working for, and as I told ye before, that's Miss Linda.
+Be off wid ye, and primp up while I get my supper, and mind ye this, if
+ye tell Miss Linda ye didn't mean that gown for her and spoil the happy
+day she has had, I won't wait for ye to send John Gilman to me; I'll
+march straight to him. Put that in your cigarette and smoke it! Think
+I've lost me nose as well as me sense?”
+
+Then Katy started a triumphal march to the kitchen and cooled down by
+the well-known process of slamming pots and pans for half an hour. Soon
+her Irish sense of humor came to her rescue.
+
+“Now, don't I hear myself telling Miss Linda a few days ago to kape her
+temper, and to kape cool, and to go aisy. Look at the aise of me when I
+got started. By gracious, wasn't I just itching to wallop her?”
+
+Then every art that Katy possessed was bent to the consummation of
+preparing a particularly delicious dinner for the night.
+
+Linda came in softly humming something to herself about the kind of
+shoes that you might wear if you chose. She had entered the high school
+that morning with an unusually brilliant color. Two or three girls, who
+never had noticed her before, had nodded to her that morning, and one or
+two had said: “What a pretty dress you have!” She had caught the
+flash of approval in the eyes of Donald Whiting, and she had noted the
+flourish with which he raised his hat when he saw her at a distance, and
+she knew what he meant when he held up a book, past the covers of which
+she could see protruding a thick fold of white paper. He had foresworn
+whatever pleasure he might have thought of for Sunday. He had prepared
+notes on some subject that he thought would further him. The lift of his
+head, the flourish of his hat, and the book all told Linda that he had
+struggled and that he felt the struggle had brought an exhilarating
+degree of success. That had made the day particularly bright for Linda.
+She had gone home with a feeling of uplift and exultation in her heart.
+As she closed the front door she cried up the stairway: “Eileen, are you
+there?”
+
+“Yes,” answered a rather sulky voice from above.
+
+Linda ascended, two steps at a bound.
+
+“Thank you over and over, old thing!” she cried as she raced down the
+hallway. “Behold me! I never did have a more becoming dress, and Katy
+loaned me money, till my income begins, to get shoes and a little scuff
+hat to go with it. Aren't I spiffy?”
+
+She pirouetted in the doorway. Eileen gripped the brush she was
+wielding, tight.
+
+“You have good taste,” she said. “It's a pretty dress, but You're always
+howling about things being suitable. Do you call that suitable for
+school?”
+
+“It certainly is an innovation for me,” said Linda, “but there are
+dozens of dresses of the same material, only different cut and colors
+in the high school today. As soon as I get my money I'll buy a skirt and
+some blouses so I won't have to wear this all the time; but I surely do
+thank you very much, and I surely have had a lovely day. Did you have a
+nice time at Riverside?”
+
+Eileen slammed down the brush and turned almost a distorted face to
+Linda. She had temper to vent. In the hour's reflection previous to
+Linda's coming, she realized that she had reached the limit with Katy.
+If she antagonized her by word or look, she would go to John Gilman, and
+Eileen dared not risk what she would say.
+
+“No, I did not have a lovely time,” she said. “I furnished the men for
+the party and I expected to have a grand time, but the first thing we
+did was to run into that inflated egotist calling herself Mary Louise
+Whiting, and like a fool, Janie Brunson introduced her to Peter
+Morrison. I had paired him with Janie on purpose to keep my eye on him.”
+
+Linda tried hard but she could not suppress a chuckle: “Of course you
+would!” she murmured softly.
+
+Eileen turned her back. That had been her first confidence to Linda.
+She was so aggrieved at that moment that she could have told unanswering
+walls her tribulations. It would have been better if she had done
+so. She might have been able to construe silence as sympathy. Linda's
+laughter she knew exactly how to interpret. “Served you right,” was what
+it meant.
+
+“I hadn't the least notion you would take an interest in anything
+concerning me,” she said. “People can talk all they please about Mary
+Louise Whiting being a perfect lady but she is a perfect beast. I have
+met her repeatedly and she has always ignored me, and yesterday she
+singled out for her special attention the most desirable man in my
+party--”
+
+“'Most desirable,'” breathed Linda. “Poor John! I see his second fiasco.
+Lavender crystals, please!”
+
+Eileen caught her lip in mortification. She had not intended to say what
+she thought.
+
+“Well, you can't claim,” she hurried on to cover her confusion, “that it
+was not an ill-bred, common trick for her to take possession of a man
+of my party, and utterly ignore me. She has everything on earth that I
+want; she treats me like a dog, and she could give me a glorious time by
+merely nodding her head.”
+
+“I am quite sure you are mistaken,” said Linda. “From what I've heard of
+her, she wouldn't mistreat anyone. Very probably what she does is merely
+to feel that she is not acquainted with you. You have an unfortunate
+way, Eileen, of defeating your own ends. If you wanted to attract Mary
+Louise Whiting, you missed the best chance you ever could have had, at
+three o'clock Saturday afternoon, when you maliciously treated her only
+brother as you would a mechanic, ordered him to our garage, and shut our
+door in his face.”
+
+Eileen turned to Linda. Her mouth fell open. A ghastly greenish white
+flooded her face.
+
+“What do you mean?” she gasped.
+
+“I mean,” said Linda, “that Donald Whiting was calling on me, and you
+purposely sent him to the garage.”
+
+Crash down among the vanities of Eileen's dressing table went her lovely
+head, and she broke into deep and violent sobs. Linda stood looking at
+her a second, slowly shaking her head. Then she turned and went to her
+room.
+
+Later in the evening she remembered the Roman scarf and told Eileen
+of what she had done, and she was unprepared for Eileen's reply: “That
+scarf always was too brilliant for me. You're welcome to it if you want
+it.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Linda gravely, “I want it very much indeed.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. Assisting Providence
+
+Linda went to the library to see to what state of emptiness it had been
+reduced by the removal of several pieces of furniture she had ordered
+taken away that day. As she stood on the threshold looking over the
+room as usual, a throb of loving appreciation of Katy swept through her
+heart. Katy had been there before her. The room had been freshly
+swept and dusted, the rugs had been relaid, the furniture rearranged
+skilfully, and the table stood at the best angle to be lighted either
+by day or night. On the table and the mantel stood big bowls of lovely
+fresh flowers. Linda was quite certain that anyone entering the room for
+the first time would have felt it completely furnished, and she doubted
+if even Marian would notice the missing pieces. Cheered in her heart,
+she ran up to the billiard room, and there again Katy had preceded
+her. The windows were shining. The walls and floor had been cleaned.
+Everything was in readiness for the new furniture. Her heart full of
+gratitude, Linda went to her room, prepared her lessons for the next
+day, and then drew out her writing materials to answer Marian's letter.
+She wrote:
+
+I have an acute attack of enlargement of the heart. So many things
+have happened since your leaving. But first I must tell you about your
+sketch. We just know you did not leave it here. Katy says there was not
+a scrap in our bedroom when she cleaned it; and as she knows you make
+plans and how precious they are to you, I guarantee she would have saved
+it if she had found anything looking like a parallelogram on a piece of
+paper. And I have very nearly combed the lawn, not only the north side,
+but the west, south, and east; and then I broke the laws and went over
+to your house and crawled through a basement window and worked my way
+up, and I have hunted every room in it, but there is nothing there. You
+must have lost that sketch after you reached San Francisco. I hope to
+all that's peaceful you did not lay it down in the offices of Nicholson
+and Snow, or where you take your lessons. I know nothing about
+architecture, but I do know something about comfort in a home, and I
+thought that was the most comfortable and convenient-looking house I
+ever had seen.
+
+Now I'll go on and tell you all the news, and I don't know which is
+the bigger piece to burst on you first. Would you be more interested in
+knowing that Peter Morrison has bought three acres on the other side of
+the valley from us and up quite a way, or in the astonishing fact that I
+have a new dress, a perfect love of a dress, really too good for school?
+You know there was blood in my eye when you left, and I didn't wait long
+to start action. I have managed to put the fear of God into Eileen's
+heart so that she has agreed to a reasonable allowance for me from the
+first of next month; but she must have felt at least one small wave of
+contrition when I told her about a peculiarly enticing dress I had seen
+at The Mode. She sent it up right away, and Katy, blessed be her loving
+footprints, loaned me money to buy a blouse and some shoes to match,
+so I went to school today looking very like the Great General Average,
+minus rouge, lipstick, hairdress, and French heels.
+
+I do hope you will approve of two things I have done.
+
+Then Linda recounted the emptying of the billiard room, the inroads in
+the library, the listing of the technical books, and what she proposed
+to do with the money. And then, her face slightly pale and her fingers
+slightly trembling, she wrote:
+
+And, Marian dear, I hope you won't be angry with me when I tell you
+that I have put the Bear Cat into commission and driven it three times
+already. It is running like the feline it is, and I am being as careful
+as I can. I know exactly how you will feel. It is the same feeling that
+has held me all these months, when I wouldn't even let myself think
+of it. But something happened at school one day, Marian. You know the
+Whitings? Mary Louise Whiting's brother is in the senior class. He is
+a six-footer, and while he is not handsome he is going to be a real man
+when he is fully developed, and steadied down to work. One day last
+week he made it his business to stop me in the hall and twit me about
+my shoes, and incidentally to ask me why I didn't dress like the other
+girls; and some way it came rougher than if it had been one of the
+girls. The more I thought about it the more wronged I felt, so I ended
+in a young revolution that is to bring me an income, a suitable place to
+work in and has brought me such a pretty dress. I think it has brought
+Eileen to a sense of at least partial justice about money, and it
+brought me back the Bear Cat. You know the proudest moment of my life
+was when Father would let me drive the little beast, and it all came
+back as natural as breathing. Please don't worry, Marian. Nothing shall
+happen, I promise you.
+
+It won't be necessary to tell you that Katy is her darling old self,
+loyal and steadfast as the sun, and quite as necessary and as comforting
+to me. And I have a couple of other interests in life that are going
+to--I won't say make up for your absence, because nothing could do
+that--but they are going to give me something interesting to think
+about, something agreeable to work at, while you are gone. But, oh,
+Marian, do hurry. Work all day and part of the night. Be Saturday's
+child yourself if you must, just so you get home quick, and where your
+white head makes a beacon light for the truest, lovingest pal you will
+ever have,
+
+                                                 LINDA.
+
+Linda laid down the pen, slid down in her chair, and looked from the
+window across the valley, and she wondered if in her view lay the
+location that had been purchased by Peter Morrison. She glanced back at
+her letter and sat looking at the closing lines and the signature.
+
+“Much good that will do her,” she commented. “When a woman loves a man
+and loves him with all her heart, as Marian loved John, and when she
+loses him, not because she has done a single unworthy thing herself,
+but because he is so rubber spined that he will let another woman
+successfully intrigue him, a lot of comfort she is going to get from the
+love of a schoolgirl!”
+
+Linda's eyes strayed to the window again, and traveled down to the city
+and up the coast, all the way to San Francisco, and out of the thousands
+of homes there they pictured a small, neat room, full of Marian's
+belongings, and Marian herself bending over a worktable, absorbed in the
+final draft of her precious plans. Linda could see Marian as plainly as
+she ever had seen her, but she let her imagination run, and she fancied
+that when Marian was among strangers and where no one knew of John
+Gilman's defection, that hers might be a very heavy heart, that hers
+might be a very sad face. Then she went to planning. She had been
+desolate, heart hungry, and isolated herself. First she had endured,
+then she had fought; the dawn of a new life was breaking over her hill.
+She had found work she was eager to do. She could put the best of her
+brain, the skill of her fingers, the creative impulse of her heart, into
+it.
+
+She was almost sure that she had found a friend. She had a feeling that
+when the coming Saturday had been lived Donald Whiting would be her
+friend. He would want her advice and her help in his work. She would
+want his companionship and the stimulus of his mind, in hers. What Linda
+had craved was a dear friend among the girls, but no girl had offered
+her friendship. This boy had, so she would accept what the gods of
+time and circumstance provided. It was a very wonderful thing that had
+happened to her. Now why could not something equally wonderful happen to
+Marian? Linda wrinkled her brows and thought deeply.
+
+“It's the worst thing in all this world to work and work with nobody to
+know about it and nobody to care,” thought Linda. “Marian could break a
+record if she thought John Gilman cared now as he used to. It's almost
+a necessary element to her success. If he doesn't care, she ought to be
+made to feel that somebody cares. This thing of standing alone, since
+I have found a friend, appeals to me as almost insupportable. Let me
+think.”
+
+It was not long until she had worked out a scheme for putting an
+interest in Marian's life and giving her something for which to work,
+until a more vital reality supplanted it. The result was that she took
+some paper, went down to the library, and opening the typewriter, wrote
+a letter. She read it over, making many changes and corrections, and
+then she copied it carefully. When she came to addressing it she was
+uncertain, but at last she hit upon a scheme of sending it in the care
+of Nicholson and Snow because Marian had told her that she meant to
+enter their contest immediately she reached San Francisco, and she would
+have left them her address. On the last reading of the letter she had
+written, she decided that it was a manly, straightforward production,
+which should interest and attract any girl. But how was she to sign
+it? After thinking deeply for a long time, she wrote “Philip Sanders,
+General Delivery,” and below she added a postscript:
+
+To save you the trouble of inquiring among your friends as to who Philip
+Sanders is, I might as well tell you in the beginning that he isn't. He
+is merely an assumption under which I shall hide my personality until
+you let me know whether it is possible that you could become even
+slightly interested in me, as a small return for the very deep and
+wholesome interest abiding in my heart for you.
+
+“Abiding,” said Linda aloud. “It seems to me that there is nothing in
+all the world quite so fine as a word. Isn't 'abiding' a good word?
+Doesn't it mean a lot? Where could you find one other word that
+means being with you and also means comforting you and loving you
+and sympathizing with you and surrounding you with firm walls and a
+cushioned floor and a starry roof? I love that word. I hope it impresses
+Marian with all its wonderful meaning.”
+
+She went back to her room, put both letters into her Geometry, and
+in the morning mailed them. She stood a long time hesitating with the
+typewritten letter in her hand, but finally dropped it in the letter box
+also.
+
+“It will just be something,” she said, “to make her think that some man
+appreciates her lovely face and doesn't care if her hair is white, and
+sees how steadfast and fine she is.”
+
+And then she slowly repeated, “'steadfast,' that is another fine word.
+It has pearls and rubies all over it.”
+
+After school that evening she visited James Brothers' and was paid the
+full amount of the appraisement of her furniture. Then she went to an
+art store and laid in a full supply of the materials she needed for the
+work she was trying to do. Her fingers were trembling as she handled the
+boxes of water colors and selected the brushes and pencils for her work,
+and sheets of drawing paper upon which she could do herself justice.
+When the transaction was finished, she had a few dollars remaining. As
+she put them in her pocket she said softly:
+
+“That's gasoline. Poor Katy! I'm glad she doesn't need her money,
+because she is going to have to wait for the allowance or the sale of
+the books or on Jane Meredith. But it's only a few days now, so that'll
+be all right.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. The Lay of the Land
+
+Linda entered the street car for her daily ride to Lilac Valley. She
+noticed Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson sitting beside each other,
+deeply engrossed in a drawing. She had been accustomed to ride in the
+open section of the car as she liked the fresh air. She had a fleeting
+thought of entering the body of the car and sitting where they would see
+her; and then a perverse spirit in Linda's heart said to her:
+
+“That is precisely what Eileen would do. You sit where you belong.”
+
+Whereupon Linda dropped into the first vacant seat she could reach, but
+it was only a few moments before Peter Morrison, looking up from the
+plans he was studying, saw her, and lifting his hat, beckoned her to
+come and sit with him. They made room for her between them and spreading
+the paper across her lap, all three of them began to discuss the plans
+for the foundation for Peter's house. Anderson had roughly outlined the
+grounds, sketching in the trees that were to be saved, the spring, and
+the most available route for reaching the road. The discussion was as to
+where the road should logically enter the grounds, and where the garage
+should stand.
+
+“Which reminds me,” said Linda--“haven't you your car with you? Or was
+that a hired one you were touring in?”
+
+“Mine,” said Peter Morrison, “but we toured so far, it's in the shop for
+a general overhauling today.”
+
+“That being the case,” said Linda, “walk home with me and I'll take you
+to your place in mine and bring you back to the cars, if you only want
+to stay an hour or two.”
+
+“Why, that would be fine,” said Peter. “You didn't mention, the other
+evening, that you had a car.”
+
+“No,” said Linda, “I had been trying to keep cars out of my thought for
+a long time, but I could endure it no longer the other day, so I got
+mine out and tuned it up. If you don't mind stacking up a bit, three can
+ride in it very comfortably.”
+
+That was the way it happened that Linda walked home after school that
+afternoon between Peter Morrison and his architect, brought out the Bear
+Cat, and drove them to Peter's location.
+
+All that day, workmen had been busy under the management of a
+well-instructed foreman, removing trees and bushes and stones
+and clearing the spot that had been selected for the garage and
+approximately for the house.
+
+The soft brownish gray of Linda's dress was exactly the color to
+intensify the darker brown of her eyes. There was a fluctuating red in
+her olive cheeks, a brilliant red framing her even white teeth. Once
+dressed so that she was satisfied with the results, Linda immediately
+forgot her clothes, and plunged into Morrison's plans.
+
+“Peter,” she said gravely, with Peter perfectly cognizant of the twinkle
+in her dark eyes, “Peter, you may save money in a straight-line road,
+but you're going to sin against your soul if you build it. You'll have
+to economize in some other way, and run your road around the base of
+those boulders, then come in straight to the line here, and then you
+should swing again and run out on this point, where guests can have one
+bewildering glimpse of the length of our blue valley, and then whip them
+around this clump of perfumy lilac and elders, run them to your side
+entrance, and then scoot the car back to the garage. I think you should
+place the front of your house about here.” Linda indicated where. “So
+long as you're buying a place like this you don't want to miss one
+single thing; and you do want to make the very most possible out of
+every beauty you have. And you mustn't fail to open up and widen the
+runway from that energetic, enthusiastic spring. Carry it across your
+road, sure. It will cost you another little something for a safe bridge,
+but there's nothing so artistic as a bridge with a cold stream running
+under it. And think what a joyful time I'll have, gathering specimens
+for you of every pretty water plant that grows in my particular canyon.
+Any time when you're busy in your library and you hear my car puffing up
+the incline and around the corner and rattling across the bridge, you'll
+know that I am down here giving you a start of watercress and miners'
+lettuce and every lovely thing you could mention that likes to be
+nibbled or loved-up, while it dabbles its toes in the water.”
+
+Peter Morrison looked at Linda reflectively. He looked for such a long
+moment that Henry Anderson reached a nebulous conclusion. “Fine!” he
+cried. “Every one of those suggestions is valuable to an inexperienced
+man. Morrison, shan't I make a note of them?”
+
+“Yes, Henry, you shall,” said Peter. “I am going to push this thing as
+fast as possible, so far as building the garage is concerned and getting
+settled in it. After that I don't care if I live on this spot until we
+know each other by the inch, before I begin building my home. At the
+present minute it appeals to me that 'home' is about the best word in
+the language of any nation. I have a feeling that what I build here is
+going to be my home, very possibly the only one I shall ever have. We
+must find the spot on which the Lord intended that a house should grow
+on this hillside, and then we must build that house so that it has
+a room suitable for a workshop in which I may strive, under the best
+conditions possible, to get my share of the joy of life and to earn the
+money that I shall require to support me and entertain my friends; and
+that sounds about as selfish as anything possibly could. It seems to
+be mostly 'me' and 'mine,' and it's not the real truth concerning this
+house. I don't believe there is a healthy, normal man living who has not
+his dream. I have no hesitation whatever in admitting that I have mine.
+This house must be two things. It has got to be a concrete workshop for
+me, and it has got to be an abstract abiding place for a dream. It's
+rather difficult to build a dream house for a dream lady, so I don't
+know what kind of a fist I am going to make of it.”
+
+Linda sat down on a boulder and contemplated her shoes for a minute.
+Then she raised her ever-shifting, eager, young eyes to Peter, and it
+seemed to him as he looked into them that there were little gold lights
+flickering at the bottom of their darkness.
+
+“Why, that's just as easy,” she said. “A home is merely a home. It
+includes a front porch and a back porch and a fireplace and a bathtub
+and an ice chest and a view and a garden around it; all the rest is
+incidental. If you have more money, you have more incidentals. If you
+don't have so much, you use your imagination and think you have just as
+much on less.”
+
+“Now, I wonder,” said Peter, “when I find my dream lady, if she will
+have an elastic imagination.”
+
+“Haven't you found her yet?” asked Linda casually.
+
+“No,” said Peter, “I haven't found her, and unfortunately she hasn't
+found me. I have had a strenuous time getting my start in life. It's
+mostly a rush from one point of interest to another, dropping at
+any wayside station for refreshment and the use of a writing table.
+Occasionally I have seen a vision that I have wanted to follow, but I
+never have had time. So far, the lady of this house is even more of a
+dream than the house.”
+
+“Oh, well, don't worry,” said Linda comfortingly. “The world is full of
+the nicest girls. When you get ready for a gracious lady I'll find you
+one that will have an India-rubber imagination and a great big loving
+heart and Indian-hemp apron strings so that half a dozen babies can
+swing from them.”
+
+Morrison turned to Henry Anderson.
+
+“You hear, Henry?” he said. “I'm destined to have a large family. You
+must curtail your plans for the workroom and make that big room back of
+it into a nursery.”
+
+“Well, what I am going to do,” said Henry Anderson, “is to build a place
+suitable for your needs. If any dream woman comes to it, she will have
+to fit herself to her environment.”
+
+Linda frowned.
+
+“Now, that isn't a bit nice of you,” she said, “and I don't believe
+Peter will pay the slightest attention to you. He'll let me make you
+build a lovely room for the love of his heart, and a great big bright
+nursery on the sunny side for his small people.”
+
+“I never believed,” said Henry Anderson, “in counting your chickens
+before they are hatched. There are a couple of acres around Peter's
+house, and he can build an addition as his needs increase.”
+
+“Messy idea,” said Linda promptly. “Thing to do, when you build a house,
+is to build it the way you want it for the remainder of your life,
+so you don't have to tear up the scenery every few years, dragging in
+lumber for expansion. And I'll tell you another thing. If the homemakers
+of this country don't get the idea into their heads pretty soon that
+they are not going to be able to hold their own with the rest of the
+world, with no children, or one child in the family, there's a sad day
+of reckoning coming. With the records at the patent office open to
+the world, you can't claim that the brain of the white man is not
+constructive. You can look at our records and compare them with those
+of countries ages and ages older than we are, which never discovered
+the beauties of a Dover egg-beater or a washing machine or a churn or
+a railroad or a steamboat or a bridge. We are head and shoulders above
+other nations in invention, and just as fast as possible, we are falling
+behind in the birth rate. The red man and the yellow man and the brown
+man and the black man can look at our egg-beaters and washing machines
+and bridges and big guns, and go home and copy them; and use them while
+rearing even bigger families than they have now. If every home in Lilac
+Valley had at least six sturdy boys and girls growing up in it with the
+proper love of country and the proper realization of the white man's
+right to supremacy, and if all the world now occupied by white men could
+make an equal record, where would be the talk of the yellow peril? There
+wouldn't be any yellow peril. You see what I mean?”
+
+Linda lifted her frank eyes to Peter Morrison.
+
+“Yes, young woman,” said Peter gravely, “I see what you mean, but this
+is the first time I ever heard a high-school kid propound such ideas.
+Where did you get them?”
+
+“Got them in Multiflores Canyon from my father to start with,” said
+Linda, “but recently I have been thinking, because there is a boy in
+high school who is making a great fight for a better scholarship record
+than a Jap in his class. I brood over it every spare minute, day or
+night, and when I say my prayers I implore high Heaven to send him an
+idea or to send me one that I can pass on to him, that will help him to
+beat that Jap.”
+
+“I see,” said Peter Morrison. “We'll have to take time to talk this
+over. It's barely possible I might be able to suggest something.”
+
+“You let that kid fight his own battles,” said Henry Anderson roughly.
+“He's no proper bug-catcher. I feel it in my bones.”
+
+For the first time, Linda's joy laugh rang over Peter Morrison's
+possession.
+
+“I don't know about that,” she said gaily. “He's a wide-awake specimen;
+he has led his class for four years when the Jap didn't get ahead of
+him. But, all foolishness aside, take my word for it, Peter, you'll be
+sorry if you don't build this house big enough for your dream lady and
+for all the little dreams that may spring from her heart.”
+
+“Nightmares, you mean,” said Henry Anderson. “I can't imagine a bunch
+of kids muddying up this spring and breaking the bushes and using
+slingshots on the birds.”
+
+“Yes,” said Linda with scathing sarcasm, “and wouldn't our government be
+tickled to death to have a clear spring and a perfect bush and a singing
+bird, if it needed six men to go over the top to handle a regiment of
+Japanese!”
+
+Then Peter Morrison laughed.
+
+“Well, your estimate is too low, Linda,” he said in his nicest drawling
+tone of voice. “Believe me, one U. S. kid will never march in a whole
+regiment of Japanese. They won't lay down their guns and walk to
+surrender as bunches of Germans did. Nobody need ever think that. They
+are as good fighters as they are imitators. There's nothing for you to
+do, Henry, but to take to heart what Miss Linda has said. Plan the house
+with a suite for a dream lady, and a dining room, a sleeping porch and a
+nursery big enough for the six children allotted to me.”
+
+“You're not really in earnest?” asked Henry Anderson in doubting
+astonishment.
+
+“I am in the deepest kind of earnest,” said Peter Morrison. “What Miss
+Linda says is true. As a nation, our people are pampering themselves and
+living for their own pleasures. They won't take the trouble or endure
+the pain required to bear and to rear children; and the day is rolling
+toward us, with every turn of the planet one day closer, when we are
+going to be outnumbered by a combination of peoples who can take our own
+tricks and beat us with them. We must pass along the good word that the
+one thing America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES AND
+HEARTS BIG ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our grandfathers,
+when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child in the family, and if
+you didn't have a dozen you weren't doing your manifest duty.”
+
+“Well, if that is the way you see the light, we must enlarge this house.
+As designed, it included every feminine convenience anyway. But when I
+build my house I am going to build it for myself.”
+
+“Then don't talk any more about being my bug-catcher,” said Linda
+promptly, “because when I build my house it's going to be a nest that
+will hold six at the very least. My heart is perfectly set on a brood of
+six.”
+
+Linda was quite unaware that the two men were studying her closely, but
+if she had known what was going on in their minds she would have had
+nothing to regret, because both of them found her very attractive, and
+both of them were wondering how anything so superficial as Eileen could
+be of the same blood as Linda.
+
+“Are we keeping you too late?” inquired Peter.
+
+“No,” said Linda, “I am as interested as I can be. Finish everything you
+want to do before we go. I hope you're going to let me come over often
+and watch you with your building. Maybe I can get an idea for some
+things I want to do. Eileen and I have our house divided by a Mason and
+Dixon line. On her side is Mother's suite, the dining room, the living
+room and the front door. On mine there's the garage and the kitchen and
+Katy's bedroom and mine and the library and the billiard room. At
+the present minute I am interested in adapting the library to my
+requirements instead of Father's, and I am emptying the billiard room
+and furnishing it to make a workroom. I have a small talent with a brush
+and pencil, and I need some bare walls to tack my prints on to dry, and
+I need numerous places for all the things I am always dragging in from
+the desert and the canyons; and since I have the Bear Cat running,
+what I have been doing in that line with a knapsack won't be worthy of
+mention.”
+
+“How did it come,” inquired Henry Anderson, “that you had that car
+jacked up so long?”
+
+“Why, hasn't anybody told you,” asked Linda, “about our day of the Black
+Shadow?”
+
+“John Gilman wrote me when it happened,” said Peter softly, “but I don't
+believe it has been mentioned before Henry. You tell him.”
+
+Linda turned to Henry Anderson, and with trembling lips and paling
+cheeks, in a few brief sentences she gave him the details. Then she
+said to Peter Morrison in a low voice: “And that is the why of Marian
+Thorne's white head. Anybody tell you that?”
+
+“That white head puzzled me beyond anything I ever saw,” he said. “I
+meant to ask John about it. He used to talk to me and write to me often
+about her, and lately he hasn't; when I came I saw the reason, and so
+you see I felt reticent on the subject.”
+
+“Well, there's nothing the matter with my tongue,” said Linda. “It's
+loose at both ends. Marian was an expert driver. She drove with the same
+calm judgment and precision and graceful skill that she does everything
+else, but the curve was steep and something in the brakes was defective.
+It broke with a snap and there was not a thing she could do. Enough was
+left of the remains of the car to prove that. Ten days afterward her
+head was almost as white as snow. Before that it was as dark as mine.
+But her body is just as young and her heart is just as young and her
+face is even more beautiful. I do think that a white crown makes her
+lovelier than she was before. I have known Marian ever since I can
+remember, and I don't know one thing about her that I could not look you
+straight in the eye and tell you all about. There is not a subterfuge
+or an evasion or a small mean deceit in her soul. She is the brainiest
+woman and the biggest woman I know.”
+
+“I haven't a doubt of it,” said Peter Morrison. “And while you are
+talking about nice women, we met a mighty fine one at Riverside on
+Sunday. Her name is Mary Louise Whiting. Do you know her?”
+
+“Not personally,” said Linda. “I don't recall that I ever saw her. I
+know her brother, Donald. He is the high-school boy who is having the
+wrestle with the Jap.”
+
+“I liked her too,” said Henry Anderson. “And by the way, Miss Linda,
+haven't bug-catchers any reputation at all as nest builders? Is it true
+that among feathered creatures the hen builds the home?”
+
+“No, it's not,” said Linda promptly. “Male birds make a splendid record
+carrying nest material. What is true is that in the majority of cases
+the female does the building.”
+
+“Well, what I am getting at,” said Henry Anderson, “is this. Is there
+anything I can do to help you with that billiard room that you're going
+to convert to a workroom? What do you lack in it that you would like to
+have? Do you need more light or air, or a fireplace, or what? When you
+take us to the station, suppose you drive us past your house and give
+me a look at that room and let me think over it a day or two. I might be
+able to make some suggestion that would help you.”
+
+“Now that is positively sweet of you,” said Linda. “I never thought of
+such a thing as either comfort or convenience. I thought I had to take
+that room as it stands and do the best I could with it, but since you
+mention it, it's barely possible that more air might be agreeable and
+also more light, and if there could be a small fireplace built in front
+of the chimney where it goes up from the library fireplace, it certainly
+would be a comfort, and it would add something to the room that nothing
+else could.
+
+“No workroom really has a soul if you can't smell smoke and see red when
+you go to it at night.”
+
+“You little outdoor heathen,” laughed Peter Morrison. “One would think
+you were an Indian.”
+
+“I am a fairly good Indian,” said Linda. “I have been scouting around
+with my father a good many years. How about it, Peter? Does the road go
+crooked?”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter, “the road goes crooked.”
+
+“Does the bed of the spring curve and sweep across the lawn and drop off
+to the original stream below the tree-tobacco clump there?”
+
+“If you say so, it does,” said Peter.
+
+“Including the bridge?” inquired Linda.
+
+“Including the bridge,” said Peter. “I'll have to burn some midnight
+oil, but I can visualize the bridge.”
+
+“And is this house where you 'set up your rest,' as you so beautifully
+said the other night at dinner, going to lay its corner stone and grow
+to its roof a selfish house, or is it going to be generous enough for a
+gracious lady and a flight of little footsteps?”
+
+Peter Morrison took off his hat. He turned his face toward the length of
+Lilac Valley and stood, very tall and straight, looking far away before
+him. Presently he looked down at Linda.
+
+“Even so,” he said softly. “My shoulders are broad enough; I have a
+brain; and I am not afraid to work. If my heart is not quite big enough
+yet, I see very clearly how it can be made to expand.”
+
+“I have been told,” said Linda in a low voice, “that Mary Louise Whiting
+is a perfect darling.”
+
+Peter looked at her from the top of her black head to the tips of her
+brown shoes. He could have counted the freckles bridging her nose. The
+sunburn on her cheeks was very visible; there was something arresting in
+the depth of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the lithe slenderness of
+her young body; she gave the effect of something smoldering inside that
+would leap at a breath.
+
+“I was not thinking of Miss Whiting,” he said soberly.
+
+Henry Anderson was watching. Now he turned his back and commenced
+talking about plans, but in his heart he said: “So that's the lay of the
+land. You've got to hustle yourself, Henry, or you won't have the ghost
+of a show.”
+
+Later, when they motored down the valley and stopped at the Strong
+residence, Peter refused to be monopolized by Eileen. He climbed the two
+flights of stairs with Henry Anderson and Linda and exhausted his fund
+of suggestions as to what could be done to that empty billiard room
+to make an attractive study of it. Linda listened quietly to all their
+suggestions, and then she said:
+
+“It would be fine to have another window, and a small skylight would be
+a dream, and as for the fireplace you mention, I can't even conceive how
+great it would be to have that; but my purse is much more limited than
+Peter's, and while I have my school work to do every day, my earning
+capacity is nearly negligible. I can only pick up a bit here and there
+with my brush and pencil--place cards and Easter cards and valentines,
+and once or twice magazine covers, and little things like that. I don't
+see my way clear to lumber and glass and bricks and chimney pieces.”
+
+Peter looked at Henry, and Henry looked at Peter, and a male high sign,
+ancient as day, passed between them.
+
+“Easiest thing in the world,” said Peter. “It's as sure as shooting that
+when my three or four fireplaces, which Henry's present plans call for,
+are built, there is going to be all the material left that can be used
+in a light tiny fireplace such as could be built on a third floor, and
+when the figuring for the house is done it could very easily include the
+cutting of a skylight and an extra window or two here, and getting the
+material in with my stuff, it would cost you almost nothing.”
+
+Linda's eyes opened wide and dewy with surprise and pleasure.
+
+“Why, you two perfectly nice men!” she said. “I haven't felt as I do
+this minute since I lost Daddy. It's wonderful to be taken care of. It's
+better than cream puffs with almond flavoring.”
+
+Henry Anderson looked at Linda keenly.
+
+“You're the darndest kid!” he said. “One minute you're smacking your
+lips over cream puffs, and the next you're going to the bottom of the
+yellow peril. I never before saw your combination in one girl. What's
+the explanation?” For the second time that evening Linda's specialty in
+rapture floated free.
+
+“Bunch all the component parts into the one paramount fact that I am
+Saturday's child,” she said, “so I am constantly on the job of working
+for a living, and then add to that the fact that I was reared by a nerve
+specialist.”
+
+Then they went downstairs, and the men refused both Eileen's and Linda's
+invitation to remain for dinner. When they had gone Eileen turned to
+Linda with a discontented and aggrieved face.
+
+“In the name of all that's holy, what are you doing or planning to do?”
+ she demanded.
+
+“Not anything that will cost you a penny beyond my natural rights,” said
+Linda quietly.
+
+“That is not answering my question,” said Eileen. “You're not of age and
+you're still under the authority of a guardian. If you can't answer me,
+possibly you can him. Shall I send John Gilman to ask what I want to
+know of you?”
+
+“When did I ever ask you any questions about what you chose to do?”
+ asked Linda. “I am merely following the example that you have previously
+set me. John Gilman and I used to be great friends. It might help both
+of us to have a family reunion. Send him by all means.”
+
+“You used to take pride,” suggested Eileen, “in leading your class.”
+
+“And has anyone told you that I am not leading my class at the present
+minute?” asked Linda.
+
+“No,” said Eileen, “but what I want to point out to you is that the
+minute you start running with the boys you will quit leading your
+class.”
+
+“Don't you believe it,” said Linda quietly. “I'm not built that way.
+I shan't concentrate on any boy to the exclusion of chemistry and
+geometry, never fear it.”
+
+Then she thoughtfully ascended the stairs and went to work.
+
+Eileen went to her room and sat down to think; and the more she thought,
+the deeper grew her anger and chagrin; and to the indifference that
+always had existed in her heart concerning Linda was added in that
+moment a new element. She was jealous of her. How did it come that a
+lanky, gangling kid in her tees had been paid a visit by the son of
+possibly the most cultured and influential family of the city, people of
+prestige, comfortable wealth, and unlimited popularity? For four years
+she had struggled to gain an entrance in some way into Louise Whiting's
+intimate circle of friends, and she had ended by shutting the door on
+the only son of the family. And why had she ever allowed Linda to keep
+the runabout? It was not proper that a young girl should own a high
+powered car like that. It was not proper that she should drive it and go
+racing around the country, heaven knew where, and with heaven knew whom.
+Eileen bit her lip until it almost bled. Her eyes were hateful and her
+hands were nervous as she reviewed the past week. She might think any
+mean thing that a mean brain could conjure up, but when she calmed down
+to facts she had to admit that there was not a reason in the world why
+Linda should not drive the car she had driven for her father, or why
+she should not take with her Donald Whiting or Peter Morrison or Henry
+Anderson. The thing that rankled was that the car belonged to Linda. The
+touring car which she might have owned and driven, had she so desired,
+lay in an extremely slender string of pearls around her neck at that
+instant. She reflected that if she had kept her car and made herself
+sufficiently hardy to drive it, she might have been the one to
+have taken Peter Morrison to his home location and to have had many
+opportunities for being with him.
+
+“I've been a fool,” said Eileen, tugging at the pearls viciously. “They
+are nothing but a little bit of a string that looks as if I were trying
+to do something and couldn't, at best. What I've got to do is to think
+more of myself. I've got to plan some way to prevent Linda from being
+too popular until I really get my mind made up as to what I want to do.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. Leavening the Bread of Life
+
+“'A house that is divided against itself cannot stand,'” quoted Linda.
+“I must keep in mind what Eileen said, not that there is the slightest
+danger, but to fall behind in my grades is a thing that simply must not
+happen. If it be true that Peter and Henry can so easily and so cheaply
+add a few improvements in my workroom in connection with Peter's
+building, I can see no reason why they shouldn't do it, so long as I pay
+for it. I haven't a doubt but that there will be something I can do
+for Peter, before he finishes his building, that he would greatly
+appreciate, while, since I'm handy with my pencil, I MIGHT be able to
+make a few head and tail pieces for some of his articles that would make
+them more attractive. I don't want to use any friend of mine: I don't
+want to feel that I am not giving quite as much as I get, but I think I
+see my way clear, between me and the Bear Cat, to pay for all the favors
+I would receive in altering my study.
+
+“First thing I do I must go through Father's books and get the money for
+them, so I'll know my limitation when I come to select furniture. And
+I don't know that I am going to be so terribly modest when it comes to
+naming the sum with which I'll be satisfied for my allowance. Possibly I
+shall exercise my age-old prerogative and change my mind; I may just say
+'half' right out loud and stick to it. And there's another thing. Since
+the editor of Everybody's Home has started my department and promised
+that if it goes well he will give it to me permanently, I can certainly
+depend on something from that. He has used my Introduction and two
+instalments now. I should think it might be fair to talk payments pretty
+soon. He should give me fifty dollars for a recipe with its perfectly
+good natural history and embellished with my own vegetable and floral
+decorations.
+
+“In the meantime I think I might buy my worktable and possibly an easel,
+so I can have real room to spread out my new material and see how it
+would feel to do one drawing completely unhampered. I'll order the table
+tonight, and then I'll begin on the books, because I must have Saturday
+free; and I must be thinking about the most attractive and interesting
+place I can take Donald to. I just have to keep him interested until
+he gets going of his own accord, because he shall beat Oka Sayye. I
+wouldn't let Donald say it but I don't mind saying myself to myself
+with no one present except myself that in all my life I have never seen
+anything so masklike as the stolid little square head on that Jap. I
+have never seen anything I dislike more than the oily, stiff, black
+hair standing up on it like menacing bristles. I have never had but one
+straight look deep into his eyes, but in that look I saw the only thing
+that ever frightened me in looking into a man's eyes in my whole life.
+And there is one thing that I have to remember to caution Donald about.
+He must carry on this contest in a perfectly open, fair, and aboveboard
+way, and he simply must not antagonize Oka Sayye. There are so many of
+the Japs. They all look so much alike, and there's a blood brotherhood
+between them that will make them protect each other to the death against
+any white man. It wouldn't be safe for Donald to make Oka Sayye hate
+him. He had far better try to make him his friend and put a spirit of
+honest rivalry into his heart; but come to think of it, there wasn't
+anything like that in my one look into Oka Sayye's eyes. I don't know
+what it was, but whatever it was it was something repulsive.”
+
+With this thought in her mind Linda walked slowly as she approached
+the high school the next time. Far down the street, over the walks and
+across the grounds, her eyes were searching eagerly for the tall slender
+figure of Donald Whiting. She did not see him in the morning, but at
+noon she encountered him in the hall.
+
+“Looking for you,” he cried gaily when he saw her. “I've got my pry in
+on Trig. The professor's interested. Dad fished out an old Trig that
+he used when he was a boy and I have some new angles that will keep my
+esteemed rival stirring up his gray matter for some little time.”
+
+“Good for you! Joyous congratulations! You've got the idea!” cried
+Linda. “Go to it! Start something all along the line, but make it
+something founded on brains and reason and common sense. But, Donald, I
+was watching for you. I wanted to say a word.”
+
+Donald Whiting bent toward her. The faintest suspicion of a tinge of
+color crept into his cheeks.
+
+“That's fine,” he said. “What was it you wanted?”
+
+“Only this,” she said in almost a breathless whisper. “There is nothing
+in California I am afraid of except a Jap, and I am afraid of them, not
+potentially, not on account of what all of us know they are planning
+in the backs of their heads for the future, but right here and now,
+personally and physically. Don't antagonize Oka Sayye. Don't be too
+precipitate about what you're trying to do. Try to make it appear that
+you're developing ideas for the interest and edification of the whole
+class. Don't incur his personal enmity. Use tact.”
+
+“You think I am afraid of that little jiu-jitsu?” he scoffed. “I can
+lick him with one hand.”
+
+“I haven't a doubt of it,” said Linda, measuring his height and apparent
+strength and fitness. “I haven't a doubt of it. But let me ask you this
+confidentially: Have you got a friend who would slip in and stab him in
+the back in case you were in an encounter and he was getting the better
+of you?”
+
+Donald Whiting's eyes widened. He looked at Linda amazed.
+
+“Wouldn't that be going rather far?” he asked. “I think I have some
+fairly good friends among the fellows, but I don't know just whom I
+would want to ask to do me that small favor.”
+
+“That is precisely the point,” cried Linda. “You haven't a friend you
+would ask; and you haven't a friend who would do it, if you did. But
+don't believe for one second that Oka Sayye hasn't half a dozen who
+would make away with you at an unexpected time and in a secluded place,
+and vanish, if it would in any way further Oka Sayye's ambition, or help
+establish the supremacy of the Japanese in California.”
+
+“Um-hm,” said Donald Whiting.
+
+He was looking far past Linda and now his eyes were narrowed in thought.
+“I believe you're RIGHT about it.”
+
+“I've thought of you so often since I tried to spur you to beat Oka
+Sayye,” said Linda. “I feel a sort of responsibility for you. It's to
+the honor and glory of all California, and the United States, and the
+white race everywhere for you to beat him, but if any harm should come
+to you I would always feel that I shouldn't have urged it.”
+
+“Now that's foolishness,” said Donald earnestly. “If I am such a dub
+that I didn't have the ambition to think up some way to beat a Jap
+myself, no matter what happens you shouldn't regret having been the one
+to point out to me my manifest duty. Dad is a Harvard man, you know, and
+that is where he's going to send me, and in talking about it the other
+night I told him about you, and what you had said to me. He's the
+greatest old scout, and was mightily interested. He went at once and
+opened a box of books in the garret and dug out some stuff that will be
+a big help to me. He's going to keep posted and see what he can do; he
+said even worse things to me than you did; so you needn't feel that you
+have any responsibility; besides that, it's not proved yet that I can
+beat Oka Sayye.”
+
+“Yes, it is!” said Linda, sending a straight level gaze deep into his
+eyes. “Yes, it is! Whenever a white man makes up his mind what he's
+going to do, and puts his brain to work, he beats any man, of any other
+color. Sure you're going to beat him.”
+
+“Fat chance I have not to,” said Donald, laughing ruefully. “If I don't
+beat him I am disgraced at home, and with you; before I try very long in
+this highly specialized effort I am making, every professor in the high
+school and every member of my class is bound to become aware of what
+is going on. You're mighty right about it. I have got to beat him or
+disgrace myself right at the beginning of my nice young career.”
+
+“Of course you'll beat him,” said Linda.
+
+“At what hour did you say I should come, Saturday?”
+
+“Oh, come with the lark for all I care,” said Linda. “Early morning in
+the desert is a mystery and a miracle, and the larks have been there
+just long enough to get their voices properly tuned for their purest
+notes.”
+
+Then she turned and hurried away. Her first leisure minute after
+reaching home she went to the library wearing one of Katy's big aprons,
+and carrying a brush and duster. Beginning at one end of each shelf, she
+took down the volumes she intended to sell, carefully dusted them, wiped
+their covers, and the place on which they had stood, and then opened and
+leafed through them so that no scrap of paper containing any notes or
+memoranda of possible value should be overlooked. It was while handling
+these volumes that Linda shifted several of the books written by her
+father, to separate them from those with which she meant to part. She
+had grown so accustomed to opening each book she handled and looking
+through it, that she mechanically opened the first one she picked up and
+from among its leaves there fell a scrap of loose paper. She picked it
+up and found it was a letter from the publishers of the book. Linda's
+eyes widened suddenly as she read:
+
+MY DEAR STRONG:
+
+Sending you a line of congratulations. You have gone to the head of the
+list of “best sellers” among medical works, and the cheque I draw you
+for the past six months' royalties will be considerably larger than that
+which goes to your most esteemed contemporary on your chosen subject.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+The signature was that of Frederic Dickman, the editor of one of the
+biggest publishing houses of the country.
+
+“Hm,” she said to herself softly. “Now that is a queer thing. That
+letter was written nearly five years ago. I don't know why I never
+thought of royalties since Daddy went. I frequently heard him
+mention them before. I suppose they're being paid to John Gilman as
+administrator, or to the Consolidated Bank, and cared for with Father's
+other business. There's no reason why these books should not keep on
+selling. There are probably the same number of young men, if not a
+greater number, studying medicine every year. I wonder now, about these
+royalties. I must do some thinking.”
+
+Then Linda began to examine books more carefully than before. The letter
+she carried with her when she went to her room; but she made a point of
+being on the lawn that evening when John Gilman came, and after talking
+to him a few minutes, she said very casually: “John, as Father's
+administrator, does a royalty from his medical books come to you?”
+
+“No,” said Gilman. “It is paid to his bank.”
+
+“I don't suppose,” said Linda casually, “it would amount to enough to
+keep one in shoes these inflated days.”
+
+“Oh, I don't know about that,” said John testily. “I have seen a few of
+those cheques in your Father's time. You should be able to keep fairly
+well supplied with shoes.”
+
+“So I should,” said Linda drily. “So I should.”
+
+Then she led him to the back of the house and talked the incident out
+of his mind as cleverly as possible by giving him an intensive botanical
+study of Cotyledon. But she could not interest him quite so deeply
+as she had hoped, for presently he said: “Eileen tells me that you're
+parting with some of the books.”
+
+“Only technical ones for which I could have no possible use,” said
+Linda. “I need clothes, and have found that had I a proper place to work
+in and proper tools to work with, I could earn quite a bit with my brush
+and pencil, and so I am trying to get enough money together to fit up
+the billiard room for a workroom, since nobody uses it for anything
+else.”
+
+“I see,” said John Gilman. “I suppose running a house is extremely
+expensive these days, but even so the income from your estate should be
+sufficient to dress a schoolgirl and provide for anything you would want
+in the way of furnishing a workroom.”
+
+“That's what I have always thought myself,” said Linda; “but Eileen
+doesn't agree with me, and she handles the money. When the first of
+the month comes, we are planning to go over things together, and she is
+going to make me a proper allowance.”
+
+“That is exactly as it should be,” said Gilman. “I never realized till
+the other night at dinner that you have grown such a great girl, Linda.
+That's fine! Fix your workroom the way you would like to have it, and
+if there's anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to
+command me. I haven't seen you often lately.”
+
+“No,” said Linda, “but I don't feel that it is exactly my fault. Marian
+and I were always pals. When I saw that you preferred Eileen, I kept
+with Marian to comfort her all I could. I don't suppose she cared,
+particularly. She couldn't have, or she would at least have made some
+effort to prevent Eileen from monopolizing you. She probably was mighty
+glad to be rid of you; but since you had been together so much, I
+thought she might miss you, so I tried to cover your defection.”
+
+John Gilman's face flushed. He stood very still, while he seemed deeply
+thoughtful.
+
+“Of course you were free to follow your inclinations, or Eileen's
+machinations, whichever you did follow,” Linda said lightly, “but 'them
+as knows' could tell you, John, as Katy so well puts it, that you have
+made the mistake of your young life.”
+
+Then she turned and went to the garage, leaving John to his visit with
+Eileen.
+
+The Eileen who took possession of John was an Eileen with whom he was
+not acquainted. He had known, the night of the dinner party, that Eileen
+was pouting, but there had been no chance to learn from her what
+her grievance was, and by the next time they met she was a bundle of
+flashing allurement, so he ignored the occurrence. This evening, for the
+first time, it seemed to him that Eileen was not so beautiful a woman as
+he had thought her. Something had roiled the blood in her delicate veins
+until it had muddied the clear freshness of her smooth satiny skin.
+There was discontent in her eyes, which were her most convincing
+attraction. They were big eyes, wide open and candid. She had so trained
+them through a lifetime of practice that she could meet other eyes
+directly while manipulating her most dextrous evasion. Whenever Eileen
+was most deceptively subtle, she was looking straight at her victim with
+the innocent appeal of a baby in her gaze.
+
+John Gilman had had his struggle. He had succeeded. He had watched, and
+waited, and worked incessantly, and when his opportunity came he was
+ready. Success had come to such a degree that in a short time he had
+assured himself of comfort for any woman he loved. He knew that his
+appearance was quite as pleasing as that of his friend. He knew that
+in manner and education they were equals. He was now handling large
+business affairs. He had made friends in high places. Whenever Eileen
+was ready, he would build and furnish a home he felt sure would be
+equal, if not superior, to what Morrison was planning. Why had Eileen
+felt that she would envy any woman who shared life with Peter Morrison?
+
+All that day she had annoyed him, because there must have been in the
+very deeps of his soul “a still, small voice” whispering to him that
+he had not lived up to the best traditions of a gentleman in his course
+with Marian. While no definite plans had been made, there had been
+endless assumption. Many times they had talked of the home they would
+make together. When he reached the point where he decided that he never
+had loved Marian as a man should love the woman he marries, he felt
+justified in turning to Eileen, but in his heart he knew that if he had
+been the man he was pleased to consider himself, he would have gone to
+Marian Thorne and explained, thereby keeping her friendship, while he
+now knew that he must have earned her contempt.
+
+The day at Riverside had been an enigma he could not solve. Eileen was
+gay to a degree that was almost boisterous. She had attracted attention
+and comment which no well-bred woman would have done.
+
+The growing discontent in John's soul had increased under Linda's direct
+attack. He had known Linda since she was four years old and had been
+responsible for some of her education. He had been a large influence
+in teaching Linda from childhood to be a good sport, to be sure she was
+right and then go ahead, and if she hurt herself in the going, to rub
+the bruise, but to keep her path.
+
+A thing patent to the eye of every man who turned an appraising look
+upon Linda always had been one of steadfast loyalty. You could depend
+upon her. She was the counterpart of her father; and Doctor Strong had
+been loved by other men. Wherever he had gone he had been surrounded.
+His figure had been one that attracted attention. When he had spoken,
+his voice and what he had to say had commanded respect. And then there
+had emanated from him that peculiar physical charm which gives such
+pleasing and distinguished personality to a very few people in this
+world. This gift too had descended to Linda. She could sit and look
+straight at you with her narrow, interested eyes, smile faintly, and
+make you realize what she thought and felt without opening her lips.
+John did not feel very well acquainted with the girl who had dominated
+the recent dinner party, but he did see that she was attractive, that
+both Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson had been greatly amused and very
+much entertained by her. He had found her so interesting himself that he
+had paid slight attention to Eileen's pouting.
+
+Tonight he was forced to study Eileen, for the sake of his own comfort
+to try to conciliate her. He was uncomfortable because he was unable
+to conduct himself as Eileen wished him to, without a small sickening
+disgust creeping into his soul. Before the evening was over he became
+exasperated, and ended by asking flatly: “Eileen, what in the dickens is
+the matter with you?”
+
+It was a new tone and a new question on nerves tensely strung.
+
+“If you weren't blind you'd know without asking,” retorted Eileen hotly.
+
+“Then I am 'blind,' for I haven't the slightest notion. What have I
+done?”
+
+“Isn't it just barely possible,” asked Eileen, “that there might be
+other people who would annoy and exasperate me? I have not hinted that
+you have done anything, although I don't know that it's customary for a
+man calling on his betrothed to stop first for a visit with her sister.”
+
+“For the love of Mike!” said John Gilman. “Am I to be found fault with
+for crossing the lawn a minute to see how Linda's wild garden is coming
+on? I have dug and helped set enough of those plants to justify some
+interest in them as they grow.”
+
+“And the garden was your sole subject of conversation?” inquired Eileen,
+implied doubt conveyed nicely.
+
+“No, it was not,” answered Gilman, all the bulldog in his nature coming
+to the surface.
+
+“As I knew perfectly,” said Eileen. “I admit that I'm not feeling
+myself. Things began going wrong recently, and everything has gone wrong
+since. I think it all began with Marian Thorne's crazy idea of selling
+her home and going to the city to try to ape a man.”
+
+“Marian never tried to ape a man in her life,” said John, instantly
+yielding to a sense of justice. “She is as strictly feminine as any
+woman I ever knew.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that you think studying architecture is a woman's
+work?” sneered Eileen.
+
+“Yes, I do,” said Gilman emphatically. “Women live in houses. They're
+in them nine tenths of the time to a man's one tenth. Next to rocking
+a cradle I don't know of any occupation in this world more distinctly
+feminine than the planning of comfortable homes for homekeeping people.”
+
+Eileen changed the subject swiftly. “What was Linda saying to you?” she
+asked.
+
+“She was showing me a plant, a rare Echeveria of the Cotyledon family,
+that she tobogganed down one side of Multiflores Canyon and delivered
+safely on the roadway without its losing an appreciable amount of
+'bloom' from its exquisitely painted leaves.”
+
+Eileen broke in rudely. “Linda has missed Marian. There's not a possible
+thing to make life uncomfortable for me that she is not doing. You
+needn't tell me you didn't see and understand her rude forwardness the
+other night!”
+
+“No, I didn't see it,” said John, “because the fact is I thought the kid
+was positively charming, and so did Peter and Henry because both of them
+said so. There's one thing you must take into consideration, Eileen. The
+time has come when she should have clothes and liberty and opportunity
+to shape her life according to her inclinations. Let me tell you she
+will attract attention in georgette and laces.”
+
+“And where are the georgette and laces to come from?” inquired Eileen
+sarcastically. “All outgo and no income for four years is leaving the
+Strong finances in mighty precarious shape, I can tell you.”
+
+“All right,” said Gilman, “I'm financially comfortable now. I'm ready.
+Say the word. We'll select our location and build our home, and let
+Linda have what there is of the Strong income till she is settled in
+life. You have pretty well had all of it for the past four years.”
+
+“Yes,” said Eileen furiously, “I have 'pretty well' had it, in a few
+little dresses that I have altered myself and very frequently made
+entirely. I have done the best I could, shifting and skimping, and it's
+not accomplished anything that I have really wanted. According to men,
+the gas and the telephone and the electric light and the taxes and
+food and cook pay for themselves. All a woman ever spends money on is
+clothes!”
+
+“Eileen,” chuckled John Gilman, “this sounds exactly as if we were
+married, and we're not, yet.”
+
+“No,” said Eileen, “thank heaven we're not. If it's come to the place
+where you're siding with everybody else against me, and where you're
+more interested in what my kid sister has to say to you than you are in
+me, I don't think we ever shall be.”
+
+Then, from stress of nerve tension and long practice, some big tears
+gushed up and threatened to overflow Eileen's lovely eyes. That never
+should happen, for tears are salt water and they cut little rivers
+through even the most carefully and skillfully constructed complexion,
+while Eileen's was looking its worst that evening. She hastily applied
+her handkerchief, and John Gilman took her into his arms; so the
+remainder of the evening it was as if they were not married. But when
+John returned to the subject of a home and begged Eileen to announce
+their engagement and let him begin work, she evaded him, and put him
+off, and had to have time to think, and she was not ready, and there
+were many excuses, for none of which Gilman could see any sufficient
+reason. When he left Eileen that night, it was with a heavy heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. Saturday's Child
+
+Throughout the week Linda had worked as never during her life
+previously, in order to save Saturday for Donald Whiting. She ran the
+Bear Cat down to the garage and had it looked over once more to be sure
+that everything was all right. Friday evening, on her way from school,
+she stopped at a grocery where she knew Eileen kept an account, and for
+the first time ordered a few groceries. These she carried home with her,
+and explained to Katy what she wanted.
+
+Katy fully realized that Linda was still her child, with no thought in
+her mind save standing at the head of her classes, carrying on the work
+she had begun with her father, keeping up her nature study, and getting
+the best time she could out of life in the open as she had been taught
+to do from her cradle.
+
+Katy had not the slightest intention of opening her lips to say one word
+that might put any idea into the head of her beloved child, but she saw
+no reason why she herself should not harbor all the ideas she pleased.
+
+Whereupon, actuated by a combination of family pride, love, ambition in
+her chosen profession, Katy made ready to see that on the morrow the
+son of Frederick Whiting should be properly nourished on his outing with
+Linda.
+
+At six o'clock Saturday morning Linda ran the Bear Cat to the back door,
+where she and Katy packed it. Before they had finished, Donald Whiting
+came down the sidewalk, his cheeks flushed with the exercise of walking,
+his eyes bright with anticipation, his cause forever won--in case he had
+a cause--with Katy, because she liked the wholesome, hearty manner in
+which he greeted Linda, and she was dumbfounded when he held out his
+hand to her and said laughingly: “Blessed among women, did you put in a
+fine large consignment of orange punch?”
+
+“No,” said Katy, “I'll just tell ye flat-footed there ain't going to be
+any punch, but, young sir, you're eshcortin' a very capable young lady,
+and don't ye bewail the punch, because ye might be complimenting your
+face with something ye would like a hape better.”
+
+“Can't be done, Katy,” cried Donald.
+
+“Ye must have a poor opinion of us,” laughed Katy, “if ye are thinking
+ye can get to the end of our limitations in one lunch. Fourteen years me
+and Miss Linda's been on this lunch-box stunt. Don't ye be thinkin' ye
+can exhaust us in any wan trip, or in any wan dozen.”
+
+So they said good-bye to Katy and rolled past Eileen's room on the way
+to the desert. Eileen stood at the window watching them, and never had
+her heart been so full of discontent and her soul the abiding place of
+such envy or her mind so busy. Just when she had thought life was going
+to yield her what she craved, she could not understand how or why things
+should begin to go wrong.
+
+As the Bear Cat traversed Lilac Valley, Linda was pointing out Peter
+Morrison's location. She was telling Donald Whiting where to find
+Peter's articles, and what a fine man he was, and that he had promised
+to think how he could help with their plan to make of Donald a better
+scholar than was Oka Sayye.
+
+“Well, I call that mighty decent of a stranger,” said Donald.
+
+“But he is scarcely more of a stranger than I am,” answered Linda. “He
+is a writer. He is interested in humanity. It's the business of every
+man in this world to reach out and help every boy with whom he comes in
+contact into the biggest, finest manhood possible. He only knows that
+you're a boy tackling a big job that means much to every white boy to
+have you succeed with, and for that reason he's just as interested as I
+am. Maybe, when we come in this evening, I'll run up to his place, and
+you can talk it over with him. If your father helped you at one angle,
+it's altogether probable that Peter Morrison could help you at another.”
+
+Donald Whiting rubbed his knee reflectively. He was sitting half turned
+in the wide seat so that he might watch Linda's hands and her face while
+she drove.
+
+“Well, that's all right,” he said heartily. “You can write me down as
+willing and anxious to take all the help I can get, for it's going to be
+no microscopic job, that I can tell you. One week has waked up the Jap
+to the fact that there's something doing, and he's digging in and has
+begun, the last day or two, to speak up in class and suggest things
+himself. Since I've been studying him and watching him, I have come to
+the conclusion that he is much older than I am. Something he said in
+class yesterday made me think he had probably had the best schooling
+Japan could give him before he came here. The next time you meet him
+look for a suspicion of gray hairs around his ears. He's too blamed
+comprehensive for the average boy of my age. You said the Japs were the
+best imitators in the world and I have an idea in the back of my head
+that before I get through with him, Oka Sayye is going to prove your
+proposition.”
+
+Linda nodded as she shot the Bear Cat across the streetcar tracks and
+headed toward the desert. The engine was purring softly as it warmed up.
+The car was running smoothly. The sun of early morning was shining on
+them through bracing, salt, cool air, and even in the valley the larks
+were busy, and the mockingbirds, and from every wayside bush the rosy
+finches were singing. All the world was coming to the exquisite bloom of
+a half-tropical country. Up from earth swept the heavy odors of blooming
+citrus orchards, millions of roses, and the overpowering sweetness of
+gardens and cultivated flowers; while down from the mountains rolled the
+delicate breath of the misty blue lilac, the pungent odor of California
+sage, and the spicy sweet of the lemonade bush. They were two young
+things, free for the day, flying down a perfect road, adventuring with
+Providence. They had only gone a few miles when Donald Whiting took off
+his hat, stuffed it down beside him, and threw back his head, shaking
+his hair to the wind in a gesture so soon to become familiar to Linda.
+She glanced across at him and found him looking at her. A smile broke
+over her lips. One of her most spontaneous laughs bubbled up in her
+throat.
+
+“Topping, isn't it!” she cried gaily.
+
+“It's the best thing that ever happened to me,” answered Donald Whiting
+instantly. “Our car is a mighty good one and Dad isn't mean about
+letting me drive it. I can take it frequently and can have plenty of
+gas and take my crowd; but lordy, I don't believe there's a boy or girl
+living that doesn't just positively groan when they see one of these
+little gray Bear Cats go loping past. And I never even had a ride in one
+before. I can't get over the fact that it's yours. It wouldn't seem so
+funny if it belonged to one of the fellows.”
+
+With steady hand and gradually increasing speed, Linda put the Bear Cat
+over the roads of early morning. Sometimes she stopped in the shade of
+pepper, eucalyptus, or palm, where the larks were specializing in their
+age-old offertory. And then again they went racing until they reached
+the real desert. Linda ran the car under the shade of a tall clump of
+bloom-whitened alders. She took off her hat, loosened the hair at her
+temples, and looked out across the long morning stretch of desert.
+
+“It's just beginning to be good,” she said. She began pointing with
+her slender hand. “That gleam you see over there is the gold of a
+small clump of early poppies. The purple beyond it is lupin. All these
+exquisite colors on the floor are birds'-eyes and baby blue eyes, and
+the misty white here and there is forget-me-not. It won't be long til
+thousands and thousands of yucca plants will light their torches all
+over the desert and all the alders show their lacy mist. Of course you
+know how exquisitely the Spaniards named the yucca 'Our Lord's Candles.'
+Isn't that the prettiest name for a flower, and isn't it the prettiest
+thought?”
+
+“It certainly is,” answered Donald.
+
+“Had any experience with the desert?” Linda asked lightly.
+
+“Hunted sage hens some,” answered Donald.
+
+“Oh, well, that'll be all right,” said Linda. “I wondered if you'd go
+murdering yourself like a tenderfoot.”
+
+“What's the use of all this artillery?” inquired Donald as he stepped
+from the car.
+
+“Better put on your hat. You're taller than most of the bushes; you'll
+find slight shade,” cautioned Linda. “The use is purely a matter
+of self-protection. The desert has got such a devil of a fight for
+existence, without shade and practically without water, that it can't
+afford to take any other chance of extermination, and so it protects
+itself with needles here and spears there and sabers at other places and
+roots that strike down to China everywhere. First thing we are going to
+get is some soap.”
+
+“Great hat!” exclaimed Donald. “If you wanted soap why didn't you bring
+some?”
+
+“For all you know,” laughed Linda, “I may be going to education you up a
+little. Dare you to tell me how many kinds of soap I can find today that
+the Indians used, and where I can find it.”
+
+“Couldn't tell you one to save my life,” said Donald.
+
+“And born and reared within a few miles of the desert!” scoffed Linda.
+“Nice Indian you'd make. We take our choice today between finding
+deer-brush and digging for amole, because the mock oranges aren't ripe
+enough to be nice and soapy yet. I've got the deer-brush spotted, and
+we'll pass an amole before we go very far. Look for a wavy blue-green
+leaf like a wide blade of grass and coming up like a lily.”
+
+So together they went to the deer-brush and gathered a bunch of flowers
+that Linda bound together with some wiry desert grass and fastened to
+her belt. It was not long before Donald spied an amole, and having found
+one, discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way past
+thorns and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they reached
+a huge barrel cactus that she had located with the glasses. Beside this
+bristling monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which
+Donald handed to her. She drew it lightly across the armor protecting
+the plant.
+
+“Short of Victrola needles?” she inquired. “Because if you are, these
+make excellent ones. A lot more singing quality to them than the steel
+needles, not nearly so metallic.”
+
+“Well, I am surely going to try that,” said Donald. “Never heard of such
+a thing.”
+
+Linda chopped off a section of plant. Then she picked one of the knives
+from the bucket and handed it to him.
+
+“All right, you get what you want,” she said, “while I operate on the
+barrel.”
+
+She set her feet firmly in the sand, swung the axe, and with a couple of
+deft strokes sliced off the top of the huge plant, and from the heart of
+it lifted up half a bucketful of the juicy interior, with her dipper.
+
+“If we didn't have drink, here is where we would get it, and mighty good
+it is,” she said, pushing down with the dipper until she formed a small
+pool in the heart of the plant which rapidly filled. “Have a taste.”
+
+“Jove, that is good!” said Donald. “What are you going to do with it?”
+
+“Show you later,” laughed Linda. “Think I'll take a sip myself.”
+
+Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the car. Once
+Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an extremely curious little
+plant spreading over the ground, a tiny reddish vine with quaint round
+leaves that looked as if a drop of white paint rimmed with maroon had
+fallen on each of them.
+
+“I never saw that before,” said Donald. “What are you going to do with
+it?”
+
+“Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite,” said Linda. “That
+is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites you, score each side
+of the wound with the cleanest, sharpest knife you have and then bruise
+the plant and bind it on with your handkerchief, and forget it.”
+
+“Is that what you do?” inquired Donald.
+
+“Why sure,” said Linda, “that is what I would do if a snake were so
+ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn't seem to be much of the
+antagonistic element in my nature. I don't go through the desert
+exhaling the odor of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent or slip away so
+silently that I never see them.”
+
+“Now what on earth do you mean by that?” inquired Donald.
+
+“Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he took me
+to the mountains and the desert. If you are afraid, your system throws
+off formic acid, and the animals need only the suspicion of a scent of
+it to make them ready to fight. Any animal you encounter or even a bee,
+recognizes it. One of the first things that I remember about Daddy was
+seeing him sit on the running board of the runabout buckling up his
+desert boots while he sang to me,
+
+  'Let not your heart be troubled
+  Neither let it be afraid,'
+
+as he got ready to take me on his back and go into the desert for our
+first lesson; he told me that a man was perfectly safe in going to the
+forest or the desert or anywhere he chose among any kind of animals if
+he had sufficient self-control that no odor of fear emanated from him.
+He said that a man was safe to make his way anywhere he wanted to go, if
+he started his journey by recognizing a blood brotherhood with anything
+living he would meet on the way; and I have heard Enos Mills say that
+when he was snow inspector of Colorado he traveled the crest of the
+Rockies from one end of the state to the other without a gun or any
+means of self-defense.”
+
+“Now, that is something new to think about,” said Donald.
+
+“And it's something that is very true,” said Linda. “I have seen it
+work times without number. Father and I went quietly up the mountains,
+through the canyons, across the desert, and we would never see a snake
+of any kind, but repeatedly we would see men with guns and dogs out to
+kill, to trespass on the rights of the wild, and they would be hunting
+for sticks and clubs and firing their guns where we had passed never
+thinking of lurking danger. If you start out in accord, at one with
+Nature, you're quite as safe as you are at home, sometimes more so. But
+if you start out to stir up a fight, the occasion is very rare on which
+you can't succeed.”
+
+“And that reminds me,” said Donald, with a laugh, “that a week ago I
+came to start a fight with you. What has become of that fight we were
+going to have, anyway?”
+
+“You can search me,” laughed Linda, throwing out her hands in a graceful
+gesture. “There's not a scrap of fight in my system concerning you, but
+if Oka Sayye were having a fight with you and I were anywhere around,
+you'd have one friend who would help you to handle the Jap.”
+
+Donald looked at Linda thoughtfully.
+
+“By the great hocus-pocus,” he said, “you know, I believe you. If two
+fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I know would
+quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would stand by and help
+a fellow if he needed it.”
+
+“That I surely would,” said Linda; “but don't you say 'most of the girls
+I know' and then make a statement like that concerning girls, because
+you prove that you don't know them at all. A few years ago, I very
+distinctly recall how angry many women were at this line in one of
+Kipling's poems:
+
+    The female of the species is more deadly than the male,
+
+and there was nothing to it save that a great poet was trying to pay
+womanhood everywhere the finest compliment he knew how. He always has
+been fundamental in his process of thought. He gets right back to the
+heart of primal things. When he wrote that line he was not really
+thinking that there was a nasty poison in the heart of a woman or death
+in her hands. What he was thinking was that in the jungle the female
+lion or tiger or jaguar must go and find a particularly secluded cave
+and bear her young and raise them to be quite active kittens before she
+leads them out, because there is danger of the bloodthirsty father
+eating them when they are tiny and helpless. And if perchance a male
+finds the cave of his mate and her tiny young and enters it to do
+mischief, then there is no recorded instance I know of in which the
+female, fighting in defense of her young, has not been 'more deadly than
+the male.' And that is the origin of the much-discussed line concerning
+the female of the species, and it holds good fairly well down the line
+of the wild. It's even true among such tiny things as guinea pigs and
+canary birds. There is a mother element in the heart of every girl.
+Daddy used to say that half the women in the world married the men they
+did because they wanted to mother them. You can't tell what is in a
+woman's heart by looking at her. You must bring her face to face with an
+emergency before you can say what she'll do, but I would be perfectly
+willing to stake my life on this: There is scarcely a girl you know who
+would see you getting the worst of a fight, say with Oka Sayye, or
+someone who meant to kill you or injure you, who would not pick up the
+first weapon she could lay her hands on, whether it was an axe or a
+stick or a stone, and go to your defense, and if she had nothing else to
+fight with, I have heard of women who put up rather a tidy battle with
+their claws. Sounds primitive, doesn't it?”
+
+“It sounds true,” said Donald reflectively. “I see, young lady, where
+one is going to have to measure his words and think before he talks to
+you.”
+
+“Pretty thought!” said Linda lightly. “We'll have a great time if you
+must stop to consider every word before you say it.”
+
+“Well, anyway,” said Donald, “when are we going to have that fight which
+was the purpose of our coming together?”
+
+“Why, we're not ever going to have it,” answered Linda. “I have got
+nothing in this world to fight with you about since you're doing
+your level best to beat Oka Sayye. I have watched your head above the
+remainder of your class for three years and wanted to fight with you on
+that point.”
+
+“Now that's a queer thing,” said Donald, “because I have watched you for
+three years and wanted to fight with you about your drygoods, and now
+since I've known you only such a short while, I don't care two whoops
+what you wear. It's a matter of perfect indifference to me. You can wear
+French heels or baby pumps, or go barefoot. You would still be you.”
+
+ “Is it a truce?” asked Linda.  I
+
+“No, ma'am,” said Donald, “it's not a truce. That implies war and
+we haven't fought. It's not armed neutrality; it's not even watchful
+waiting. It's my friend, Linda Strong. Me for her and her for me, if you
+say so.”
+
+He reached out his hand. Linda laid hers in it, and looking into his
+eyes, she said: “That is a compact. We'll test this friendship business
+and see what there is to it. Now come on; let's run for the canyon.”
+
+It was only a short time until the Bear Cat followed its trail of the
+previous Saturday, and, rushing across the stream, stopped at its former
+resting place, while Linda and Donald sat looking at the sheer-walled
+little room before them.
+
+“I can see,” said Linda, “a stronger tinge in the green. There are more
+flowers in the carpet. There is more melody in the birds' song. We are
+going to have a better time than we had last Saturday. First let's fix
+up our old furnace, because we must have a fire today.”
+
+So they left the car, and under Linda's direction they reconstructed
+the old fireplace at which the girl and her father had cooked when
+botanizing in Multiflores. In a corner secluded from wind, using the
+wall of the canyon for a back wall, big boulders the right distance
+apart on each side, and small stones for chinking, Linda superintended
+the rebuilding of the fireplace.
+
+She unpacked the lunch box, set the table, and when she had everything
+in readiness she covered the table, and taking a package, she carried it
+on a couple of aluminium pie pans to where her fire was burning crisply.
+With a small field axe she chopped a couple of small green branches,
+pointed them to her liking, and peeled them. Then she made a poker from
+one of the saplings they had used to move the rocks, and beat down her
+fire until she had a bright bed of deep coals. When these were arranged
+exactly to her satisfaction, she pulled some sprays of deer weed
+bloom from her bundle and, going down to the creek, made a lather and
+carefully washed her hands, tucking the towel she used in drying them
+through her belt. Then she came back to the fire and, sitting down
+beside it, opened the package and began her operations. On the long,
+slender sticks she strung a piece of tenderloin beef, about three inches
+in circumference and one fourth of an inch in thickness, then half a
+slice of bacon, and then a slice of onion. This she repeated until her
+skewer would bear no more weight. Then she laid it across the rocks
+walling her fire, occasionally turning it while she filled the second
+skewer. Then she brought from the car the bucket of pulp she had taken
+from the barrel cactus, transferred it to a piece of cheesecloth and
+deftly extracted the juice. To this she added the contents of a thermos
+bottle containing a pint of sugar that had been brought to the boiling
+point with a pint of water and poured over some chopped spearmint to
+which had been added the juice of half a dozen lemons and three or four
+oranges. From a small, metal-lined compartment, Linda took a chunk of
+ice and dropped it into this mixture.
+
+She was sitting on the ground, one foot doubled under her, the other
+extended. She had taken off her hat; the wind and the bushes had
+roughened her hair. Exercise had brought deep red to her cheeks and
+her lips. Happiness had brought a mellow glow to her dark eyes. She
+had turned back her sleeves, and her slender hands were fascinatingly
+graceful in their deft handling of everything she touched. They were
+a second edition of the hands with which Alexander Strong had felt out
+defective nerve systems and made delicate muscular adjustments. She was
+wholly absorbed in what she was doing. Sitting on the blanket across
+from her Donald Whiting was wholly absorbed in her and he was thinking.
+He was planning how he could please her, how he could earn her
+friendship. He was admitting to himself that he had very little, if
+anything, to show for hours of time that he had spent in dancing, at
+card games, beach picnics, and races. All these things had been amusing.
+But he had nothing to show for the time he had spent or the money he had
+wasted. Nothing had happened that in any way equipped him for his battle
+with Oka Sayye. Conversely, this girl, whom he had resented, whom he had
+criticized, who had claimed his notice only by her radical difference
+from the other girls, had managed, during the few minutes he had first
+talked with her in the hall, to wound his pride, to spur his ambition,
+to start him on a course that must end in lasting and material benefit
+to him even if he failed in making a higher record of scholarship than
+Oka Sayye. It was very certain that the exercise he was giving his
+brain must be beneficial. He had learned many things that were intensely
+interesting to him and he had not even touched the surface of what he
+could see that she had been taught by her father or had learned through
+experience and personal investigation. She had been coming to the
+mountains and the canyons alone, for four years doing by herself what
+she would have done under her father's supervision had he lived. That
+argued for steadfastness and strength of character. She would not utter
+one word of flattery. She would say nothing she did not mean. Watching
+her intently, Donald Whiting thought of all these things. He thought of
+what she had said about fighting for him, and he wondered if it really
+was true that any girl he knew would fight for him. He hardly believed
+it when he remembered some of his friends, so entirely devoted to
+personal adornment and personal gratification. But Linda had said that
+all women were alike in their hearts. She knew about other things. She
+must know about this. Maybe all women would fight for their young or for
+their men, but he knew of no other girl who could drive a Bear Cat with
+the precision and skill with which Linda drove. He knew no other girl
+who was master of the secrets of the desert and the canyons and the
+mountains. Certainly he knew no other girl who would tug at great
+boulders and build a fireplace and risk burning her fingers and
+scorching her face to prepare a meal for him. So he watched Linda and so
+he thought.
+
+At first he thought she was the finest pal a boy ever had, and then he
+thought how he meant to work to earn and keep her friendship; and then,
+as the fire reddened Linda's cheeks and she made running comments while
+she deftly turned her skewers of brigand beefsteak, food that half the
+Boy Scouts in the country had been eating for four years, there came an
+idea with which he dallied until it grew into a luring vision.
+
+“Linda,” he asked suddenly, “do you know that one of these days you're
+going to be a beautiful woman?”
+
+Linda turned her skewers with intense absorption. At first he almost
+thought she had not heard him, but at last she said quietly: “Do you
+really think that is possible, Donald?”
+
+“You're lovely right now!” answered the boy promptly.
+
+“For goodness' sake, have an eye single to your record for truth and
+veracity,” said Linda. “Doesn't this begin to smell zippy?”
+
+“It certainly does,” said Donald. “It's making me ravenous. But honest,
+Linda, you are a pretty girl.”
+
+“Honest, your foot!” said Linda scornfully. “I am not a pretty girl.
+I am lean and bony and I've got a beak where I should have a nose.
+Speaking of pretty girls, my sister, Eileen, is a pretty girl. She is a
+downright beautiful girl.”
+
+“Yes,” said Donald, “she is, but she can't hold a candle to you. How did
+she look when she was your age?”
+
+“I can't remember Eileen,” said Linda, “when she was not exquisitely
+dressed and thinking more about taking care of her shoes than anything
+else in the world. I can't remember her when she was not curled, and
+even when she was a tiny thing Mother put a dust of powder on her nose.
+She said her skin was so delicate that it could not bear the sun. She
+never could run or play or motor much or do anything, because she
+has always had to be saved for the sole purpose of being exquisitely
+beautiful. Talk about lilies of the field, that's what Eileen is! She
+is an improvement on the original lily of the field--she's a lily of the
+drawing room. Me, now, I'm more of a Joshua tree.”
+
+Donald Whiting laughed, as Linda intended that he should.
+
+A minute afterward she slid the savory food from a skewer upon one of
+the pie pans, tossed back the cover from the little table, stacked
+some bread-and-butter sandwiches beside the meat and handed the pan to
+Donald.
+
+“Fall to,” she said, “and prove that you're a man with an appreciative
+tummy. Father used to be positively ravenous for this stuff. I like it
+myself.”
+
+She slid the food from the second skewer to a pan for herself, settled
+the fire to her satisfaction and they began their meal. Presently she
+filled a cup from the bucket beside her and handed it to Donald. At the
+same time she lifted another for herself.
+
+“Here's to the barrel cactus,” she said. “May the desert grow enough
+of them so that we'll never lack one when we want to have a Saturday
+picnic.”
+
+Laughingly they drank this toast; and the skewers were filled a second
+time. When they could eat no more they packed away the lunch things,
+buried the fire, took the axe and the field glasses, and started on a
+trip of exploration down the canyon. Together they admired delicate
+and exquisite ferns growing around great gray boulders. Donald tasted
+hunters' rock leek, and learned that any he found while on a hunting
+expedition would furnish a splendid substitute for water. Linda told him
+of rare flowers she lacked and what they were like and how he would be
+able to identify what she wanted in case he should ever find any when he
+was out hunting or with his other friends. They peeped into the nesting
+places of canyon wrens and doves and finches, and listened to the
+exquisite courting songs of the birds whose hearts were almost bursting
+with the exuberance of spring and the joy of home making. When they were
+tired out they went back to the dining room and after resting a time,
+they made a supper from the remnants of their dinner. When they were
+seated in the car and Linda's hand was on the steering wheel, Donald
+reached across and covered it with his own.
+
+“Wait a bit,” he said. “Before we leave here I want to ask you a
+question and I want you to make me a promise.”
+
+“All right,” said Linda. “What's your question?”
+
+“What is there,” said Donald, “that I can do that would give you such
+pleasure as you have given me?”
+
+Linda could jest on occasions, but by nature she was a serious person.
+She looked at Donald reflectively.
+
+“Why, I think,” she said at last, “that having a friend, having someone
+who understands and who cares for the things I do, and who likes to go
+to the same places and to do the same things, is the biggest thing that
+has happened to me since I lost my father. I don't see that you are in
+any way in my debt, Donald.”
+
+“All right then,” said the boy, “that brings me to the promise I want
+you to make me. May we always have our Saturdays together like this?”
+
+“Sure!” said Linda, “I would be mightily pleased. I'll have to work
+later at night and scheme, maybe. By good rights Saturday belongs to me
+anyway because I am born Saturday's child.”
+
+“Well, hurrah for Saturday! It always was a grand old day,” said Donald,
+“and since I see what it can do in turning out a girl like you, I've got
+a better opinion of it than ever. We'll call that settled. I'll always
+ask you on Friday at what hour to come, and hereafter Saturday is ours.”
+
+“Ours it is,” said Linda.
+
+Then she put the Bear Cat through the creek and on the road and, driving
+swiftly as she dared, ran to Lilac Valley and up to Peter Morrison's
+location.
+
+She was amazed at the amount of work that had been accomplished. The
+garage was finished. Peter's temporary work desk and his cot were in it.
+A number of his personal belongings were there. The site for his house
+had been selected and the cellar was being excavated.
+
+Linda descended from the Bear Cat and led Donald before Peter.
+
+“Since you're both my friends,” she said, “I want you to know each
+other. This is Donald Whiting, the Senior I told you about, Mr.
+Morrison. You know you said you would help him if you could.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Peter. “I am very glad to know any friend of yours,
+Miss Linda. Come over to my workroom and let's hear about this.”
+
+“Oh, go and talk it over between yourselves,” said Linda. “I am going up
+here to have a private conversation with the spring. I want it to tell
+me confidentially exactly the course it would enjoy running so that when
+your house is finished and I come to lay out your grounds I will know
+exactly how it feels about making a change.”
+
+“Fine!” said Peter. “Take your time and become extremely confidential,
+because the more I look at the location and the more I hear the gay
+chuckling song that that water sings, the more I am in love with your
+plan to run it across the lawn and bring it around the boulder.”
+
+“It would be a downright sin not to have that water in a convenient
+place for your children to play in, Peter,” said Linda.
+
+“Then that's all settled,” said Peter. “Now, Whiting, come this way and
+we'll see whether I can suggest anything that will help you with your
+problem.”
+
+“Whistle when you are ready, Donald,” called Linda as she turned away.
+
+Peter Morrison glanced after her a second, and then he led Donald
+Whiting to a nail keg in the garage and impaled that youngster on
+the mental point of a mental pin and studied him as carefully as any
+scientist ever studied a rare specimen. When finally he let him go, his
+mental comment was: “He's a mighty fine kid. Linda is perfectly safe
+with him.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. Linda's Hearthstone
+
+Early the following week Linda came from school one evening to find a
+load of sand and a heap of curiously marked stones beside the back door.
+
+“Can it possibly be, Katy,” she asked, “that those men are planning to
+begin work on my room so soon? I am scared out of almost seven of my
+five senses. I had no idea they would be ready to begin work until after
+I had my settlement with Eileen or was paid for the books.”
+
+“Don't ye be worried,” said Katy. “There's more in me stocking than me
+leg, and you're as welcome to it as the desert is welcome to rain, an'
+nadin' it 'most as bad.”
+
+“Anyway,” said Linda, “it will surely take them long enough so that I
+can pay by the time they finish.”
+
+But Linda was not figuring that back of the projected improvements
+stood two men, each of whom had an extremely personal reason for greatly
+desiring to please her. Peter Morrison had secured a slab of sandstone.
+He had located a marble cutter to whom he meant to carry it, and was
+spending much thought that he might have been using on an article in
+trying to hit upon exactly the right line or phrase to build in above
+Linda's fire--something that would convey to her in a few words a sense
+of friendship and beauty.
+
+While Peter gazed at the unresponsive gray sandstone and wrote line
+after line which he immediately destroyed, Henry Anderson explored the
+mountain and came in, red faced and perspiring, from miles of climbing
+with a bright stone in each hand, or took the car to bring in small
+heaps too heavy to carry that he had collected near the roads. They were
+two men striving for the favor of the same girl. How Linda would have
+been amused had she understood the situation, or how Eileen would have
+been provoked, neither of the men knew nor did they care.
+
+The workmen came after Linda left and went before her return. Having
+been cautioned to silence, Katy had not told her when work actually
+began; and so it happened that, going to her room one evening, she
+unlocked the door and stepped inside to face the completed fireplace.
+The firebox was not very large but ample. The hearthstone was a
+big sheet of smooth gray sandstone. The sides and top were Henry's
+collection of brilliant boulders, carefully and artistically laid
+in blue mortar, and over the firebox was set Peter's slab of gray
+sandstone. On it were four deeply carved lines. The quaint Old English
+lettering was filled even to the surface with a red mortar, while the
+capitals were done in dull blue. The girl slowly read:
+
+  Voiceless stones, with Flame-tongues Preach     Sermons struck
+from Nature's Lyre; Notes of Love and Trust and Hope Hourly sing in
+Linda's Fire.
+
+In the firebox stood a squat pair of black andirons, showing age and
+usage. A rough eucalyptus log waited across them while the shavings from
+the placing of the mantel and the cutting of the windows were tucked
+beneath it. Linda stood absorbed a minute. She looked at the skylight,
+flooding the room with the light she so needed coming from the right
+angle. She went over to the new window that gave her a view of the
+length of the valley she loved and a most essential draft. When she
+turned back to the fireplace her hands were trembling.
+
+“Now isn't that too lovely of them?” she said softly. “Isn't that
+altogether wonderful? How I wish Daddy were here to sit beside my fire
+and share with me the work I hope to do here.”
+
+In order to come as close to him as possible she did the next best
+thing. She sat down at her table and wrote a long letter to Marian,
+telling her everything she could think of that would interest her.
+Then she re-read with extreme care the letter she had found at the Post
+Office that day in reply to the one she had written Marian purporting to
+come from an admirer. Writing slowly and thinking deeply, she answered
+it. She tried to imagine that she was Peter Morrison and she tried to
+say the things in that letter that she thought Peter would say in the
+circumstances, because she felt sure that Marian would be entertained
+by such things as Peter would say. When she finished, she read it over
+carefully, and then copied it with equal care on the typewriter, which
+she had removed to her workroom.
+
+When she heard Katy's footstep outside her door, she opened it and drew
+her in, slipping the bolt behind her. She led her to the fireplace and
+recited the lines.
+
+“Now ain't they jist the finest gentlemen?” said Katy. “Cut right off
+of a piece of the same cloth as your father. Now some way we must
+get together enough money to get ye a good-sized rug for under your
+worktable, and then ye've got to have two bits of small ones, one for
+your hearthstone and one for your aisel; and then ye're ready, colleen,
+to show what ye can do. I'm so proud of ye when I think of the grand
+secret it's keepin' for ye I am; and less and less are gettin' me
+chances for the salvation of me soul, for every night I'm a-sittin'
+starin' at the magazines ye gave me when I ought to be tellin' me beads
+and makin' me devotions. Ain't it about time the third was comin' in?”
+
+“Any day now,” said Linda in a whisper. “And, Katy, you'll be careful?
+That editor must think that 'Jane Meredith' is full of years and ripe
+experience. I probably wouldn't get ten cents, no not even a for-nothing
+chance, if he knew those articles were written by a Junior.”
+
+“Junior nothing!” scoffed Katy. “There was not a day of his life that
+your pa did not spend hours drillin' ye in things the rest of the
+girls in your school never heard of. 'Tain't no high-school girl that's
+written them articles. It's Alexander Strong speakin' through the medium
+of his own flesh and blood.”
+
+“Why, so it is, Katy!” cried Linda delightedly. “You know, I never
+thought of that. I have been so egoistical I thought I was doing them
+myself.”
+
+“Paid ye anything yet?” queried Katy.
+
+“No,” said Linda, “they haven't. It seems that the amount of interest
+the articles evoke is going to decide what I am to be paid for them, but
+they certainly couldn't take the recipe and the comments and the sketch
+for less than twenty-five or thirty dollars, unless recipes are like
+poetry. Peter said the other day that if a poet did not have some other
+profession to support him, he would starve to death on all he was paid
+for writing the most beautiful things that ever are written in all this
+world. Peter says even an effort to write a poem is a beautiful thing.”
+
+“Well, maybe that used to be the truth,” said Katy as she started toward
+the door, “but I have been reading some things labeled 'poetry' in the
+magazines of late, and if the holy father knows what they mean, he's
+even bigger than ever I took him to be.”
+
+“Katy,” said Linda, “we are dreadful back numbers. We are letting this
+world progress and roll right on past us without a struggle. We haven't
+either one been to a psychoanalyst to find out the color of our auras.”
+
+“Now God forbid,” said Katy. “I ain't going to have one of them things
+around me. The colors I'm wearin' satisfy me entoirely.”
+
+“And mine are going to satisfy me very shortly, now,” laughed Linda,
+“because tomorrow is my big day with Eileen. Next time we have a minute
+together, old dear, I'll have started my bank account.”
+
+“Right ye are,” said Katy, “jist exactly right. You're getting such
+a great girl it's the proper thing ye should be suitably dressed, and
+don't ye be too modest.”
+
+“The unfortunate thing about that, Katy, is that l intimated the other
+day that I would be content with less than half, since she is older and
+she should have her chance first.”
+
+“Now ain't that jist like ye?” said Katy. “I might have known ye would
+be doing that very thing.”
+
+“After I have gone over the accounts,” said Linda, “I'll know better
+what to demand. Now fly to your cooking, Katy, and let me sit down at
+this table and see if I can dig out a few dollars of honest coin; but
+I'm going to have hard work to keep my eyes on the paper with that
+fireplace before me. Isn't that red and blue lettering the prettiest
+thing, Katy, and do you notice that tiny 'P. M.' cut down in the lower
+left-hand corner nearly out of sight? That, Katy, stands for 'Peter
+Morrison,' and one of these days Peter is going to be a large figure on
+the landscape. The next Post he has an article in I'll buy for you.”
+
+“It never does,” said Katy, “to be makin' up your mind in this world so
+hard and fast that ye can't change it. In the days before John Gilman
+got bewitched out of his senses I did think, barrin' your father, that
+he was the finest man the Lord ever made; but I ain't thought so much of
+him of late as I did before.”
+
+“Same holds good for me,” said Linda.
+
+“I've studied this Peter,” continued Katy, “like your pa used to study
+things under his microscope. He's the most come-at-able man. He's got
+such a kind of a questionin' look on his face, and there's a bit of a
+stoop to his shoulders like they had been whittled out for carryin'
+a load, and there's a kind of a whimsy quiverin' around his lips that
+makes me heart stand still every time he speaks to me, because I can't
+be certain whether he is going to make me laugh or going to make me cry,
+and when what he's sayin' does come with that little slow drawl, I can't
+be just sure whether he's meanin' it or whether he's jist pokin' fun
+at me. He said the quarest thing to me the other day when he was here
+fiddlin' over the makin' of this fireplace. He was standin' out beside
+your desert garden and I come aven with him and I says to him: 'Them's
+the rare plants Miss Linda and her pa have been goin' to the deserts and
+the canyons, as long as he lived, to fetch in; and then Miss Linda
+went alone, and now the son of Judge Whiting, the biggest lawyer in Los
+Angeles, has begun goin' with her. Ain't it the brightest, prettiest
+place?' I says to him. And he stood there lookin', and he says to me:
+'No, Katy, that is a graveyard.' Now what in the name of raison was the
+man meanin' by that?”
+
+Linda stared at the hearth motto reflectively.
+
+“A graveyard!” she repeated. “Well, if anything could come farther from
+a graveyard than that spot, I don't know how it would do it. I haven't
+the remotest notion what he meant. Why didn't you ask him?”
+
+“Well, the truth is,” said Katy, “that I proide myself on being able to
+kape me mouth shut when I should.”
+
+“I'll leave to think over it,” said Linda. “At present I have no
+more idea than you in what respect my desert garden could resemble a
+graveyard. Oh! yes, there's one thing I wanted to ask you, Katy. Has
+Eileen been around while this room was being altered?”
+
+“She came in yesterday,” answered Katy, “when the hammerin' and sawin'
+was goin' full blast.”
+
+“What I wanted to find out'” said Linda, “was whether she had been here
+and seen this room or not, because if she hasn't and she wants to see
+it, now is her time. After I get things going here and these walls are
+covered with drying sketches this room is going to be strictly private.
+You see that you keep your key where nobody gets hold of it.”
+
+“It's on a string round me neck this blessed minute,” said Katy. “I
+didn't see her come up here, but ye could be safe in bettin' anything
+ye've got that she came.”
+
+“Yes, I imagine she did,” said Linda. “She would be sufficiently curious
+that she would come to learn how much I have spent if she had no other
+interest in me.”
+
+She looked at the fireplace reflectively.
+
+“I wonder,” she said, “what Eileen thought of that and I wonder if she
+noticed that little 'P. M.' tucked away down there in the corner.”
+
+“Sure she did,” said Katy. “She has got eyes like a cat. She can see
+more things in a shorter time than anybody I ever knew.” So that evening
+at dinner Linda told Eileen that the improvements she had made for her
+convenience in the billiard room were finished, and asked her if she
+would like to see them.
+
+“I can't imagine what you want to stick yourself off up there alone
+for,” said Eileen. “I don't believe I am sufficiently interested in
+garret skylights and windows to climb up to look at them. What everybody
+in the neighborhood can see is that you have absolutely ruined the looks
+of the back part of the house.”
+
+“Good gracious!” said Linda. “Have I? You know I never thought of that.”
+
+“Of course! But all you've got to do is go on the cast lawn and take
+a look at that side and the back end of the house to see what you have
+done,” said Eileen. “Undoubtedly you've cut the selling price of the
+house one thousand, at least. But it's exactly like you not to have
+thought of what chopping up the roof and the end of the house as
+you have done, would make it look like. You have got one of those
+single-track minds, Linda, that can think of only one thing at a time,
+and you never do think, when you start anything, of what the end is
+going to be.”
+
+“Very likely there's a large amount of truth in that,” said Linda
+soberly. “Perhaps I do get an idea and pursue it to the exclusion of
+everything else. It's an inheritance from Daddy, this concentrating
+with all my might on one thing at a time. But I am very sorry if I have
+disfigured the house.”
+
+“What I want to know,” said Eileen, “is how in this world, at present
+wages and cost of material, you're expecting to pay men for the work you
+have had done.”
+
+“I can talk more understandingly about that,” said Linda quietly, “day
+after tomorrow. I'll get home from school tomorrow as early as I can,
+and then we'll figure out our financial situation exactly.”
+
+Eileen made no reply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. Producing the Evidence
+
+When Linda hurried home the next evening, her first word to Katy was to
+ask if Eileen were there.
+
+“No, she isn't here,” said Katy, “and she's not going to be.”
+
+“Not going to be!” cried Linda, her face paling perceptibly.
+
+“She went downtown this morning and she telephoned me about three
+sayin' she had an invoitation to go with a motor party to Pasadena this
+afternoon, an' she wasn't knowin' whether she could get home the night
+or not.”
+
+“I don't like it,” said Linda. “I don't like it at all.”
+
+She liked it still less when Eileen came home for a change of clothing
+the following day, and again went to spend the night with a friend,
+without leaving any word whatever.
+
+“I don't understand this,” said Linda, white lipped and tense. “She does
+not want to see me. She does not intend to talk business with me if she
+can possibly help it. She is treating me as if I were a four-year-old
+instead of a woman with as much brain as she has. If she appears while
+I am gone tomorrow and starts away again, you tell her Come to think of
+it, you needn't tell her anything; I'll give you a note for her.”
+
+So Linda sat down and wrote:
+
+DEAR EILEEN:
+
+It won't be necessary to remind you of our agreement night before last
+to settle on an allowance from Father's estate for me. Of course I
+realize that you are purposely avoiding seeing me, for what reason I
+can't imagine; but I give you warning, that if you have been in this
+house and have read this note, and are not here with your figures ready
+to meet me when I get home tomorrow night, I'll take matters into my own
+hands, and do exactly what I think best without the slightest reference
+to what you think about it. If you don't want something done that you
+will dislike, even more than you dislike seeing me, you had better heed
+this warning.
+
+LINDA.
+
+She read it over slowly: “My, that sounds melodramatic!” she commented.
+“It's even got a threat in it, and it's a funny thing to threaten my own
+sister. I don't think that it's a situation that occurs very frequently,
+but for that matter I sincerely hope that Eileen isn't the kind of
+sister that occurs frequently.”
+
+Linda went up to her room and tried to settle herself to work, but found
+that it was impossible to fix her attention on what she was doing. Her
+mind jumped from one thing to another in a way that totally prohibited
+effective work of any kind. A sudden resolve came into her heart. She
+would not wait any longer. She would know for herself just how she was
+situated financially. She wrote a note to the editor of Everybody's
+Home, asking him if it would be convenient to let her know what
+reception her work was having with his subscribers, whether he desired
+her to continue the department in his magazines, and if so, what was
+the best offer he could make her for the recipes, the natural history
+comments accompanying them, and the sketches. Then she went down to the
+telephone book and looked up the location of the Consolidated Bank. She
+decided that she would stop there on her way from school the next day
+and ask to be shown the Strong accounts.
+
+While she was meditating these heroic measures the bell rang and Katy
+admitted John Gilman. Strangely enough, he was asking for Linda, not for
+Eileen. At the first glimpse of him Linda knew that something was wrong;
+so without any prelude she said abruptly: “What's the matter, John?
+Don't you know where I Eileen is either?”
+
+“Approximately,” he answered. “She has 'phoned me two or three times,
+but I haven't seen her for three days. Do you know where she is or
+exactly why she is keeping away from home as she is?”
+
+“Yes,” said Linda, “I do. I told you the other day the time had come
+when I was going to demand a settlement of Father's estate and a fixed
+income. That time came three days ago and I have not seen Eileen since.”
+
+They entered the living room. As Linda passed the table, propped against
+a candlestick on it, she noticed a note addressed to herself.
+
+“Oh, here will be an explanation,” she said. “Here is a note for me. Sit
+down a minute till I read it.”
+
+She seated herself on the arm of a chair, tore open the note, and
+instantly began reading aloud.
+
+“Dear little sister--”
+
+“Pathetic,” interpolated Linda, “in consideration of the fact that I am
+about twice as big as she is. However, we'll let that go, and focus on
+the enclosure.” She waved a slender slip of paper at Gilman. “I never
+was possessed of an article like this before in all my tender young
+life, but it seems to me that it's a cheque, and I can't tell you quite
+how deeply it amuses me. But to return to business, at the present
+instant I am:
+
+DEAR LITTLE SISTER:
+
+It seems that all the friends I have are particularly insistent on
+seeing me all at once and all in a rush. I don't think I ever had quite
+so many invitations at one time in my life before, and the next two or
+three days seem to be going to be equally as full. But I took time to
+run into the bank and go over things carefully. I find that after the
+payment of taxes and insurance and all the household expenses, that by
+wearing old clothes I have and making them over I can afford to turn
+over at least seventy-five dollars a month to you for your clothing and
+personal expenses. As I don't know exactly when I can get home, I am
+enclosing a cheque which is considerably larger than I had supposed I
+could make it, and I can only do this by skimping myself; but of course
+you are getting such a big girl and beginning to attract attention, so
+it is only right that you should have the very best that I can afford to
+do for you. I am not taking the bill from The Mode into consideration. I
+paid that with last month's expenses.
+
+With love,
+
+EILEEN.
+
+Linda held the letter in one hand, the cheque in the other, and stared
+questioningly at John Gilman.
+
+“What do you think of that?” she inquired tersely.
+
+“It seems to me,” said Gilman, “that a more pertinent question would be,
+what do you think of it?”
+
+“Rot!” said Linda tersely. “If I were a stenographer in your office I
+would think that I was making a fairly good start; but I happen to be
+the daughter of Alexander Strong living in my own home with my
+only sister, who can afford to flit like the flittingest of social
+butterflies from one party to another as well dressed as, and better
+dressed than, the Great General Average. You have known us, John, ever
+since Eileen sat in the sun to dry her handmade curls, while I was
+leaving a piece of my dress on every busk in Multiflores Canyon. Right
+here and now I am going to show you something!”
+
+Linda started upstairs, so John Gilman followed her. She went to the
+door of Eileen's suite and opened it.
+
+“Now then,” she said, “take a look at what Eileen feels she can afford
+for herself. You will observe she has complete and exquisite furnishings
+and all sorts of feminine accessories on her dressing table. You will
+observe that she has fine rugs in her dressing room and bathroom. Let me
+call your attention to the fact that all these drawers are filled with
+expensive comforts and conveniences.”
+
+Angrily Linda began to open drawers filled with fancy feminine apparel,
+daintily and neatly folded, everything in perfect order: gloves, hose,
+handkerchiefs, ribbons, laces, all in separate compartments She
+pointed to the high chiffonier, the top decorated with candlesticks and
+silver-framed pictures. Here the drawers revealed heaps of embroidered
+underclothing and silken garments. Then she walked to the closet and
+threw the door wide.
+
+She pushed hangers on their rods, sliding before the perplexed and
+bewildered man dress after dress of lace and georgette, walking suits of
+cloth, street dresses of silk, and pretty afternoon gowns, heavy coats,
+light coats, a beautiful evening coat. Linda took this down and held it
+in front of John Gilman.
+
+“I see things marked in store windows,” she said. “Eileen paid not a
+penny less than three hundred for this one coat. Look at the rows of
+shoes, and pumps, and slippers, and what that box is or I don't know.”
+
+Linda slid to the light a box screened by the hanging dresses, and
+with the toe of her shoe lifted the lid, disclosing a complete smoking
+outfit--case after case of cigarettes. Linda dropped the lid and shoved
+the box back. She stood silent a second, then she looked at John Gilman.
+
+“That is the way things go in this world,” she said quietly. “Whenever
+you lose your temper, you always do something you didn't intend to do
+when you started. I didn't know that, and I wouldn't have shown it to
+you purposely if I had known it; but it doesn't alter the fact that you
+should know it. If you did know it no harm's done but if you didn't know
+it, you shouldn't be allowed to marry Eileen without knowing as much
+about her as you did about Marian, and there was nothing about Marian
+that you didn't know. I am sorry for that, but since I have started this
+I am going through with it. Now give me just one minute more.”
+
+Then she went down the hall, threw open the door to her room, and
+walking in said: “You have seen Eileen's surroundings; now take a look
+at mine. There's my bed; there's my dresser and toilet articles; and
+this is my wardrobe.”
+
+She opened the closet door and exhibited a pair of overalls in which she
+watered her desert garden. Next ranged her khaki breeches and felt hat.
+Then hung the old serge school dress, beside it the extra skirt and
+orange blouse. The stack of underclothing on the shelves was pitifully
+small, visibly dilapidated. Two or three outgrown gingham dresses hung
+forlornly on the opposite wall. Linda stood tall and straight before
+John Gilman.
+
+“What I have on and one other waist constitute my wardrobe,” she said,
+“and I told Eileen where to get this dress and suggested it before I got
+it.”
+
+Gilman looked at her in a dazed fashion.
+
+“I don't understand,” he said slowly. “If that isn't the dress I saw
+Eileen send up for herself, I'm badly mistaken. It was the Saturday we
+went to Riverside. It surely is the very dress.”
+
+Linda laughed bleakly.
+
+“That may be,” she said. “The one time she ever has any respect for me
+is in a question of taste. She will agree that I know when colors are
+right and a thing is artistic. Now then, John, you are the administrator
+of my father's estate; you have seen what you have seen. What are you
+going to do about it?”
+
+“Linda,” he said quietly, “what my heart might prompt me to do in
+consideration of the fact that I am engaged to marry Eileen, and what my
+legal sense tells me I must do as executor of your father's wishes, are
+different propositions. I am going to do exactly what you tell me to.
+What you have shown me, and what I'd have realized, if I had stopped to
+think, is neither right nor just.”
+
+Then Linda took her tun at deep thought.
+
+“John,” she said at last, “I am feeling depressed over what I have just
+done. I am not sure that in losing my temper and bringing you up here I
+have played the game fairly. You don't need to do anything. I'll manage
+my affairs with Eileen myself. But I'll tell you before you go, that you
+needn't practice any subterfuges. When she reaches the point where she
+is ready to come home, I'll tell her that you were here, and what you
+have seen. That is the best I can do toward squaring myself with my own
+conscience.”
+
+Slowly they walked down the hall together. At the head of the stairs
+Linda took the cheque that she carried and tore it into bits. Stepping
+across the hall, she let the little heap slowly flutter to the rug in
+front of Eileen's door. Then she went back to her room and left John
+Gilman to his own reflections.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. A Rock and a Flame
+
+The first time Linda entered the kitchen after her interview with
+Gilman, Katy asked in deep concern, “Now what ye been doing, lambie?”
+
+“Doing the baby act, Katy,” confessed Linda. “Disgracing myself. Losing
+my temper. I wish I could bring myself to the place where I would think
+half a dozen times before I do a thing once.”
+
+“Now look here,” said Katy, beginning to bristle, “ain't it the truth
+that ye have thought for four years before ye did this thing once?”
+
+“Quite so,” said Linda. “But since I am the daughter of the finest
+gentleman I ever knew, I should not do hasty, regrettable things. On the
+living-room table I found a note sweeter than honey, and it contained a
+cheque for me that wouldn't pay Eileen's bills for lunches, candy,
+and theaters for a month; so in undue heat I reduced it to bits and
+decorated the rug before her door. But before that, Katy, I led my
+guardian into the room, and showed him everything. I meant to tell him
+that, since he had neglected me for four years, he could see that I had
+justice now, but when I'd personally conducted him from Eileen's room
+to mine, and when I took a good look at him there was something on his
+face, Katy, that I couldn't endure. So I told him to leave it to me;
+that I would tell Eileen myself what I had done, and so I will. But I am
+sorry I did it, Katy; I am awfully sorry. You always told me to keep
+my temper and I lost it completely. From now on I certainly will try to
+behave myself more like a woman than a spoiled child. Now give me a dust
+cloth and brushes. I am almost through with my job in the library and
+I want to finish, because I shall be forced to use the money from the
+books to pay for my skylight and fireplace.”
+
+Linda went to the library and began work, efficiently, carefully, yet
+with a precise rapidity habitual to her. Down the long line of heavy
+technical books, she came to the end of the shelf. Three books from
+the end she noticed a difference in the wall behind the shelf. Hastily
+removing the other two volumes, she disclosed a small locked door having
+a scrap of paper protruding from the edge which she pulled out and upon
+which she read:
+
+In the event of my passing, should anyone move these books and find this
+door, these lines are to inform him that it is to remain untouched. The
+key to it is in my safety-deposit vault at the Consolidated Bank. The
+Bank will open the door and attend to the contents of the box at the
+proper time.
+
+Linda fixed the paper back exactly as she had found it. She stood
+looking at the door a long time, then she carefully wiped it, the wall
+around it, and the shelf. Going to another shelf, she picked out the
+books that had been written by her father and, beginning at the end of
+the shelf, she ranged them in a row until they completely covered the
+opening. Then she finished filling the shelf with other books that she
+meant to keep, but her brain was working, milling over and over the
+question of what that little compartment contained and when it was to
+be opened and whether John Gilman knew about it, and whether the
+Consolidated Bank would remember the day specified, and whether it would
+mean anything important to her.
+
+She carried the dusters back to Katy, and going to her room,
+concentrated resolutely upon her work; but she Was unable to do anything
+constructive. Her routine lessons she could prepare, but she could not
+even sketch a wild rose accurately. Finally she laid down her pencil,
+washed her brushes, put away her material, and locking her door, slipped
+the key into her pocket. Going down to the garage she climbed into the
+Bear Cat and headed straight for Peter Morrison. She drove into his
+location and blew the horn. Peter stepped from the garage, and seeing
+her, started in her direction. Linda sprang down and hurried toward
+him. He looked at her intently as she approached and formed his own
+conclusions.
+
+“Sort of restless,” said Linda. “Couldn't evolve a single new idea with
+which to enliven the gay annals of English literature and Greek history.
+A personal history seems infinitely more insistent and unusual. I ran
+away from my lessons, and my work, and came to you, Peter, because I had
+a feeling that there was something you could give me, and I thought you
+would.”
+
+Peter smiled a slow curious smile.
+
+“I like your line of thought, Linda,” he said quietly. “It greatly
+appeals to me. Any time an ancient and patriarchal literary man named
+Peter Morrison can serve as a rock upon which a young thing can rest,
+why he'll be glad to be that rock.”
+
+“What were you doing?” asked Linda abruptly.
+
+“Come and see,” said Peter.
+
+He led the way to the garage. His worktable and the cement floor around
+it were littered with sheets of closely typed paper.
+
+“I'll have to assemble them first,” said Peter, getting down on his
+knees and beginning to pick them up.
+
+Linda sat on a packing case and watched him. Already she felt comforted.
+Of course Peter was a rock, of course anyone could trust him, and of
+course if the tempest of life beat upon her too strongly she could
+always fly to Peter.
+
+“May I?” she inquired, stretching her hand in the direction of a sheet.
+
+“Sure,” said Peter.
+
+“What is it?” inquired Linda lightly. “The bridge or the road or the
+playroom?”
+
+“Gad!” he said slowly. “Don't talk about me being a rock! Rocks are
+stolid, stodgy unresponsive things. I thought I was struggling with
+one of the biggest political problems of the day from an economic and
+psychological standpoint. If I'd had sense enough to realize that it
+was a bridge I was building, I might have done the thing with some
+imagination and subtlety. If you want a rock and you say I am a rock, a
+rock I'll be, Linda. But I know what you are, and what you will be to me
+when we really become the kind of friends we are destined to be.”
+
+“I wonder now,” said Linda, “if you are going to say that I could be any
+such lovely thing on the landscape as a bridge.”
+
+“No,” said Peter slowly, “nothing so prosaic. Bridges are common in
+this world. You are going to be something uncommon. History records
+the experiences of but one man who has seen a flame in the open. I am a
+second Moses and you are going to be my burning bush. I intended to read
+this article to you.”
+
+Peter massed the sheets, straightened them on the desk, and deliberately
+ripped them across several times. Linda sprang to her feet and stretched
+out her hands.
+
+“Why, Peter!” she cried in a shocked voice. “That is perfectly
+inexcusable. There are hours and hours of work on that, and I have not a
+doubt but that it was good work.”
+
+“Simple case of mechanism,” said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller
+size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his
+wastebasket. “A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clockwork. I have
+got the idea now. I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way
+I look I can see a golden-flame tongue of inspiration burning. I'll
+rewrite that thing and animate it. Take me for a ride, Linda.”
+
+Linda rose and walked to the Bear Cat. Peter climbed in and sat beside
+her. Linda laid her hands on the steering wheel and started the car. She
+ran it down to the highway and chose a level road leading straight
+down the valley through cultivated country. In all the world there was
+nothing to equal the panorama that she spread before Peter that evening.
+She drove the Bear Cat past orchards, hundreds of acres of orchards
+of waxen green leaves and waxen white bloom of orange, grapefruit, and
+lemon. She took him where seas of pink outlined peach orchards, and
+other seas the more delicate tint of the apricots. She glided down
+avenues lined with palm and eucalyptus, pepper and olive, and through
+unbroken rows, extending for miles, of roses, long stretches of white,
+again a stretch of pink, then salmon, yellow, and red. Nowhere in all
+the world are there to be found so many acres of orchard bloom and
+so many miles of tree-lined, rose-decorated roadway as in southern
+California. She sent the little car through the evening until she felt
+that it was time to go home, and when at last she stopped where they had
+started, she realized that neither she nor Peter had spoken one word. As
+he stepped from the car she leaned toward him and reached out her hand.
+
+“Thank you for the fireplace, Peter,” she said.
+
+Peter took the hand she extended and held it one minute in both his own.
+Then very gently he straightened it out in the palm of one of his hands
+and with the other hand turned back the fingers and laid his lips to the
+heart of it.
+
+“Thank you, Linda, for the flame,” he said, and turning abruptly, he
+went toward his workroom.
+
+Stopping for a bite to eat in the kitchen, Linda went back to her room.
+She sat down at the table and picking up her pencil, began to work, and
+found that she could work. Every stroke came true and strong. Every idea
+seemed original and unusual. Quite as late as a light ever had shone in
+her window, it shone that night, the last thing she did being to
+write another anonymous letter to Marian, and when she reread it Linda
+realized that it was an appealing letter. She thought it certainly would
+comfort Marian and surely would make her feel that someone worth while
+was interested in her and in her work. She loved some of the whimsical
+little touches she had put into it, and she wondered if she had made
+it so much like Peter Morrison that it would be suggestive of him
+to Marian. She knew that she had no right to do that and had no such
+intention. She merely wanted a model to copy from and Peter seemed the
+most appealing model at hand.
+
+After school the next day Linda reported that she had finished going
+through the books and was ready to have them taken. Then, after a few
+minutes of deep thought, she made her way to the Consolidated Bank. At
+the window of the paying teller she explained that she wished to see
+the person connected with the bank who had charge of the safety-deposit
+boxes and who looked after the accounts pertaining to the estate of
+Alexander Strong. The teller recognized the name. He immediately became
+deferential.
+
+“I'll take you to the office of the president,” he said. “He and Doctor
+Strong were very warm friends. You can explain to him what it is you
+want to know.”
+
+Before she realized what was happening, Linda found herself in an office
+that was all mahogany and marble. At a huge desk stacked with papers sat
+a man, considerably older than her father. Linda remembered to have seen
+him frequently in their home, in her father's car, and she recalled one
+fishing expedition to the Tulare Lake region where he had been a member
+of her father's party.
+
+“Of course you have forgotten me, Mr. Worthington,” she said as she
+approached his desk. “I have grown such a tall person during the past
+four years.”
+
+The white-haired financier rose and stretched out his hand.
+
+“You exact replica of Alexander Strong,” he said laughingly, “I couldn't
+forget you any more than I could forget your father. That fine fishing
+trip where you proved such a grand little scout is bright in my memory
+as one of my happiest vacations. Sit down and tell me what I can do for
+you.”
+
+Linda sat down and told him that she was dissatisfied with the manner in
+which her father's estate was being administered.
+
+He listened very carefully to all she had to say, then he pressed a
+button and gave a few words of instruction to the clerk who answered
+it. When several ledgers and account books were laid before him,
+with practiced hand he turned to what he wanted. The records were not
+complicated. They covered a period of four years. They showed exactly
+what monies had been paid into the bank for the estate. They showed what
+royalties had been paid on the books. Linda sat beside him and watched
+his pencil running up and down columns, setting down a list of items,
+and making everything plain. Paid cheques for household expenses I and
+drygoods bills were all recorded and deducted. With narrow, alert eyes,
+Linda was watching, and her brain was keenly alive. As she realized the
+discrepancy between the annual revenue from the estate and the totaling
+of the expenses, she had an inspiration. Something she never before had
+thought of occurred to her. She looked the banker in the eye and said
+very quietly: “And now, since she is my sister and I am going to be of
+age very shortly and these things must all be gone into and opened up,
+would it be out of place for me to ask you this afternoon to let me have
+a glimpse at the private account of Miss Eileen Strong?”
+
+The banker drew a deep breath and looked at Linda keenly.
+
+“That would not be customary,” he said slowly.
+
+“No?” said Linda. “But since Father and Mother went out at the same time
+and there was no will and the property would be legally divided equally
+between us upon my coming of age, would my sister be entitled to a
+private account?”
+
+“Had she any sources of obtaining money outside the estate?”
+
+“No,” said Linda. “At least none that I know of. Mother had I some
+relatives in San Francisco who were very wealthy people, but they never
+came to see us and we never went there. I know nothing about them. I
+never had any money from them and I am quite sure Eileen never had.”
+
+Linda sat very quietly a minute and then she looked at the banker.
+
+“Mr. Worthington,” she said, “the situation is slightly peculiar. My
+guardian, John Gilman, is engaged to marry my sister Eileen. She is a
+beautiful girl, as you no doubt recall, and he is very much in love with
+her. Undoubtedly she has been able, at least recently, to manage affairs
+very much in her own way. She is more than four years my senior, and has
+always had charge of the household accounts and the handling of the bank
+accounts. Since there is such a wide discrepancy between the returns
+from the property and the expenses that these books show, I am forced to
+the conclusion that there must be upon your books, or the books of some
+other bank in the city, a private account in Eileen's name or in the
+name of the Strong estate.”
+
+“That I can very easily ascertain,” said Mr. Worthington, reaching again
+toward the button on his desk. A few minutes later the report came that
+there was a private account in the name of Miss Eileen Strong. Again
+Linda was deeply thoughtful.
+
+“Is there anything I can do,” she inquired, “to prevent that account
+from being changed or drawn out previous to my coming of age?”
+
+Then Mr. Worthington grew thoughtful.
+
+“Yes,” he said at last. “If you are dissatisfied, if you feel that you
+have reason to believe that money rightfully belonging to you is being
+diverted to other channels, you have the right to issue an injunction
+against the bank, ordering it not to pay out any further money on
+any account nor to honor any cheques drawn by Miss Strong until the
+settlement of the estate. Ask your guardian to execute and deliver such
+an injunction, or merely ask him, as your guardian and the administrator
+of the estate, to give the bank a written order to that effect.”
+
+“But because he is engaged to Eileen, I told him I would not bring him
+into this matter,” said Linda. “I told him that I would do what I wanted
+done, myself.”
+
+“Well, how long is it until this coming birthday of yours?” inquired Mr.
+Worthington.
+
+“Less than two weeks,” answered Linda.
+
+For a time the financier sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda.
+It was a keen, searching look. It went to the depths of her eyes; it
+included her face and hair; it included the folds of her dress, the cut
+of her shoe, and rested attentively on the slender hands lying quietly
+in her lap.
+
+“I see the circumstances very clearly,” he said. “I sympathize with your
+position. Having known your father and being well acquainted with your
+guardian, would you be satisfied if I should take the responsibility of
+issuing to the clerks an order not to allow anything to be drawn from
+the private account until the settlement of the estate?”
+
+“Perfectly satisfied,” said Linda.
+
+“It might be,” said Mr. Worthington, “managing matters i that way, that
+no one outside of ourselves need ever know of il Should your sister not
+draw on the private account in the mean time, she would be free to draw
+household cheques on the monthly income and if in the settlement of the
+estate she turns in this private account or accounts, she need never
+know of the restriction concerning this fund.”
+
+“Thank you very much,” said Linda. “That will fix everything finely.”
+
+On her way to the street car, Linda's brain whirled.
+
+“It's not conceivable,” she said, “that Eileen should be enriching
+herself at my expense. I can't imagine her being dishonest in money
+affairs, and yet I can recall scarcely a circumstance in life in which
+Eileen has ever hesitated to be dishonest when a lie served her purpose
+better than the truth. Anyway, matters are safe now.”
+
+The next day the books were taken and a cheque for their value was
+waiting for Linda when she reached home. She cashed this cheque and
+went straight to Peter Morrison for his estimate of the expenses for the
+skylight and fireplace. When she asked for the bill Peter hesitated.
+
+“You wouldn't accept this little addition to your study as a gift from
+Henry and me?” he asked lightly. “It would be a great pleasure to us if
+you would.”
+
+“I could accept stones that Henry Anderson had gathered from the
+mountains and canyons, and I could accept a verse carved on stone, and
+be delighted with the gift; but I couldn't accept hours of day labor
+at the present price of labor, so you will have to give me the bill,
+Peter.”
+
+Peter did not have the bill, but he had memoranda, and when Linda paid
+him she reflected that the current talk concerning the inflated price of
+labor was greatly exaggerated.
+
+For two evenings as Linda returned from school and went to her room she
+glanced down the hall and smiled at the decoration remaining on Eileen's
+rug. The third evening it was gone, so that she knew Eileen was either
+in her room or had been there. She did not meet her sister until
+dinnertime. She was prepared to watch Eileen, to study her closely. She
+was not prepared to admire her, but in her heart she almost did that
+very thing. Eileen had practiced subterfuges so long, she was so
+accomplished, that it would have taken an expert to distinguish reality
+from subterfuge. She entered the dining room humming a gay tune. She was
+carefully dressed and appealingly beautiful. She blew a kiss to Linda
+and waved gaily to Katy.
+
+“I was rather afraid,” she said lightly, “that I might find you two in
+mourning when I got back. I never stayed so long before, did I? Seemed
+as if every friend I had made special demand on my time all at once.
+Hope you haven't been dull without me.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Linda quietly. “Being away at school all day, of course
+I wouldn't know whether you were at home or not, and I have grown so
+accustomed to spending my evenings alone that I don't rely on you for
+entertainment at any time.”
+
+“In other words,” said Eileen, “it doesn't make any difference to you
+where I am.”
+
+“Not so far as enjoying your company is concerned,” said Linda.
+“Otherwise, of course it makes a difference. I hope you had a happy
+time.”
+
+“Oh, I always have a happy time,” answered Eileen lightly. “I certainly
+have the best friends.”
+
+“That's your good fortune,” answered Linda.
+
+At the close of the meal Linda sat waiting. Eileen gave Katy
+instructions to have things ready for a midnight lunch for her and John
+Gilman and then, humming her tune again, she left the dining room and
+went upstairs. Linda stood looking after her.
+
+ “Now or never,” she said at last.  “I have no business to let
+her meet John until I have recovered my self-respect. But the Lord help
+me to do the thing decently!”
+
+So she followed Eileen up the stairway. She tapped at the door, and
+without waiting to hear whether she was invited or not, opened it and
+stepped inside. Eileen was sitting before the window, a big box of candy
+beside her, a magazine in her fingers.
+
+Evidently she intended to keep her temper in case the coming interview
+threatened to become painful.
+
+“I was half expecting you,” she said, “you silly hothead. I found the
+cheque I wrote you when I got home this afternoon. That was a foolish
+thing to do. Why did you tear it up? If it were too large or if it were
+not enough why didn't you use it and ask for another? Because I had
+to be away that was merely to leave you something to go on until I got
+back.”
+
+Then Linda did the most disconcerting thing possible. In her effort at
+self-control she went too far. She merely folded her hands in her lap
+and sat looking straight at Eileen without saying one word. It did not
+show much on the surface, but Eileen really had a conscience, she really
+had a soul; Linda's eyes, resting rather speculatively on her, were
+honest eyes, and Eileen knew what she knew. She flushed and fidgeted,
+and at last she broke out impatiently: “Oh, for goodness' sake, Linda,
+don't play 'Patience-on-a-monument.' Speak up and say what it is that
+you want. If that cheque was not big enough, what will satisfy you?”
+
+“Come to think of it,” said Linda quietly, “I can get along with what I
+have for the short time until the legal settlement of our interests is
+due. You needn't bother any more about a cheque.”
+
+Eileen was surprised and her face showed it; and she was also relieved.
+That too her face showed.
+
+“I always knew,” she said lightly, “that I had a little sister with
+a remarkably level head and good common sense. I am glad that you
+recognize the awful inflation of prices during the war period, and how I
+have had to skimp and scheme and save in order to make ends meet and to
+keep us going on Papa's meager income.”
+
+All Linda's good resolutions vanished. She was under strong nervous
+tension. It irritated her to have Eileen constantly referring to their
+monetary affairs as if they were practically paupers, as if their
+father's life had been a financial failure, as if he had not been able
+to realize from achievements recognized around the world a comfortable
+living for two women.
+
+“Oh, good Lord!” she said shortly. “Bluff the rest of the world like
+a professional, Eileen, but why try it with me? You're right about my
+having common sense. I'll admit that I am using it now. I will be of
+age in a few days, and then we'll take John Gilman and go to the
+Consolidated Bank, and if it suits your convenience to be absent for
+four or five days at that period, I'll take John Gilman and we'll go
+together.”
+
+Eileen was amazed. The receding color in her cheeks left the rouge on
+them a ghastly, garish thing.
+
+“Well, I won't do anything of the sort,” she said hotly, “and neither
+will John Gilman.”
+
+“Unfortunately for you,” answered Linda, “John Gilman is my guardian,
+not yours. He'll be forced to do what the law says he must, and what
+common decency tells him he must, no matter what his personal feelings
+are; and I might as well tell you that your absence has done you no
+good. You'd far better have come home, as you agreed to, and gone over
+the books and made me a decent allowance, because in your absence John
+came here to ask me where you were, and I know that he was anxious.”
+
+“He came here!” cried Eileen.
+
+“Why, yes,” said Linda. “Was it anything unusual? Hasn't he been coming
+here ever since I can remember? Evidently you didn't keep him as well
+posted this time as you usually do. He came here and asked for me.”
+
+“And I suppose,” said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into her
+white cheeks, “that you took pains to make things uncomfortable for me.”
+
+“I am very much afraid,” said Linda, “that you are right. You have
+made things uncomfortable for me ever since I can remember, for I can't
+remember the time when you were not finding fault with me, putting me in
+the wrong and getting me criticized and punished if you possibly could.
+It was a fair understanding that you should be here, and you were not,
+and I was seeing red about it; and just as John came in I found your
+note in the living room and read it aloud.'
+
+“Oh, well, there was nothing in that,” said Eileen in a relieved tone.
+
+“Nothing in the wording of it, no,” said Linda, “but there was
+everything in the intention back of it. Because you did not live up to
+your tacit agreement, and because I had been on high tension for two or
+three days, I lost my temper completely. I brought John Gilman up here
+and showed him the suite of rooms in which you have done for yourself,
+for four years. I gave him rather a thorough inventory of your dressing
+table and drawers, and then I opened the closet door and called his
+attention to the number and the quality of the garments hanging there.
+The box underneath them I thought was a shoe box, but it didn't prove to
+be exactly that; and for that I want to tell you, as I have already told
+John, I am sorry. I wouldn't have done that if I had known what I was
+doing.”
+
+“Is that all?” inquired Eileen, making a desperate effort at
+self-control.
+
+“Not quite,” said Linda. “When I finished with your room, I took him
+back and showed him mine in even greater detail than I showed him yours.
+I thought the contrast would be more enlightening than anything either
+one of us could say.”
+
+“And I suppose you realize,” said Eileen bitterly, “that you lost me
+John Gilman when you did it.”
+
+“I?” said Linda. “I lost you John Gilman when I did it? But I didn't
+do it. You did it. You have been busy for four years doing it. If you
+hadn't done it, it wouldn't have been there for me to show him. I can't
+see that this is profitable. Certainly it's the most distressing thing
+that ever has occurred for me. But I didn't feel that I could let you
+meet John Gilman tonight without telling you what he knows. If you have
+any way to square your conscience and cleanse your soul before you meet
+him, you had better do it, for he's a mighty fine man and if you lose
+him you will have lost the best chance that is likely ever to come to
+you.”
+
+Linda sat studying Eileen. She saw the gallant effort she was making
+to keep her self-possession, to think with her accustomed rapidity, to
+strike upon some scheme whereby she could square herself. She rose and
+started toward the door.
+
+“What you'll say to John I haven't the faintest notion,” she said. “I
+told him very little. I just showed him.”
+
+Then she went out and closed the door after her. At the foot of the
+stairs she met Katy admitting Gilman. Without any preliminaries she
+said: “I repeat, John, that I'm sorry for what happened the other day.
+I have just come from Eileen. She will be down as soon as Katy tells her
+you're here, no doubt. I have done what I told you I would. She knows
+what I showed you so you needn't employ any subterfuges. You can be
+frank and honest with each other.”
+
+“I wish to God we could,” said John Gilman.
+
+Linda went to her work. She decided that she would gauge what happened
+by the length of time John stayed. If he remained only a few minutes it
+would indicate that there had been a rupture. If he stayed as long as he
+usually did, the chances were that Eileen's wit had triumphed as usual.
+
+At twelve o'clock Linda laid her pencils in the box, washed the brushes,
+and went down the back stairs to the ice chest for a glass of milk. The
+living room was still lighted and Linda thought Eileen's laugh quite
+as gay as she ever had heard it. Linda closed her lips very tight and
+slowly climbed the stairs. When she entered her room she walked up to
+the mirror and stared at herself in the glass for a long time, and then
+of herself she asked this question:
+
+“Well, how do you suppose she did it?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. Spanish Iris
+
+Just as Linda was most deeply absorbed with her own concerns there came
+a letter from Marian which Linda read and reread several times; for
+Marian wrote:
+
+MY DEAREST PAL:
+
+Life is so busy up San Francisco way that it makes Lilac Valley look in
+retrospection like a peaceful sunset preliminary to bed time.
+
+But I want you to have the consolation and the comfort of knowing that I
+have found at least two friends that I hope will endure. One is a woman
+who has a room across the hall from mine in my apartment house. She is
+a newspaper woman and life is very full for her, but it is filled with
+such intensely interesting things that I almost regret having made my
+life work anything so prosaic as inanimate houses; but then it's my
+dream to enliven each house I plan with at least the spirit of home.
+This woman--her name is Dana Meade--enlivens every hour of her working
+day with something concerning the welfare of humanity. She is a
+beautiful woman in her soul, so extremely beautiful that I can't at this
+minute write you a detailed description of her hair and her eyes and her
+complexion, because this nice, big, friendly light that radiates
+from her so lights her up and transfigures her that everyone says how
+beautiful she is, and yet I have a vague recollection that her nose is
+what you would call a “beak,” and I am afraid her cheek bones are too
+high for good proportion, and I know that her hair is not always so
+carefully dressed as it should be, but what is the difference when
+the hair is crowned with a halo? I can't swear to any of these things;
+they're sketchy impressions. The only thing I am absolutely sure about
+is the inner light that shines to an unbelievable degree. I wish she
+had more time and I wish I had more time and that she and I might become
+such friends as you and I are. I can't tell you, dear, how much I think
+of you. It seems to me that you're running a sort of undercurrent in my
+thoughts all day long.
+
+You will hardly credit it, Linda, but a few days ago I drove a car
+through the thickest traffic, up a steep hill, and round a curve. I did
+it, but practically collapsed when it was over. The why of it was this:
+I think I told you before that in the offices of Nicholson and Snow
+there is a man who is an understanding person. He is the junior partner
+and his name is Eugene Snow. I happened to arrive at his desk the day
+I came for my instructions and to make my plans for entering their
+contest. He was very kind to me and went out of his way to smooth out
+the rough places. Ever since, he makes a point of coming to me and
+talking a few minutes when I am at the office or when he passes me on my
+way to the drafting rooms where I take my lessons. The day I mention I
+had worked late and hard the night before. I had done the last possible
+thing to the plans for my dream house. At the last minute, getting it
+all on paper, working at the specifications, at which you know I am
+wobbly, was nervous business; and when I came from the desk after having
+turned in my plans, perhaps I showed fatigue. Anyway, he said to me that
+his car was below. He said also that he was a lonely person, having lost
+his wife two years ago, and not being able very frequently to see his
+little daughter who is in the care of her grandmother, there were times
+when he was hungry for the companionship he had lost. He asked me if I
+would go with him for a drive and I told him that I would. I am rather
+stunned yet over what happened. The runabout he led me to was greatly
+like yours, and, Linda, he stopped at a florist's and came out with an
+armload of bloom--exquisite lavender and pale pink and faint yellow and
+waxen white--the most enticing armload of spring. For one minute I
+truly experienced a thrill. I thought he was going to give that mass of
+flowers to me, but he did not. He merely laid it across my lap and said:
+“Edith adored the flowers from bulbs. I never see such bloom that my
+heart does not ache with a keen, angry ache to think that she should be
+taken from the world, and the beauty that she so loved, so early and so
+ruthlessly. We'll take her these as I would take them to her were she
+living.”
+
+So, Linda dear, I sat there and looked at color and drank in fragrance,
+and we whirled through the city and away to a cemetery on a beautiful
+hill, and filled a vase inside the gates of a mausoleum with these
+appealing flowers. Then we sat down, and a man with a hurt heart told
+me about his hurt, and what an effort he was making to get through the
+world as the woman he loved would have had him; and before I knew what
+I was doing, Linda, I told him the tellable part of my own hurts. I even
+lifted my turban and bowed my white head before him. This hurt--it was
+one of the inexorable things that come to people in this world--I could
+talk about. That deeper hurt, which has put a scar that never will be
+effaced on my soul, of course I could not tell him about. But when we
+went back to the car he said to me that he would help me to get
+back into the sunlight. He said the first thing I must do to regain
+self-confidence was to begin driving again. I told him I could not, but
+he said I must, and made me take the driver's seat of a car I had
+never seen and take the steering wheel of a make of machine I had never
+driven, and tackle two or three serious problems for a driver. I did it
+all right, Linda, because I couldn't allow myself to fail the kind of a
+man Mr. Snow is, when he was truly trying to help me, but in the depths
+of my heart I am afraid I am a coward forever, for there is a ghastly
+illness takes possession of me as I write these details to you. But
+anyway, put a red mark on your calendar beside the date on which you
+get this letter, and joyfully say to yourself that Marian has found two
+real, sympathetic friends.
+
+In a week or ten days I shall know about the contest. If I win, as I
+really have a sneaking hope that I shall, since I have condensed the
+best of two dozen houses into one and exhausted my imagination on
+my dream home, I will surely telegraph, and you can make it a day of
+jubilee. If I fail, I will try to find out where my dream was not true
+and what can be done to make it materialize properly; but between us,
+Linda girl, I am going to be dreadfully disappointed. I could use the
+material value that prize represents. I could start my life work which
+I hope to do in Lilac Valley on the prestige and the background that it
+would give me. I don't know, Linda, whether you ever learned to pray
+or not, but I have, and it's a thing that helps when the black
+shadow comes, when you reach the land of “benefits forgot and friends
+remembered not.”
+
+And this reminds me that I should not write to my very dearest friend
+who has her own problems and make her heart sad with mine; so to the
+joyful news of my two friends add a third, Linda, for I am going to tell
+you a secret because it will make you happy. Since I have been in San
+Francisco some man, who for a reason of his own does not tell me his
+name, has been writing me extremely attractive letters. I have had
+several of them and I can't tell you, Linda, what they mean to me or
+how they help me. There is a touch of whimsy about them. I can't as
+yet connect them with anybody I ever met, but to me they are taking the
+place of a little lunch on the bread of life. They are such real, such
+vivid, such alive letters from such a real person that I have been
+doing the very foolish and romantic thing of answering them as my heart
+dictates and signing my own name to them, which on the surface looks
+unwise when the man in the case keeps his identity in the background;
+but since he knows me and knows my name it seems useless to do anything
+else: and answer these letters I shall and must; because every one of
+them is to me a strong light thrown on John Gilman. Every time one of
+these letters comes to me I have the feeling that I would like to reach
+out through space and pick up the man who is writing them and dangle him
+before Eileen and say to her: “Take HIM. I dare you to take HIM.” And my
+confidence, Linda, is positively supreme that she could not do it.
+
+You know, between us, Linda, we regarded Eileen as a rare creature, a
+kind of exotic thing, made to be kept in a glass house with tempered air
+and warmed water; but as I go about the city and at times amuse myself
+at concerts and theaters, I am rather dazed to tell you, honey, that
+the world is chock full of Eileens. On the streets, in the stores,
+everywhere I go, sometimes half a dozen times in a day I say to myself:
+“There goes Eileen.” I haven't a doubt that Eileen has a heart, if
+it has not become so calloused that nobody could ever reach it, and I
+suspect she has a soul, but the more I see of her kind the more I feel
+that John Gilman may have to breast rather black water before he finds
+them.
+
+With dearest love, be sure to remember me to Katherine O'Donovan. Hug
+her tight and give her my unqualified love. Don't let her forget me.
+
+As ever,
+
+MARIAN.
+
+This was the letter that Linda read once, then she read it again and
+then she read it a third time, and after that she lost count and reread
+it whenever she was not busy doing something else, for it was a letter
+that was the next thing to laying hands upon Marian. The part of the
+letter concerning the unknown man who was writing Marian, Linda pondered
+over deeply.
+
+“That is the best thing I ever did in my life,” she said in
+self-commendation. “It's doing more than I hoped it would. It's giving
+Marian something to think about. It's giving her an interest in life.
+It's distracting her attention. Without saying a word about John Gilman
+it is making her see for herself the weak spots in him through the very
+subtle method of calling her attention to the strength that may lie
+in another man. For once in your life, Linda, you have done something
+strictly worth while. The thing for you to do is to keep it up, and in
+order to keep it up, to make each letter fresh and original, you will
+have to do a good deal of sticking around Peter Morrison's location and
+absorbing rather thoroughly the things he says. Peter doesn't know he is
+writing those letters but he is in them till it's a wonder Marian does
+not hear him drawl and see the imps twisting his lips as she reads them.
+Before I write another single one I'll go see Peter. Maybe he will have
+that article written. I'll take a pencil, and as he reads I'll jot down
+the salient points and then I'll come home and work out a head and tail
+piece for him to send in with it, and in that way I'll ease my soul
+about the skylight and the fireplace.”
+
+So Linda took pad and pencils, raided Katy for everything she could find
+that was temptingly edible, climbed into the Bear Cat, and went to see
+Peter as frankly as she would have crossed the lawn to visit Marian.
+He was not in the garage when she stopped her car before it, but the
+workmen told her that he had strolled up the mountain and that probably
+he would return soon. Learning that he had been gone but a short time
+Linda set the Bear Cat squalling at the top of its voice. Then she took
+possession of the garage, and clearing Peter's worktable spread upon it
+the food she had brought, and then started out to find some flowers for
+decorations. When Peter came upon the scene he found Linda, flushed and
+brilliant eyed, holding before him a big bouquet of alder bloom, the
+last of the lilacs she had found in a cool, shaded place, pink filaree,
+blue lupin, and white mahogany panicles. “Peter,” she cried. “you can't
+guess what I have been doing!”
+
+Peter glanced at the flowers.
+
+“Isn't it obvious?” he inquired.
+
+“No, it isn't,” said Linda, “because I am capable of two processes at
+once. The work of my hands is visible; with it I am going to decorate
+your table. You won't have to go down to the restaurant for your supper
+tonight because I have brought my supper up to share with you, and after
+we finish, you're going to read me your article as you have rewritten
+it. I am going to decorate it and we are going to make a hit with it
+that will be at least a start on the road to greater fame. What you see
+is material. You can pick it up, smell it, admire it and eat it. But
+what I have truly been doing is setting Spanish iris for yards down one
+side of the bed of your stream. When I left it was a foot and a half
+high Peter, and every blue that the sky ever knew in its loveliest
+moments, and a yellow that is the concentrated essence of the best gold
+from the heart of California. Oh, Peter, there is enchantment in the way
+I set it. There are irregular deep beds, and there are straggly places
+where there are only one or two in a ragged streak, and then it runs
+along the edge in a fringy rim, and then it stretches out in a marshy
+place that is going to have some other wild things, arrowheads, and
+orchids, and maybe a bunch of paint brush on a high, dry spot near by. I
+wish you could see it!”
+
+Peter looked at Linda reflectively and then he told her that he could
+see it. He fold her that he adored it, that he was crazy about her
+straggly continuity and her fringy border, but there was not one word of
+truth in what he said, because what he saw was a slender thing, willowy,
+graceful; roughened wavy black hair hanging half her length in heavy
+braids, dark eyes and bright cheeks, a vivid red line of mouth, and
+a bright brown line of freckles bridging a prominent and aristocratic
+nose. What he was seeing was a soul, a young thing, a thing he coveted
+with every nerve and fiber of his being. And while he glibly humored her
+in her vision of decorating his brook, in his own consciousness he was
+saying to himself: “Is there any reason why I should not try for her?”
+
+And then he answered himself. “There is no reason in your life. There
+is nothing ugly that could offend her or hurt her. The reason, the real
+reason, probably lies in the fact that if she were thinking of caring
+for anyone it would be for that attractive young schoolmate she brought
+up here for me to exercise my wits upon. It is very likely that she
+regards me in the light of a grandfatherly person to whom she can come
+with her joys or her problems, as frankly as she has now.”
+
+So Peter asked if the irises crossed the brook and ran down both sides.
+Linda sat on a packing case and concentrated on the iris, and finally
+she announced that they did. She informed him that his place was going
+to be natural, that Nature evolved things in her own way. She did not
+grow irises down one side of a brook and arrowheads down the other.
+They waded across and flew across and visited back and forth, riding
+the water or the wind or the down of a bee or the tail of a cow. As she
+served the supper she had brought she very gravely informed him that
+there would be iris on both sides of his brook, and cress and miners'
+lettuce under the bridge; and she knew exactly where the wild clematis
+grew that would whiten his embankment after his workmen had extracted
+the last root of poison oak.
+
+“It may not scorch you, Peter,” she said gravely, “but you must look out
+for the Missus and the little things. I haven't definitely decided on
+her yet, but she looks a good deal like Mary Louise Whiting to mc. I saw
+her the other day. She came to school after Donald. I liked her looks
+so well that I said to myself: 'Everybody talks about how fine she is.
+I shouldn't wonder if I had better save her for Peter'; but if I decide
+to, you should act that poison stuff out, because it's sure as shooting
+to attack any one with the soft, delicate skin that goes with a golden
+head.”
+
+“Oh, let's leave it in,” said Peter, “and dispense with the golden head.
+By the time you get that stream planted as you're planning, I'll have
+become so accustomed to a dark head bobbing up and down beside it that
+I won't take kindly to a sorrel top.” “That is positively sacrilegious,”
+ said Linda, lifting her hands to her rough black hair. “Never in my life
+saw anything lovelier than the rich gold on Louise Whiting's bare head
+as she bent to release her brakes and start her car. A black head looks
+like a cinder bed beside it; and only think what a sunburst it will be
+when Mary Louise kneels down beside the iris.”
+
+When they had finished their supper Linda gathered up the remnants and
+put them in the car, then she laid a notebook and pencil on the table.
+
+“Now I want to hear that article,” she said. “I knew you would do it
+over the minute I was gone, and I knew you would keep it to read to me
+before you sent it.”
+
+“Hm,” said Peter. “Is it second sight or psychoanalysis or telepathy, or
+what?”
+
+“Mostly 'what',” laughed Linda. “I merely knew. The workmen are gone and
+everything is quiet now, Peter. Begin. I am crazy to get the particular
+angle from which you 'make the world safe for democracy.' John used to
+call our attention to your articles during the war. He said we had
+not sent another man to France who could write as humanely and as
+interestingly as you did. I wish I had kept those articles; because I
+didn't get anything from them to compare with what I can get since I
+have a slight acquaintance with the procession that marches around
+your mouth. Peter, you will have to watch that mouth of yours. It's an
+awfully betraying feature. So long as it's occupied with politics
+and the fads and the foibles and the sins and the foolishness and the
+extravagances of humanity, it's all very well. But if you ever get
+in trouble or if ever your heart hurts, or you get mad enough to kill
+somebody, that mouth of yours is going to be a most awfully revealing
+feature, Peter. You will have hard work to settle it down into
+hard-and-fast noncommittal lines.”
+
+Peter looked at the girl steadily.
+
+“Have you specialized on my mouth?” he asked.
+
+“Huh-umph!” said Linda, shaking her head vigorously. “When I specialize I
+use a pin and a microscope and go right to the root of matters as I was
+taught. This is superficial. I am extemporizing now.”
+
+“Well, if this is extemporizing,” said Peter, “God help my soul if you
+ever go at me with a pin and a microscope.”
+
+“Oh, but I won't!” cried Linda. “It wouldn't be kind to pin your friends
+on a setting board and use a microscope on them. You might see things
+that were strictly private. You might see things they wouldn't want you
+to see. They might not be your friends any more if you did that. When
+I make a friend I just take him on trust like I did Donald. You're my
+friend, aren't you, Peter?”
+
+“Yes, Linda,” said Peter soberly. “Put me to any test you can think of
+if you want proof.”
+
+“But I don't believe in PROVING friends, either,” said Linda. “I believe
+in nurturing them. I would set a friend in my garden and water his feet
+and turn the sunshine on him and tell him to stay there and grow. I
+might fertilize him, I might prune him, and I might use insecticide on
+him. I might spray him with rather stringent solutions, but I give you
+my word I would not test him. If he flourished under my care I would
+know it, and if he did not I would know it, and that would be all I
+would want to know. I have watched Daddy search for the seat of
+nervous disorders, and sometimes he had to probe very deep to find what
+developed nerves unduly but he didn't ever do any picking and raveling
+and fringing at the soul of a human being merely for the sake of finding
+out what it was made of; and everyone says I am like him.”
+
+“I wish I might have known him,” said Peter.
+
+“Don't I wish it!” said Linda. “Now then, Peter, go ahead. Read your
+article.”
+
+Peter opened a packing case, picked out a sheaf of papers, and sitting
+opposite Linda, began to read. He was dumbfounded to find that he, a man
+who had read and talked extemporaneously before great bodies of learned
+men, should have cold feet and shaking hands and a hammering heart
+because he was trying to read an article on America for Americans before
+a high-school Junior. But presently, as the theme engrossed him, he
+forgot the vision of Linda interesting herself in his homemaking, and
+saw instead a vision of his country threatened on one side by the red
+menace of the Bolshevik, on the other by the yellow menace of the
+Jap, and yet on another by the treachery of the Mexican and the slowly
+uprising might of the black man, and presently he was thundering his
+best-considered arguments at Linda until she imperceptibly drew back
+from him on the packing case, and with parted lips and wide eyes she
+listened in utter absorption. She gazed at a transformed Peter with
+aroused eyes and a white light of patriotism on his forehead, and a
+conception even keener than anything that the war had brought her young
+soul was burning in her heart of what a man means when he tries to
+express his feeling concerning the land of his birth. Presently, without
+realizing what she was doing, she reached for her pad and pencils and
+rapidly began sketching a stretch of peaceful countryside over which
+a coming storm of gigantic proportions was gathering. Fired by Peter's
+article, the touch of genius in Linda's soul became creative and she
+fashioned huge storm clouds wind driven, that floated in such a manner
+as to bring the merest suggestion of menacing faces, black faces,
+yellow faces, brown faces, and under the flash of lightning, just at the
+obscuring of the sun, a huge, evil, leering red face. She swept a stroke
+across her sheet and below this she began again, sketching the same
+stretch of country she had pictured above, strolling in cultivated
+fields, dotting it with white cities, connecting it with smooth
+roadways, sweeping the sky with giant planes. At one side, winging in
+from the glow of morning, she drew in the strong-winged flight of a
+flock of sea swallows, peacefully homing toward the far-distant ocean.
+She was utterly unaware when Peter stopped reading. Absorbed, she bent
+over her work. When she had finished she looked up.
+
+“Now I'll take this home,” she said. “I can't do well on color
+with pencils. You hold that article till I have time to put this on
+water-color paper and touch it up a bit here and there, and I believe it
+will be worthy of starting and closing your article.”
+
+She pushed the sketches toward him.
+
+“You little wonder!” said Peter softly.
+
+“Yes, 'little' is good,” scoffed Linda, rising to very nearly his height
+and reaching for the lunch basket. “'Little' is good, Peter. If I could
+do what I like to myself I would get in some kind of a press and squash
+down about seven inches.”
+
+“Oh, Lord!” said Peter. “Forget it. What's the difference what the
+inches of your body are so long as your brain has a stature worthy of
+mention?”
+
+“Good-bye!” said Linda. “On the strength of that I'll jazz that sketch
+all up, bluey and red-purple and jade-green. I'll make it as glorious as
+a Catalina sunset.”
+
+As she swung the car around the sharp curve at the boulders she looked
+back and laughingly waved her hand at Peter, and Peter experienced a
+wild desire to shriek lest she lose control of the car and plunge down
+the steep incline. A second later, when he saw her securely on the road
+below, he smiled to himself.
+
+“Proves one thing,” he said conclusively. “She is over the horrors.
+She is driving unconsciously. Thank God she knew that curve so well she
+could look the other way and drive it mentally.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. The Official Bug-Catcher
+
+Not a mile below the exit from Peter's grounds, Linda perceived a
+heavily laden person toiling down the roadway before her and when she
+ran her car abreast and stopped it, Henry Anderson looked up at her with
+joyful face.
+
+“Sorry I can't uncover, fair lady,” he said, “but you see I am very much
+otherwise engaged.”
+
+What Linda saw was a tired, disheveled man standing in the roadway
+beside her car, under each arm a boulder the size of her head, one
+almost jet-black, shot through with lines of white and flying figures
+of white crossing between these bands that almost reminded one of winged
+dancers. The other was a combination stone made up of matrix thickly
+imbedded with pebbles of brown, green, pink, and dull blue.
+
+“For pity's sake!” said Linda. “Where are you going and why are you
+personally demonstrating a new method of transporting rock?”
+
+“I am on my way down Lilac Valley to the residence of a friend of mine,”
+ said Henry Anderson. “I heard her say the other day that she saved
+every peculiarly marked boulder she could find to preserve coolness and
+moisture in her fern bed.”
+
+Linda leaned over and opened the car door.
+
+“All well and good,” she said; “but why in the cause of reason didn't
+you leave them at Peter's and bring them down in his car?”
+
+Henry Anderson laid the stones in the bottom of the car, stepped in and
+closed the door behind him. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and
+wiped his perspiring face and soiled hands.
+
+“I had two sufficient personal reasons,” he said. “One was that the car
+at our place is Peter Morrison's car, not mine; and the other was that
+it's none of anybody's business but my own if I choose to 'say it' with
+stones.”
+
+Linda started the car, being liberal with gas--so liberal that it was
+only a few minutes till Henry Anderson protested.
+
+“This isn't the speedway,” he said. “What's your hurry?”
+
+“Two reasons seem to be all that are allowed for things at the present
+minute,” answered Linda. “One of mine is that you can't drive this beast
+slow, and the other is that my workroom is piled high with things I
+should be doing. I have two sketches I must complete while I am in the
+mood, and I have had a great big letter from my friend, Marian Thorne,
+today that I want to answer before I go to bed tonight.”
+
+“In other words,” said Henry Anderson bluntly, “you want me to
+understand that when I have reached your place and dumped these stones I
+can beat it; you have no further use for me.”
+
+“You said that,” retorted Linda.
+
+“And who ever heard of such a thing,” said Henry, “as a young woman
+sending away a person of my numerous charms and attractions in order to
+work, or to write a letter to another woman?”
+
+“But you're not taking into consideration,” said Linda, “that I must
+work, and I scarcely know you, while I have known Marian ever since I
+was four years old and she is my best friend.”
+
+“Well, she has no advantage over me,” said Henry instantly, “because I
+have known you quite as long as Peter Morrison has at least, and I'm
+your official bug-catcher.”
+
+“I had almost forgotten about the bugs,” said Linda.
+
+“Well, don't for a minute think I am going to give you an opportunity to
+forget,” said Henry Anderson.
+
+He reached across and laid his hand over Linda's on the steering gear.
+Linda said nothing, neither did she move. She merely added more gas and
+put the Bear Cat forward at a dizzy whirl. Henry laughed.
+
+“That's all right, my beauty,” he said. “Don't you think for a minute
+that I can't ride as fast as you can drive.”
+
+A dull red mottled Linda's cheeks. As quickly as it could be done she
+brought the Bear Cat to a full stop. Then she turned and looked at Henry
+Anderson. The expression in her eyes was disconcerting even to that
+cheeky young individual--he had not borne her gaze a second until he
+removed his hand.
+
+“Thanks,” said Linda in a dry drawl. “And you will add to my obligation
+if in the future you will remember not to deal in assumptions. I am not
+your 'beauty,' and I'm not anyone's beauty; while the only thing in this
+world that I am interested in at present is to get the best education I
+can and at the same time carry on work that I love to do. I have a year
+to finish my course in the high school and when I finish I will only
+have a good beginning for whatever I decide to study next.”
+
+“That's nothing,” said the irrepressible Henry. “It will take me two
+years to catch a sufficient number of gold bugs to be really serious,
+but there wouldn't be any harm in having a mutual understanding and
+something definite to work for, and then we might be able, you know, to
+cut out some of that year of high-school grinding. If the plans I have
+submitted in the Nicholson and Snow contest should just happen to be the
+prize winners, that would put matters in such a shape for young Henry
+that he could devote himself to crickets and tumble-bugs at once.”
+
+“Don't you think,” said Linda quietly, “that you would better forget
+that silly jesting and concentrate the best of your brains on improving
+your plans for Peter Morrison's house?”
+
+“Why, surely I will if that's what you command me to do,” said Henry,
+purposely misunderstanding her.
+
+“You haven't mentioned before,” said Linda, “that you had submitted
+plans in that San Francisco contest.”
+
+“All done and gone,” said Henry Anderson lightly. “I had an inspiration
+one day and I saw a way to improve a house with comforts and
+conveniences I never had thought of before. I was enthusiastic over the
+production when I got it on paper and figured it. It's exactly the house
+that I am going to build for Peter, and when I've cut my eye teeth on it
+I am going to correct everything possible and build it in perfection for
+you.”
+
+“Look here,” said Linda soberly, “I'm not accustomed to this sort of
+talk. I don't care for it. If you want to preserve even the semblance of
+friendship with me you must stop it, and get to impersonal matters and
+stay there.”
+
+“All right,” he agreed instantly, “but if you don't like my line of
+talk, you're the first girl I ever met that didn't.”
+
+“You have my sympathy,” said Linda gravely. “You have been extremely
+unfortunate.”
+
+Then she started the Bear Cat, and again running at undue speed she
+reached her wild-flower garden. Henry Anderson placed the stones as she
+directed and waited for an invitation to come in, but the invitation
+was not given. Linda thanked him for the stones. She told him that in
+combination with a few remaining from the mantel they would make all she
+would require, and excusing herself she drove to the garage. When she
+came in she found the irrepressible Henry sitting on the back steps
+explaining to Katy the strenuous time he had had finding and carrying
+down the stones they had brought. Katy had a plate of refreshments ready
+to hand him when Linda laughingly passed them and went to her room.
+
+When she had finished her letter to Marian she took a sheet of drawing
+paper, and in her most attractive lettering sketched in the heading, “A
+Palate Teaser,” which was a direct quotation from Katy. Below she wrote:
+
+You will find Tunas in the cacti thickets of any desert, but if you are
+so fortunate as to be able to reach specimens which were brought from
+Mexico and set as hedges around the gardens of the old missions, you
+will find there the material for this salad in its most luscious form.
+Naturally it can be made from either Opuntia Fiscus-Indica or Opuntia
+Tuna, but a combination of these two gives the salad an exquisite
+appearance and a tiny touch more delicious flavor, because Tuna, which
+is red, has to my taste a trifle richer and fuller flavor than Indica,
+which is yellow. Both fruits taste more like the best well-ripened
+watermelon than any other I recall.
+
+Bring down the Tunas with a fishing rod or a long pole with a nail in
+the end. With anything save your fingers roll them in the sand or in
+tufts of grass to remove the spines. Slice off either end, score the
+skin down one side, press lightly, and a lush globule of pale gold or
+rosy red fruit larger than a hen's egg lies before you. With a sharp
+knife, beginning with a layer of red and ending with one of yellow,
+slice the fruits thinly, stopping to shake out the seeds as you work. In
+case you live in San Diego County or farther south, where it is possible
+to secure the scarlet berries of the Strawberry Cactus--it is the
+Mammillaria Goodridgei species that you should use--a beautiful
+decoration for finishing your salad can be made from the red
+strawberries of these. If you live too far north to find these, you
+may send your salad to the table beautifully decorated by cutting fancy
+figures from the red Tuna, or by slicing it lengthwise into oblong
+pieces and weaving them into a decoration over the yellow background.
+
+For your dressing use the juice of a lemon mixed with that of an
+orange, sweetened to taste, into which you work, a drop at a time, four
+tablespoons of the best Palermo olive oil. If the salad is large more
+oil and more juice should be used.
+
+To get the full deliciousness of this salad, the fruit must have been
+on ice, and the dressing made in a bowl imbedded in cracked ice, so that
+when ready to blend both are ice-cold, and must be served immediately.
+
+Gigantic specimens of fruit-bearing Cacti can be found all over the
+Sunland Desert near to the city, but they are not possessed of the full
+flavor of the cultivated old mission growths, so that it is well worth
+your while to make a trip to the nearest of these for the fruit with
+which to prepare this salad. And if, as you gather it, you should see
+a vision of a white head, a thin, ascetic, old face, a lean figure
+trailing a brown robe, slender white hands clasping a heavy cross;
+if you should hear the music of worship ascending from the throats of
+Benedictine fathers leading a clamoring choir of the blended voices of
+Spaniard, Mexican, and Indian, combining with the music of the bells and
+the songs of the mocking birds, nest making among the Tunas, it will be
+good for your soul in the line of purging it from selfishness, since in
+this day we are not asked to give all of life to the service of others,
+only a reasonable part of it.
+
+Linda read this over, working in changes here and there, then she picked
+up her pencil and across the top of her sheet indicated an open sky
+with scarcely a hint of cloud. Across the bottom she outlined a bit
+of Sunland Desert she well remembered, in the foreground a bed of
+flat-leaved nopal, flowering red and yellow, the dark red prickly pears,
+edible, being a near relative of the fruits she had used in her salad.
+After giving the prickly pear the place of honor to the left, in higher
+growth she worked in the slender, cylindrical, jointed stems of the
+Cholla, shading the flowers a paler, greenish yellow. On the right,
+balancing the Cholla, she drew the oval, cylindrical columns of the
+hedgehog cactus, and the color touch of the big magenta flowers blended
+exquisitely with the color she already had used. At the left, the length
+of her page, she drew a gigantic specimen of Opuntia Tuna, covered with
+flowers, and well-developed specimens of the pears whose coloring ran
+into the shades of the hedgehog cactus.
+
+She was putting away her working materials when she heard steps and
+voices on the stairs, so she knew that Eileen and John Gilman were
+coming. She did not in the least want them, yet she could think of no
+excuse for refusing them admission that would not seem ungracious. She
+hurried to the wall, snatched down the paintings for Peter Morrison, and
+looked around to see how she could dispose of them. She ended by laying
+one of them in a large drawer which she pushed shut and locked. The
+other she placed inside a case in the wall which formerly had been used
+for billiard cues. At their second tap she opened the door. Eileen
+was not at her best. There was a worried look across her eyes, a
+restlessness visible in her movements, but Gilman was radiant.
+
+“What do you think, Linda?” he cried. “Eileen has just named the day!”
+
+“I did no such thing,” broke in Eileen.
+
+“Your pardon, fair lady, you did not,” said Gilman. “That was merely a
+figure of speech. I meant named the month. She has definitely promised
+in October, and I may begin to hunt a location and plan a home for us. I
+want the congratulations of my dear friend and my dearer sister.”
+
+Linda held out her hand and smiled as bravely as she could.
+
+“I am very glad you are so pleased, John,” she said quietly, “and I hope
+that you will be as happy as you deserve to be.”
+
+“Now exactly what do you mean by that?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, Linda prides herself on being deep and subtle and conveying hidden
+meanings,” said Eileen. “She means what a thousand people will tell you
+in the coming months: merely that they hope you will be happy.”
+
+“Of course,” Linda hastened to corroborate, wishing if possible to avoid
+any unpleasantness.
+
+“You certainly have an attractive workroom here,” said John, “much as I
+hate to see it spoiled for billiards.”
+
+“It's too bad,” said Linda, “that I have spoiled it for you for
+billiards. I have also spoiled the outside appearance of the house for
+Eileen.”
+
+“Oh, I don't know,” said John. “I looked at it carefully the other
+day as I came up, and I thought your changes enhanced the value of the
+property.”
+
+“I am surely glad to hear that,” said Linda. “Take a look through my
+skylight and my new window. Imagine you see the rugs I am going to have
+and a few more pieces of furniture when I can afford them; and let me
+particularly point out the fireplace that Henry Anderson and your friend
+Peter designed and had built for me. Doesn't it add a soul and a heart
+to my study?”
+
+John Gilman walked over and looked at the fireplace critically. He read
+the lines aloud, then he turned to Eileen.
+
+“Why, that is perfectly beautiful,” he said. “Let's duplicate it in our
+home.”
+
+“You bungler!” scoffed Eileen.
+
+“I think you're right,” said Gilman reflectively, “exactly right. Of
+course I would have no business copying Linda's special fireplace where
+the same people would see it frequently; and if I had stopped to think a
+second, I might have known that you would prefer tiling to field stone.”
+
+“Linda seems very busy tonight,” said Eileen. “Perhaps we are bothering
+her.”
+
+“Yes,” said John, “we'll go at once. I had to run up to tell our good
+news; and I wanted to tell you too, Linda dear, that I think both of us
+misjudged Eileen the other day. You know, Linda, you have always dressed
+according to your father's ideas, which were so much simpler and plainer
+than the manner in which your mother dressed Eileen, that she merely
+thought that you wished to continue in his way. She had no objection to
+your having any kind of clothes you chose, if only you had confided in
+her, and explained to her what you wanted.”
+
+Linda stood beside her table, one lean hand holding down the letter she
+had been writing. She stood very still, but she was powerless to raise
+her eyes to the face of either John or Eileen. Above everything she did
+not wish to go any further in revealing Eileen to John Gilman. If he
+knew what he knew and if he felt satisfied, after what he had seen, with
+any explanation that Eileen could trump up to offer, Linda had no desire
+to carry the matter further. She had been ashamed of what she already
+had done. She had felt angry and dissatisfied with herself, so she stood
+before them downcast and silent.
+
+“And it certainly was a great joke on both of us,” said John jovially,
+“what we thought about that box of cigarettes, you know. They were a
+prize given by a bridge club at an 'Ambassador' benefit for the Good
+Samaritan Hospital. Eileen, the little card shark she is, won it, and
+she was keeping it hidden away there to use as a gift for my birthday.
+Since we disclosed her plans prematurely, she gave it to me at once, and
+I'm having a great time treating all my friends.”
+
+At that instant Linda experienced a revulsion. Previously she had not
+been able to raise her eyes. Now it would have been quite impossible to
+avoid looking straight into Eileen's face. But Eileen had no intention
+of meeting anyone's gaze at that minute. She was fidgeting with a sheet
+of drawing paper.
+
+“Careful you don't bend that,” cautioned Linda. Then she looked at
+John Gilman. He BELIEVED what he was saying; he was happy again. Linda
+evolved the best smile she could.
+
+“How stupid of us not to have guessed!” she said.
+
+Closing the door behind them, Linda leaned against it and looked up
+through the skylight at the creep blue of the night, the low-hung stars.
+How long she stood there she did not know. Presently she went to her
+chair, picked up her pencil, and slowly began to draw. At first she
+scarcely realized what she was doing, then she became absorbed in
+her work. Then she reached for her color box and brushes, and shortly
+afterward tacked against the wall an extremely clever drawing of a
+greatly enlarged wasp. Skillfully she had sketched a face that was
+recognizable round the big insect eyes. She had surmounted the face by
+a fluff of bejewelled yellow curls, encased the hind legs upon which the
+creature stood upright in pink velvet Turkish trousers and put tiny gold
+shoes on the feet. She greatly exaggerated the wings into long trails
+and made them of green gauze with ruffled edges. All the remainder of
+the legs she had transformed into so many braceleted arms, each holding
+a tiny fan, or a necklace, a jewel box, or a handkerchief of lace. She
+stood before this sketch, studying it for a few minutes, then she walked
+over to the table and came back with a big black pencil. Steadying her
+hand with a mahl stick rested against the wall, with one short sharp
+stroke she drew a needle-pointed stinger, so screened by the delicate
+wings that it could not be seen unless you scrutinized the picture
+minutely. After that, with careful, interested hands she brought out
+Peter Morrison's drawings and replaced them on the wall to dry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. The Cap Sheaf
+
+Toward the last of the week Linda began to clear the mental decks of her
+ship of life in order that she might have Saturday free for her promised
+day with Donald. She had decided that they would devote that day to
+wave-beaten Laguna. It was a long drive but delightful. It ran over the
+old King's Highway between miles of orange and lemon orchards in full
+flower, bordered by other miles of roses in their prime.
+
+Every minute when her mind was not actively occupied with her lessons
+or her recipes Linda was dreaming of the King's Highway. Almost
+unconsciously she began to chant:
+
+“All in the golden weather, forth let us ride today, You and I together
+on the King's Highway, The blue skies above us, and below the shining
+sea; There's many a road to travel, but it's this road for me.”
+
+You must have ridden this road with an understanding heart and the
+arm of God around you to know the exact degree of disappointment that
+swelled in Linda's heart when she answered the telephone early Saturday
+morning and heard Donald Whiting's strained voice speaking into it. He
+was talking breathlessly in eager, boyish fashion.
+
+“Linda, I am in a garage halfway downtown,” he was saying, “and it looks
+to me as if to save my soul I couldn't reach you before noon. I have had
+the darnedest luck. Our Jap got sick last week and he sent a new man
+to take his place. There wasn't a thing the matter with our car when
+I drove it in Friday night. This morning Father wanted to use it on
+important business, and it wouldn't run. He ordered me to tinker it
+up enough to get it to the shop. I went at it and when it would go,
+I started You can imagine the clip I was going, and the thing went to
+pieces. I don't know yet how it comes that I saved my skin. I'm pretty
+badly knocked out, but I'll get there by noon if it's a possible thing.”
+
+“Oh, that's all right,” said Linda, fervently hoping that the ache in
+her throat would not tincture her voice.
+
+It was half-past eleven when Donald came. Linda could not bring herself
+to give up the sea that day. She found it impossible to drive the King's
+Highway. It seemed equally impossible not to look on the face of the
+ocean, so she compromised by skirting Santa Monica Bay, and taking the
+foothill road she ran it to the north end of the beach drive. When they
+had spread their blankets on the sand, finished their lunch and were
+resting, Linda began to question Donald about what had happened. She
+wanted to know how long Whitings' gardener had been in their employ;
+if they knew where he lived and about his family; if they knew who his
+friends were, or anything concerning him. She inquired about the man
+who had taken his place, and wanted most particularly to know what the
+garage men had found the trouble with a car that ran perfectly on
+Friday night and broke down in half a dozen different places on Saturday
+morning. Finally Donald looked at her, laughingly quizzical.
+
+“Linda,” he said, “you're no nerve specialist and no naturalist. You're
+the cross examiner for the plaintiff. What are you trying to get at?
+Make out a case against Yogo Sani?”
+
+“Of course it's all right,” said Linda, watching a distant pelican turn
+head down and catapult into the sea. “It has to be all right, but you
+must admit that it looks peculiar. How have you been getting along this
+week?”
+
+Donald waved his hand in the direction of a formation of stone the size
+of a small house.
+
+“Been rolling that to the top of the mountain,” he said lightly. Linda's
+eyes narrowed, her face grew speculative. She looked at Donald intently.
+
+“Is it as difficult as that?” she asked in a lowered voice as if the
+surf and the sea chickens might hear.
+
+“It is just as difficult as that,” said Donald. “While you're talking
+about peculiar things, I'll tell you one. In class I came right up
+against Oka Sayye on the solution of a theorem in trigonometry. We both
+had the answer, the correct answer, but we had arrived at it by widely
+different routes, and it was up to me to prove that my line of reasoning
+was more lucid, more natural, the inevitable one by which the solution
+should be reached. We got so in earnest that I am afraid both of us were
+rather tense. I stepped over to his demonstration to point out where I
+thought his reasoning was wrong. I got closer to the Jap than I had ever
+been before; and by gracious, Linda! scattered, but nevertheless still
+there, and visible, I saw a sprinkling of gray hairs just in front of
+and over his ears. It caught me unawares, and before I knew what I was
+doing, before the professor and the assembled classroom I blurted it
+out: 'Say, Oka Sayye, how old are you?' If the Jap had had any way of
+killing me, I believe he would have done it. There was a look in his
+eyes that was what I would call deadly. It was only a flash and then,
+very courteously, putting me in the wrong, of course, he remarked that
+he was 'almost ninekleen'; and it struck me from his look and the way he
+said it that it was a lie. If he truly was the average age of the rest
+of the class there was nothing for him to be angry about. Then I did
+take a deliberate survey. From the settled solidity of his frame and the
+shape of his hands and the skin of his face and the set of his eyes in
+his head, I couldn't see that much youth. I'll bet he's thirty if he's a
+day, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he has graduated at the most
+worthwhile university in Japan, before he ever came to this country to
+get his English for nothing.”
+
+Linda was watching a sea swallow now, and slowly her lean fingers were
+gathering handfuls of sand and sifting them into a little pyramid she
+was heaping beside her. Again almost under her breath she spoke.
+
+“Donald, do you really believe that?” she asked. “Is it possible that
+mature Jap men are coming here and entering our schools and availing
+themselves of the benefits that the taxpayers of California provide for
+their children?”
+
+“Didn't you know it?” asked Donald. “I hadn't thought of it in
+connection with Oka Sayye, but I do know cases where mature Japs have
+been in grade schools with children under ten.”
+
+“Oh, Donald!” exclaimed Linda. “If California is permitting that or ever
+has permitted it, we're too easy. We deserve to become their prey if we
+are so careless.”
+
+“Why, I know it's true,” said Donald. “I have been in the same classes
+with men more than old enough to be my father.”
+
+“I never was,” said Linda, industriously sifting sand. “I have been
+in classes with Japs ever since I have been at school, but it was with
+girls and boys of our gardeners and fruit dealers and curio-shop people,
+and they were always of my age and entitled to be in school, since our
+system includes the education of anybody who happens to be in California
+and wants to go to school.”
+
+“Did my being late spoil any particular plan you had made, Linda?”
+
+“Yes,” said Linda, “it did.”
+
+“Oh, I am so sorry!” cried Donald. “I certainly shall try to see that it
+doesn't occur again. Could we do it next Saturday?”
+
+“I am hoping so,” said Linda.
+
+“I told Dad,” said Donald, “where I wanted to go and what I wanted to
+do, and he was awfully sorry but he said it was business and it would
+take only a few minutes and he thought I could do it and be on time. If
+he had known I would be detained I don't believe he would have asked it
+of me. He's a grand old peter, Linda.”
+
+
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Linda. “There's not much you can tell me about
+peters of the grand sort, the real, true flesh-and-blood, bighearted,
+human-being fathers, who will take you to the fields and the woods and
+take the time to teach you what God made and how He made it and why
+He made it and what we can do with it, and of the fellowship and
+brotherhood we can get from Nature by being real kin. The one thing that
+I have had that was the biggest thing in all this world was one of these
+real fathers.”
+
+Donald watched as she raised the pyramid higher and higher.
+
+“Did you tell your father whom you were to go with?” she asked.
+
+“Sure I did,” said Donald. “Told the whole family at dinner last night.
+Told 'em about all the things I was learning, from where to get soap
+off the bushes to the best spot for material for wooden legs or
+instantaneous relief for snake bite.”
+
+“What did they say?” Linda inquired laughingly.
+
+“Unanimously in favour of continuing the course,” he said. “I had
+already told Father about you when I asked him for books and any help
+that he could give me with Oka Sayye. Since I had mentioned you last
+night he told Mother and Louise about that, and they told me to bring
+you to the house some time. All of them are crazy to know you. Mother
+says she is just wild to know whether a girl who wears boots and
+breeches and who knows canyons and the desert and the mountains as you
+do can be a feminine and lovable person.”
+
+“If I told her how many friends I have, she could have speedily decided
+whether I am lovable or not,” said Linda; “but I would make an effort to
+convince her that I am strictly feminine.”
+
+“You would convince her of that without making the slightest effort.
+You're infinitely more feminine than any other girl I have ever known.”
+
+“How do you figure that?” asked Linda.
+
+“Well,” said Donald, “it's a queer thing about you, Linda. I take
+any liberty I pretty nearly please with most of the girls I have been
+associated with. I tie their shoes and pull their hair--down if I want
+to--and hand them round 'most any way the notion takes me, and they just
+laugh and take the same liberties with me, which proves that I am pretty
+much a girl with them or they are pretty much boys with me. But it
+wouldn't occur to me to touch your hair or your shoe lace or the tips of
+your fingers; which proves that you're more feminine than any other
+girl I know, because if you were not I would be treating you more like
+another boy. I thought, the first day we were together, that you were
+like a boy, and I said so, and I thought it because you did not tease me
+and flirt with me, but since I have come to know you better, you're less
+like a boy than any other girl I ever have known.”
+
+“Don't get psychological, Donald,” said Linda. “Go on with the Jap. I
+haven't got an answer yet to what I really want to know. Have you made
+the least progress this week? Can you beat him?”
+
+Donald hesitated, studying over the answer.
+
+“Beat him at that trig proposition the other day,” he said. “Got an
+open commendation before the class. There's not a professor in any of my
+classes who isn't 'hep' to what I'm after by this time, and if I would
+cajole them a little they would naturally be on my side, especially if
+their attention were called to that incident of yesterday; but you said
+I have to beat him with my brains, by doing better work than he does; so
+about the biggest thing I can honestly tell you is that I have held my
+own. I have only been ahead of him once this week, but I haven't failed
+in anything that he has accomplished. I have been able to put some
+additional touches to some work that he has done for which he used to be
+marked A which means your One Hundred. Double A which means your plus
+I made in one instance. And you needn't think that Oka Sayye does not
+realize what I am up to as well as any of the rest of the class, and you
+needn't think that he is not going to give me a run for my brain. All
+I've got will be needed before we finish this term.”
+
+“I see,” said Linda, slowly nodding her head.
+
+“I wish,” said Donald, “that we had started this thing two years ago, or
+better still, four. But of course you were not in the high school four
+years ago and there wasn't a girl in my class or among my friends who
+cared whether I beat the Jap or not. They greatly preferred that I take
+them motoring or to a dance or a picture show or a beach party. You're
+the only one except Mother and Louise who ever inspired me to get down
+to business.”
+
+Linda laid her palm on the top of the sand heap and pressed it flat. She
+looked at Donald with laughing eyes.
+
+“Symbolical,” she announced. “That sand was the Jap.” She stretched her
+hand toward him. “That was you. Did you see yourself squash him?”
+
+Donald's laugh was grim.
+
+“Yes, I saw,” he said. “I wish it were as easy as that.”
+
+“That was not easy,” said Linda; “make a mental computation of all the
+seconds that it took me to erect that pyramid and all the millions of
+grains of sand I had to gather.”
+
+Donald was deeply thoughtful, yet a half smile was playing round his
+lips.
+
+“Of all the queer girls I ever knew, you're the cap sheaf, Linda,” he
+said.
+
+Linda rose slowly, shook the sand from her breeches and stretched out
+her hand.
+
+“Let's hotfoot it down to the African village and see what the movies
+are doing that is interesting today,” she proposed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. Shifting the Responsibility
+
+On her pillow that night before dropping to almost instantaneous sleep
+Linda reflected that if you could not ride the King's Highway, racing
+the sands of Santa Monica was a very excellent substitute. It had been
+a wonderful day after all. When she had left Donald at the Lilac Valley
+end of the car line he had held her hand tight an instant and looked
+into her face with the most engaging of clear, boyish smiles.
+
+“Linda, isn't our friendship the nicest thing that ever happened to us?”
+ he demanded.
+
+“Yes,” answered Linda promptly, “quite the nicest. Make your plans for
+all day long next Saturday.”
+
+“I'll be here before the birds are awake,” promised Donald.
+
+At the close of Monday's sessions, going down the broad walk from the
+high school, Donald overtook Linda and in a breathless whisper he said:
+“What do you think? I came near Oka Sayye again this morning in trig,
+and his hair was as black as jet, dyed to a midnight, charcoal finish,
+and I am not right sure that he had not borrowed some girl's lipstick
+and rouge pot for the benefit of his lips and cheeks. Positively he's
+hectically youthful today. What do you know about that?”
+
+Then he hurried on to overtake the crowd of boys he had left, Linda's
+heart was racing in her breast.
+
+Turning, she re-entered the school building, and taking a telephone
+directory she hunted an address, and then, instead of going to the
+car line that took her to Lilac Valley she went to the address she had
+looked up. With a pencil she wrote a few lines on a bit of scratch paper
+in one of her books. That note opened a door and admitted her to the
+presence of a tall, lean, gray-haired man with quick, blue-gray eyes and
+lips that seemed capable of being either grave or gay on short notice.
+With that perfect ease which Linda had acquired through the young days
+of her life in meeting friends of her father, she went to the table
+beside which this man was standing and stretched out her hand.
+
+“Judge Whiting?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” said the Judge.
+
+“I am Linda Strong, the younger daughter of Alexander Strong. I think
+you knew my father.”
+
+“Yes,” said the Judge, “I knew him very well indeed, and I have some
+small acquaintance with his daughter through very interesting reports
+that my son brings home.”
+
+“Yes, it is about Donald that I came to see you,” said Linda.
+
+If she had been watching as her father would have watched, Linda would
+have seen the slight uplift of the Judge's figure, the tensing of his
+muscles, the narrowing of his eyes in the swift, speculative look he
+passed over her from the crown of her bare, roughened black head down
+the gold-brown of her dress to her slender, well-shod feet. The last
+part of that glance Linda caught. She slightly lifted one of the feet
+under inspection, thrust it forward and looked at the Judge with a gay
+challenge in her dark eyes.
+
+“Are you interested in them too?” she asked.
+
+The Judge was embarrassed. A flush crept into his cheeks. He was
+supposed to be master of any emergency that might arise, but one had
+arisen in connection with a slip of a schoolgirl that left him wordless.
+
+“It is very probable,” said Linda, “that if my shoes had been like
+most other girls' shoes I wouldn't be here today. I was in the same
+schoolroom with your son for three years, and he never saw me or spoke
+to me until one day he stopped me to inquire why I wore the kind of
+shoes I did. He said he had a battle to wage with me because I tried to
+be a law to myself, and he wanted to know why I wasn't like other girls.
+And I told him I had a crow to pick with HIM because he had the kind of
+brain that would be content to let a Jap beat him in his own school,
+in his own language and in his own country; so we made an engagement to
+fight to a finish, and it ended by his becoming the only boy friend I
+have and the nicest boy friend a girl ever had, I am very sure. That's
+why I'm here.”
+
+Linda lifted her eyes and Judge Whiting looked into them till he saw the
+same gold lights in their depths that Peter Morrison had seen. He came
+around the table and placed a big leather chair for Linda. Then he went
+back and resumed his own.
+
+“Of course,” said the Judge in his most engaging manner. “I gather from
+what Donald has told me that you have a reason for being here, and I
+want you to understand that I am intensely interested in anything you
+have to say to me. Now tell me why you came.”
+
+“I came,” said Linda, “because I started something and am afraid of the
+possible result. I think very likely if, in retaliation for what Donald
+said to me about my hair and my shoes, I had not twitted him about the
+use he was making of his brain and done everything in my power to drive
+him into competition with Oka Sayye in the hope that a white man would
+graduate with the highest honors, he would not have gone into this
+competition, which I am now certain has antagonized Oka Sayye.”
+
+Linda folded her slim hands on the table and leaned forward.
+
+“Judge Whiting,” she said earnestly, “I know very little about men. The
+most I know was what I learned about my father and the men with whom he
+occasionally hunted and fished. They were all such fine men that I must
+have grown up thinking that every man was very like them, but one day I
+came in direct contact with the Jap that Donald is trying to beat, and
+the thing I saw in his face put fear into my heart and it has been there
+ever since. I have almost an unreasoning fear of that Jap, not because
+he has said anything or done anything. It's just instinctive. I may be
+wholly wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time, but there
+are two things I wanted to tell you. I could have told Donald, but if
+I did and his mind went off at a tangent thinking of these things he
+wouldn't be nearly so likely to be in condition to give his best thought
+to his studies. If I really made him see what I think I have seen,
+and fear what I know I fear, he might fail where I would give almost
+anything to see him succeed; so I thought I would come to you and tell
+you about it and ask you please to think it over, and to take extra care
+of him, because I really believe that he may be in danger; and if he is
+I never shall be able to rid myself of a sense of responsibility.”
+
+“I see,” said Judge Whiting. “Now tell me, just as explicitly as you
+have told me this, exactly what it is that you fear.”
+
+“Last Saturday,” said Linda, “Donald told me that while standing at the
+board beside Oka Sayye, demonstrating a theorem, he noticed that there
+were gray hairs above the Jap's ears, and he bluntly asked him, before
+the professor and the class, how old he was. In telling me, he said he
+had the feeling that if the Jap could have done so in that instant, he
+would have killed him. He said he was nineteen, but Donald says from the
+matured lines of his body, from his hands and his face and his hair,
+he is certain that he is thirty or more, and he thinks it very probable
+that he may have graduated at home before he came here to get his
+English for nothing from our public schools. I never before had the fact
+called to my attention that this was being done, but Donald told me that
+he had been in classes with matured men when he was less than ten years
+of age. That is not fair, Judge Whiting; it is not right. There should
+be an age specified above which people may not be allowed to attend
+public school.”
+
+“I quite agree with you,” said the Judge. “That has been done in the
+grades, but there is nothing fair in bringing a boy under twenty in
+competition with a man graduated from the institutions of another
+country, even in the high schools. If this be the case--”
+
+“You can be certain that it is,” said Linda, “because Donald whispered
+to me as he passed me half an hour ago, coming from the school building,
+that TODAY Oka Sayye's hair is a uniform, shining black, and he
+also thought that he had used a lipstick and rouge in an effort at
+rejuvenation. Do you think, from your knowledge of Donald, that he would
+imagine that?”
+
+“No,” said Judge Whiting, “I don't think such a thing would occur to him
+unless he saw it.”
+
+“Neither do I,” said Linda. “From the short acquaintance I have with him
+I should not call him at all imaginative, but he is extremely quick and
+wonderfully retentive. You have to show him but once from which cactus
+he can get Victrola needles and fishing hooks, or where to find material
+for wooden legs.”
+
+The Judge laughed. “Doesn't prove much,” he said. “You wouldn't have
+to show me that more than once either. If anyone were giving me an
+intensive course on such interesting subjects, I would guarantee to
+remember, even at my age.”
+
+Linda nodded in acquiescence. “Then you can regard it as quite certain,”
+ she said, “that Oka Sayye is making up in an effort to appear younger
+than he is which means that he doesn't want his right questioned to be
+in our schools, to absorb the things that we are taught, to learn our
+language, our government, our institutions, our ideals, our approximate
+strength and our only-too-apparent weakness.”
+
+The Judge leaned forward and waited attentively.
+
+“The other matter,” said Linda, “was relative to Saturday. There may not
+be a thing in it, but sometimes a woman's intuition proves truer than
+what a man thinks he sees and knows. I haven't SEEN a thing, and I don't
+KNOW a thing, but I don't believe your gardener was sick last week.
+I believe he had a dirty job he wanted done and preferred to save his
+position and avoid risks by getting some other Jap who had no family
+and no interests here, to do it for him. I don't BELIEVE that your car,
+having run all right Friday night, was shot to pieces Saturday morning
+so that Donald went smash with it in a manner that might very easily
+have killed him, or sent him to the hospital for months, while Oka Sayye
+carried off the honors without competition I want to ask you to find out
+whether your regular gardener truly was ill, whether he has a family and
+interests to protect here, or whether he is a man who could disappear in
+a night as Japs who have leased land and have families cannot. I want
+to know about the man who took your gardener's place, and I want the man
+who is repairing your car interviewed very carefully as to what he found
+the trouble with it.”
+
+Linda paused. Judge Whiting sat in deep thought, then he looked at
+Linda.
+
+“I see,” he said at last. “Thank you very much for coming to me. All
+these things and anything that develops from them shall be handled
+carefully. Of course you know that Donald is my only son and you can
+realize what he is to me and to his mother and sister.”
+
+“It is because I do realize that,” said Linda, “that I am here. I
+appreciate his friendship, but it is not for my own interests that I am
+asking to have him taken care of while he wages his mental war with this
+Jap. I want Donald to have the victory, but I want it to be a victory
+that will be an inspiration to any boy of white blood among any of our
+allies or among peoples who should be our allies. There's a showdown
+coming between the white race and a mighty aggregation of colored
+peoples one of these days, and if the white man doesn't realize pretty
+soon that his supremacy is not only going to be contested but may be
+lost, it just simply will be lost; that is all there is to it.”
+
+The Judge was studying deeply now. Finally he said: “Young lady, I
+greatly appreciate your coming to me. There may be NOTHING in what you
+fear. It MIGHT be a matter of national importance. In any event, it
+shows that your heart is in the right place. May Mrs. Whiting and I pay
+you a visit some day soon in your home?”
+
+“Of course,” said Linda simply. “I told Donald to bring his mother the
+first time he came, but he said he did not need to be chaperoned when he
+came to see me, because my father's name was a guarantee to his mother
+that my home would be a proper place for him to visit.”
+
+“I wonder how many of his other girl friends invited him to bring his
+mother to see them,” said the Judge.
+
+“Oh, he probably grew up with the other girls and was acquainted with
+them from tiny things,” said Linda.
+
+“Very likely,” conceded the Judge. “I think, after all, I would rather
+have an invitation to make one of those trips with you to the desert or
+the mountains. Is there anything else as interesting as fish hooks and
+Victrola needles and wooden legs to be learned?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Linda, leaning farther forward, a lovely color sweeping
+up into her cheeks, her eyes a-shine. She had missed the fact that the
+Judge was jesting. She had thought him in sober, scientific earnest.
+
+“It's an awfully nice thing if you dig a plant or soil your hands in
+hunting, or anything like that, to know that there are four or five
+different kinds of vegetable soap where you can easily reach them, if
+you know them. If you lose your way or have a long tramp, it's good to
+know which plants will give you drink and where they are. And if you're
+short of implements, you might at any time need a mescal stick, or an
+arrow shaft or an arrow, even. If Donald were lost now, he could keep
+alive for days, because he would know what wood would make him a bow and
+how he could take amole fiber and braid a bow string and where he could
+make arrows and arrow points so that he could shoot game for food. I've
+taught him to make a number of snares, and he knows where to find and
+how to cook his greens and potatoes and onions and where to find his
+pickles and how to make lemonade and tea, and what to use for snake
+bite. It's been such fun, Judge Whiting, and he has been so interested.”
+
+“Yes, I should think he would be,” said the Judge. “I am interested
+myself. If you would take an old boy like me on a few of those trips, I
+would be immensely pleased.”
+
+“You'd like brigand beefsteak,” suggested Linda, “and you'd like cress
+salad, and I am sure you'd like creamed yucca.”
+
+“Hm,” said the Judge. “Sounds to me like Jane Meredith.”
+
+Linda suddenly sat straight. A dazed expression crossed her face.
+Presently she recovered.
+
+“Will you kindly tell me,” she said, “what a great criminal judge knows
+about Jane Meredith?”
+
+“Why, I hear my wife and daughter talking about her,” said the Judge.
+
+“I wonder,” said Linda, “if a judge hears so many secrets that he
+forgets what a secret is and couldn't possibly keep one to save his
+life.”
+
+“On the other hand,” said Judge Whiting, “a judge hears so many secrets
+that he learns to be a very secretive person himself, and if a young
+lady just your size and so like you in every way as to be you, told me
+anything and told me that it was a secret, I would guarantee to carry it
+with me to my grave, if I said I would.”
+
+One of Linda's special laughs floated out of the windows. Her right hand
+slipped across the table toward the Judge.
+
+“Cross your heart and body?” she challenged.
+
+The Judge took the hand she offered in both of his own.
+
+“On my soul,” he said, “I swear it.”
+
+“All right,” bubbled Linda. “Judge Whiting, allow me to present to
+you Jane Meredith, the author and originator of the Aboriginal Cookery
+articles now running in Everybody's Home.”
+
+Linda stood up as she made the presentation and the Judge arose with
+her. When she bowed her dark head before him the Judge bowed equally as
+low, then he took the hand he held and pressed it against his lips.
+
+“I am not surprised,” he said. “I am honored, deeply honored, and I am
+delighted. For a high school girl that is a splendid achievement.”
+
+“But you realize, of course,” said Linda, “that it is vicarious. I
+really haven't done anything. I am just passing on to the world what
+Alexander Strong found it interesting to teach his daughter, because he
+hadn't a son.”
+
+“I certainly am fortunate that my son is getting the benefit of this,”
+ said Judge Whiting earnestly. “There are girls who make my old-fashioned
+soul shudder, but I shall rest in great comfort whenever I know that my
+boy is with you.”
+
+“Sure!” laughed Linda. “I'm not vamping him. I don't know the first
+principles. We're not doing a thing worse than sucking 'hunters' rock
+leek' or roasting Indian potatoes or fishing for trout with cactus
+spines. I have had such a lovely time I don't believe that I'll
+apologize for coming. But you won't waste a minute in making sure about
+Oka Sayye?”
+
+“I won't waste a minute,” said the Judge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. The End of Marian's Contest
+
+Coming from school a few days later on an evening when she had been
+detained, Linda found a radiant Katy awaiting her.
+
+“What's up, old dear?” cried Linda. “You seem positively illumined.”
+
+“So be,” said Katy. “It's a good time I'm havin'. In the first place the
+previous boss of this place ain't nowise so bossy as sue used to be, an'
+livin' with her is a dale aisier. An' then, when Miss Eileen is around
+these days, she is beginning to see things, and she is just black with
+jealousy of ye. Something funny happened here the afternoon, an' she
+was home for once an' got the full benefit of it. I was swapin' the aist
+walk, but I know she was inside the window an' I know she heard. First,
+comes a great big loaded automobile drivin' up, and stopped in front
+with a flourish an' out hops as nice an' nate a lookin' lad as ever you
+clapped your eyes on, an' up he comes to me an' off goes his hat with a
+swape, an' he hands me that bundle an' he says: 'Here's something Miss
+Linda is wantin' bad for her wild garden.'”
+
+Katy handed Linda a bundle of newspaper, inside which, wrapped in a
+man's handkerchief, she found several plants, carefully lifted, the
+roots properly balled, the heads erect, crisp, although in full flower.
+
+“Oh, Katy!” cried Linda. “Look, it's Gallito, 'little rooster'!” “Now
+ain't them jist yellow violets?” asked Katy dubiously.
+
+“No,” said Linda, “they are not. They are quite a bit rarer. They are
+really a wild pansy. Bring water, Katy, and help me.”
+
+“But I've something else for ye,” said Katy.
+
+“I don't care what you have,” answered Linda. “I am just compelled to
+park these little roosters at once.”
+
+“What makes ye call them that ungodly name?” asked Katy.
+
+“Nothing ungodly about it,” answered Linda. “It's funny. Gallito is the
+Spanish name for these violets, and it means 'little rooster.'”
+
+Linda set the violets as carefully as they had been lifted and rinsed
+her hands at the hydrant.
+
+“Now bring on the remainder of the exhibit,” she ordered.
+
+“It's there on the top of the rock pile, which you notice has incrased
+since ye last saw it.”
+
+“So it has!” said Linda. “So it has! And beautifully colored specimens
+those are too. My fern bed will lift up its voice and rejoice in them.
+And rocks mean Henry Anderson. The box I do not understand.”
+
+Linda picked it up, untied the string, and slipped off the wrapping.
+Katy stared in wide-mouthed amazement.
+
+“I was just tickled over that because Miss Eileen saw a good-looking and
+capable young man leave a second package, right on the heels of young
+Whiting,” she said. “Whatever have ye got, lambie? What does that mean?”
+
+Linda held up a beautiful box of glass, inside of which could be seen
+swarming specimens of every bug, beetle, insect, and worm that Henry
+Anderson had been able to collect in Heaven only knew what hours of
+search. Linda opened the box. The winged creatures flew, the bettles
+tumbled, the worms went over the top. She set it on the ground and
+laughed to exhaustion. Her eyes were wet as she looked up at Katy.
+
+“That first night Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison were here to dinner,
+Katy,” she said, “Anderson made a joke about being my bug-catcher when
+I built my home nest, and several times since he has tried to be silly
+about it, but the last time I told him it was foolishness to which I
+would listen no more, so instead of talking, he has taken this way of
+telling me that he is fairly expert as a bug-catcher. Really, it is
+awfully funny, Katy.”
+
+Katy was sober. She showed no appreciation of the fun.
+
+“Ye know, lambie,” she said, her hands on her hips, her elbows
+wide-spread, her jaws argumentative, “I've done some blarneying with
+that lad, an' I've fed him some, because he was doin' things that would
+help an' please ye, but now I'm tellin' ye, just like I'll be tellin' ye
+till I die, I ain't STRONG for him. If ever the day comes when ye ask me
+to take on that Whiting kid for me boss, I'll bow my head an' I'll fly
+at his bidding, because he is real, he's goin' to come out a man lots
+like your pa, or hisn. An' if ever the day comes when ye will be telling
+me ye want me to serve Pater Morrison, I'll well nigh get on my knees
+to him. I think he'd be the closest we'd ever come to gettin' the master
+back. But I couldn't say I'd ever take to Anderson. They's something
+about him, I can't just say what, but he puts me back up amazin'.”
+
+“Don't worry, ancient custodian of the family,” said Linda. “That same
+something in Henry Anderson that antagonizes you, affects me in even
+stronger degree. You must not get the foolish notion that any man has a
+speculative eye on me, because it is not true. Donald Whiting is only a
+boy friend, treating me as a brother would, and Peter Morrison is much
+too sophisticated and mature to pay any serious attention to a girl
+with a year more high school before her. I want to be decent to Henry
+Anderson, because he is Peter's architect, and I'm deeply interested in
+Peter's house and the lady who will live in it. Sometimes I hope it will
+be Donald's sister, Mary Louise. Anyway, I am going to get acquainted
+with her and make it my business to see that she and Peter get their
+chance to know each other well. My job for Peter is to help run his
+brook at the proper angle, build his bridge, engineer his road, and
+plant his grounds; so don't be dreaming any foolish dreams, Katy.”
+
+Katy folded her arms, tilted her chin at an unusually aspiring angle,
+and deliberately sniffed.
+
+“Don't ye be lettin' yourself belave your own foolishness,” she said. “I
+ain't done with me exhibit yet. On the hall table ye will find a package
+from the Pater Morrison man that Miss Eileen had the joy of takin'
+in and layin' aside for ye, an atop of it rists a big letter that I'm
+thinkin' might mean Miss Marian.”
+
+“Oh,” cried Linda. “Why are you wasting all this time? If there is a
+letter from Marian it may mean that the competition is decided; but if
+it is, she loses, because she was to telegraph if she won.”
+
+Linda rushed into the house and carried her belongings to her workroom.
+She dropped them on the table and looked at them.
+
+“I'll get you off my mind first,” she said to the Morrison package,
+which enclosed a new article entitled “How to Grow Good Citizens.” With
+it was a scrawled line, “I'm leaving the head and heels of the future to
+you.”
+
+“How fine!” exulted Linda. “He must have liked the head and tail pieces
+I drew for his other article, so he wants the same for this, and if he
+is well paid for his article, maybe in time, after I've settled for my
+hearth motto, he will pay me something for my work. Gal-lum-shus!”
+
+As she opened the letter from Marian she slowly shook her head.
+
+“Drat the luck,” she muttered, “no good news here.”
+
+Slowly and absorbedly she read:
+
+DEAREST LINDA:
+
+No telegram to send. I grazed the first prize and missed the second
+because Henry Anderson wins with plans so like mine that they are
+practically duplicates. I have not seen the winning plans. Mr. Snow told
+me as gently as he could that the judges had ruled me out entirely. The
+winning plans are practically a reversal of mine, more professionally
+drawn, and no doubt the specifications are far ahead of mine, as these
+are my weak spot, although I have worked all day and far into the night
+on the mathematics of house building. Mr. Snow was very kind, and
+terribly cut up about it. I made what I hope was a brave fight, I did so
+believe in those plans that I am afraid to say just how greatly
+disappointed I am. All I can do is to go to work again and try to find
+out how to better my best, which I surely put into the plans I
+submitted. I can't see how Henry Anderson came to hit upon some of my
+personal designs for comforts and conveniences. I had hoped that no man
+would think of my especial kitchen plans. I rather fancied myself as a
+benefactor to my sex, an emancipator from drudgery, as it were. I had a
+concealed feeling that it required a woman who had expended her strength
+combating the construction of a devilish kitchen, to devise some of my
+built-in conveniences, and I worked as carefully on my kitchen table, as
+on any part of the house. If I find later that the winning plans include
+these things I shall believe that Henry Anderson is a mind reader, or
+that lost plans naturally gravitate to him. But there is no use to
+grouch further. I seem to be born a loser. Anyway, I haven't lost you
+and I still have Dana Meade.
+
+I have nothing else to tell you except that Mr. Snow has waited for me
+two evenings out of the week ever since I wrote you, and he has taken
+me in his car and simply forced me to drive him for an hour over what
+appeals to me to be the most difficult roads he could select. So far
+I have not balked at anything but he has had the consideration not to
+direct me to the mountains. He is extremely attractive, Linda, and I do
+enjoy being with him, but I dread it too, because his grief is so deep
+and so apparent that it constantly keeps before me the loss of my own
+dear ones, and those things to which the hymn books refer as “aching
+voids” in my own life.
+
+But there is something you will be glad to hear. That unknown
+correspondent of mine is still sending letters, and I am crazy about
+them. I don't answer one now until I have mulled over it two or three
+days and I try to give him as good as he sends.
+
+I judge from your letters that you are keeping at least even with
+Eileen, and that life is much happier for you. You seem to be
+broadening. I am so glad for the friendship you have formed with Donald
+Whiting. My mother and Mrs. Whiting were friends. She is a charming
+woman and it has seemed to me that in her daughter Louise she has
+managed a happy compound of old-fashioned straightforwardness and
+unswerving principle, festooned with happy trimmings of all that is best
+in the present days. I hope that you do become acquainted with her. She
+is older than you, but she is the kind of girl I know you would like.
+
+Don't worry because I have lost again, Linda dear. Today is my blue
+day. Tomorrow I shall roll up my sleeves and go at it again with all my
+might, and by and by it is written in the books that things will come
+right for me. They cannot go wrong for ever. With dearest love,
+
+MARIAN.
+
+Linda looked grim as she finished the letter.
+
+“Confound such luck,” she said emphatically. “I do not understand
+it. How can a man like Henry Anderson know more about comforts and
+conveniences in a home than a woman with Marian's experience and
+comprehension? And she has been gaining experience for the past ten
+years. That partner of his must be a six-cylinder miracle.”
+
+Linda went to the kitchen, because she was in pressing need of someone
+to whom to tell her troubles, and there was no one except Katy. What
+Katy said was energetic and emphatic, but it comforted Linda, because
+she agreed with it and what she was seeking at the minute was someone
+who agreed with her. As she went back upstairs, she met Eileen on her
+way to the front door. Eileen paused and deliberately studied Linda's
+face, and Linda stopped and waited quietly until she chose to speak.
+
+“I presume,” said Eileen at last, “that you and Katy would call the
+process through which you are going right now, 'taking the bit in your
+teeth,' or some poetic thing like that, but I can't see that you are
+getting much out of it. I don't hear the old laugh or the clatter of
+gay feet as I did before all this war of dissatisfaction broke out. This
+minute if you haven't either cried, or wanted to, I miss my guess.”
+
+“You win,” said Linda. “I have not cried, because I make it a rule never
+to resort to tears when I can help it; so what you see now is unshed
+tears in my heart. They in no way relate to what you so aptly term my
+'war of dissatisfaction'; they are for Marian. She has lost again, this
+time the Nicholson and Snow prize in architecture.”
+
+“Serves her right,” said Eileen, laughing contemptuously. “The
+ridiculous idea of her trying to compete in a man's age-old occupation!
+As if she ever could learn enough about joists and beams and girders and
+installing water and gas and electricity to build a house. She should
+have had the sense to know she couldn't do it.”
+
+“But,” said Linda quietly, “Marian wasn't proposing to be a contractor,
+she only wants to be an architect. And the man who beat her is Peter
+Morrison's architect, Henry Anderson, and he won by such a narrow margin
+that her plans were thrown out of second and third place, because they
+were so very similar to his. Doesn't that strike you as curious?”
+
+“That is more than curious,” said Eileen slowly. “That is a very strange
+coincidence. They couldn't have had anything from each other, because
+they only met at dinner, before all of us, and Marian went away the next
+morning; it does seem queer.” Then she added with a flash of generosity
+and justice, “It looks pretty good for Marian, at that. If she came so
+near winning that she lost second and third because she was too near
+first to make any practical difference, I must be wrong and she must be
+right.”
+
+“You are wrong,” said Linda tersely, “if you think Marian cannot
+make wonderful plans for houses. But going back to what my 'war of
+dissatisfaction' is doing to me, it's a pale affair compared with what
+it is doing to you, Eileen. You look a debilitated silhouette of the
+near recent past. Do you feel that badly about giving up a little money
+and authority?”
+
+“I never professed to have the slightest authority over you,” said
+Eileen very primly, as she drew back in the shadows. “You have come and
+gone exactly as you pleased. All I ever tried to do was to keep up a
+decent appearance before the neighbors and make financial ends meet.”
+
+“That never seemed to wear on you as something seems to do now,” said
+Linda. “I am thankful that this week ends it. I was looking for you
+because I wanted to tell you to be sure not to make any date that
+will keep you from meeting me at the office of the president of the
+Consolidated Bank Thursday afternoon. I am going to arrange with John
+to be there and it shouldn't take fifteen minutes to run through matters
+and divide the income in a fair way between us. I am willing for you to
+go on paying the bills and ordering for the house as you have been.”
+
+“Certainly you are,” sneered Eileen. “You are quite willing for all the
+work and use the greater part of my time to make you comfortable.”
+
+Linda suddenly drew back. Her body seemed to recoil, but her head thrust
+forward as if to bring her eyes in better range to read Eileen's face.
+
+“That is utterly unjust, Eileen,” she cried.
+
+Then two at a time she rushed the stairs in a race for her room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. The Day of Jubilee
+
+Linda started to school half an hour earlier Wednesday morning because
+that was the day for her weekly trip to the Post Office for any mail
+which might have come to her under the name of Jane Meredith. She had
+hard work to keep down her color when she recognized the heavy gray
+envelope used by the editor of Everybody's Home. As she turned from the
+window with it in her fingers she was trembling slightly and wondering
+whether she could have a minute's seclusion to face the answer which her
+last letter might have brought. There was a small alcove beside a public
+desk at one side of the room. Linda stepped into this, tore open the
+envelope and slipped out the sheet it contained. Dazedly she stared at
+the slip that fell from it. Slowly the color left her cheeks and then
+came rushing back from her surcharged heart until her very ears were
+red, because that slip was very manifestly a cheque for five hundred
+dollars. Mentally and physically Linda shook herself, then she
+straightened to full height, tensing her muscles and holding the sheet
+before her with a hand on each side to keep it from shaking, while she
+read:
+
+MY DEAR MADAM:
+
+I sincerely apologize for having waited so long before writing you of
+the very exceptional reception which your articles have had. I think one
+half their attraction has been the exquisite and appealing pictures you
+have sent for their illustration. At the present minute they are forming
+what I consider the most unique feature in the magazine. I am enclosing
+you a cheque for five hundred dollars as an initial payment on the
+series. Just what the completed series should be worth I am unable to
+say until you inform me how many months you can keep it up at the same
+grade of culinary and literary interest and attractive illustration; but
+I should say at a rough estimate that you would be safe in counting upon
+a repetition of this cheque for every three articles you send in. This
+of course includes payment for the pictures also, which are to me if
+anything more attractive than the recipes, since the local color and
+environment they add to the recipe and the word sketch are valuable in
+the extreme.
+
+If you feel that you can continue this to the extent of even a small
+volume, I shall be delighted to send you a book contract. In considering
+this proposition, let me say that if you could not produce enough
+recipes to fill a book, you could piece it out to the necessary length
+most charmingly and attractively by lengthening the descriptions of the
+environment in which the particular fruits and vegetables you deal with
+are to be found; and in book form you might allow yourself much greater
+latitude in the instructions concerning the handling of the fruits
+and the preparation of the recipes. I think myself that a wonderfully
+attractive book could be made from this material, and hope that you will
+agree with me. Trusting that this will be satisfactory to you and that
+you will seriously consider the book proposition before you decline it,
+I remain, my dear madam, Very truly yours,
+
+HUGH THOMPSON,
+
+Editor, Everybody's Home.
+
+Gripping the cheque and the letter, Linda lurched forward against the
+window casement and shut her eyes tight, because she could feel big,
+nervous gulps of exultation and rejoicing swelling up in her throat. She
+shifted the papers to one hand and surreptitiously slipped the other to
+her pocket. She tried to keep the papers before her and looked straight
+from the window to avoid attracting attention. The tumult of exultation
+in her heart was so wild that she did not surely know whether she wanted
+to sink to the floor, lay her face against the glass, and indulge in
+what for generations women have referred to as “a good cry,” or whether
+she wanted to leap from the window and sport on the wind like a driven
+leaf.
+
+Then she returned the letter and cheque to the envelope, and slipped it
+inside her blouse, and started on her way to school. She might as well
+have gone to Multiflores Canyon and pitted her strength against climbing
+its walls for the day, for all the good she did in her school work.
+She heard no word of any recitation by her schoolmates. She had no word
+ready when called on for a recitation herself. She heard nothing that
+was said by any of the professors. On winged feet she was flying back
+and forth from the desert to the mountains, from the canyons to the sea.
+She was raiding beds of amass and devising ways to roast the bulbs and
+make a new dish. She was compounding drinks from mescal and bisnaga. She
+was hunting desert pickles and trying to remember whether Indian rhubarb
+ever grew so far south. She was glad when the dismissal hour came that
+afternoon. With eager feet she went straight to the Consolidated Bank
+and there she asked again to be admitted to the office of the president.
+Mr. Worthington rose as she came in.
+
+“Am I wrong in my dates?” he inquired. “I was not expecting you until
+tomorrow.”
+
+“No, you're quite right,” said Linda. “At this hour tomorrow. But, Mr.
+Worthington, I am in trouble again.”
+
+Linda looked so distressed that the banker pushed a chair to the table's
+side for her, and when she had seated herself, he said quietly: “Tell me
+all about it, Linda. We must get life straightened out as best we can.”
+
+“I think I must tell you all about it,” said Linda, “because I know just
+enough about banking to know that I have a proposition that I don't
+know how to handle. Are bankers like father confessors and doctors and
+lawyers?”
+
+“I think they are even more so,” laughed Mr. Worthington. “Perhaps the
+father confessor takes precedence, otherwise I believe people are quite
+as much interested in their financial secrets as in anything else in all
+this world. Have you a financial secret?”
+
+“Yes,” said Linda, “I have what is to me a big secret, and I don't in
+the least know how to handle it, so right away I thought about you and
+that you would be the one to tell me what I could do.”
+
+“Go ahead,” said Mr. Worthington kindly. “I'll give you my word of honor
+to keep any secret you confide to me.”
+
+Linda produced her letter. She opened it and without any preliminaries
+handed it and the cheque to the banker. He looked at the cheque
+speculatively, and then laid it aside and read the letter. He gave every
+evidence of having read parts of it two or three times, then he examined
+the cheque again, and glanced at Linda.
+
+“And just how did you come into possession of this, young lady?” he
+inquired. “And what is it that you want of me?”
+
+“Why, don't you see?” said Linda. “It's my letter and my cheque; I'm
+'Jane Meredith.' Now how am I going to get my money.”
+
+For one dazed moment Mr. Worthington studied Linda; then he threw back
+his head and laughed unrestrainedly. He came around the table and took
+both Linda's hands.
+
+“Bully for you!” he cried exultantly. “How I wish your father could see
+the seed he has sown bearing its fruit. Isn't that fine? And do you want
+to go on with this anonymously?”
+
+“I think I must,” said Linda. “I have said in my heart that no Jap, male
+or female, young or old, shall take first honors in a class from which
+I graduate; and you can see that if people generally knew this, it would
+make it awfully hard for me to go on with my studies, and I don't know
+that the editor who is accepting this work would take it if he knew
+it were sent him by a high-school Junior. You see the dignified way in
+which he addresses me as 'madam'?”
+
+“I see,” said Mr. Worthington reflectively.
+
+“I'm sure,” said Linda with demure lips, though the eyes above them
+were blazing and dancing at high tension, “I'm sure that the editor
+is attaching a husband, and a house having a well-ordered kitchen, and
+rather wide culinary experience to that 'dear madam.'”
+
+“And what about this book proposition?” asked the banker gravely. “That
+would be a big thing for a girl of your age. Can you do it, and continue
+your school work?”
+
+“With the background I have, with the unused material I have, and with
+vacation coming before long, I can do it easily,” said Linda. “My school
+work is not difficult for me. It only requires concentration for about
+two hours in the preparation that each day brings. The remainder of the
+time I could give to amplifying and producing new recipes.”
+
+“I see,” said the banker. “So you have resolved, Linda, that you don't
+want your editor to know your real name.”
+
+“Could scarcely be done,” said Linda.
+
+“But have you stopped to think,” said the banker, “that you will be
+asked for personal history and about your residence, and no doubt a
+photograph of yourself. If you continue this work anonymously you're
+going to have trouble with more matters than cashing a cheque.”
+
+“But I am not going to have any trouble cashing a cheque,” she said,
+“because I have come straight to the man whose business is cheques.”
+
+“True enough,” he said; “I SHALL have to arrange the cheque; there's not
+a doubt about that; and as for your other bugbears.”
+
+“I refuse to be frightened by them,” interposed Linda.
+
+“Have you ever done any business at the bank?”
+
+“No,” said Linda.
+
+“None of the clerks know you?”
+
+“Not that I remember,” said Linda. “I might possibly be acquainted with
+some of them. I have merely passed through the bank on my way to your
+room twice.”
+
+“Then,” said the banker, “we'll have to risk it. After this estate
+business is settled you will want to open an account in your name.”
+
+“Quite true,” said Linda.
+
+“Then I would advise you,” said Mr. Worthington, “to open this account
+in your own name. Endorse this cheque 'Jane Meredith' and make it
+payable to me personally. Whenever one of these comes, bring it to me
+and I'll take care of it for you. One minute.”
+
+He left Linda sitting quietly reading and rereading her letter, and
+presently returned and laid a sheaf of paper money before her.
+
+“Take it to the paying teller. Tell him that you wish to deposit it, and
+ask him to give you a bank book and a cheque book,” he said. “Thank you
+very much for coming to me and for confiding in me.”
+
+Linda gathered up the money, and said good-bye to the banker. Just as
+she started forward she recognized Eileen at the window of the paying
+teller. It was an Eileen she never before had seen. Her face was
+strained to a ghastly gray. Her hat was not straight and her hands were
+shaking. Without realizing that she was doing it, Linda stepped behind
+one of the huge marble pillars supporting the ceiling and stood there
+breathlessly, watching Eileen. She could gather that she was discussing
+the bank ledger which lay before the teller and that he was refusing
+something that Eileen was imploring him to do. Linda thought she
+understood what it was. Then very clearly Eileen's voice, sharp and
+strained, reached her ears.
+
+“You mean that you are refusing to pay me my deposits on my private
+account?” she cried; and Linda could also hear the response.
+
+“I am very sorry if it annoys or inconveniences you, Miss Strong, but
+since the settlement of the estate takes place tomorrow, our orders are
+to pay out no funds in any way connected with the estate until after
+that settlement has been arranged.”
+
+“But this is my money, my own private affair,” begged Eileen. “The
+estate has nothing to do with it.”
+
+“I am sorry,” repeated the teller. “If that is the case, you will have
+no difficulty in establishing the fact in a few minutes' time.”
+
+Eileen turned and left the bank, and it seemed that she was almost
+swaying. Linda stood a second with narrowed eyes, in deep thought.
+
+“I think,” she said at last, deep down in her heart, “that it looks
+precious much as if there had been a bit of transgression in this
+affair. It looks, too, as if 'the way of the transgressor' were a darned
+hard way. Straight ahead open and aboveboard for you, my girl!”
+
+Then she went quietly to the desk and transacted her own business;
+but her beautiful day was clouded. Her heart was no longer leaping
+exultantly. She was sickened and sorrowful over the evident nerve strain
+and discomfort which Eileen seemed to have brought upon herself. She
+dreaded meeting her at dinner that night, and she wondered all the way
+home where Eileen had gone from the bank and what she had been doing.
+What she felt was a pale affair compared with what she would have felt
+if she could have seen Eileen leave the bank and enter a near-by
+store, go to a telephone booth and put in a long-distance call for San
+Francisco. Her eyes were brilliant, her cheeks by nature redder than
+the rouge she had used upon them. She squared her shoulders, lifted
+her head, as if she irrevocably had made a decision and would not be
+thwarted in acting upon it. While she waited she straightened her hat,
+and tucked up her pretty hair, once more evincing concern about her
+appearance. After a nervous wait she secured her party.
+
+“Am I speaking with Mr. James Heitman?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” came the answer.
+
+“Well, Uncle Jim, this is Eileen.”
+
+“Why, hello, girlie,” was the quick response. “Delighted that you're
+calling your ancient uncle. Haven't changed the decision in the last
+letter I had from you, have you?”
+
+“Yes,” said Eileen, “I have changed it. Do you and Aunt Caroline still
+want me, Uncle Jim?”
+
+“YOU BET WE WANT YOU!” roared the voice over the 'phone. “Here we are,
+with plenty of money and not a relation on earth but you to leave it to.
+You belong to us by rights. We'd be tickled to death to have you, and
+for you to have what's left of the money when we get through with it.
+May I come after you? Say the word, and I'll start this minute.”
+
+“Oh, Uncle Jim, could you? Would you?” cried Eileen.
+
+“Well, I'd say I could. We'd be tickled to death, I tell you!”
+
+“How long would it take you to get here?” said Eileen.
+
+“Well, I could reach you by noon tomorrow. Eleven something is the
+shortest time it's been made in; that would give me thirteen--more than
+enough. Are you in that much of a hurry?”
+
+“Yes,” gasped Eileen, “yes, I am in the biggest kind of a hurry there
+is, Uncle Jim. This troublesome little estate has to be settled tomorrow
+afternoon. There's going to be complaint about everything that I have
+seen fit to do. I've been hounded and harassed till I am disgusted with
+it. Then I've promised to marry John Gilman as I wrote you, and I don't
+believe you would think that was my best chance with the opportunities
+you could give me. It seems foolish to stay here, abused as I have been
+lately, and as I will be tomorrow. You have the house number. If you
+come and get me out of it by noon tomorrow, I'll go with you. You may
+take out those adoption papers you have always entreated me to agree to
+and I'll be a daughter that you can be proud of. It will be a relief to
+have some real money and some real position, and to breathe freely and
+be myself once more.”
+
+“All right for you, girlie!” bellowed the great voice over the line.
+“Pick up any little personal bits you can put in a suitcase, and by
+twelve o'clock tomorrow I'll whisk you right out of that damn mess.”
+
+Eileen walked from the telephone booth with her head high, triumph
+written all over her face and figure. They were going to humiliate her.
+She would show them!
+
+She went home immediately. Entering her room, she closed the door and
+stood looking at her possessions. How could she get her trunk from the
+garret? How could she get it to the station? Would it be possible for
+Uncle James to take it in his car? As she pondered these things Eileen
+had a dim memory of a day in her childhood when her mother had gone on
+business to San Francisco and had taken her along. She remembered a
+huge house, all turrets and towers and gables, all turns and twists
+and angles, closed to the light of day and glowing inside with shining
+artificial lights. She remembered stumbling over deep rugs. One vivid
+impression was of walls covered with huge canvases, some of them having
+frames more than a foot wide. She remembered knights in armor, and big
+fireplaces, and huge urns and vases. It seemed to her like the most
+wonderful bazaar she ever had been in. She remembered, too, that she had
+been glad when her mother had taken her out into the sunshine again and
+from the presence of two ponderous people who had objected strongly to
+everything her mother had discussed with them. She paused one instant,
+contemplating this picture. The look of triumph on her face toned down
+considerably. Then she comforted herself aloud.
+
+“I've heard Mother say,” she said softly, “that everybody overdid things
+and did not know how to be graceful with immense fortunes got from
+silver and gold mines, and lumber. It will be different now. Probably
+they don't live in the same house, even. There is a small army of
+servants, and there is nothing I can think of that Uncle Jim won't
+gladly get me. I've been too big a fool for words to live this way as
+long as I have. Crush me, will they? I'll show them! I won't even touch
+these things I have strained so to get.”
+
+Eileen jerked from her throat the strand of pearls that she had worn
+continuously for four years and threw it contemptuously on her dressing
+table.
+
+“I'll make Uncle Jim get me a rope with two or three strands in it that
+will reach to my waist. 'A suitcase!' I don't know what I would fill a
+suitcase with from here. The trunk may stay in the garret, and while I
+am leaving all this rubbish, I'll just leave John Gilman with it. Uncle
+Jim will give me an income that will buy all the cigarettes I want
+without having to deceive anyone; and I can have money if I want to
+stake something at bridge without being scared into paralysis for fear
+somebody may find it out or the accounts won't balance. I'll put on the
+most suitable thing I have to travel in, and just walk out and leave
+everything else.”
+
+That was what Eileen did. At noon the next day her eyes were bright with
+nervousness. Her cheeks alternately paled with fear and flooded red with
+anxiety. She had dressed herself carefully, laid out her hat and gloves
+and a heavy coat in case the night should be chilly. Once she stood
+looking at the dainty, brightly colored dresses hanging in her wardrobe
+A flash of regret passed over her face.
+
+“Tawdry little cheap things and makeshifts,” she said. “If Linda feels
+that she has been so terribly defrauded, she can help herself now!”
+
+By twelve o'clock she found herself standing at the window, straining
+her eyes down Lilac Valley. She was not looking at its helpful hills,
+at its appealing curves, at its brilliant colors. She was watching the
+roadway. When Katy rang to call her to lunch, she told her to put the
+things away; she was expecting people who would take her out to lunch
+presently. In the past years she had occasionally written to her uncle.
+Several times when he had had business in Los Angeles she had met him at
+his hotel and dined with him. She reasoned that he would come straight
+to the house and get her, and then they would go to one of the big
+hotels for lunch before they started.
+
+“I shan't feel like myself,” said Eileen, “until we are well on the way
+to San Francisco.”
+
+At one o'clock she was walking the floor. At two she was almost frantic.
+At half past she almost wished that she had had the good sense to have
+some lunch, since she was very hungry and under tense nerve strain. Once
+she paused before the glass, but what she saw frightened her. Just when
+she felt that she could not endure the strain another minute, grinding
+brakes, the blast of a huge Klaxon, and the sound of a great voice arose
+from the street. Eileen rushed to the window. She took one look, caught
+up the suitcase and raced down the stairs. At the door she met a bluff,
+big man, gross from head to foot. It seemed to Eileen strange that she
+could see in him even a trace of her mother, and yet she could. Red
+veins crossed his cheeks and glowed on his nose. His tired eyes
+were watery; his thick lips had an inclination to sag; but there was
+heartiness in his voice and earnestness in the manner in which he picked
+her up.
+
+“What have they been doing to you down here?” he demanded. “Never should
+have left you this long. Ought to have come down and taken you and
+showed you what you wanted, and then you would have known whether you
+wanted it or not.”
+
+At this juncture a huge woman, gross in a feminine way as her husband
+was in his, paddled up the walk.
+
+“I'm comin' in and rest a few minutes,” she said. “I'm tired to death
+and I'm pounded to pieces.”
+
+Her husband turned toward her. He opened his lips to introduce Eileen.
+His wife forestalled him.
+
+“So this is the Eileen you have been ravin' about for years,” she said.
+“I thought you said she was a pretty girl.”
+
+Eileen's soul knew one sick instant of recoil. She looked from James
+Heitman to Caroline, his wife, and remembered that he had a habit
+of calling her “Callie.” All that paint and powder and lipstick and
+brilliantine could do to make the ponderous, big woman more ghastly had
+been done, but in the rush of the long ride through which her husband
+had forced her, the colors had mixed and slipped, the false waves were
+displaced. She was not in any condition to criticize the appearance
+of another woman. For one second Eileen hesitated, then she lifted her
+shaking hands to her hat.
+
+“I have been hounded out of my senses,” she said apologetically, “and
+have been so terribly anxious for fear you wouldn't get here on time.
+Please, Aunt Caroline, let us go to a hotel, some place where we can
+straighten up comfortably.”
+
+“Well, what's your hurry?” said Aunt Caroline coolly. “You're not a
+fugitive from justice, are you? Can't a body rest a few minutes and have
+a drink, even? Besides, I am going to see what kind of a place you've
+been living in, and then I'll know how thankful you'll be for what we
+got to offer.”
+
+Eileen turned and threw open the door. The big woman walked in. She
+looked down the hall, up the stairway, and went on to the living room.
+She gave it one contemptuous glance, and turning, came back to the door.
+
+“All right, Jim,” she said brusquely. “I have seen enough. If you know
+the best hotel in the town, take me there. And then, if Eileen's in such
+a hurry, after we have had a bite we'll start for home.”
+
+“Thank you, Aunt Caroline, oh, thank you!” cried Eileen.
+
+“You needn't take the trouble to 'aunt' me every time you speak to me,”
+ said the lady. “I know you're my niece, but I ain't goin' to remind you
+of it every time I speak to you. It's agein', this 'auntie' business.
+I don't stand for it, and as for a name, I am free to confess I always
+like the way Jim calls me 'Callie.' That sounds younger and more
+companionable than 'Caroline.'”
+
+James Heitman looked at Eileen and winked.
+
+“You just bet, old girl!” he said. “They ain't any of them can beat
+you, not even Eileen at her best. Let's get her out of here. Does this
+represent your luggage, girlie?”
+
+“You said not to bother with anything else,” said Eileen.
+
+“So I did,” said Uncle Jim, “and I meant just what I said if it's all
+right with you. I suppose I did have, in the back of my head, an idea
+that there might be a trunk or a box--some things that belonged to your
+mother, mebby, and your 'keepsakes.'”
+
+“Oh, never mind,” interrupted Eileen. “Do let's go. It's nearly four
+o'clock. Any minute they may send for me from the bank, and I'd be more
+than glad to be out of the way.”
+
+“Well, I'm not accustomed to being the porter, but if time's that
+precious, here we go,” said Uncle Jim.
+
+He picked up the suitcase with one hand and took his wife's arm with the
+other.
+
+“Scoot down there and climb into that boat,” he said proudly to Eileen.
+“We'll have a good dinner in a private room when we get to the hotel. I
+won't even register. And then we'll get out of here when we have rested
+a little.”
+
+“Can't we stay all night and go in the morning?” panted his wife.
+
+“No, ma'am, we can't,” said James Heitman authoritatively. “We'll eat
+a bite because we need to be fed up, and I sincerely hope they's some
+decent grub to be had in this burg. The first place we come to outside
+of here, that looks like they had a decent bed, we'll stop and make up
+for last night. But we ain't a-goin' to stay here if Eileen wants us to
+start right away, eh, Eileen?”
+
+“Yes, please!” panted Eileen. “I just don't want to meet any of them.
+It's time enough for them to know what has happened after I am gone.”
+
+“All right then,” said Uncle James. “Pile in and we'll go.”
+
+So Eileen started on the road to the unlimited wealth her soul had
+always craved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. Linda's First Party
+
+At the bank Linda and John Gilman waited an hour past the time set for
+Eileen's appearance. Then Linda asserted herself.
+
+“I have had a feeling for some time,” she said quietly, “that Eileen
+would not appear today, and if she doesn't see fit to come, there is no
+particular reason why she should. There is nothing to do but go over
+the revenue from the estate. The books will show what Eileen has drawn
+monthly for her expense budget. That can be set aside and the remainder
+divided equally between us. It's very simple. Here is a letter I wrote
+to the publishers of Father's books asking about royalties. I haven't
+even opened it. I will turn it in with the remainder of the business.”
+
+They were in the office with the president of the bank. He rang for the
+clerk he wanted and the books he required, and an hour's rapid figuring
+settled the entire matter, with the exception of the private account,
+amounting to several thousands, standing in Eileen's name. None of them
+knew any source of separate income she might have. At a suggestion from
+Linda, the paying teller was called in and asked if he could account for
+any of the funds that had gone into the private account.
+
+“Not definitely,” he said, “but the amounts always corresponded
+exactly with the royalties from the books. I strongly suspect that they
+constitute this private account of Miss Eileen's.”
+
+But he did not say that she had tried to draw it the day previous.
+
+John Gilman made the suggestion that they should let the matter rest
+until Eileen explained about it. Then Linda spoke very quietly, but with
+considerable finality in her tone.
+
+“No,” she said, “I know that Eileen HAD no source of private income.
+Mother used to mention that she had some wealthy relatives in San
+Francisco, but they didn't approve of her marriage to what they called
+a 'poor doctor,' and she would never accept, or allow us to accept,
+anything from them. They never came to see us and we never went to see
+them. Eileen knows no more about them than I do. We will work upon the
+supposition that everything that is here belonged to Father. Set aside
+to Eileen's credit the usual amount for housekeeping expenses. Turn the
+private account in with the remainder. Start two new bank books, one for
+Eileen and one for me. Divide the surplus each month exactly in halves.
+And I believe this is the proper time for the bank to turn over to me
+a certain key, specified by my father as having been left in your
+possession to be delivered to me on my coming of age.”
+
+With the key in her possession, Linda and John Gilman left the bank. As
+they stood for a moment in front of the building, Gilman removed his hat
+and ran his hands through his hair as if it were irritating his head.
+
+“Linda,” he said in a deeply wistful tone, “I don't understand this. Why
+shouldn't Eileen have come today as she agreed? What is there about this
+that is not according to law and honor and the plain, simple rights of
+the case?”
+
+“I don't know,” said Linda; “but there is something we don't understand
+about it. And I am going to ask you, John, as my guardian, closing up my
+affairs today, to go home with me to be present when I open the little
+hidden door I found at the back of a library shelf when I was disposing
+of Daddy's technical books. There was a slip of paper at the edge of it
+specifying that the key was in possession of the Consolidated Bank and
+was to be delivered to me, in the event of Daddy's passing, on my coming
+of age. I have the key, but I would like to have you with me, and Eileen
+if she is in the house, when I open that door. I don't know what is
+behind it, but there's a certain feeling that always has been strong in
+my heart and it never was so strong as it is at this minute.”
+
+So they boarded the street car and ran out to Lilac Valley. When Katy
+admitted them Linda put her arm around her and kissed her. She could see
+that the house was freshly swept and beautifully decorated with flowers,
+and her trained nostrils could scent whiffs of delicious odors from
+food of which she was specially fond. In all her world Katy was the one
+person who was celebrating her birthday. She seemed rather surprised
+when Linda and Gilman came in together.
+
+“Where is Eileen?” inquired Linda.
+
+“She must have made some new friends,” said Katy. “About four o'clock,
+the biggest car that ever roared down this street rolled up, and the
+biggest man and woman that I ever see came puffin' and pantin' in. Miss
+Eileen did not tell me where she was goin' or when she would be back,
+but I know it won't be the night, because she took her little dressin'
+case with her. Belike it's another of them trips to Riverside or
+Pasadena.”
+
+“Very likely,” said Linda quietly. “Katy, can you spare a few minutes?”
+
+“No, lambie, I jist can't,” said Katy, “because a young person that's
+the apple of me eye is havin' a birthday the day and I have got me
+custard cake in the oven and the custard is in the makin', and after
+Miss Eileen went and I didn't see no chance for nothin' special, I
+jist happened to look out, one of the ways ye do things unbeknownst
+to yourself, and there stood Mr. Pater Morrison moonin' over the
+'graveyard,' like he called it, and it was lookin' like seein' graves he
+was, and I jist took the bull by the horns, and I sings out to him and
+I says: 'Mr. Pater Morrison, it's a good friend ye were to the young
+missus when ye engineered her skylight and her beautiful fireplace, and
+this bein' her birthday, I'm takin' the liberty to ask ye to come to
+dinner and help me celebrate.' And he said he would run up to the garage
+and get into his raygimentals, whatever them might be, and he would be
+here at six o'clock. So ye got a guest for dinner, and if the custard's
+scorched and the cake's flat, it's up to ye for kapin' me here to tell
+ye all this.”
+
+Then Katy hurried to the kitchen. Linda looked at John Gilman and
+smiled.
+
+“Isn't that like her?” she said.
+
+Then she led the way to the library, pulled aside the books, fitted the
+key to the little door, and opened it. Inside lay a single envelope,
+sealed and bearing her name. She took the envelope, and walking to her
+father's chair beside his library table, sat down in it, and laying the
+envelope on the table, crossed her hands on top of it.
+
+“John,” she said, “ever since I have been big enough to think and reason
+and study things out for myself, there is a feeling I have had--I used
+to think it was unreasonable, then I thought it remote possibility. This
+minute I think it's extremely probable. Before I open this envelope I am
+going to tell you what I believe it contains. I have not the slightest
+evidence except personal conviction, but I believe that the paper inside
+this envelope is written by my father's hand and I believe it tells me
+that he was not Eileen's father and that I am not her sister. If it
+does not say this, then there is nothing in race and blood and inherited
+tendencies.”
+
+Linda picked up the paper cutter, ran it across the envelope, slipped
+out the sheet, and bracing herself she read:
+
+MY DARLING LINDA:
+
+These lines are to tell you that your mother went to her eternal sleep
+when you were born. Four years later I met and fell in love with the
+only mother you ever have known. At the time of our marriage we entered
+into a solemn compact that her little daughter by a former marriage and
+mine should be reared as sisters. I was to give half my earnings and to
+do for Eileen exactly as I did for you. She was to give half her love
+and her best attention to your interests.
+
+I sincerely hope that what I have done will not result in any discomfort
+or inconvenience to you.
+
+With dearest love, as ever your father,
+
+ALEXANDER STRONG.
+
+Linda laid the sheet on the table and dropped her hands on top of it.
+Then she looked at John Gilman.
+
+“John,” she said, “I believe you had better face the fact that the big
+car and the big people that carried Eileen away today were her mother's
+wealthy relatives from San Francisco. She must have been in touch with
+them. I think very likely she sent for them after I saw her in the bank
+yesterday afternoon, trying with all her might to make the paying teller
+turn over to her the funds of the private account.”
+
+John Gilman sat very still for a long time, then he raised tired,
+disappointed eyes to Linda's face.
+
+“Linda,” he said, “do you mean you think Eileen was not straight about
+money matters?”
+
+“John,” said Linda quietly, “I think it is time for the truth about
+Eileen between you and me. If you want me to answer that question
+candidly, I'll answer it.”
+
+“I want the truth,” said John Gilman gravely.
+
+“Well,” said Linda, “I never knew Eileen to be honest about anything
+in all her life unless the truth served her better than an evasion. Her
+hair was not honest color and it was not honest curl. Her eyebrows were
+not so dark as she made them. Her cheeks and lips were not so red, her
+forehead and throat were not so white, her form was not so perfect. Her
+friends were selected because they could serve her. As long as you were
+poor and struggling, Marian was welcome to you. When you won a great
+case and became prosperous and fame came rapidly, Eileen took you. I
+believe what I told you a minute ago: I think she has gone for good. I
+think she went because she had not been fair and she would not be forced
+to face the fact before you and me and the president of the Consolidated
+today. I think you will have to take your heart home tonight and I think
+that before the night is over you will realize what Marian felt when she
+knew that in addition to having been able to take you from her, Eileen
+was not a woman who would make you happy. I am glad, deeply glad, that
+there is not a drop of her blood in my veins, sorry as I am for you and
+much as I regret what has happened. I won't ask you to stay tonight,
+because you must go through the same black waters Marian breasted, and
+you will want to be alone. Later, if you think of any way I can serve
+you, I will be glad for old sake's sake; but you must not expect me ever
+to love you or respect your judgment as I did before the shadow fell.”
+
+Then Linda rose, replaced the letter, turned the key in the lock, and
+quietly slipped out of the room.
+
+When she opened her door and stepped into her room she paused in
+astonishment. Spread out upon the bed lay a dress of georgette with
+little touches of fur and broad ribbons of satin. In color it was
+like the flame of seasoned beechwood. Across the foot of the bed hung
+petticoat, camisole, and hose, and beside the dress a pair of satin
+slippers exactly matching the hose, and they seemed the right size.
+Linda tiptoed to the side of the bed and delicately touched the dress,
+and then she saw a paper lying on the waist front, and picking it up
+read:
+
+Lambie, here's your birthday, from loving old Katy.
+
+The lines were terse and to the point. Linda laid them down, and picking
+up the dress she walked to the mirror, and holding it under her chin
+glanced down the length of its reflection. What she saw almost stunned
+her.
+
+“Oh, good Lord!” she said. “I can't wear that. That isn't me.”
+
+Then she tossed the dress on the bed and started in a headlong rush to
+the kitchen. As she came through the door, “You blessed old darling!”
+ she cried. “What am I going to say to make you know how I appreciate
+your lovely, lovely gift?”
+
+Katy raised her head. There was something that is supposed to be the
+prerogative of royalty in the lift of it. Her smile was complacent in
+the extreme.
+
+“Don't ye be standin' there wastin' no time talkie',” she said.
+
+“I have oodles of time,” said Linda, “but I warn you, you won't know me
+if I put on that frock, Katy.”
+
+“Yes, I will, too,” said Katy.
+
+“Katy,” said Linda, sobering suddenly, “would it make any great
+difference to you if I were the only one here for always, after this?”
+
+Katy laughed contemptuously.
+
+“Well, I'd warrant to survive it,” she said coolly.
+
+“But that is exactly what I must tell you, Katy,” said Linda soberly.
+“You know I have told you a number of times through these years that I
+did not believe Eileen and I were sisters, and I am telling you now that
+I know it. She did not come to the bank today, and the settlement of
+Father's affairs developed the fact that I was my father's child and
+Eileen was her mother's; and I'm thinking, Katy, that the big car
+you saw and the opulent people in it were Eileen's mother's wealthy
+relatives from San Francisco. My guess is, Katy, that Eileen has gone
+with them for good. Lock her door and don't touch her things until we
+know certainly what she wants done with them.”
+
+Katy stood thinking intently, then she lifted her eyes to Linda's.
+
+“Lambie,” she whispered softly, “are we ixpicted to go into mourning
+over this?”
+
+A mischievous light leaped into Linda's eyes.
+
+“Well, if there are any such expectations abroad, Katherine O'Donovan,”
+ she said soberly, “the saints preserve 'em, for we can't fulfill 'em,
+can we, Katy?”
+
+ “Not to be savin' our souls,” answered Katy heartily.  “I'm jist
+so glad and thankful that I don't know what to do, and it's such good
+news that I don't belave one word of it. And while you're talkie', what
+about John Gilman?”
+
+“I think,” said Linda quietly, “that tonight is going to teach him how
+Marian felt in her blackest hours.”
+
+“Well, he needn't be coming to me for sympathy,” said Katy. “But if Miss
+Eileen has gone to live with the folks that come after her the day, ye
+might be savin' a wee crap o' sympathy for her, lambie. They was jist
+the kind of people that you'd risk your neck slidin' down a mountain to
+get out of their way.”
+
+“That is too bad,” said Linda reflectively; “because Eileen is sensitive
+and constant contact with crass vulgarity certainly would wear on her
+nerves.”
+
+“Now you be goin' and gettin' into that dress, lambie,” said Katy.
+
+“Katherine O'Donovan,” said Linda, “you're used to it; come again to
+confession. Tell me truly where and how did you get that dress?”
+
+“'Tain't no rule of polite society to be lookin' gift horses in the
+mouth,” said Katy proudly. “HOW I got it is me own affair, jist like ye
+got any gifts ye was ever makin' me, is yours. WHERE I got it? I went
+into the city on the strafe car and I went to the biggest store in the
+city and I got in the elevator and I says to the naygur: 'Let me off
+where real ladies buy ready-to-wear dresses.'
+
+“And up comes a little woman, and her hair was jist as soft and curling
+round her ears, and brown and pretty was her eyes, and the pink that
+God made was in her cheeks, and in a voice like runnin' water she says:
+'Could I do anything for you?' I told her what I wanted. And she says:
+'How old is the young lady, and what's her size, and what's her color?'
+Darlin', ain't that dress the answer to what I told her?”
+
+“Yes,” said Linda. “If an artist had been selecting a dress for me he
+would probably have chosen that one. But, old dear, it's not suitable
+for me. It's not the kind of dress that I intended to wear for years and
+years yet. Do you think, if I put it on tonight, I'll ever be able to
+go back to boots and breeches again, and hunt the canyons for plants to
+cook for--you know what?”
+
+Katy stood in what is commonly designated as a “brown study.” Then she
+looked Linda over piercingly.
+
+“Yes, ma'am,” she said conclusively. “It's my judgment that ye will. I
+think ye'll maybe wrap the braids of ye around your head tonight, and I
+think ye'll put on that frock, and I think ye'll show Pater Morrison how
+your pa's daughter can sit at the head of his table and entertain her
+friends. Then I think ye'll hang it in your closet and put on your boots
+and breeches and go back to your old Multiflores and attind to your
+business, the same as before.”
+
+“All right, Katy,” said Linda, “if you have that much faith in me I have
+that much faith in myself; but, old dear, I can't tell you how I LOVE
+having a pretty dress for tonight. Katy dear, the 'Day of Jubilee' has
+come. Before you go to sleep I'm coming to your room to tell you fine
+large secrets, that you won't believe for a minute, but I haven't the
+time to do it now.”
+
+Then Linda raced to her room and began dressing. She let down the mop of
+her hair waving below her waist and looked at it despairingly.
+
+“That dress never was made for braids down your back,” she said,
+glancing toward the bed where it lay shimmering in a mass of lovely
+color. “I am of age today; for state occasions I should be a woman. What
+shall I do with it?”
+
+And then she recalled Katy's voice saying: “Braids round your head.”
+
+“Of course,” said Linda, “that would be the thing to do. I certainly
+don't need anything to add to my height; I am far too tall now.”
+
+So she parted her hair in the middle, brushed it back, divided it in
+even halves, and instead of braiding it, she coiled it around her head,
+first one side and then the other.
+
+She slipped into the dress and struggled with its many and intricate
+fastenings. Then she went to the guest room to stand before the
+full-length mirror there. Slowly she turned. Critically she examined
+herself.
+
+“It's a bit shorter than I would have ordered it,” she said, “but it
+reduces my height, it certainly gives wonderful freedom in walking, and
+it's not nearly so short as I see other girls wearing.”
+
+Again she studied herself critically.
+
+“Need some kind of ornament for my hair,” she muttered, “but I haven't
+got it, and neither do I own beads, bracelet, or a ring; and my ears are
+sticking right out in the air. I am almost offensively uncovered.”
+
+Then she went down to show herself to a delighted Katy. When the
+doorbell rang Linda turned toward the hall. Katy reached a detaining
+hand.
+
+“You'll do nothing of the sort,” she said. “I answered the bell for Miss
+Eileen. Answer the bell I shall for you.”
+
+Down the hall went Katy with the light of battle in her eyes and the
+air of a conqueror in the carriage of her head. She was well trained.
+Neither eyelid quivered as she flung the door wide to Peter Morrison.
+He stood there in dinner dress, more imposing than Katy had thought he
+could be. With quick, inner exultation she reached for two parcels he
+carried; over them her delight was so overpowering that Peter Morrison
+must have seen a hint of it. With a flourish Katy seated him, and
+carried the packages to Linda. She returned a second later for a big
+vase, and in this Linda arranged a great sheaf of radiant roses. As Katy
+started to carry them back to the room, Linda said “Wait a second,” and
+selecting one half opened, she slipped it out, shortened the stem and
+tucked it among the coils of hair where she would have set an ornament.
+The other package was a big box that when opened showed its interior
+to be divided into compartments in each of which nestled an exquisite
+flower made of spun sugar. The petals, buds, and leaves were
+perfect. There were wonderful roses with pale pink outer petals and
+deeper-colored hearts. There were pink mallows that seemed as if they
+must have been cut from the bushes bordering Santa Monica road. There
+were hollyhocks of white and gold, and simply perfect tulips. Linda
+never before had seen such a treasure candy box. She cried out in
+delight, and hurried to show Katy. In her pleasure over the real flowers
+and the candy flowers Linda forgot her dress, but when she saw Peter
+Morrison standing tall and straight, in dinner dress, she stopped and
+looked the surprise and pleasure she felt. She had grown accustomed
+to Peter in khaki pottering around his building. This Peter she never
+before had seen. He represented something of culture, something of
+pride, a conformity to a nice custom and something more. Linda was not a
+psychoanalyst.
+
+She could not see a wonderful aura of exquisite color enveloping Peter.
+But when Peter saw the girl approaching him, transformed into a woman
+whose shining coronet was jewelled with his living red rose, when he saw
+the beauty of her lithe slenderness clothed in a soft, flaming color,
+something emanated from his inner consciousness that Linda did see,
+and for an instant it disturbed her as she went forward holding out her
+hands.
+
+“Peter,” she said gaily, “do you know that this is my Day of Jubilee? I
+am a woman today by law, Peter. Hereafter I am to experience at least
+a moderate degree of financial freedom, and that I shall enjoy. But the
+greatest thing in life is friends.”
+
+Peter took both the hands extended to him and looked smilingly into her
+eyes.
+
+“You take my breath,” he said. “I knew, the first glimpse I ever had
+of you scrambling from the canyon floor, that this transformation COULD
+take place. My good fortune is beyond words that I have been first to
+see it. Permit me, fair lady.”
+
+Peter bent and kissed both her hands. He hesitated a second, then he
+turned the right hand and left one more kiss in its palm.
+
+“To have and to hold!” he said whimsically.
+
+“Thank you,” said Linda, closing her fist over it and holding it up for
+inspection. “I'll see that it doesn't escape. And this minute I thank
+you for the candy, which I know is delicious, and for my very first
+sheaf of roses from any man. See what I have done with one of them?”
+
+She turned fully around that he might catch the effect of the rose,
+and in getting that he also got the full effect of the costume, and the
+possibilities of the girl before him. And then she gave him a shock.
+
+“Isn't it a lovely frock?” she said. “Another birthday gift from the
+Strong rock of ages. I have been making a collection of rocks for my
+fern bed, and I have got another collection that is not visible to
+anyone save myself. Katy's a rock, and you're a rock, and Donald is a
+rock, and Marian's a rock, and I am resting securely on all of you. I
+wish my father knew that in addition to Marian and Katy I have found two
+more such wonderful friends.”
+
+“And what about Henry Anderson?” inquired Peter. “Aren't you going to
+include him?”
+
+Linda walked over to the chair in which she intended to seat herself.
+
+“Peter,” she said, “I wish you hadn't asked me that.”
+
+Peter's figure tensed suddenly.
+
+“Look here, Linda,” he said sternly, “has that rather bold youngster
+made himself in any way offensive to you?”
+
+“Not in any way that I am not perfectly capable of handling myself,”
+ said Linda. She looked at Peter confidently.
+
+“Do you suppose,” she said, “that I can sit down in this thing without
+ruining it? Shouldn't I really stand up while I am wearing it?”
+
+Peter laughed unrestrainedly.
+
+“Linda, you're simply delicious,” he said. “It seems to me that I have
+seen young ladies in like case reach round and gather the sash to one
+side and smooth out the skirt as they sit.”
+
+“Thank you, Peter, of course that would be the way,” said Linda. “This
+being my first, I'm lacking in experience.”
+
+And thereupon she sat according to direction; while Peter sat opposite
+her.
+
+“Now finish. Just one word more about Henry Anderson,” he said. “Are you
+perfectly sure there is nothing I need do for you in that connection?”
+
+“Oh, perfectly,” said Linda lightly. “I didn't mean to alarm you. He
+merely carried that bug-catcher nonsense a trifle too far. I wouldn't
+have minded humoring him and fooling about it a little. But, Peter, do
+you know him quite well? Are you very sure of him?”
+
+“No,” said Peter, “I don't know him well at all. The only thing I am
+sure about him is that he is doing well in his profession. I chose him
+because he was an ambitious youngster and I thought I could get more
+careful attention from him than I could from some of the older fellows
+who had made their reputation. You see, there are such a lot of things I
+want to know about in this building proposition, and the last four years
+haven't been a time for any man to be careful about saving his money.”
+
+“Then,” said Linda, “he is all right, of course. He must be. But I think
+I'm like a cat. I'm very complacent with certain people, but when I
+begin to get goose flesh and hair prickles my head a bit, I realize that
+there is something antagonistic around, something for me to beware of. I
+guess it's because I am such a wild creature.”
+
+“Do you mean to say,” said Peter, “that these are the sensations that
+Henry gives you?”
+
+Linda nodded.
+
+“Now forget Henry,” she said. “I have had such a big day I must tell
+you about it, and then we'll come to that last article you left me.
+I haven't had time to put anything on paper concerning it yet, but I
+believe I have an awfully good idea in the paint pot, and I'll find time
+in a day or two to work it out. Peter, I have just come from the bank,
+where I was recognized as of legal age, and my guardian discharged. And
+perhaps I ought to explain to you, Peter, that your friend, John Gilman,
+is not here because this night is going to be a bad one for him. When
+you knew him best he was engaged, or should have been, to Marian Thorne.
+When you met him this time he really was engaged to Eileen. I don't
+know what you think about Eileen. I don't feel like influencing anyone's
+thought concerning her, so I'll merely say that today has confirmed a
+conviction that always has been in my heart. Katy could tell you that
+long ago I said to her that I did not believe Eileen was my sister.
+Today has brought me the knowledge and proof positive that she is not,
+and today she has gone to some wealthy relatives of her mother in San
+Francisco. She expressed her contempt for what she was giving up by
+leaving everything, including the exquisite little necklace of pearls
+which has been a daily part of her since she owned them. I may be
+mistaken, but intuition tells me that with the pearls and the wardrobe
+she has also discarded John Gilman. I think your friend will be
+suffering tonight quite as deeply as my friend suffered when John
+abandoned her at a time when she had lost everything else in life but
+her money. I feel very sure that we won't see Eileen any more. I hope
+she will have every lovely thing in life.”
+
+“Amen,” said Peter Morrison earnestly. “I loved John Gilman when we were
+in school together, but I have not been able to feel, since I located
+here, that he is exactly the same John; and what you have told me very
+probably explains the difference in him.”
+
+When Katy announced dinner Linda arose.
+
+Peter Morrison stepped beside her and offered his arm. Linda rested her
+finger tips upon it and he led her to the head of the table and seated
+her. Then Katy served a meal that, if it had been prepared for Eileen,
+she would have described as a banquet. She gave them delicious, finely
+flavored food, stimulating, exquisitely compounded drinks that she had
+concocted from the rich fruits of California and mints and essences at
+her command. When, at the close of the meal, she brought Morrison some
+of the cigars Eileen kept for John Gilman, she set a second tray before
+Linda, and this tray contained two packages. Linda looked at Katy
+inquiringly, and Katy, her face beaming, nodded her sandy red head
+emphatically.
+
+“More birthday gifts you've havin', me lady,” she said in her mellowest
+Irish voice.
+
+“More?” marveled Linda. She picked up the larger package, and opening
+it, found a beautiful book inscribed from her friend Donald, over which
+she passed caressing fingers.
+
+“Why, how lovely of him!” she said. “How in this world did he know?”
+
+Katherine O'Donovan could have answered that question, but she did not.
+The other package was from Marian. When she opened it Linda laughed
+unrestrainedly.
+
+“What a joke!” she said. “I had promised myself that I would not touch
+a thing in Eileen's room, and before I could do justice to Katy's lovely
+dress I had to go there for pins for my hair and powder for my nose.
+This is Marian's way of telling me that I am almost a woman. Will you
+look at this?”
+
+“Well, just what is it?” inquired Peter.
+
+“Hairpins,” laughed Linda, “and hair ornaments, and a box of face
+powder, and the little, feminine touches that my dressing table needs
+badly. How would you like, Peter, to finish your cigar in my workroom?”
+
+“I would like it immensely,” said Peter.
+
+So together they climbed to the top of the house. Linda knelt and made a
+little ceremony of lighting the first fire in her fireplace. She pushed
+one of her chairs to one side for Peter, and taking the other for
+herself, she sat down and began the process of really becoming
+acquainted with him. Two hours later, as he was leaving her, Peter made
+a circuit of the room, scrutinizing the sketches and paintings that were
+rapidly covering the walls, and presently he came to the wasp. He looked
+at it so closely that he did not miss even the stinger. Linda stood
+beside him when he made his first dazed comment: “If that isn't Eileen,
+and true to the life!”
+
+“I must take that down,” said Linda. “I did it one night when my heart
+was full of bitterness.”
+
+“Better leave it,” said Peter drily.
+
+“Do you think I need it as a warning?” asked Linda.
+
+Peter turned and surveyed her slowly.
+
+“Linda,” he said quietly, “what I think of you has not yet been written
+in any of the books.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. Buena Moza
+
+As soon as Peter had left her Linda took her box of candy flowers and
+several of her finest roses and went to Katy's room. She found Katy in a
+big rocking chair, her feet on a hassock, reading a story in Everybody's
+home. When her door opened and she saw her young mistress framed in it
+she tossed the magazine aside and sprang to her feet, but Linda made her
+resume her seat. The girl shortened the stems of the roses and put them
+in a vase on Katy's dresser.
+
+“They may clash with your coloring a mite, Mother Machree,” she said,
+“but by themselves they are very wonderful things, aren't they?”
+
+Linda went over, and drawing her dress aside, sat down on the hassock
+and leaning against Katy's knee she held up the box of candy flowers for
+amazed and delighted inspection.
+
+“Ah, the foine gintleman!” cried Katy. “Sure 'twas only a pape I had
+when ye opened the box, an' I didn't know how rare them beauties railly
+was.”
+
+“Choose the one you like best,” said Linda.
+
+But Katy would not touch the delicate things, so Linda selected a brushy
+hollyhock for her and then sat at her knee again.
+
+“Katherine O'Donovan,” she said solemnly, “it's up to a couple of young
+things such as we are, stranded on the shoals of the Pacific as we have
+been, to put our heads together and take counsel. You're a host, Katy,
+and while I am taking care of you, I'll be just delighted to have you go
+on looking after your black sheep; but it's going to be lonely, for all
+that. After Eileen has taken her personal possessions, what do you
+say to fixing up that room with the belongings that Marian kept, and
+inviting her to make that suite her home until such time as she may have
+a home of her own again?”
+
+“Foine!” cried Katy. “I'd love to be havin' her. I'd agree to take
+orders from Miss Marian and to be takin' care of her jist almost the
+same as I do of ye, Miss Linda. The one thing I don't like about it is
+that it ain't fair nor right to give even Marian the best. Ye be takin'
+that suite yourself, lambie, and give Miss Marian your room all fixed up
+with her things, or, if ye want her nearer, give her the guest room and
+make a guest room of yours.”
+
+“I am willing to follow either of the latter suggestions for myself,”
+ said Linda; “it might be pleasant to be across the hall from Marian
+where we could call back and forth to each other. I wouldn't mind a
+change as soon as I have time to get what I'd need to make the change.
+I'll take the guest room for mine, and you may call in a decorator and
+have my room freshly done and the guest things moved into it.”
+
+Katy looked belligerent. Linda reached up and touched the frowning lines
+on her forehead.
+
+“Brighten your lovely features with a smile, Katherine me dear,” she
+said gaily. “Don't be forgetting that this is our Day of Jubilee. We
+are free--I hope we are free forever--from petty annoyances and
+dissatisfactions and little, galling things that sear the soul and bring
+out all the worst in human nature. I couldn't do anything to Eileen's
+suite, not even if I resorted to tearing out partitions and making it
+new from start to finish, that would eliminate Eileen from it for me. If
+Marian will give me permission to move and install her things in it,
+I think she can use it without any such feeling, but I couldn't. It's
+agreed then, Katy, I am to write to Marian and extend to her a welcome
+on your part as well as on mine?”
+
+“That ye may, lambie,” said Katy heartily. “And, as the boss used to be
+sabin', just to make assurance doubly sure, if YoU would address it
+for me I would be writing' a bit of a line myself, conveying' to her me
+sentiments on the subject.”
+
+“Oh, fine, Katy; Marian would be delighted!” cried Linda, springing up.
+
+“And, Katy dear, it won't make us feel any more like mourning for Eileen
+when I tell you that it developed at the bank yesterday and today, that
+since she has been managing household affairs she has deposited in a
+separate account all the royalties from Father's books. I had thought
+the matter closed at the bank when this fund was added to the remainder
+of the estate, the household expenses set aside to Eileen, and the
+remainder divided equally between us. I didn't get the proof that she
+was not my sister until after I came home. I think it means that I shall
+have to go back to the bank, have the matter reopened, and unless she
+can produce a will or something proving that she is entitled to it, it
+seems to me that what remains of my father's estate is legally mine. Of
+course, if it develops that he has made any special provision for her,
+she shall have it; otherwise, Katy, we'll be in a position to install
+you as housekeeper and put some light-footed, capable young person under
+you for a step-saver in any direction you want to use her. It means,
+too, that I shall be able to repay your loan immediately and to do the
+things that I wanted to do about the house.”
+
+“Now I ain't in any hurry about that money, lambie,” said Katy; “and you
+understand of course that the dress you're wearing' I am given' ye.”
+
+“Of course, old dear, and you should have seen Peter Morrison light up
+and admire it. He thinks you have wonderful taste, Katy.”
+
+Katy threw up both her hands.
+
+“Oh, my Lord, lambie!” she cried, aghast. “Was you telling' him that the
+dress ye were wearing' was a present from your old cook?”
+
+“Why, certainly I was,” said Linda, wide eyed with astonish meet. “Why
+shouldn't I? I was proud to. And now, old dear, before I go, the biggest
+secret of all. I had a letter, Katy, from the editor of Everybody's
+Home, and people like our articles, Katy; they are something now and
+folk are letting the editor know about it, and he wants all I can send
+him. He likes the pictures I make; and, Katy, you won't believe it till
+I show you my little bank book, but for the three already published
+with their illustrations he pays me five hundred nice, long, smooth,
+beautifully decorated, paper dollars!”
+
+“Judas praste!” cried Katy, her hands once more aloft. “Ye ain't manin'
+it, lambie?”
+
+“Yes, I are,” laughed Linda. “I've got the money; and for each
+succeeding three with their pictures I am to have that much more, and
+when I finish--now steady yourself, Katy, because this is going to be a
+shock--when I finish, blessed old dear heart, he is going to make them
+into a book! That will be my job for this summer, and you shall help me,
+and it will be a part of our great secret. Won't it be the most fun?”
+
+“My soul!” said Katy. “You're jist crazy. I don't belave a word you're
+telling' me.”
+
+“But I can prove it, because I have the letter and the bank book,” said
+Linda.
+
+Katy threw her arms around the girl and kissed the top of her head and
+cried over her and laughed at the same time and patted her and petted
+her and ended by saying: “Oh, lambie, if only the master could be
+knowin' it.”
+
+“But he does know, Katy,” said Linda.
+
+She went to her room, removed the beautiful dress and, arranging it on
+a hanger, left it in her closet. Slipping into an old dressing gown, she
+ran to her workroom and wrote a letter to Marian from herself. She tried
+not to tell Marian the big, vital thing that was throbbing in her
+heart all day concerning her work, the great secret that meant such
+a wonderful thing to her, the thing that was beating in her heart and
+fluttering behind her lips like a bird trying to escape its cage;
+but she could tell her in detail of Eileen's undoubted removal to San
+Francisco; she could tell her enough of the financial transactions of
+the day to make her understand what had been happening in the past; and
+she could tell of her latest interview with John Gilman. Once, as she
+sat with her pen poised, thinking how to phrase a sentence, Linda said
+to herself: “I wonder in my heart if he won't try to come crawfishing
+back to Marian now, and if he does, I wonder, oh, how I wonder, what she
+will do.” Linda shut her lips very tight and stared up through her
+skylight to the stars, as she was fast falling into a habit of doing
+when she wanted inspiration.
+
+“Well, I know one thing,” she said to the shining things above her,
+“Marian will do as she sees fit, of course, but if it were I, and any
+man had discarded me as John Gilman discarded Marian, in case he ever
+wanted to pick me up again he would find I was not there. Much as I plan
+in my heart for the home and the man and the little people that I
+hope to have some day, I would give up all of them before I would be
+discarded and re-sought like that; and knowing Marian as I do, I have
+a conviction that she will feel the same way. From the things she is
+writing about this Snow man I think it is highly probable that he may
+awake some day to learn that he is not so deeply grieved but that he
+would like to have Marian to comfort him in his loneliness; and as for
+his little girl I don't see where he could find a woman who would rear
+her more judiciously and beautifully than Marian would.”
+
+She finished her letter, sealed and stamped it, and then, taking out
+a fresh sheet, she lettered in at the top of it, “INDIAN POTATOES” and
+continued:
+
+And very good potatoes they are. You will find these growing everywhere
+throughout California, blooming from May to July, their six long,
+slender, white petals shading to gold at the base, grayish on the
+outside, a pollen-laden pistil upstanding, eight or ten gold-clubbed
+stamens surrounding it, the slender brown stem bearing a dozen or more
+of these delicate blooms, springing high from a base of leaves sometimes
+nearly two feet long and an inch broad, wave margined, spreading in a
+circle around it. In the soil of the plains and the dry hillsides you
+will find an amazingly large solid bulb, thickly enwrapped in a coat
+of brown fiber, the long threads of which can be braided, their amazing
+strength making them suitable for bow strings, lariats, or rope of any
+kind that must needs be improvised for use at the moment. The bulbs
+themselves have many uses. Crushed and rubbed up in water they make a
+delightful cleansing lather. The extracted juice, when cooked down, may
+be used as glue. Of the roasted bulbs effective poultices for bruises
+and boils may be made. It was an Indian custom to dam a small stream and
+throw in mashed Amole bulbs, the effect of which was to stupefy the fish
+so that they could be picked out by hand; all of which does not make it
+appear that the same bulb would serve as an excellent substitute for a
+baked potato; but we must remember how our grandmothers made starch from
+our potatoes, used them to break in the new ironware, and to purify the
+lard; which goes to prove that one vegetable may be valuable for
+many purposes. Amole, whose ponderous scientific name is Chlorogalum
+pomeridiarum, is at its best for my purposes when all the chlorophyll
+from flower and stem has been driven back to the bulb, and it lies ripe
+and fully matured from late August until December.
+
+Remove the fibrous cover down to the second or third layer enclosing the
+bulb. These jackets are necessary as they keep the bulbs from drying out
+and having a hard crust. Roast them exactly as you would potatoes. When
+they can easily be pierced with a silver fork remove from the oven,
+and serve immediately with any course with which you would use baked
+potatoes.
+
+“And gee, but they're good!” commented Linda as she reread what she had
+written.
+
+After that she turned her attention to drawing a hillside whitened
+here and there with amole bloom showing in its purity against the warm
+grayish-tan background. The waving green leaves ran among big rocks
+and overlapped surrounding growth. At the right of her drawing Linda
+sketched in a fine specimen of monkey flower, deepening the yellow from
+the hearts of the amole lilies for the almost human little monkey
+faces. On the left one giant specimen of amole, reared from a base of
+exquisitely waving leaves, ran up the side of the drawing and broke into
+an airy and graceful head of gold-hearted white lilies. For a long time
+Linda sat with poised pencil, studying her foreground. What should she
+introduce that would be most typical of the location and gave her the
+desired splash of contrasting color that she used as a distinctive touch
+in the foreground of all her drawings?
+
+Her pencil flew busily a few minutes while she sketched in a flatly
+growing bush of prickly phlox, setting the flower faces as closely
+as the overlapped scales of a fish, setting them even as they grow in
+nature; and when she resorted to the color box she painted these faces
+a wonderful pink that was not wild rose, not cerise, not lilac, but
+it made one think of all of them. When she could make no further
+improvement on this sketch, she carefully stretched it against the wall
+and tacked it up to dry.
+
+Afterward she cleared her mental decks of all the work she could think
+of in order to have Saturday free, because Saturday was the day upon
+which she found herself planning in the back of her mind throughout
+the strenuous week, to save for riding the King's Highway with Donald
+Whiting. Several times she had met him on the walks or in the hallways,
+and always he had stopped to speak with her and several times he had
+referred to the high hope in which he waited for Saturday. Linda already
+had held a consultation with Katy on the subject of the lunch basket.
+That matter being satisfactorily arranged, there was nothing for her
+to do but to double on her work so that Saturday would be free. Friday
+evening Linda was called from the dinner table to the telephone. She
+immediately recognized the voice inquiring for her as that of Judge
+Whiting, and then she listened breathlessly while he said to her: “You
+will recognize that there is very little I may say over a telephone
+concerning a matter to which you brought my attention. I have a very
+competent man looking into the matter thoroughly, and I find that
+your fear is amply justified. Wherever you go or whatever you do, use
+particular care. Don't have anything to do with any stranger. Just use
+what your judgment and common sense tell you is a reasonable degree of
+caution in every direction no matter how trivial. You understand?”
+
+“I do,” said Linda promptly. “Would you prefer that we do not go on any
+more Saturday trips at present?”
+
+The length of time that the Judge waited to answer proved that he had
+taken time to think.
+
+“I can't see,” he said finally, “that you would not be safer on such a
+trip where you are moving about, where no one knows who you are, than
+you would where you are commonly found.”
+
+“All right then,” said Linda. “Ask the party we are considering and he
+will tell you where he will be tomorrow. Thank you very much for letting
+me know. If anything should occur, you will understand that it was
+something quite out of my range of fore-sight.”
+
+“I understand,” said the Judge.
+
+With all care and many loving admonitions Katy assisted in the start
+made early Saturday morning. The previous Saturday Linda had felt that
+all nature along the road she planned to drive would be at its best,
+but they had not gone far until she modified her decision. They were
+slipping through mists of early morning, over level, carefully made
+roads like pavilion floors. If any one objection could have been made,
+it would have been that the mists of night were weighting too heavily to
+earth the perfume from the blooming orchards and millions of flowers in
+gardens and along the roadside. At that hour there were few cars abroad.
+Linda was dressed in her outing suit of dark green. She had removed
+her hat and slipped it on the seat beside her. She looked at Donald, a
+whimsical expression on her most expressive young face.
+
+“Please to 'scuse me,” she said lightly, “if I step on the gas a mite
+while we have the road so much to ourselves and are so familiar with
+it. Later, when we reach stranger country and have to share with others,
+we'll be forced to go slower.”
+
+“Don't stint your speed on account of me,” said Donald. “I am just
+itching to know what Kitty can do.”
+
+“All right, here's your chance,” said Linda. “Hear her purr?”
+
+She settled her body a trifle tensely, squared her shoulders, and
+gripped the steering wheel. Then she increased the gas and let the Bear
+Cat roll over the smooth road from Lilac Valley running south into
+Los Angeles. At a speed that was near to flying as a non-professional
+attains, the youngsters traveled that road. Their eyes were shining;
+their blood was racing. Until the point where rougher roads and
+approaching traffic forced them to go slower, they raced, and when they
+slowed down they looked at each other and laughed in morning delight.
+
+“I may not be very wise,” said Linda, “but didn't I do the smartest
+thing when I let Eileen have the touring car and saved the Bear Cat for
+us?”
+
+“Nothing short of inspiration,” said Donald. “The height of my ambition
+is to own a Bear Cat. If Father makes any mention of anything I would
+like particularly to have for a graduation present, I am cocked and
+primed as to what I shall tell him.”
+
+“You'd better save yourself a disappointment,” said Linda soberly. “You
+will be starting to college this fall, and when you do you will be gone
+nine months out of the year, and I am fairly sure your father wouldn't
+think shipping a Bear Cat back and forth a good investment, or
+furnishing you one to take to school with you. He would fear you would
+never make a grade that would be a credit to him if he did.”
+
+“My!” laughed Donald, “you've got a long head on your shoulders!”
+
+“When you're thrown on your own for four of the longest, lonesomest
+years of your life, you learn to think,” said Linda soberly.
+
+She was touching the beginning of Los Angeles traffic. Later she was on
+the open road again. The mists were thinning and lifting. The perfume
+was not so heavy. The sheeted whiteness of the orange groves was broken
+with the paler white of plum merging imperceptibly into the delicate
+pink of apricot and the stronger pink of peach, and there were deep
+green orchards of smooth waxen olive foliage and the lacy-leaved
+walnuts. Then came the citrus orchards again, and all the way on either
+hand running with them were almost uninterrupted miles of roses of every
+color and kind, and everywhere homes ranging from friendly mansions, all
+written over in adorable flower color with the happy invitation, “Come
+in and make yourself at home,” to tiny bungalows along the wayside
+crying welcome to this gay pair of youngsters in greetings fashioned
+from white and purple wisteria, gold bignonia, every rose the world
+knows, and myriad brilliant annual and perennial flower faces gathered
+from the circumference of the tropical globe and homing enthusiastically
+on the King's Highway. Sometimes Linda lifted her hand from the wheel
+to wave a passing salute to a particularly appealing flower picture.
+Sometimes she whistled a note or cried a greeting to a mockingbird, a
+rosy finch, or a song sparrow.
+
+“Look at the pie timber!” she cried to Donald, calling his attention
+to a lawn almost covered with red-winged blackbirds. “Four hundred and
+twenty might be baked in that pie,” she laughed.
+
+Then a subtle change began to creep over the world. The sun peered over
+the mountains inquiringly, a timid young thing, as if she were asking
+what degree of light and warmth they would like for the day. A new
+brilliancy tinged every flower face in this light, a throbbing ecstasy
+mellowed every bird note; the orchards dropped farther apart, meadows
+filled with grazing cattle flashed past them, the earthy scent of
+freshly turned fields mingled with flower perfume, and on their right
+came drifting in a cool salt breath from the sea. At mid-forenoon, as
+they neared Laguna, they ran past great hills, untouched since the days
+when David cried: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence
+cometh my help.” At one particularly beautiful range, draped with the
+flowing emerald of spring, decorated with beds of gold poppy, set with
+flowering madrona and manzanita, with the gold of yellow monkey flower
+or the rich red of the related species, with specimens of lupin growing
+in small trees, here and there adventurous streams singing and flashing
+their unexpected way to the mother breast of the waiting ocean very
+near to the road which at one surprising turn carried them to the
+never-ending wonder of the troubled sea, they drove as slowly as
+the Bear Cat would consent to travel, so that they might study great
+boulders, huge as many of the buildings they had passed, their faces
+scarred by the wrack of ages. Studying their ancient records one
+could see that they had been familiar with the star that rested over
+Bethlehem. On their faces had shone the same moon that opened the
+highways Journeying into Damascus. They had stood the storms that had
+beaten upon the world since the days when the floods subsided, the
+land lifted above the face of the waters in gigantic upheavals that had
+ripped the surface of the globe from north to south and forced up the
+hills, the foothills, and the mountains of the Coast Range. They had
+been born then, they had first seen the light of day, in glowing,
+molten, red-hot, high-piled streams of lava that had gushed forth in
+that awful evolution of birth.
+
+Sometimes Linda stopped the car, they left it, and climbed over the
+faces of these mighty upheavals. Once Linda reached her hand to Donald
+and cried, half laughingly, half in tense earnest: “Oh, kid, we have got
+to hurry. Compared with the age of these, we've only a few minutes. It's
+all right to talk jestingly about 'the crack of doom' but you know
+there really was a crack of doom, and right here is where it cracked and
+spewed out the material that hardened into these very rocks. Beside them
+I feel as a shrimp must feel beside a whale, and I feel that we must
+hurry.”
+
+“And so we must,” said Donald. “I'm hungry as Likeliest when he waited
+for them to find enough peacock tongues to satisfy his appetite.”
+
+“I wonder what brand of home-brew made him think of that,” said Linda.
+
+“Well, you know,” said Donald, “the world was only a smallish place
+then. They didn't have to go far to find everything to which they had
+access, and it must have been rather a decent time in which to live.
+Awful lot of light and color and music and unique entertainment.”
+
+“You're talking,” said Linda, “from the standpoint of the king or the
+master. Suppose you had lived then and had been the slave.”
+
+“There you go again,” said Donald, “throwing a brick into the most
+delicate mechanism of my profound thought. You ought to be ashamed to
+round me up with something scientific and materialistic every time I go
+a-glimmering. Don't you think this would be a fine place to have lunch?”
+
+“You wait and see where we lunch today, and you will have the answer to
+that,” said Linda, starting back to the Bear Cat.
+
+A few miles farther on they followed the road around the frowning menace
+of an overhanging rock and sped out directly to the panorama of the sea.
+The sun was shining on it, but, as always round the Laguna shore, the
+rip tide was working itself into undue fury. It came dashing up on the
+ancient rocks until one could easily understand why a poet of long
+ago wrote of sea horses. Some of the waves did suggest monstrous white
+chargers racing madly to place their feet upon the solid rock.
+
+Through the village, up the steep inclines, past placid lakes, past
+waving yellow mustard beds, beside highways where the breastplate of
+Mother Earth gleamed emerald and ruby against the background of billions
+of tiny, shining diamonds of the iceplant, past the old ostrich tree
+reproduced by etchers of note the world over, with grinding brakes,
+sliding down the breathless declivity leading to the shore, Linda
+stopped at last where the rock walls lifted sheer almost to the sky. She
+led Donald to a huge circle carpeted with cerise sand verbena, with
+pink and yellow iceplant bloom, with jewelled iceplant foliage, with the
+running blue of the lovely sea daisy, with the white and pink of the
+sea fig, where the walls were festooned with ferns, lichens, studded all
+over with flaming Our Lord's Candles, and strange, uncanny, grotesque
+flower forms, almost human in their writhing turns as they twisted
+around the rocks and slipped along clinging to the sheer walls. Just
+where the vegetation met the white, sea-washed sand, Linda spread
+the Indian blanket, and Donald brought the lunch box. At their feet
+adventurous waves tore themselves to foam on the sharp rocks. On their
+left they broke in booming spray, tearing and fretting the base of
+cliffs that had stood impregnable through aeons of such ceaseless attack
+and repulse.
+
+“I wonder,” said Donald, “how it comes that I have lived all my life in
+California, and today it seems to me that most of the worthwhile things
+I know about her I owe to you. When I go to college this winter the
+things I shall be telling the boys will be how I could gain a living, if
+I had to, on the desert, in Death Valley, from the walls of Multiflores
+Canyon; and how the waves go to smash on the rocks of Laguna, not to
+mention cactus fish hooks, mescal sticks, and brigand beefsteak. It's
+no wonder the artists of all the world come here copying these pictures.
+It's no wonder they build these bungalows and live here for years,
+unsatisfied with their efforts to reproduce the pictures of the Master
+Painter of them all.”
+
+“I wonder,” said Linda, “if anybody is very easily satisfied. I wonder
+today if Eileen is satisfied with being merely rich. I wonder if we
+are satisfied to have this golden day together. I wonder if the white
+swallows are satisfied with the sea. I wonder if those rocks are
+satisfied and proud to stand impregnable against the constant torment of
+the tide.”
+
+“I wonder, oh, Lord, how I wonder,” broke in Donald, “about Katherine
+O'Donovan's lunch box. If you want a picture of per feet satisfaction,
+Belinda beloved, lead me to it!”
+
+“Thank heaven you're mistaken,” she said; “they spared me the 'Be'--.
+It's truly just 'Linda.”'
+
+“Well, I'm not sparing you the 'Be--',” said Donald, busy with the
+fastenings of the lunch basket. “Did you hear where I used it?”
+
+“Yes, child, and I like it heaps,” said Linda casually. “It's fine to
+have you like me. Awfully proud of myself.”
+
+“You have two members of our family at your feet,” said Donald soberly
+as he handed her packages from the box. “My dad is beginning to
+discourse on you with such signs of intelligence that I am almost led
+to believe, from some of his wildest outbursts, that he has had some
+personal experience in some way.”
+
+“And why not?” asked Linda lightly. “Haven't I often told you that my
+father constantly went on fishing and hunting trips, that he was a great
+collector of botanical specimens, that he frequently took his friends
+with him? You might ask your father if he does not recall me as having
+fried fish and made coffee and rendered him camp service when I was a
+slip of a thing in the dawn of my teens.”
+
+“Well, he didn't just mention it,” said Donald, “but I can easily see
+how it might have been.”
+
+After they had finished one of Katy's inspired lunches, in which a large
+part of the inspiration had been mental on Linda's part and executive on
+Katy's, they climbed rock faces, skirted wave-beaten promontories, and
+stood peering from overhanging cliffs dipping down into the fathomless
+green sea, where the water boiled up in turbulent fury. Linda pointed
+out the rocks upon which she would sit, if she were a mermaid, to comb
+the seaweed from her hair. She could hear the sea bells ringing in those
+menacing depths, but Donald's ears were not so finely tuned. At the top
+of one of the highest cliffs they climbed, there grew a clump of slender
+pale green bushes, towering high above their heads with exquisitely
+cut blue-green leaves, lance shaped and slender. Donald looked at the
+fascinating growth appraisingly.
+
+“Linda,” he said, “do you know that the slimness and the sheerness and
+the audacious foothold and the beauty of that thing remind me of you?
+It is covered all over with the delicate frostbloom you taught me to see
+upon fruit. I find it everywhere but you have never told me what it is.”
+
+Linda laughingly reached up and broke a spray of greenish-yellow tubular
+flowers, curving out like clustered trumpets spilling melody from their
+fluted throats.
+
+“You will see it everywhere. You will find these flowers every month
+of the year,” she said, “and I am particularly gladsome that this plant
+reminds you of me. I love the bluish-green 'bloom' of its sheer foliage.
+I love the music these flower trumpets make to me. I love the way it
+has traveled, God knows how, all the way from the Argentine and spread
+itself over our country wherever it is allowed footing. I am glad that
+there is soothing in these dried leaves for those who require it. I
+shall be delighted to set my seal on you with it. There are two little
+Spanish words that it suggests to the Mexican--Buena moza--but you shall
+find out for yourself what they mean.”
+
+Encountering his father that night at his library door, Donald Whiting
+said to him: “May I come in, Dad? I have something I must look up before
+I sleep. Have you a Spanish lexicon, or no doubt you have this in your
+head.”
+
+“Well, I've a halting vocabulary,” said the Judge. “What's your phrase?”
+
+“Linda put this flower on me today,” said Donald, “and she said she was
+pleased because I said the tall, slender bush it grew on reminded me
+of her. She gave me the Spanish name, but I don't know the exact
+significance of the decoration I am wearing until I learn the meaning of
+the phrase.”
+
+“Try me on it,” said the Judge.
+
+“'Buena moza,'” quoted Donald.
+
+The Judge threw back his head and laughed heartily.
+
+“Son,” he said, “you should know that from the Latin you're learning.
+You should translate it instinctively. I couldn't tell you exactly
+whether a Spaniard would translate 'Buena' 'fine' or 'good.' Knowing
+their high-falutin' rendition of almost everything else I would take my
+chance on 'fine.' Son, your phrase means 'a fine girl.'”
+
+Donald looked down at the flower in his buttonhole, and then he looked
+straight at his father.
+
+“And only the Lord knows, Dad,” he said soberly, “exactly how fine
+Linda-girl is.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. A Mouse Nest
+
+LINDA DEAREST:
+
+I am delighted that you had such a wonderful birthday. I would take a
+shot in air that anything you don't understand about it you might with
+reasonable safety charge to Katherine O'Donovan. I think it was great
+of her to have a suitable and a becoming dress waiting for you and a
+congenial man like Peter Morrison to dine with you. He appealed to me as
+being a rare character, highly original, and, I should think, to those
+who know him well he must be entertaining and lovable in the extreme.
+I never shall be worried about you so long as I know that he is taking
+care of you.
+
+I should not be surprised if some day I meet Eileen somewhere, because
+Dana and I are going about more than you would believe possible. I
+heartily join with you in wishing her every good that life can bring
+her. I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can't help feeling, Linda,
+that she is taking a poor way to win the best, and I gravely doubt
+whether she finds it in the spending of unlimited quantities of the
+money of a coarse man who stumbled upon his riches accidentally, as has
+many a man of California and Colorado.
+
+I intended, when I sat down to write, the very first thing I said,
+to thank you for your wonderful invitation, seconded so loyally and
+cordially by Katy, to make my home with you until the time comes--if it
+ever does come--when I shall have a home of my own again. And just
+as simply and wholeheartedly as you made the offer, I accept it. I am
+enclosing the address and the receipt for my furniture in storage, and a
+few lines ordering it delivered at your house and the bill sent to me.
+I only kept a few heirlooms and things of Mother's and Father's that are
+very precious to me. Whenever Eileen takes her things you can order mine
+in and let me know, and I'll take a day or two off and run down for a
+short visit.
+
+Mentioning Eileen makes me think of John. I think of him more frequently
+than I intend or wish that I did, but I feel my ninth life is now
+permanently extinguished concerning him. I thought I detected in your
+letter, Linda dear, a hint of fear that he might come back to me and
+that I might welcome him. If you have any such feeling in your heart,
+abandon it, child, because, while I try not to talk about myself, I do
+want to say that I rejoice in a family inheritance of legitimate pride.
+I couldn't give the finest loyalty and comradeship I had to give to a
+man, have it returned disdainfully, and then furbish up the pieces and
+present it over again. If I can patch those same pieces and so polish
+and refine them that I can make them, in the old phrase, “as good as
+new,” possibly in time--but, Linda, one thing is certain as the hills
+of morning. Never in my life will any man make any headway with me again
+with vague suggestions and innuendoes and hints. If ever any man wants
+to be anything in my life, he will speak plainly and say what he wants
+and thinks and hopes and intends and feels in not more than two-syllable
+English. I learned my lesson about the futility of building your house
+of dreams on a foundation of sand. Next time I erect a dream house, it
+is going to have a proper foundation of solid granite. And that may seem
+a queer thing for me to say when you know that I am getting the joy in
+my life, that I do not hesitate to admit I am, from letters written by a
+man whose name I don't know. It may be that I don't know the man, but I
+certainly am very well acquainted with him, and in some way he seems to
+me to be taking on more definite form. I should not be surprised if I
+were to recognize him the first time I met him face to face.
+
+Linda looked through the skylight and cried out to the stars: “Good
+heavens! Have I copied Peter too closely?”
+
+She sat thinking a minute and then she decided she had not.
+
+And in this connection you will want to know how I am progressing in
+my friendship with the junior partner, and what kind of motorist I am
+making. I am still driving twice a week, and lately on Sundays in a
+larger car, taking Dana and a newspaper friend of hers along. I think I
+have driven every hazard that this part of California affords except the
+mountains; Mr. Snow is still merciful about them.
+
+Linda dear, I know what you're dying to know. You want to know whether
+Mr. Snow is in the same depths of mourning as when our acquaintance
+first began. This, my dear child, is very reprehensible of you. Young
+girls with braids down their backs--and by the way, Linda, you did not
+tell me what happened “after the ball was over.” Did you go to school
+the next morning with braids down your back, or wearing your coronet?
+Because on that depends what I have to say to you now; if you went with
+braids, you're still my little girl chum, the cleanest, finest kid I
+have ever known; but if you wore your coronet, then you're a woman and
+my equal and my dearest friend, far dearer than Dana even; and I tell
+you this, Linda, because I want you always to understand that you come
+first.
+
+I have tried and tried to visualize you, and can't satisfy my mind as to
+whether the braids are up or down. Going on the assumption that they are
+up, and that life may in the near future begin to hold some interesting
+experiences for you, I will tell you this, beloved child: I don't think
+Mr. Snow is mourning quite so deeply as he was. I have not been asked,
+the last four or five trips we have been on, to carry an armload
+of exquisite flowers to the shrine of a departed love. I have been
+privileged to take them home and arrange them in my room and Dana's. And
+I haven't heard so much talk about loneliness, and I haven't seen such
+tired, sad eyes. It seems to me that a familiar pair of shoulders
+are squaring up to the world again, and a very kind pair of eyes are
+brighter with interest. I don't know how you feel about this; I don't
+know how I feel about it myself. I am sure that Eugene Snow is a man
+who, in the years to come, would line up beside your father and mine,
+and I like him immensely. It is merely a case of not liking him
+less, but of liking my unknown man more. I couldn't quite commit the
+sacrilege, Linda dear, of sending you a sample of the letters I am
+receiving, but they are too fanciful and charming for any words of mine
+to describe adequately. I don't know who this man is, or what he has to
+offer, or whether he intends to offer anything, but it is a ridiculous
+fact, Linda, that I would rather sit with him in a chimney corner
+of field boulders, on a pine floor, with a palm roof and an Ocotillo
+candle, than to glow in the parchment-shielded electric light of the
+halls of a rich man. In a recent letter, Linda, there was a reference
+to a woman who wore “a diadem of crystallized light.” It was a beautiful
+thing and I could not help taking it personally. It was his way of
+telling me that he knew me, and knew my tragedy; and, as I said before,
+I am beginning to feel that I have him rather definitely located; and I
+can understand the fine strain in him that prompted his anonymity, and
+his reasons for it. Of course I am not sufficiently confident yet to
+say anything definite, but my heart is beginning to say things that I
+sincerely hope my lips never will be forced to deny.
+
+Linda laid down the letter, folded her hands across it, and once more
+looked at the stars.
+
+“Good gracious!” she said. “I am tincturing those letters with too
+much Peter. I'll have to tone down a bit. Next thing I know she will
+be losing her chance with that wonderful Snow man for a dream. In my
+efforts to comfort her I must have gone too far. It is all right
+to write a gushy love letter and stuff it full of Peter's whimsical
+nonsense, but, in the language of the poet, how am I going to 'deliver
+the goods'? Of course that talk about Louise Whiting was all well
+enough. Equally, of course, I outlined and planted the brook and
+designed the bridge for Marian, whether she knows it or Peter knows it,
+or not. If they don't know it, it's about time they were finding it out.
+I think it's my job to visit Peter more frequently and see if I can't
+invent some way to make him see the light. I will give Katy a hint in
+the morning. Tomorrow evening I'll go up and have supper with him and
+see if he has another article in the stewpan. I like this work with
+Peter. I like having him make me dream dreams and see pictures. I like
+the punch and the virility he puts into my drawings. It's all right
+reproducing monkey flowers and lilies for pastime, but for serious
+business, for real life work, I would rather do Peter's brainstorming,
+heart-thrilling pictures than my merely pretty ones. On the subject of
+Peter, I must remember in the morning to take those old books he gave me
+to Donald. I believe that from one of them he is going to get the very
+material he needs to down the Jap in philosophy. And they are not text
+books which proves that Peter must have been digging into the subject
+and hunted them up in some second-hand store, or even sent away an order
+for them.”
+
+In the hall the next morning Linda stopped Donald and gave him the
+books. In the early stages of their friendship she had looked at him
+under half-closed lids and waited to see whether he intended stopping to
+say a word with her when they passed each other or came down the halls
+together. She knew that their acquaintance would be noted and commented
+upon, and she knew how ready the other girls would be to say that
+she was bold and forward, so she was careful to let Donald make the
+advances, until he had called to her so often, and had dug flowers and
+left his friends waiting at her door while he delivered them, that
+she felt free to address him as she chose. He had shown any interested
+person in the high school that he was her friend, that he was speaking
+to her exactly as he did to girls he had known from childhood. He was
+very popular among the boys and girls of his class and the whole school.
+His friendship, coming at the time of Linda's rebellion on the subject
+of clothes, had developed a tendency to bring her other friendships.
+Boys who never had known she was in existence followed Donald's example
+in stopping her to say a word now and then. Girls who had politely
+ignored her now found things to say; and several invitations she had
+not had leisure to accept had been sent to her for afternoon and evening
+entertainments among the young people. Linda had laid out for herself
+something of a task in deciding to be the mental leader of her class.
+There were good brains in plenty among the other pupils. It was only by
+work, concentration, and purpose, only by having a mind keenly alert,
+by independent investigation and introducing new points of view that she
+could hold her prestige. Up to the receipt of her letter containing the
+offer to publish her book she had been able rigorously to exclude from
+her mind the personality and the undertakings of Jane Meredith. She was
+Linda Strong in the high school and for an hour or two at her studies.
+She was Jane Meredith over the desert, through the canyons, beside the
+sea, in her Multiflores kitchen or in Katherine O'Donovan's. But this
+book offer opened a new train of thought, a new series of plans. She
+could see her way--thanks to her father she had the material in her mind
+and the art in her finger tips--to materialize what she felt would be
+even more attractive in book form than anything her editor had been able
+to visualize from her material. She knew herself, she knew her territory
+so minutely. Frequently she smiled when she read statements in her
+botanies as to where plants and vegetables could be found. She knew the
+high home of the rare and precious snow plant. She knew the northern
+limit of the strawberry cactus. She knew where the white sea swallow
+nested. She knew where the Monarch butterfly went on his winter
+migration. She knew where the trap-door spider, with cunning past
+the cunning of any other architect of Nature, built his small, round,
+silken-lined tower and hinged his trap door so cleverly that only he
+could open it from the outside. She had even sat immovable and watched
+him erect his house, and she would have given much to see him weave its
+silver lining.
+
+Linda was fast coming to the place where she felt herself to be one in
+an interested group of fellow workers. She no longer gave a thought to
+what kind of shoes she wore. Other girls were beginning to wear the
+same kind. The legislatures of half a dozen states were passing
+laws regulating the height of heel which might be worn within their
+boundaries. Manufacturers were promising for the coming season that
+suitable shoes would be built for street wear and mountain climbing, for
+the sands of the sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of
+canyons. The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the
+extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down. A sane and sensible
+wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country. Under the impetus of
+Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and those of other
+pupils to lead theirs a higher grade of scholarship was beginning to be
+developed throughout the high school. Pupils were thinking less of what
+they wore and how much amusement they could crowd in, and more about
+making grades that would pass them with credit from year to year. The
+horrors of the war and the disorders following it had begun to impress
+upon the young brains growing into maturity the idea that soon it would
+be their task to take over the problems that were now vexing the world's
+greatest statesmen and its wisest and most courageous women. A tendency
+was manifesting itself among young people to equip themselves to take a
+worthy part in the struggles yet to come. Classmates who had looked with
+toleration upon Linda's common-sense shoes and plain dresses because
+she was her father's daughter, now looked upon her with respect and
+appreciation because she started so many interesting subjects for
+discussion, because she was so rapidly developing into a creature well
+worth looking at. Always she would be unusual because of her extreme
+height, her narrow eyes, her vivid coloring. But a greater maturity, a
+fuller figure, had come to be a part of the vision with which one looked
+at Linda. In these days no one saw her as she was. Even her schoolmates
+had fallen into the habit of seeing her as she would be in the years to
+come.
+
+Thus far she had been able to keep her identities apart without any
+difficulty; but the book proposition was so unexpected, it was such a
+big thing to result from her modest beginning, that Linda realized
+that she must proceed very carefully, she must concentrate with all her
+might, else her school work would begin to suffer in favor of the book.
+Recently so many things had arisen to distract her attention. Many days
+she had not been able to keep Eileen's face off her geometry papers;
+and again she saw Gilman's, anxious and pain-filled. Sometimes she found
+herself lifting her eyes from tasks upon which she was concentrating
+with all her might, and with no previous thought whatever she was
+searching for Donald Whiting, and when she saw him, coming into muscular
+and healthful manhood, she returned to her work with more strength,
+deeper vision, a quiet, assured feeling around her heart. Sometimes,
+over the edge of Literature and Ancient History, Peter Morrison looked
+down at her with gravely questioning eyes and dancing imps twisting his
+mouth muscles, and Linda paused a second to figure upon what had become
+an old problem with her. Why did her wild-flower garden make Peter
+Morrison think of a graveyard? What was buried there besides the feet of
+her rare flowers? She had not as yet found the answer.
+
+This day her thoughts were on Peter frequently because she intended to
+see him that night. She was going to share with him a supper of baked
+ham and beans and bread and butter and pickled onions and little nut
+cakes, still warm from Katy's oven. She was going to take Katy with her
+in order that she might see Peter Morrison's location and the house for
+his dream lady, growing at the foot of the mountain like a gay orchid
+homing on a forest tree. To Linda it was almost a miracle, the rapidity
+with which a house could be erected in California. In a few weeks' time
+she had seen a big cellar scooped out of the plateau, had seen it lined
+and rising to foundation height above the surface in solid concrete,
+faced outside with cracked boulders. She had seen a framework erected,
+a rooftree set, and joists and rafters and beams swinging into place.
+Fretworks of lead and iron pipe were running everywhere, and wires for
+electricity. Soon shingles and flooring would be going into place, and
+Peter said that when he had finished acrobatic performances on beams
+and girders and really stepped out on solid floors where he might tread
+without fear of breaking any of his legs, he would perform a Peacock
+Dance all by himself.
+
+“Peter, you sound like a centipede,” said Linda.
+
+“Dear child,” said Peter, “when I enter my front door and get to the
+back on two-inch footing, I positively feel that I have numerous legs,
+and I ache almost as badly in the fear that I shall break the two I
+have, as I should if they were really broken.”
+
+And then he added a few words on a subject of which he had not before
+spoken to Linda.
+
+“It was like that in France. When we really got into the heat of things
+and the work was actually being done, we were not afraid: we were too
+busy; we were 'supermen.' The time when we were all legs and arms and
+head, and all of them were being blown away wholesale was when the
+shells whined over while we had a rest hour and were trying to sleep,
+or in the cold, dim dawn when we stumbled out stiff, hungry, and sleepy.
+It's not the REAL THING when it's really occurring that gets one. It's
+the devils of imagination tormenting the soul. There is only one thing
+in this world can happen to me that is really going to be as bad as the
+things I dream.”
+
+Linda looked down Lilac Valley, her eyes absently focusing on Katy
+busily setting supper on a store box in front of the garage. Then she
+looked at Peter.
+
+“Mind telling?” she inquired lightly.
+
+Peter looked at her speculatively.
+
+“And would a man be telling his heart's best secret to a kid like you?”
+ he asked.
+
+“Now, I call that downright mean,” said Linda. “Haven't you noticed that
+my braids are up? Don't you see a maturity and a dignity and a general
+matronliness apparent all over me today?”
+
+“Matronliness” was too much for Peter. You could have heard his laugh
+far down the blue valley.
+
+“That's good!” he cried.
+
+“It is,” agreed Linda. “It means that my braids are up to stay, so
+hereafter I'm a real woman.”
+
+She lingered over the word an instant, glancing whimsically at Peter,
+a trace of a smile on her lips, then she made her way down a slant
+declivity and presently returned with an entire flower plant, new to
+Peter and of unusual beauty.
+
+“And because I am a woman I shall set my seal upon you,” she said.
+
+In the buttonhole of his light linen coat she placed a flower of satin
+face of purest gold, the five petals rounded, but sharply tipped, a
+heavy mass of silk stamens, pollen dusted in the heart. She pushed back
+the left side of his coat and taking one of the rough, hairy leaves
+of the plant she located it over Peter's heart, her slim, deft fingers
+patting down the leaf and flattening it out until it lay pasted smooth
+and tight. As she worked, she smiled at him challengingly. Peter knew he
+was experiencing a ceremony of some kind, the significance of which he
+must learn. It was the first time Linda had voluntarily touched him. He
+breathed lightly and held steady, lest he startle her.
+
+“Lovely enough,” he said, “to have come from the hills of the stars.
+Don't make me wait, Linda; help me to the interpretation.”
+
+“Buena Mujer,” suggested Linda.
+
+“Good woman,” translated Peter.
+
+Linda nodded, running a finger down the leaf over his heart.
+
+“Because she sticks close to you,” she explained. Then startled by the
+look in Peter's eyes, she cried in swift change: “Now we are all going
+to work for a minute. Katy's spreading the lunch. You take this pail and
+go to the spring for water and I shall tidy your quarters for you.”
+
+With the eye of experience Linda glanced over the garage deciding that
+she must ask for clean sheets for the cot and that the Salvation Army
+would like the heap of papers. Studying the writing table she heard a
+faint sound that untrained ears would have missed.
+
+“Ah, ha, Ma wood mouse,” said Linda, “nibbling Peter's dr. goods are
+you?”
+
+Her cry a minute later answered the question. She came from the garage
+upon Katherine O'Donovan rushing to meet her, holding a man's coat at
+the length of her far-reaching arm.
+
+“I wish you'd look at that pocket. I don't know how long this coat has
+been hanging there, but there is a nest of field mice in it,” she said.
+
+Katy promptly retreated to the improvised dining table, seated herself
+upon an end of it, and raised both feet straight into the air.
+
+“Small help I'll be getting from you,” said Linda laughingly.
+
+She went to the edge of the declivity that cut back to the garage and
+with a quick movement reversed the coat catching it by the skirts and
+shaking it vigorously.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. The Straight and Narrow
+
+This served exactly the purpose Linda had intended. It dislodged
+the mouse nest and dropped it three feet below her level, but it did
+something else upon which Linda had no time to count. It emptied every
+pocket in the coat and sent the contents scattering down the rough
+declivity.
+
+“Oh my gracious!” gasped Linda. “Look what I have done! Katy, come help
+me quickly; I have to gather up this stuff; but it's no use; I'll have
+to take it to Peter and tell him. I couldn't put these things back in
+the pockets where his hand will reach for them, because I don't know
+which came from inside and which came from out.”
+
+Linda sprang down and began hastily gathering up everything she could
+see that had fallen from the coat pockets. She had almost finished when
+her fingers chanced upon a very soiled, befigured piece of paper whose
+impressed folds showed that it had been carried for some time in an
+inner pocket. As her fingers touched this paper her eyes narrowed, her
+breath came in a gasp. She looked at it a second, irresolute, then she
+glanced over the top of the declivity in the direction Peter had taken.
+He was standing in front of the building, discussing some matter with
+the contractor. He had not yet gone to the spring. Shielded by the
+embankment with shaking fingers Linda opened the paper barely enough to
+see that it was Marian's lost sheet of plans; but it was not as Marian
+had lost it. It was scored deeply here and there with heavy lines
+suggestive of alterations, and the margin was fairly covered with fine
+figuring. Linda did not know Peter Morrison's writing or figures. His
+articles had been typewritten and she had never seen his handwriting.
+She sat down suddenly on account of weakened knees, and gazed unseeingly
+down the length of Lilac Valley, her heart sick, her brain tormented.
+Suddenly she turned and studied the house.
+
+“Before the Lord!” she gasped. “I THOUGHT there was something mighty
+familiar even about the skeleton of you! Oh, Peter, Peter, where did you
+get this, and how could you do it?”
+
+For a while a mist blurred her eyes. She reached for the coat and
+started to replace the things she had gathered up, then she shut her
+lips tight.
+
+“Best time to pull a tooth,” she said tersely to a terra cotta red
+manzanita bush, “is when it aches.”
+
+When Peter returned from the spring he was faced by a trembling girl,
+colorless and trying hard to keep her voice steady. She held out the
+coat to him with one hand, the package of papers with the other, the
+folded drawing conspicuous on the top. With these she gestured toward
+the declivity.
+
+“Mouse nest in your pocket, Peter,” she said thickly. “Reversed the coat
+to shake it out, and spilled your stuff.”
+
+Then she waited for Peter to be confounded. But Peter was not in the
+faintest degree troubled about either the coat or the papers. What did
+trouble him was the face and the blazing eyes of the girl concerning
+whom he would not admit, even to himself, his exact state of feeling.
+
+“The mouse did not get on you, Linda?” he asked anxiously.
+
+Linda shook her head. Suddenly she lost her self-control.
+
+“Oh, Peter,” she wailed, “how could you do it?”
+
+Peter's lean frame tensed suddenly.
+
+“I don't understand, Linda,” he said quietly. “Exactly what have I
+done?”
+
+Linda thrust the coat and the papers toward him accusingly and stood
+there wordless but with visible pain in her dark eyes. peter smiled at
+her reassuringly.
+
+“That's not my coat, you know. If there is anything distressing about
+it, don't lay it to me.”
+
+“Oh, Peter!” cried Linda, “tell the truth about it. Don't try any
+evasions. I am so sick of them.”
+
+A rather queer light sprang into Peter's eyes. He leaned forward
+suddenly and caught the coat from Linda's fingers.
+
+“Well, if you need an alibi concerning this coat,” he said, “I think I
+can furnish it speedily.”
+
+As he talked he whirled the garment around and shot his long arms into
+the sleeves. Shaking it into place on his shoulders, he slowly turned in
+front of Linda and the surprised Katy. The sleeves came halfway to his
+wrists and the shoulders slid down over his upper arms. He made such a
+quaint and ridiculous figure that Katy burst out laughing. She was very
+well trained, but she knew Linda was deeply distressed.
+
+“Wake up, lambie!” she cried sharply. “That coat ain't belonging to
+Mr. Pater Morrison. That gairment is the property of that bug-catchin'
+architect of his.”
+
+Peter shook off the coat and handed it back to Linda.
+
+“Am I acquitted?” he asked lightly; but his surprised eyes were
+searching her from braid to toe.
+
+Linda turned from him swiftly. She thrust the packet into a side pocket
+and started to the garage with the coat. As she passed inside she
+slipped down her hand, slid the sheet of plans from the other papers,
+and slipped it into the front of her blouse. She hung the coat back
+where she had found it, then suddenly sat down on the side of Peter
+Morrison's couch, white and shaken. Peter thought he heard a peculiar
+gasp and when he strayed past the door, casually glancing inward, he
+saw what he saw, and it brought him to his knees beside Linda with all
+speed.
+
+“Linda-girl,” he implored, “what in this world has happened?”
+
+Linda struggled to control her voice; but at last she buried her face
+in her hands and frankly emitted a sound that she herself would have
+described as “howling.” Peter knelt back in wonder.
+
+“Of all the things I ever thought about you, Linda,” he said, “the one
+thing I never did think was that you were hysterical.”
+
+If there was one word in Linda's vocabulary more opprobrious than
+“nerves,” which could be applied to a woman, it was “hysterics.” The
+great specialist had admitted nerves; hysterics had no standing with
+him. Linda herself had no more use for a hysterical woman than she had
+for a Gila monster. She straightened suddenly, and in removing her hands
+from her face she laid one on each of Peter's shoulders.
+
+“Oh, Peter,” she wailed, “I am not a hysterical idiot, but I couldn't
+have stood it if that coat had been yours. Peter, I just couldn't have
+borne it!”
+
+Peter held himself rigidly in the fear that he might disturb the hands
+that were gripping him.
+
+“I see I have the job of educating these damned field mice as to where
+they may build with impunity,” he said soberly.
+
+But Linda was not to be diverted. She looked straight and deep into his
+eyes.
+
+“Peter,” she said affirmatively, “you don't know a thing about that
+coat, do you?”
+
+“I do not,” said Peter promptly.
+
+“You never saw what was in its pockets, did you?”
+
+“Not to my knowledge,” answered Peter. “What was in the pockets, Linda?”
+
+Linda thought swiftly. Peter adored his dream house. If she told him
+that the plans for it had been stolen by his architect, the house would
+be ruined for Peter. Anyone could see from the candor of his gaze and
+the lines that God and experience had graven on his face that Peter was
+without guile. Suddenly Linda shot her hands past Peter's shoulders and
+brought them together on the back of his neck. She drew his face against
+hers and cried: “Oh Peter, I would have been killed if that coat had
+been yours. I tell you I couldn't have endured it, Peter. I am just
+tickled to death!”
+
+One instant she hugged him tight. If her lips did not brush his cheek,
+Peter deluded himself. Then she sprang up and ran from the garage.
+Later he took the coat from its nail, the papers from its pockets, and
+carefully looked them over. There was nothing among them that would
+give him the slightest clue to Linda's conduct. He looked again,
+penetratingly, searchingly, for he must learn from them a reason; and
+no reason was apparent. With the coat in one hand and the papers in the
+other he stepped outside.
+
+“Linda,” he said, “won't you show me? Won't you tell me? What is there
+about this to upset you?”
+
+Linda closed her lips and shook her head. Once more Peter sought in her
+face, in her attitude the information he craved.
+
+“Needn't tell me,” he said, “that a girl who will face the desert and
+the mountains and the canyons and the sea is upset by a mouse.”
+
+“Well, you should have seen Katy sitting in the midst of our supper with
+her feet rigidly extended before her!” cried the girl, struggling to
+regain her composure. “Put back that coat and come to your supper. It's
+time for you to be fed now. The last workman has gone and we'll barely
+have time to finish nicely and show Katy your dream house before it's
+time to go.”
+
+Peter came and sat in the place Linda indicated. His mind was whirling.
+There was something he did not understand, but in her own time, in her
+own way, a girl of Linda's poise and self-possession would tell him what
+had occurred that could be responsible for the very peculiar things
+she had done. In some way she had experienced a shock too great for her
+usual self-possession. The hands with which she fished pickled onions
+from the bottle were still unsteady, and the corroboration Peter needed
+for his thoughts could be found in the dazed way in which Katy watched
+Linda as she hovered over her in serving her. But that was not the time.
+By and by the time would come. The thing to do was to trust Linda and
+await its coming. So Peter called on all the reserve wit and wisdom he
+had at command. He jested, told stories, and to Linda's satisfaction and
+Katy's delight, he ate his supper like a hungry man, frankly enjoying
+it, and when the meal was finished Peter took Katy over the house,
+explaining to her as much detail as was possible at that stage of its
+construction, while Linda followed with mute lips and rebellion surging
+in her heart. When leaving time came, while Katy packed the Bear
+Cat, Linda wandered across toward the spring, and Peter, feeling
+that possibly she might wish to speak with him, followed her. When he
+overtook her she looked at him straightly, her eyes showing the hurt her
+heart felt.
+
+“Peter,” she said, “that first night you had dinner with us, was Henry
+Anderson out of your presence one minute from the time you came into the
+house until you left it?”
+
+Peter stopped and studied the ground at his feet intently. Finally he
+said conclusively: “I would go on oath, Linda, that he was not. We were
+all together in the living room, all together in the dining room. We
+left together at night and John was with us.”
+
+“I see,” said Linda. “Well, then, when you came back the next morning
+after Eileen, before you started on your trip, to hunt a location, was
+he with you all the time?”
+
+Again Peter took his time to answer.
+
+“We came to your house with Gilman,” he said. “John started to the front
+door to tell Miss Eileen that we were ready. I followed him. Anderson
+said he would look at the scenery. He must have made a circuit of the
+house, because when we came out ready to start, a very few minutes
+later, he was coming down the other side of the house.”
+
+“Ah,” said Linda comprehendingly.
+
+“Linda,” said Peter quietly, “it is very obvious that something has
+worried you extremely. Am I in any way connected with it?”
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+“Is there anything I can do?”
+
+The negative was repeated. Then she looked at him.
+
+“No, Peter,” she said quietly, “I confess I have had a shock, but it is
+in no way connected with you and there is nothing you can do about it
+but forget my foolishness. But I am glad--Peter, you will never know how
+glad I am--that you haven't anything to do with it.”
+
+Then in the friendliest fashion imaginable she reached him her hand and
+led the way back to the Bear Cat, their tightly gripped hands swinging
+between them. As Peter closed the door he looked down on Linda.
+
+“Young woman,” he said, “since this country has as yet no nerve
+specialist to take the place of your distinguished father, if you have
+any waves to wave to me tonight, kindly do it before you start or after
+you reach the highway. If you take your hands off that steering wheel as
+you round the boulders and strike that declivity as I have seen you
+do heretofore, I won't guarantee that I shall not require a specialist
+myself.”
+
+Linda started to laugh, then she saw Peter's eyes and something in them
+stopped her suddenly.
+
+“I did not realize that I was taking any risk,” she said. “I won't do it
+again. I will say good-bye to you right here and now so I needn't look
+back.”
+
+So she shook hands with Peter and drove away. Peter slowly followed
+down the rough driveway, worn hard by the wheels of delivery trucks, and
+stood upon the highest point of the rocky turn, looking after the small
+gray car as it slid down the steep declivity. And he wondered if there
+could have been telepathy in the longing with which he watched it go,
+for at the level roadway that followed between the cultivated land
+out to the highway Linda stopped the car, stood up in it, and turning,
+looked back straight to the spot upon which Peter stood. She waved both
+hands to him, and then gracefully and beautifully, with outstretched,
+fluttering fingers she made him the sign of birds flying home. And with
+the whimsy in his soul uppermost, Peter reflected, as he turned back for
+a microscopic examination of Henry Anderson's coat and the contents of
+its pockets, that there was one bird above all others which made
+him think of Linda; but he could not at the moment feather Katherine
+O'Donovan. And then he further reflected as he climbed the hill that
+if it had to be done the best he could do would be a bantam hen
+contemplating domesticity.
+
+Linda looked the garage over very carefully when she put away the Bear
+Cat. When she closed the garage doors she was particular about the
+locks. As she came through the kitchen she said to Katy, busy with the
+lunch box:
+
+“Belovedest, have there been any strange Japs poking around here
+lately?”
+
+She nearly collapsed when Katy answered promptly:
+
+“A dale too many of the square-headed haythens. I am pestered to death
+with them. They used to come jist to water the lawn but now they want
+to crane the rugs; they want to do the wash. They are willing to crane
+house. They want to get into the garage; they insist on washing the car.
+If they can't wash it they jist want to see if it nades washin'.”
+
+Linda stood amazed.
+
+“And how long has this been going on, Katy?” she finally asked.
+
+“Well, I have had two good months of it,” said Katy; “that is, it
+started two months ago. The past month has been workin' up and the last
+ten days it seemed to me they was a Jap on the back steps oftener than
+they was a stray cat, and I ain't no truck with ayther of them. They
+give me jist about the same falin'. Between the two I would trust the
+cat a dale further with my bird than I would the Jap.”
+
+“Have you ever unlocked the garage for them, Katy?” asked Linda.
+
+“No,” said Katy. “I only go there when I nade something about me work.”
+
+“Well, Katy,” said Linda, “let me tell you this: the next time you go
+there for anything take a good look for Japs before you open the door.
+Get what you want and get out as quickly as possible and be sure, Katy,
+desperately sure, that you lock the door securely when you leave.”
+
+Katy set her hands on her hips, flared her elbows, and lifted her chin.
+
+“What's any of them little haythen been coin' to scare ye, missy?” she
+demanded belligerently. “Don't you think I'm afraid of them! Comes any
+of them around me and I'll take my mopstick over the heads of them.”
+
+“And you'll break a perfectly good mopstick and not hurt the Jap when
+you do it,” said Linda. “There's an undercurrent of something deep
+and subtle going on in this country right now, Katy. When Japan sends
+college professors to work in our kitchens and relatives of her greatest
+statesmen to serve our tables, you can depend on it she is not doing
+it for the money that is paid them. If California does not wake up very
+shortly and very thoroughly she is going to pay an awful price for the
+luxury she is experiencing while she pampers herself with the service
+of the Japanese, just as the South has pampered herself for generations
+with the service of the Negroes. When the Negroes learn what there is
+to know, then the day of retribution will be at hand. And this is not
+croaking, Katy. It is the truest gospel that was ever preached. Keep
+your eyes wide open for Japs. Keep your doors locked, and if you see one
+prowling around the garage and don't know what he is after, go to the
+telephone and call the police.”
+
+Linda climbed the stairs to her workroom, plumped down at the table, set
+her chin in her palms, and lost herself in thought. For half an hour
+she sat immovable, staring at her caricature of Eileen through narrowed
+lids. Then she opened the typewriter, inserted a sheet and wrote:
+
+MY DEAR Mr. SNOW:
+
+I am writing as the most intimate woman friend of Marian Thorne. As
+such, I have spent much thought trying to figure out exactly the reason
+for the decision in your recent architectural competition; why a man
+should think of such a number of very personal, intimate touches that,
+from familiarity with them, I know that Miss Thorne had incorporated in
+her plans, and why his winning house should be her winning house, merely
+reversed.
+
+Today I have found the answer, which I am forwarding to you, knowing
+that you will understand exactly what should be done. Enclosed you will
+find one of the first rough sketches Marian made of her plans. In
+some mysterious manner it was lost on a night when your prize-winning
+architect had dinner at our house where Miss Thorne was also a guest.
+Before retiring she showed to me and explained the plans with which she
+hoped to win your competition. In the morning I packed her suitcase and
+handed it to the porter of her train. When she arrived at San Francisco
+she found that the enclosed sheet was missing.
+
+This afternoon tidying a garage in which Mr. Peter Morrison, the author,
+is living while Henry Anderson completes a residence he is building
+for him near my home, I reversed a coat belonging to Henry Anderson
+to dislodge from its pocket the nest of a field mouse. In so doing I
+emptied all the pockets, and in gathering up their contents I found this
+lost sheet from Marian's plans.
+
+I think nothing more need be said on my part save that I understood the
+winning plan was to become the property of Nicholson and Snow. Without
+waiting to see whether these plans would win or not, Henry Anderson has
+them three fourths of the way materialized in Mr. Morrison's residence
+in Lilac Valley which is a northwestern suburb of Los Angeles.
+
+You probably have heard Marian speak of me, and from her you may obtain
+any information you might care to have concerning my responsibility.
+
+I am mailing the sketch to you rather than to Marian because I feel that
+you are the party most deeply interested in a business way, and I hope,
+too, that you will be interested in protecting my very dear friend from
+the disagreeable parts of this very disagreeable situation.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+LINDA STRONG.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. Putting It Up to Peter
+
+When Peter Morrison finally gave up looking in the pockets of Henry
+Anderson's coat for enlightenment concerning Linda's conduct, it was
+with his mind settled on one point. There was nothing in the coat now
+that could possibly have startled the girl or annoyed her. Whatever had
+been there that caused her extremely peculiar conduct she had carried
+away with her. Peter had settled convictions concerning Linda. From the
+first instant he had looked into her clear young eyes as she stood in
+Multiflores Canyon triumphantly holding aloft the Cotyledon in one
+hand and with the other struggling to induce the skirt of her blouse to
+resume its proper location beneath the band of her trousers, he had felt
+that her heart and her mind were as clear and cool and businesslike
+as the energetic mountain stream hurrying past her. Above all others,
+“straight” was the one adjective he probably would have applied to her.
+Whatever she had taken from Henry's pockets was something that concerned
+her. If she took anything, she had a right to take it; of that Peter
+was unalterably certain. He remembered that a few days before she
+practically had admitted to him that Anderson had annoyed her, and a
+slow anger began to surge up in Peter's carefully regulated heart. His
+thoughts were extremely busy, but the thing he thought most frequently
+and most forcefully was that he would thoroughly enjoy taking Henry
+Anderson by the scruff of the neck, leading him to the sheerest part of
+his own particular share of the mountain, and exhaustively booting him
+down it.
+
+“It takes these youngsters to rush in and raise the devil where there's
+no necessity for anything to happen if just a modicum of common sense
+had been used,” growled Peter.
+
+He mulled over the problem for several days, and then he decided he
+should see Linda, and with his first look into her straight-forward
+eyes, from the tones of her voice and the carriage of her head he would
+know whether the annoyance persisted. About the customary time for her
+to return from school Peter started on foot down the short cut between
+his home and the Strong residence. He was following a footpath rounding
+the base of the mountain, crossing and recrossing the enthusiastic
+mountain stream as it speeded toward the valley, when a flash of color
+on the farther side of the brook attracted him. He stopped, then hastily
+sprang across the water, climbed a few yards, and, after skirting a
+heavy clump of bushes, looked at Linda sitting beside them--a most
+astonishing Linda, appearing small and humble, very much tucked away,
+unrestrained tears rolling down her cheeks, a wet handkerchief wadded
+in one hand, a packet of letters in her lap. A long instant they studied
+each other.
+
+“Am I intruding?” inquired Peter at last.
+
+Linda shook her head vigorously and gulped down a sob.
+
+“No, Peter,” she sobbed, “I had come this far on my way to you when my
+courage gave out.”
+
+Peter rearranged the immediate landscape and seated himself beside
+Linda.
+
+“Now stop distressing yourself,” he said authoritatively. “You
+youngsters do take life so seriously. The only thing that could have
+happened to you worth your shedding a tear over can't possibly have
+happened; so stop this waste of good material. Tears are very precious
+things, Linda. They ought to be the most unusual things in life. Now
+tell me something. Were you coming to me about that matter that worried
+you the other evening?”
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+“No,” she said, “I have turned that matter over where it belongs. I have
+nothing further to do with it. I'll confess to you I took a paper from
+among those that fell from Henry Anderson's pocket. It was not his. He
+had no right to have it. He couldn't possibly have come by it honorably
+or without knowing what it was. I took the liberty to put it where it
+belongs, or at least where it seemed to me that it belongs. That is all
+over.”
+
+“Then something else has happened?” asked Peter. “Something connected
+with the package of letters in your lap?”
+
+Linda nodded vigorously.
+
+“Peter, I have done something perfectly awful,” she confessed. “I never
+in this world meant to do it. I wouldn't have done it for anything. I
+have got myself into the dreadfullest mess, and I don't know how to get
+out. When I couldn't stand it another minute I started right to you,
+Peter, just like I'd have started to my father if I'd had him to go to.”
+
+“I see,” said Peter, deeply interested in the toe of his shoe. “You
+depended on my age and worldly experience and my unconcealed devotion to
+your interests, which is exactly what you should do, my dear. Now tell
+me. Dry your eyes and tell me, and whatever it is I'll fix it all right
+and happily for you. I'll swear to do it if you want me to.”
+
+Then Linda raised her eyes to his face.
+
+“Oh, Peter, you dear!” she cried. “Peter, I'll just kneel and kiss your
+hands if you can fix this for me.”
+
+Peter set his jaws and continued his meditations on shoe leather.
+
+“Make it snappy!” he said tersely. “The sooner your troubles are out of
+your system the better you'll feel. Whose letters are those, and why are
+you crying over them?”
+
+“Oh, Peter,” quavered Linda, “you know how I love Marian. You have seen
+her and I have told you over and over.”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter soothingly, “I know.”
+
+“I have told you how, after years of devotion to Marian, John Gilman let
+Eileen make a perfect rag of him and tie him into any kind of knot she
+chose. Peter, when Marian left here she had lost everything on earth but
+a little dab of money. She had lost a father who was fine enough to be
+my father's best friend. She had lost a mother who was fine enough to
+rear Marian to what she is. She had lost them in a horrible way that
+left her room for a million fancies and regrets: 'if I had done this,'
+or 'if I had done that,' or 'if I had taken another road.' And when she
+went away she knew definitely she had lost the first and only love of
+her heart; and I knew, because she was so sensitive and so fine, I knew,
+better than anybody living, how she COULD be hurt; and I thought if I
+could fix some scheme that would entertain her and take her mind off
+herself and make her feel appreciated only for a little while--I knew in
+all reason, Peter, when she got out in the world where men would see her
+and see how beautiful and fine she is, there would be somebody who would
+want her quickly. All the time I have thought that when she came back,
+YOU would want her. Peter, I fibbed when I said I was setting your
+brook for Louise Whiting. I was not. I don't know Louise Whiting. She is
+nothing to me. I was setting it for you and Marian. It was a WHITE head
+I saw among the iris marching down your creek bank, not a gold one,
+Peter.”
+
+Peter licked his dry lips and found it impossible to look at Linda.
+
+“Straight ahead with it,” he said gravely. “What did you do?”
+
+“Oh, I have done the awfullest thing,” wailed Linda, “the most
+unforgivable thing!”
+
+She reached across and laid hold of the hand next her, and realizing
+that she needed it for strength and support, Peter gave it into her
+keeping.
+
+“Yes?” he questioned. “Get on with it, Linda. What was it you did?”
+
+“I had a typewriter: I could. I began writing her letters, the kind of
+letters that I thought would interest her and make her feel loved and
+appreciated.”
+
+“You didn't sign my name to them, did you, Linda?” asked Peter in a dry,
+breathless voice.
+
+“No, Peter,” said Linda, “I did not do that, I did worse. Oh, I did a
+whole lot worse!”
+
+“I don't understand,” said Peter hoarsely.
+
+“I wanted to make them fine. I wanted to make them brilliant. I wanted
+to make them interesting. And of course I could not do it by myself. I
+am nothing but a copycat. I just quoted a lot of things I had heard you
+say; and I did worse than that, Peter. I watched the little whimsy lines
+around your mouth and I tried to interpret the perfectly lovely things
+they would make you say to a woman if you loved her and were building a
+dream house for her. And oh, Peter, it's too ghastly; I don't believe I
+can tell you.”
+
+“This is pretty serious business, Linda,” said Peter gravely. “Having
+gone this far you are in honor bound to finish. It would not be fair to
+leave me with half a truth. What is the result of this impersonation?”
+
+“Oh, Peter,” sobbed Linda, breaking down again, “you're going to hate
+me; I know you're going to hate me and Marian's going to hate me; and I
+didn't mean a thing but the kindest thing in all the world.”
+
+“Don't talk like that, Linda,” said Peter. “If your friend is all you
+say she is, she is bound to understand. And as for me, I am not very
+likely to misjudge you. But be quick about it. What did you do, Linda?”
+
+“Why, I just wrote these letters that I am telling you about,” said
+Linda, “and I said the things that I thought would comfort her and
+entertain her and help with her work; and these are the answers that
+she wrote me, and I don't think I realized till last night that she
+was truly attributing them to any one man, truly believing in them. Oh,
+Peter, I wasn't asleep a minute all last night, and for the first time I
+failed in my lessons today.”
+
+“And what is the culmination, Linda?” urged Peter.
+
+“She liked the letters, Peter. They meant all I intended them to and
+they must have meant something I never could have imagined. And in San
+Francisco one of the firm where she studies--a very fine man she says he
+is, Peter; I can see that in every way he would be quite right for her;
+and I had a letter from her last night, and, Peter, he had asked her to
+marry him, to have a lifelong chance at work she's crazy about. He
+had offered her a beautiful home with everything that great wealth and
+culture and good taste could afford. He had offered her the mothering of
+his little daughter; and she refused him, Peter, refused him because she
+is in love, with all the love there is left in her disappointed, hurt
+heart, with the personality that these letters represent to her; and
+that personality is yours, Peter. I stole it from you. I copied it into
+those letters. I'm not straight. I'm not fair. I wasn't honest with her.
+I wasn't honest with you. I'll just have to take off front the top of
+the highest mountain or sink in the deepest place in the sea, Peter.
+I thought I was straight. I thought I was honorable I have made Donald
+believe that I was. If I have to tell him the truth about this he won't
+want to wear my flower any more. I shall know all the things that Marian
+has suffered, and a thousand times worse, because she was not to blame;
+she had nothing with which to reproach herself.”
+
+Peter put an arm across Linda's shoulders and drew her up to him. For a
+long, bitter moment he thought deeply, and then he said hoarsely: “Now
+calm down, Linda. You're making an extremely high mountain out of an
+extremely shallow gopher hole. You haven't done anything irreparable.
+I see the whole situation. You are sure your friend has finally refused
+this offer she has had on account of these letters you have written?”
+
+Suddenly Linda relaxed. She leaned her warm young body against Peter.
+She laid her tired head on his shoulder. She slipped the top letter of
+the packet in her lap from under its band, opened it, and held it before
+him. Peter read it very deliberately, then he nodded in acquiescence.
+
+“It's all too evident,” he said quietly, “that you have taught her that
+there is a man in this world more to her liking than John Gilman ever
+has been. When it came to materializing the man, Linda, what was your
+idea? Were you proposing to deliver me?”
+
+“I thought it would be suitable and you would be perfectly happy,”
+ sobbed Linda, “and that way I could have both of you.”
+
+“And Donald also?” asked Peter lightly.
+
+“Donald of course,” assented Linda.
+
+And then she lifted her tear-spilling, wonderful eyes, wide open, to
+Peter's, and demanded: “But, oh Peter, I am so miserable I am almost
+dead. I have said you were a rock, and you are a rock. peter, can you
+get me out of this?”
+
+“Sure,” said Peter grimly. “Merely a case of living up to your blue
+china, even if it happens to be in the form of hieroglyphics instead of
+baked pottery. Give me the letters, Linda. Give me a few days to study
+them. Exchange typewriters with me so I can have the same machine. Give
+me some of the paper on which you have been writing and the address you
+have been using, and I'll guarantee to get you out of this in some way
+that will leave you Donald, and your friendship with Marian quite as
+good as new.”
+
+At that juncture Peter might have been kissed, but his neck was very
+stiff and his head was very high and his eyes were on a far-distant
+hilltop from which at that minute he could not seem to gather any
+particular help.
+
+“Would it be your idea,” he said, “that by reading these letters I could
+gain sufficient knowledge of what has passed to go on with this?”
+
+“Of course you could,” said Linda.
+
+Peter reached in his side pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief.
+He shook it from its folds and dried her eyes. Then he took her by her
+shoulders and set her up straight.
+
+“Now stop this nerve strain and this foolishness,” he said tersely.
+“You have done a very wonderful thing for me. It is barely possible that
+Marian Thorne is not my dream woman, but we can't always have our dreams
+in this world, and if I could not have mine, truly and candidly, Linda,
+so far as I have lived my life, I would rather have Marian Thorne than
+any other woman I have ever met.”
+
+Linda clapped her hands in delight.
+
+“Oh, goody goody, Peter!” she cried. “How joyous! Can it be possible
+that my bungling is coming out right for Marian and right for you?”
+
+“And right for you, Linda?” inquired Peter lightly.
+
+“Sure, right for me,” said Linda eagerly. “Of course it's right for me
+when it's right for you and Marian. And since it's not my secret alone
+I don't think it would be quite honorable to tell Donald about it. What
+hurts Marian's heart or heals it is none of his business. He doesn't
+even know her.”
+
+“All right then, Linda,” said Peter, rising, “give me the letters and
+bring me the machine and the paper. Give me the joyous details and tell
+me when I am expected to send in my first letter in propria persona?”
+
+“Oh, Peter,” cried Linda, beaming on him, “oh, Peter, you are a rock! I
+do put my trust in you.”
+
+“Then God help me,” said Peter, “for whatever happens, your trust in me
+shall not be betrayed, Linda.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. Katy Unburdens Her Mind
+
+Possibly because she wished to eliminate herself from the offices of
+Nicholson and Snow for a few days, possibly because her finely attuned
+nature felt the call, Marian Thorne boarded a train that carried her to
+Los Angeles. She stepped from it at ten o'clock in the morning, and by
+the streetcar route made her way to Lilac Valley. When she arrived she
+realized that she could not see Linda before, possibly, three in the
+afternoon. She entered a restaurant, had a small lunch box packed,
+and leaving her dressing case, she set off down the valley toward
+the mountains. She had need of their strength, their quiet and their
+healing. To the one particular spot where she had found comfort in Lilac
+Valley her feet led her. By paths of her own, much overgrown for want
+of recent usage, she passed through the cultivated fields, left the
+roadway, and began to climb. When she reached the stream flowing down
+the rugged hillside, she stopped to rest for a while, and her mind was
+in a tumult. In one minute she was seeing the bitterly disappointed face
+of a lonely, sensitive man whose first wound had been reopened by the
+making of another possibly quite as deep; and at the next her heart was
+throbbing because Linda had succeeded in transferring the living Peter
+to paper.
+
+The time had come when Marian felt that she would know the personality
+embodied in the letters she had been receiving; and in the past few
+days her mind had been fixing tenaciously upon Peter Morrison. And the
+feeling concerning which she had written Linda had taken possession of
+her. Wealth did not matter; position did not matter. Losing the love of
+a good man did not matter But the mind and the heart and the personality
+behind the letters she had been receiving did matter. She thought long
+and seriously When at last she arose she had arrived at the conclusion
+that she had done the right thing, no matter whether the wonderful
+letters she had received went on and offered her love or not, no matter
+about anything. She must merely live and do the best she could, until
+the writer of those letters chose to disclose himself and say what
+purpose he had in mind when he wrote them.
+
+So Marian followed her own path beside the creek until she neared its
+head, which was a big, gushing icy spring at the foot of the mountain
+keeping watch over the small plateau that in her heart she had thought
+of as hers for years. As she neared the location strange sounds began to
+reach her, voices of men, clanging of hammers, the rip of saws. A look
+of deep consternation overspread her face. She listened an instant and
+then began to run. When she broke through the rank foliage flourishing
+from the waters of the spring and looked out on the plateau what she saw
+was Peter Morrison's house in the process of being floored and shingled.
+For a minute Marian was physically ill. Her heart hurt until her hand
+crept to her side in an effort to soothe it. Before she asked the
+question of a man coming to the spring with a pail in his hand, she
+knew the answer. It was Peter Morrison's house. Marian sprang across the
+brook, climbed to the temporary roadway, and walked down in front of the
+building. She stood looking at it intently. It was in a rough stage, but
+much disguise is needed to prevent a mother from knowing her own child.
+Marian's dark eyes began to widen and to blaze. She walked up to the
+front of the house and found that rough flooring had been laid so that
+she could go over the first floor. When she had done this she left the
+back door a deeply indignant woman.
+
+“There is some connection,” she told herself tersely, “between my lost
+sketch and this house, which is merely a left-to-right rehearsal of
+my plans; and it's the same plan with which Henry Anderson won the
+Nicholson and Snow prize money and the still more valuable honor of
+being the prize winner. What I want to know is how such a wrong may be
+righted, and what Peter Morrison has to do with it.”
+
+Stepping from the back door, Marian followed the well-worn pathway
+that led to the garage, looking right and left for Peter, and she was
+wondering what she would say to him if she met him. She was thinking
+that perhaps she had better return to San Francisco and talk the matter
+over with Mr. Snow before she said anything to anyone else; by this time
+she had reached the garage and stood in its wide-open door. She looked
+in at the cot, left just as someone had arisen from it, at the row of
+clothing hanging on a rough wooden rack at the back, at the piled boxes,
+at the big table, knocked together from rough lumber, in the center,
+scattered and piled with books and magazines; and then her eyes fixed
+intently on a packet lying on the table beside a typewriter and a stack
+of paper and envelopes. She walked over and picked up the packet. As she
+had known the instant she saw them, they were her letters. She stood
+an instant holding them in her hand, a dazed expression on her face.
+Mechanically she reached out and laid her hands on the closed typewriter
+to steady herself. Something about it appealed to her as familiar.
+She looked at it closely, then she lifted the cover and examined the
+machine. It was the same machine that had stood for years in Doctor
+Strong's library, a machine upon which she had typed business letters
+for her own father, and sometimes she had copied lectures and book
+manuscript on it for Doctor Strong. Until his house was completed and
+his belongings arrived, Peter undoubtedly had borrowed it. Suddenly a
+wild desire to escape swept over Marian. Her first thought was of her
+feelings. She was angry, and justly so. In her heart she had begun to
+feel that the letters she was receiving were from Peter Morrison. Here
+was the proof.
+
+Could it be possible that in their one meeting Peter had decided that
+she was his dream woman, that in some way he had secured that rough
+sketch of her plans, and from them was preparing her dream house for
+her? The thought sped through her brain that he was something more
+than human to have secured those plans, to have found that secluded and
+choice location. For an instant she forgot the loss of the competition
+in trying to comprehend the wonder of finding her own particular house
+fitting her own particular location as naturally as one of its big
+boulders.
+
+She tried to replace the package of letters exactly as she had found
+them. On tiptoe she slipped back to the door and looked searchingly down
+the road, around, and as far as possible through the house. Then she
+gathered her skirts, stepped from the garage, and began the process
+of effacing herself on the mountain side From clump to clump of the
+thickest bushes, crouching below the sage and greasewood, pausing to
+rest behind lilac and elder, without regard for her traveling suit or
+her beautifully shod feet, Marian fled from her location. When at last
+she felt that she was completely hidden and at least a mile from the
+spot, she dropped panting on a boulder, brushing the debris from her
+skirts, lifting trembling hands to straighten her hat, and ruefully
+contemplating her shoes. Then she tried to think in a calm,
+dispassionate, and reasonable manner, but she found it a most difficult
+process. Her mind was not well ordered, neither was it at her
+command. It whirled and shot off at unexpected tangents and danced as
+irresponsibly as a grasshopper from one place to another. The flying
+leaps it took ranged from San Francisco to Lilac Valley, from her
+location upon which Peter Morrison was building her house, to Linda.
+Even John Gilman obtruded himself once more. At one minute she was
+experiencing a raging indignation against Henry Anderson. How had he
+secured her plan? At another she was trying to figure dispassionately
+what connection Peter Morrison could have had with the building of his
+house upon her plan. Every time Peter came into the equation her heart
+arose in his defense. In some way his share in the proceeding was all
+right. He had cared for her and he had done what he thought would please
+her. Therefore she must be pleased, although forced to admit to herself
+that she would have been infinitely more pleased to have built her own
+house in her own way.
+
+She was hungry to see Linda. She wanted Katherine O'Donovan to feed her
+and fuss over her and entertain her with her mellow Irish brogue; but if
+she went to them and disclosed her presence in the valley, Peter would
+know about it, and if he intended the building he was erecting as a
+wonderful surprise for her, then she must not spoil his joy. Plan in any
+way she could, Marian could see no course left to her other than to slip
+back to the station and return to San Francisco without meeting any
+of her friends. She hurriedly ate her lunch, again straightened her
+clothing, went to the restaurant for her traveling bag, and took the car
+for the station where she waited for a return train to San Francisco She
+bought a paper and tried to concentrate upon it in an effort to take her
+mind from her own problems so that, when she returned to them, she would
+be better able to think clearly, to reason justly, to act wisely.
+She was very glad when her train came and she was started on her way
+northward. At the first siding upon which it stopped to allow the
+passing of a south-bound limited, she was certain that as the cars
+flashed by, in one of them she saw Eugene Snow. She was so certain that
+when she reached the city she immediately called the office and asked
+for Mr. Snow only to be told that he had gone away for a day or two
+on business. After that Marian's thought was confused to the point of
+exasperation.
+
+It would be difficult to explain precisely the state of mind in which
+Linda, upon arriving at her home that afternoon, received from Katy the
+information that a man named Snow had been waiting an hour for her in
+the living room. Linda's appearance was that of a person so astonished
+that Katy sidled up to her giving strong evidence of being ready to
+bristle.
+
+“Ye know, lambie,” she said with elaborate indifference, “ye aren't
+havin' to see anybody ye don't want to. If it's somebody intrudin'
+himself on ye, just say the word and I'll fire him; higher than
+Guilderoy's kite I'll be firin' him.”
+
+“No, I must see him, Katy,” said Linda quietly. “And have something
+specially nice for dinner. Very likely I'll take him to see Peter
+Morrison's house and possibly I'll ask him and Peter to dinner. He is
+a San Francisco architect from the firm where Marian takes her lessons,
+and it's business about Peter's house. I was surprised, that's all.”
+
+Then Linda turned and laid a hand on each of Katy's hairy red arms.
+
+“Katherine O'Donovan, old dear,” she said, “if we do come back for
+dinner, concentrate on Mr. Snow and study him. Scrutinize, Katy! It's
+a bully word. Scrutinize closely. To add one more to our long lists of
+secrets, here's another. He's the man I told you about who has asked
+Marian to marry him, and Marian has refused him probably because she
+prefers somebody nearer home.”
+
+Then Linda felt the tensing of every muscle in Katy's body. She saw the
+lift of her head, the incredulous, resentful look in her eyes. There was
+frank hostility in her tone.
+
+“Well, who is there nearer home that Marian knows?” she demanded
+belligerently.
+
+“Well, now, who would there be?” retorted Linda.
+
+“Ye ain't manin' John Gilman?” asked Katy.
+
+“No,” said Linda, “I am not meaning John Gilman. You should know Marian
+well enough to know that.”
+
+“Well, ye ought to know yourself well enough to know that they ain't
+anybody else around these diggin's that Marian Thorne's going to get,”
+ said Katy.
+
+“I imagine Marian will get pretty much whom she wants,” said Linda
+laughingly. “In your heart, Katy, you know that Marian need not have
+lost John Gilman if she had not deliberately let him go. If she had been
+willing to meet Eileen on her own ground and to play the game with
+her, it wouldn't have happened. Marian has more brains in a minute than
+Eileen has in a month.”
+
+When Linda drew back the portiere and stepped into the living room
+Eugene Snow rose to meet her. What either of them expected it might
+be difficult to explain. Knowing so little of each other, it is very
+possible that they had no visualizations. What Snow saw was what
+everyone saw who looked at Linda--a girl arrestingly unusual. With
+Linda lay the advantage by far, since she had Marian's letters for a
+background. What she saw was a tall man, slender, and about him there
+was to Linda a strong appeal. As she looked into his eyes, she could
+feel the double hurt that Fate had dealt him. She thought she could
+fathom the fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building
+his chosen occupation. Instantly she liked him. With only one look deep
+into his eyes she was on his side. She stretched out both her hands and
+advanced.
+
+“Now isn't this the finest thing of you?” she said. “I am so glad that
+you came. I'll tell you word for word what happened here.”
+
+“That will be fine,” he said. “Which is your favorite chair?”
+
+“You know,” she said, “that is a joke. I am so unfamiliar with this room
+that I haven't any favorite chair. I'll have to take the nearest, like
+Thoreau selected his piece of chicken.”
+
+Then for a few minutes Linda talked frankly. She answered Eugene
+Snow's every question unhesitatingly and comprehensively. Together they
+ascended the stairs, and in the guest room she showed him the table
+at which she and Marian had studied the sketches of plans, and exactly
+where they had left them lying overnight.
+
+“The one thing I can't be explicit about,” said Linda, “is how many
+sheets were there in the morning. We had stayed awake so late talking,
+that we overslept. I packed Marian's bag while she dressed. I snatched
+up what there were without realizing whether there were two sheets or
+three, laid them in the flat bottom of the case, and folded her clothing
+on top of them.”
+
+“I see,” said Mr. Snow comprehendingly. “Now let's experiment a little.
+Of course the window before that table was raised?”
+
+“Yes, it was,” said Linda, “but every window in the house is screened.”
+
+“And what about the door opening into the hall? Can you tell me whether
+it was closed or open?”
+
+“It was open,” said Linda. “We left it slightly ajar to create a draft;
+the night was warm.”
+
+“Is there anyone about the house,” inquired Mr. Snow, “who could tell us
+certainly whether that window was screened that night?”
+
+“Of course,” said Linda. “Our housekeeper, Katherine O'Donovan, would
+know. When we go down we'll ask her.”
+
+On their return to the living room, for the first time in her life Linda
+rang for Katy. She hesitated an instant before she did it. It would be
+establishing a relationship that never before had existed between them.
+She always had gone to Katy as she would have, gone to her mother. She
+would have gone to her now, but she wanted Katy to make her appearance
+and give her information without the possibility of previous discussion.
+Katy answered the bell almost at once. Linda went to her side and
+reached her arm across her shoulders.
+
+“Katy,” she said, “this is Mr. Eugene Snow of San Francisco He is
+interested in finding out exactly what became of that lost plan of
+Marian's that we have looked for so carefully. Put on your thinking cap,
+old dear, and try to answer accurately any question that Mr. Snow may
+wish to ask you.”
+
+Katy looked expectantly at Eugene Snow.
+
+“In the meantime,” said Linda, “I'll be excused and go bring round the
+Bear Cat.”
+
+“I have only one question to ask you,” said Mr. Snow. “Can you recall
+whether, for any reason, there was a screen out of the guest-room window
+directly in front of which the reading table was standing the night Miss
+Marian occupied the room before leaving for San Francisco?”
+
+“Sure there was,” answered Katy instantly in her richest, mellowest
+brogue.
+
+She was taking the inventory she had been told to take. She was
+deciding, as instantly as Linda had done, that she liked this man.
+Years, appearance, everything about him appealed to Katy as being
+exactly right for Marian; and her cunning Irish mind was leaping and
+flying and tugging at the leash that thirty years of conventions had
+bound upon her.
+
+“Sure,” she repeated, “the wildest santana that ever roared over us just
+caught that screen and landed it slam against the side of the garage,
+and it set inside for three days till I could get a workman to go up
+the outside and put it back. It had been out two days before the night
+Marian was here.”
+
+“Did Miss Linda know about it?” asked Snow.
+
+“Not that I know of,” said Katy. “She is a schoolgirl, you know, off
+early in the morning, back and up to her room, the busiest youngster the
+valley knows; and coin' a dale of good she is, too. It was Miss Eileen
+that heard the screen ripped out and told me it was gone. She's the one
+who looked after the housekapin' and paid the bills. She knew all about
+it. If 'twould be helpin' Miss Marian any about findin' them plans we've
+ransacked the premises for, I couldn't see any reason why Miss Eileen
+wouldn't tell ye the same as I'm tellin' ye, and her housekapin'
+accounts and her cheque book would show she paid the carpenter, if it's
+legal business you're wantin'.”
+
+“Thank you, Katy,” said Mr. Snow. “I hope nothing of that kind will
+occur. A great wrong has been perpetrated, but we must find some way
+to right it without involving such extremely nice young women in the
+annoyance of legal proceedings.”
+
+Katy folded her arms and raised her head. All her share of the blarney
+of Ireland began to roll from the mellow tip of her tongue.
+
+“Now, the nice man ye are, to be seein' the beauty of them girls so
+quick,” she said. “The good Lord airly in the mornin' of creation
+thought them out when He was jist fresh from rist, and the material was
+none shopworn. They ain't ladies like 'em anywhere else in the whole of
+California, and belave me, a many rale ladies have I seen in my time.
+Ye can jist make up your mind that Miss Linda is the broth of the earth.
+She is her father's own child and she is like him as two pase in the
+pod. And Marian growed beside her, and much of a hand I've had in her
+raisin' meself, and well I'm knowin' how fine she is and what a juel
+she'd be, set on any man's hearthstone. I'm wonderin',” said Katy
+challengingly, “if you're the Mr. Snow at whose place she is takin' her
+lessons, and if ye are, I'm wonderin' if ye ain't goin' to use the good
+judgment to set her, like the juel she would be, in the stone of your
+own hearth.”
+
+Eugene Snow looked at Katy intently. He was not accustomed to discussing
+his affairs with household helpers, but he could not look at Katy
+without there remaining in his vision the forte of Linda standing beside
+her, a reassuring arm stretched across her shoulders, the manner in
+which she had presented her and then left her that she might be free
+to answer as she chose with out her young mistress even knowing exactly
+what was asked of her. Such faith and trust and love were unusual.
+
+“I might try to do that very thing,” he said, “but, you know, a
+wonderful woman is an animated jewel. You can't manufacture a setting
+and put her in and tighten the clasps without her consent.”
+
+“Then why don't you get it?” said Katy casually.
+
+Eugene Snow laughed ruefully.
+
+“But suppose,” he said, “that the particular jewel you're discussing
+prefers to select her own setting, and mine does not please her.”
+
+“Well, they's jist one thing,” said Katy. Her heels left the floor
+involuntarily; she arose on her tiptoes; her shoulders came up, and
+her head lifted to a height it never had known before. “They's jist one
+thing,” she said. “Aside from Miss Linda, who is my very own child that
+I have washed and I have combed and I have done for since she was a
+toddlin' four-year-old, they ain't no woman in this world I would go
+as far for as I would for Miss Marian; but I'm tellin' ye now, ye Mr.
+Eujane Snow, that they's one thing I don't lend no countenance to. I am
+sorry she has had the cold, cruel luck that she has, but I ain't sorry
+enough that I'm goin' to stand for her droppin' herself into the place
+where she doesn't belong. If the good Lord ain't give her the sense to
+see that you're jist the image of the man that would be jist exactly
+right for her, somebody had better be tellin' her so. Anyway, if Miss
+Linda is takin' ye up to the house that Mr. Pater Morrison is buildin'
+and the Pater man is there, I would advise ye to cast your most
+discernin' eye on that gintleman. Ye watch him jist one minute when he
+looks at the young missus and he thinks nobody ain't observing him, and
+ye'll see what ye'll see. If ye want Marian, ye jist go on and take her.
+I'm not carin' whether ye use a club or white vi'lets, but don't ye be
+lettin' Marian Thorne get no idea into her head that she is goin' to
+take Mr. Pater Morrison, because concernin' Pater I know what I know,
+and I ain't goin' to stand by and see things goin' wrong for want of
+spakin' up. Now if you're a wise man, ye don't nade nothing further said
+on the subject.”
+
+Eugene Snow thought intently for a few moments. His vision centered on
+Katherine O'Donovan's face.
+
+“You're absolutely sure of this?” he said at last.
+
+“Jist as sure as the sun's sure, and the mountains, and the seasons come
+and go,” said Katy with finality. “Watch him and you'll see it stickin'
+out all over him. I have picked him for me boss, and it's jist adorin'
+that man crature I am.”
+
+“What about Miss Linda?” inquired Snow. “Is she adoring him?”
+
+“She ain't nothing but a ganglin' school kid, adorin' the spade with
+which she can shoot around that Bear Cat of hers, and race the canyons,
+and the rely lovely things she can strike on paper with her pencil and
+light up with her joyous colors. Her day and her hour ain't come, and
+the Pater man's that fine he won't lay a finger on her to wake her up
+when she has a year yet of her schoolin' before her. But in the manetime
+it's my job to stand guard as I'm standin' right now. I'm tellin' ye
+frank and fair. Ye go on and take Marian Thorne because ye ought to have
+her. If she's got any idea in her head that she's goin' to have Pater
+Morrison, she'll have to get it out.”
+
+Eugene Snow held out his hand and started to the front door in answer to
+the growl of the Bear Cat. As he came down the steps and advanced to the
+car, Linda, with the quick eye that had been one of her special gifts as
+a birthright, noted a change in him. He seemed to have been keyed up
+and toned up. There was a different expression on his face. There was
+buoyancy in his step. There was a visible determination in his eye. He
+took the seat beside her and Linda started the car. She looked at him
+interrogatively.
+
+“Can you connect a heavy wind with the date of the lost plan?” he
+inquired.
+
+“There was a crack-a-jack a few days before,” said Linda. “It blew over
+some trees in the lot next to us.”
+
+“Exactly,” said Snow; “and it plucked a screen from your guest-room
+window. Katy thinks that the cheque to the carpenter and the cost of the
+repairs will be in your sister's account books.”
+
+“Um hm,” nodded Linda. “Well, that simplifies matters, because Peter
+Morrison is going to tell you about a trip Henry Anderson made around
+our house the morning Marian left.”
+
+“I think that is about all we need to know,” said Mr. Snow conclusively.
+
+“I think so,” said Linda, “but I want you to see Peter's house for
+yourself, since I understand that according to your contract the rights
+to reproduce these particular plans remained with you after you had paid
+prize money for them.”
+
+“Most certainly,” said Mr. Snow. “We should have that much to show for
+our share of the transaction.”
+
+“It's a queer thing,” said Linda. “You would have to know me a long
+time, and perhaps know under what conditions I have been reared in order
+to understand a feeling that I frequently have concerning people. I
+tobogganed down a sheer side of Multiflores Canyon one day without my
+path having been previously prepared, and I very nearly landed in the
+automobile that carried Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison on their first
+trip to Lilac Valley. I was much interested in preserving the integrity
+of my neck. I fervently hoped not to break more than a dozen of my
+legs and arms, and was forced to bring down intact the finest Cotyledon
+pulverulenta that Daddy or I had found in fourteen years of collecting
+in California. I am telling you all this that you may see why I
+might have been excused for not having been minutely observant of
+my surroundings when I landed. But what I did observe was a chilly,
+caterpillary sensation chasing up my spine the instant I met the eyes of
+Henry Anderson. In that instant I said to myself that I would not trust
+him, that I did not like him.”
+
+“And what about his companion?” asked Eugene Snow lightly. “Oh, Peter?”
+ said Linda. There was a caress in her pronunciation of the name. “Why,
+Peter is a rock. The instant I deposited my Cotyledon in a safe place I
+would have put my hand in Peter Morrison's and started around the world
+if he had asked me to go. There is only one Peter. You will recognize
+that the instant you meet him.”
+
+“I am altogether willing to take your word for it,” said Mr. Snow.
+
+“And there is one thing about this disagreeable business,” said Linda.
+“It was not Peter's coat that had the plan in it. He knew nothing about
+it. He has had his full service of stiff war work, and he has been
+knocking around big cities in newspaper work, and now he has come home
+to Lilac Valley to 'set up his rest,' as in the hymn book, you know. He
+built his garage first and he is living in it because he so loves this
+house of his that he has to be present to watch it grow in minute
+detail. Once on a time I saw a great wizard walking along the sidewalk,
+and he looked exactly like any man. He might have been you so far as
+anything different from other men in his appearance w as concerned.”
+
+Linda cut down the Bear Cat to its slowest speed.
+
+“What is on my mind is this,” she said. “I don't think Peter could quite
+afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building.
+I think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him
+two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with
+him. Now can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid,
+underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt,
+how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is
+building with such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the
+Sea clinging to his back? Do you think, Mr. Eugene Snow, that you're
+enough of a wizard to examine this house and to satisfy yourself as to
+whether it's an infringement of your plans or not, without letting Peter
+know the things about it that would spoil it for him?”
+
+Eugene Snow reached across and closed a hand over the one of Linda's
+nearest him on the steering wheel.
+
+“You very decent kid, you,” he said appreciatively. “I certainly am
+enough of a wizard to save your Peter man any disillusionment concerning
+his dream house.”
+
+“Oh, but he is not my Peter man,” said Linda. “We are only the best
+friends in the world. Really and truly, if you can keep a secret, he's
+Marian's.”
+
+“Is he?” asked Mr. Snow interestedly. And then he added very casually,
+in the most offhand manner--he said it more to an orange orchard through
+which they were passing than he said it to Linda--“I have very grave
+doubts about that. I think there must be some slight complication that
+will have to be cleared up.”
+
+Linda's heart gave a great jump of consternation.
+
+“Indeed no,” she said emphatically. “I don't think he has just told
+Marian yet, but I am very sure that he cares for her more than for any
+other woman, and I am equally sure she cares for him; and nothing could
+be more suitable.”
+
+“All right then,” agreed Mr. Snow.
+
+Linda put the Bear Cat at the mountain, crept around the road, skirted
+the boulders, and stopped halfway to the garage. And there, in a low
+tone, she indicated to Mr. Snow where they had lunched, when she found
+the plans, how she had brought out the coat, where she had emptied the
+mouse nest. Then she stepped from the car and hallooed for Peter. Peter
+came hurrying from the garage, and Eugene Snow was swift in his mental
+inventory. It coincided exactly with Linda's. He would have been willing
+to join hands with Peter and start around the world, quite convinced
+of the fairness of the outcome, with no greater acquaintance than one
+intent look at Peter, one grip of his sure hand. After that he began to
+act on Katy's hint, and in a very short time he had convinced himself
+that she was right. Maybe Peter tried to absorb himself in the plans he
+was going over, in the house he was proud to show the great architect;
+but it seemed to the man he was entertaining that his glance scarcely
+left Linda, that he was so preoccupied with where she went and what she
+did that he was like a juggler keeping two mental balls in the air at
+the same time.
+
+It seemed to Peter a natural thing that, the architect being in the city
+on business, he should run out to call on Miss Thorne's dearest friend
+It seemed to him equally natural that Linda should bring him to see
+a house in which she was so kindly interesting herself. And just when
+Peter was most dexterous in his juggling, just when he was trying to
+explain the very wonderful step-saving' time-saving, rational kitchen
+arrangements and at the same time watch Linda on her course down to the
+spring, the architect halted him with a jerk. Eugene Snow stood very
+straight, his hands in his coat pockets, looking, Peter supposed, with
+interest at the arrangements of kitchen conveniences. His next terse
+sentence fairly staggered Peter. He looked him straight in the eye
+and inquired casually: “Chosen your dream woman to fit your house,
+Morrison?”
+
+Peter was too surprised to conceal his feelings. His jaws snapped
+together; a belligerent look sprang into his eyes.
+
+“I have had a good deal to do with houses,” continued Mr. Snow. “They
+are my life work. I find that invariably they are built for a woman.
+Almost always they are built from her plans, and for her pleasure. It's
+a new house, a unique house, a wonderful house you're evolving here. It
+must be truly a wonderful woman you're dreaming about while you build
+it.”
+
+That was a nasty little trap. With his years and worldly experience
+Peter should not have fallen into it; but all men are children when they
+are sick, heart sick or body sick, and Peter was a very sick man at that
+minute. He had been addressed in such a frank and casual manner. His own
+brain shot off at queer tangents and led him constantly into unexpected
+places. The narrow side lane that opened up came into view so suddenly
+that Peter, with the innocence of a four-year-old, turned with military
+precision at the suggestion and looked over the premises for the exact
+location of Linda. Eugene Snow had seen for himself the thing that Katy
+had told him he would see if he looked for it. Suddenly he held out his
+hand.
+
+“As man to man, Morrison, in this instance,” he said in rather a hoarse,
+breathless voice, “don't you think it would be a good idea for you and
+me to assert our manhood, to manage our own affairs, to select our
+own wives if need be? If we really set ourselves to the job don't you
+believe we can work out our lives more to our liking than anyone else
+can plan for us? You get the idea, don't you, Morrison?”
+
+Peter was facing the kitchen sink but he did not see it. His brain was
+whirling. He did see Snow's point of view. He did realize his position.
+But what Mr. Snow knew of his affairs he could only guess. The one
+thing Mr. Snow could not know was that Linda frankly admitted her
+prepossession for her school chum, Donald Whiting, but in any event
+if Peter could not have Linda he would much prefer occupying his dream
+house alone. So he caught at the straw held out to him with both hands.
+
+“I get you,” he said tersely. “It is not quite up to the mark of the
+manhood we like to think we possess to let our lives be engineered by
+a high school kid. Suppose we do just quietly and masterfully assert
+ourselves concerning our own affairs.”
+
+“Suppose we do,” said Snow with finality.
+
+Whereupon they shook hands with a grip that whitened their knuckles.
+
+Then they went back to Lilac Valley and had their dinner together, and
+Linda and Peter escorted Eugene Snow to his train and started him on his
+return trip to San Francisco feeling very much better. Peter would not
+allow Linda to drive him home at night, so he left her after the Bear
+Cat had been safely placed in the garage. As she stood on the walk
+beside him, strongly outlined in the moonlight, Peter studied Linda
+whimsically. He said it half laughingly, but there was something to
+think about in what he said:
+
+“I'm just picturing, Linda, what a nice old lady you will be by the time
+that high school kid of yours spends four years in college, one on the
+continent, and the Lord knows how many at mastering a profession.”
+
+Linda looked at him with widened eyes.
+
+
+KATY UNBURDENS HER MIND
+
+“Why, what are you talking about, Peter? Are you moonstruck?” she
+inquired solicitously. “Donald's only a friend, you know. I love him
+because he is the nicest companion; but there is nothing for you to be
+silly about.”
+
+Then Peter began to realize the truth. There wasn't anything for him to
+be concerned about. She had not the slightest notion what love meant,
+even as she announced that she loved Donald.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. Peter's Release
+
+Eugene Snow returned to San Francisco enthusiastic about Linda, while he
+would scarcely have known how to express his appreciation of Katherine
+O'Donovan. He had been served a delicious dinner, deftly and quietly,
+such food as men particularly like; but there had been no subservience.
+If Katherine O'Donovan had been waiting on her own table, serving her
+own friends she could not have managed with more pride. It was very
+evident that she loved service, that she loved the girl to whom she gave
+constant attention. He understood exactly what there was in her heart
+and why she felt as she did when he saw Linda and Peter together and
+heard their manner of speaking to each other, and made mental note
+of the many points of interest which seemed to exist between
+them. He returned to San Francisco with a good deal of a
+“See-the-conquering-hero-comes” mental attitude. He went directly to
+his office, pausing on the way for a box of candy and a bunch of Parma
+violets. His first act on reaching the office was to send for Miss
+Thorne. Marian came almost immediately, a worried look in her eyes. She
+sat in the big, cushioned chair that was offered her, and smiled faintly
+when the box was laid on her lap, topped with the violets. She looked at
+Eugene Snow with an “I-wish-you-wouldn't” expression on her face; but he
+smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+“Nothing,” he said. “Picked them up on the way from the station. I made
+a hasty trip to that precious Lilac Valley of yours, and I must say it
+pales your representation. It is a wonderfully lovely spot.”
+
+Marian settled back in the chair. She picked up the violets and ran an
+experienced finger around the stems until she found the pin with which
+she fastened them at her waist. Then as they occupied themselves making
+selections from the candy box he looked smilingly at Marian. Her eyes
+noted the change in him. He was neither disappointed nor sad. Something
+had happened in Lilac Valley that had changed his perspective.
+Womanlike, she began probing.
+
+“Glad you liked my valley,” she said. “We are told that blue is a
+wonderful aura to surround a person, and it's equally wonderful when it
+surrounds a whole valley. With the blue sky and the blue walls and a few
+true-blue friends I have there, it's naturally a very dear spot to me.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Snow, “I can see that it is. I ran down on a business
+matter. I have been deeply puzzled and much perturbed over this prize
+contest. We have run these affairs once a year, sometimes oftener, for
+a long time, so I couldn't understand the peculiar thing about the
+similarity of the winning plans and your work this year. I have been
+holding up the prize money, because I did not feel that you were saying
+exactly what was in your heart, and I couldn't be altogether satisfied
+that everything was right. I went to Lilac Valley because I had a letter
+from your friend, Miss Linda Strong. There was an enclosure in it.”
+
+He drew from his pocket the folded sheet and handed it to Marian. Her
+eyes were surprised, incredulous, as she opened the missing sheet
+from her plans, saw the extraneous lines drawn upon it and the minute
+figuring with which the margin was covered.
+
+“Linda found it at last!” she cried. “Where in this world did she get
+it, and whose work is this on it?”
+
+“She got it,” said Eugene Snow, “when she undertook to clean Peter
+Morrison's workroom on an evening when she and her cook were having
+supper with him. She turned a coat belonging to his architect that hung
+with some of his clothing in Peter Morrison's garage. She was shaking
+the nest of a field mouse from one of the side pockets. Naturally this
+emptied all the pockets, and in gathering up their contents she came
+across that plan, which she recognized. She thought it was right to take
+it and very wisely felt that it was man's business, so she sent it to me
+with her explanations. I went to Lilac Valley because I wanted to judge
+for myself exactly what kind of young person she was. I wanted to see
+her environment. I wanted to see the house that she felt sure was being
+built from these plans. I wanted to satisfy myself of the stability
+of what I had to work on before I mentioned the matter to you or Henry
+Anderson.”
+
+Marian sat holding the plan, listening absorbedly to what he was saying.
+
+“It's an ugly business,” he said, “so ugly that there is no question
+whatever but that it can be settled very quietly and without any
+annoyance to you. I shall have to take the matter up with the board,
+but I have the details so worked out that I shall have no difficulty
+in arranging matters as I think best. There is no question whatever,
+Marian, but Anderson found that sketch on the west side of the Strong
+residence. When you left your plans lying on a table before a window in
+the Strong guestroom the night before you came to San Francisco you did
+not know that the santana which raged through the valley a day or two
+previously had stripped a screen from the window before which you left
+them. In opening your door to establish a draft before you went to
+bed you started one that carried your top drawing through the window.
+Waiting for Miss Strong the next morning, in making a circuit of
+the grounds Anderson found it and appropriated it to most excellent
+advantage. Miss Linda tells me that your study of architecture was
+discussed at the dinner table that night. He could not have helped
+realizing that any sheet of plans he found there must have been yours.
+If he could acquit his conscience of taking them and using them, he
+would still have to explain why he was ready to accept the first prize
+and the conditions imposed when he already had a house fairly well under
+construction from the plans he submitted in the contest. The rule is
+unbreakable that the plans must be original, must be unused, must be our
+sole property, if they take the prize.”
+
+Marian was leaning forward, her eyes wide with interest, her breast
+agitated. She nodded in acquiescence. Eugene Snow reached across and
+helped himself to another piece of candy from the box on her knee. He
+looked at her speculatively and spoke quietly as if the matter were of
+no great importance.
+
+“Would it be agreeable, Marian, if the prize committee should announce
+that there were reasons as to why they were not satisfied, that they
+have decided to return all plans and call off the present contest,
+opening another in a few months in which interested parties may again
+submit their drawings? I will undertake swiftly and comprehensively to
+eliminate Henry Anderson from California. I would be willing to venture
+quite a sum that when I finish with the youngster he will see the
+beauty of going straight hereafter and the desirability of a change of
+atmosphere. He's a youngster. I hate to make the matter public, not
+only on account of involving you and your friends in such disagreeable
+business, but I am sorry for him. I would like to deal with him like the
+proverbial 'Dutch uncle,' then I would like to send him away to make a
+new start with the assurance that I am keeping close watch on him. Would
+you be satisfied if I handled the matter quietly and in my own way?
+Could you wait a few weeks for justice?”
+
+Marian drew a deep breath.
+
+“Of course,” she said, “it would be wonderful if you could do that. But
+what about Peter Morrison? How much did he know concerning the plans,
+and what does he know about this?”
+
+“Nothing,” said Mr. Snow. “That most unusual young friend of yours made
+me see the light very clearly concerning Peter Morrison. There is no
+necessity for him ever to know that the 'dream house,' as Miss Linda
+calls it, that he is building for his dream woman has any disagreeable
+history attached to it. He so loves the spot that he is living on it to
+watch that house in minutest detail. Miss Linda was fairly eloquent in
+the plea she made on his behalf. He strikes me as a very unusual person,
+and she appealed to me in the same way. There must be some scientific
+explanation concerning her that I don't just get, but I can see that
+she is most unusual when I watched them together and heard them talk of
+their plans for the house and the grounds and discussing illustrations
+that she is making for articles that he is writing, I saw how deep and
+wholesome was the friendship existing between them. I even heard that
+wonderful serving woman, whom they so familiarly speak of as 'Katy,'
+chiding Peter Morrison for allowing Linda to take her typewriter to
+him and do her own work with a pen. And because Miss Linda seems so
+greathearted and loving with her friends, I was rather glad to hear his
+explanation that they were merely changing machines for the time being
+for a very particular reason of their own.”
+
+“Do you mean,” asked Marian, “that you think there is anything more than
+casual friendship between Linda and Peter Morrison?”
+
+“Not on her part,” answered Eugene Snow. “Anybody can see that she is
+a child deeply engrossed in all sorts of affairs uncommon for a girl of
+her age and position. Her nice perceptions, her wonderful loyalty to
+her friends, her loving thought for them, are manifest in everything she
+says or does. If she ever makes any mistakes they will be from the head,
+not from the heart. But for the other end of the equation I could speak
+authoritatively. Katy pointed out to me the fact that if I would watch
+Peter Morrison in Miss Linda's presence, I should see that he adored
+her. I did watch, and I did see that very thing. When I taxed him about
+building a dream house for a dream woman, his eyes crossed a plateau,
+leaped a brook, and started up the side of a mountain. They did not rest
+until they had found Linda.”
+
+Marian sat so still that it seemed as if she were not even breathing.
+In view of what Katy had said, and his few words with Peter Morrison,
+Eugene Snow had felt justified in giving Marian a hint as to what was
+going on in Lilac Valley. Exactly what he had done he had no means of
+knowing. If he had known and had talked intentionally he could not have
+made clearer to Marian the thing which for months had puzzled her.
+She was aware that Eugene Snow was talking, that he was describing the
+dinner he had been served, the wonderful wild-flower garden that he had
+seen, how skillfully Linda drove the Bear Cat. She heard these things
+and dimly comprehended them but underneath, her brain was seizing
+upon one fact after another. They had exchanged typewriters. The poor,
+foolish little kid had known how her health was wracked, how she was
+suffering, how her pride would not let her stoop to Eileen's subterfuges
+and wage war with her implements for a man she did not want if her
+manner of living her everyday life did not appeal to him. Linda had
+known how lonely and heart hungry and disappointed she had gone away,
+and loyally she had tried to create an interest in life for her; and she
+had succeeded entirely too well. And then in a panic she must have
+gone to Peter Morrison and explained the situation; and Peter must
+have agreed to take over the correspondence. One by one things that had
+puzzled her about the letters and about the whole affair began to grow
+clear. She even saw how Linda, having friendly association with no man
+save Peter, would naturally use him for a model. The trouble was that,
+with her gift of penetration and insight and her facility with her pen,
+she had overdone the matter. She had not imitated Peter; she had BEEN
+Peter. Marian arose suddenly.
+
+She went home, locked the door, and one after another she read the
+letters that had piqued, amused, comforted, and finally intrigued her.
+They were brilliant letters, charming, appealing letters, and yet, with
+knowledge concerning them, Marian wondered how she could have failed to
+appreciate in the beginning that they were from Linda.
+
+“It goes to prove,” she said at last, “how hungry the human heart is for
+love and sympathy. And that poor kid, what she must have suffered when
+she went to Peter for help! And if, as Mr. Snow thinks, he cares for
+her, how he must have suffered before he agreed to help her, as no doubt
+he did. What I have to do is to find some way out of the situation that
+will relieve Linda's anxiety and at least partially save my face. I
+shall have to take a few days to work it out. Luckily I haven't answered
+my last letter. When I find out what I really want to say then I will be
+very careful how I say it. I don't just exactly relish having my letters
+turned over to Peter Morrison, but possibly I can think of some way--I
+must think of some way--to make them feel that I have not been any more
+credulous than they.”
+
+While she thought, both Linda and Peter were doing much thinking on the
+same subject. Linda's heart was full of gratitude to Peter for helping
+her out of her very disagreeable situation. Peter had not yet opened the
+packet of letters lying on his table He had a sickening distaste for the
+whole transaction. He had thought that he would wait until he received
+the first letter he was to answer. If it gave him sufficient foundation
+in itself for the answer, he would not be forced to search further. He
+had smoked many pipes on this decision. After the visit of Mr. Snow,
+Peter had seen a great light and had decided, from the mood and the
+attitude of that gentleman after his interview with Katy, that he very
+likely would be equal to any complication that might arise when he
+reached San Francisco. Mulling over the situation one day Peter said
+reflectively to the spring which was very busy talking to him: “I am
+morally certain that this matter has resolved itself into a situation
+that closely resembles the bootblack's apple: 'they ain't goin' to be
+any core.' I am reasonably certain that I never shall have a letter to
+answer. In a few days probably I shall be able to turn back that packet
+to Linda without having opened it.”
+
+To make up for the perturbation which had resulted in failure in
+class and two weeks of work that represented her worst appearances in
+high-school history, Linda, her mind freed from the worry over Marian's
+plans, and her heart calmer over the fiasco in trying to comfort her,
+devoted herself absorbingly to her lessons and to the next magazine
+article that she must finish. She had decided that it was time to write
+on the subject of Indian confections. Her first spare minute she and
+Katy must busy themselves working out the most delicious cactus candy
+possible. Then they could try the mesquite candy. No doubt she could
+evolve a delicious gum from the mesquite and the incense plant. She knew
+she could from the willow milkweed; and under the head of “sweets” an
+appetizing jelly from manzanita. There were delightful drinks too, from
+the manzanita and the chia. And better than either, the lemonade berry
+would serve this purpose. She had not experimented to an authoritative
+extent with the desert pickles. And among drinks she might use the
+tea made from blue-eyed grass, brewed by the Indians for feverish
+conditions; and there was a whole world of interest to open up in
+differing seeds and berries, parched or boiled for food. And there were
+the seeds that were ground for mush, like the thistle sage, and the mock
+orange which was food and soap also, and the wild sunflowers that were
+parched for meal, and above all, the acorns. She could see that her
+problem was not going to be one of difficulty in securing sufficient
+material for her book; it would be how to find time to gather all these
+things, and put them through the various processes and combinations
+necessary to make edible dishes from I them. It would mean a long summer
+of interesting and absorbing I work for her and for Katy. Much of it
+could not be done until the I summer was far advanced and the seeds and
+the berries were I ripe. She could rely on Donald to help her search for
+the material. With only herself and Katy in the family they could give
+much of their time to the work.
+
+“Where Katy will rebel,” said Linda to herself, “is when it comes to
+gathering sufficient seeds and parching them to make these meal and mush
+dishes. She will call it 'fiddlin' business.' She shall be propitiated
+with a new dress and a beautiful bonnet, and she shall go with me
+frequently to the fields. The old dear loves to ride. First thing I do
+I'll call at the bank again and have our affairs properly straightened
+and settled there in the light of the letter Daddy left me. Then I shall
+have money to get all the furniture and the rugs and things we truly
+need. I'll repaint the kitchen and get Katy some new cooking utensils to
+gladden her soul. And Saturday I must make my trip with Donald account
+for something worth while on the book.”
+
+All these plans were feasible. What Linda had to do was to accomplish
+them, and this she proceeded to do in a swift and businesslike manner.
+She soon reached the place where the whole house with the exception
+of Eileen's suite had been gone over, freshened and refurnished to her
+liking. The guest-room furniture had been moved to her rejuvenated room.
+On the strength of her I returns from the book she had disposed of her
+furniture and was finding much girlish delight in occupying a beautiful
+room, daintily decorated, comfortably furnished with pieces of her own
+selection. As she and Katy stood looking over their work when everything
+was ready for her first night of occupancy Katy had said to her:
+
+“It's jist right and proper, lambie; it's jist the way it ought to be;
+and now say the word and let me clean out Eileen's suate and get it
+ready for Miss Marian, so if she would drop down unexpected she would
+find we was good as our word.”
+
+“All right,” said Linda.
+
+“And what am I to do with the stuff?” inquired Katy.
+
+“Katy, my dear,” said Linda with a dry laugh, “you'll think I am
+foolish, but I have the queerest feeling concerning those things. I
+can't feel that Eileen has done with them; I can't feel that she
+will never want them again; I can't feel that they should go to some
+second-hand basement. Pack all of her clothing that you can manage in
+her trunk and put it in the garret, and what the trunk won't hold pack
+in a tight box and put that in the garret also. She hasn't written me
+a line; she has sent me no address; I don't know what to do; but, as I
+have said before, I am going to save the things at least a year and see
+whether some day Eileen won't think of something she wants to do with
+them. Clean the rooms and I will order Marian's things sent.”
+
+According to these arrangements it was only a few days until Linda wrote
+Marian that her room was ready for her and that any time she desired to
+come and take possession she could test the lovingness of the welcome
+that awaited her by becoming intimately acquainted with it. Marian
+answered the letter immediately. She said that she was planning to come
+very soon to test that welcome. She longed for the quiet of the valley,
+for its cool, clean, wild air. She was very tired; she needed rest. She
+thought she would love the new home they were offering her. Then came
+two amazing paragraphs.
+
+The other day Dana and I went into one of the big cafes in the city to
+treat ourselves to a taste of the entertainment with which the people
+of wealth regale themselves. We had wandered in laughingly jesting about
+what we should order, and ran into Eileen in the company of her aunt and
+uncle and a very flashy and loudly dressed young man, evidently a new
+suitor of Eileen's. I don't think Eileen wanted to introduce us, and yet
+she acted like a person ravenous for news of her home and friends. She
+did introduce us, and immediately her ponderous uncle took possession of
+us. It seems that the man is a brother of Eileen's mother. Linda, he is
+big and gross, he is everything that a man of nice perceptions would not
+be, but he does love Eileen. He is trying conscientiously to please
+her. His wife is the kind of person who would marry that kind of man and
+think everything he said and did was right. And the suitor, my dear, was
+the kind of man who could endure that kind of people. Eileen was almost,
+if not quite, the loveliest thing I ever have seen. She was plain; she
+was simple; but it was the costly simplicity of extravagance. Ye gods!
+but she had pearls of the size she had always wanted. She tried with
+all her might to be herself, but she knows me well enough to know what
+I would think and what I would write to you concerning the conditions
+under which I met her. We were simply forced to lunch with them. We
+could only nibble at the too rich, too highly seasoned food set before
+us. And I noticed that Eileen nibbled also. She is not going to grow fat
+and waddle and redden her nose, but, my dear, back deep in her eyes and
+in the curve of her lips and in the tone of her voice there were such
+disappointment and discontent as I never have seen in any woman. She
+could not suppress them; she could not conceal them. There was nothing
+on earth she could do but sit quietly and endure. They delivered us at
+our respective offices, leaving both of us dates on which to visit them,
+but neither of us intends to call on them. Eileen's face was a tragedy
+when her uncle insisted on making the arrangements. I can at least spare
+her that.
+
+And now, my dear, life is growing so full and my time is so taken with
+my work at the office and with my widening friendships with Dana and
+her friends and with Mr. Snow, that I really feel I have not time to go
+farther with our anonymous correspondence. It is all I can do to find
+time to write you letters such as the one I am writing I have done my
+best to play up to what you expected of me and I think I have succeeded
+in fooling you quite as much as you have felt that you were fooling me.
+But, Linda dear, I want you always to know that I appreciate the spirit
+in which you began this thing. I know why you did it and I shall always
+love you a trifle more for your thought of me and your effort to tide
+over the very dark days you knew I would be facing in San Francisco.
+I think, dear friend of mine, that I have had my share of dark days.
+I think there is very beautiful sunlight ahead for me. And by and by I
+hope to come into happiness that maybe is even more than my share. I am
+coming to see you soon and then I will tell you all about it.
+
+There was more of the letter, but at that point Linda made one headlong
+rush for the Bear Cat. She took the curve on two wheels and almost ran
+into the mountain face behind the garage before she could slow down.
+Then she set the Cat screaming wildly for Peter. As he came up to the
+car she leaned toward him, shaking with excitement.
+
+“Peter,” she cried, “have you opened that packet of letters yet?”
+
+“No,” said Peter, “I have not.”
+
+“Then give them to me quickly, Peter,” said Linda.
+
+Peter rushed into the garage and brought out the packet. Linda caught it
+in both hands and dropped it in her lap.
+
+“Well, thank God,” she said devoutly. “And, Peter, the joke's on me.
+Marian knew I was writing those letters all the time and she just
+pretended that she cared for them to make the game interesting for me.
+And when she had so many friends and so much to do, she hadn't time
+for them any longer; then she pretended that she was getting awfully in
+earnest in order to stop me, and she did stop me all right.”
+
+Linda's face was a small panorama of conflicting emotions as she
+appealed to Peter.
+
+“Peter,” she said in a quivering voice, “you can testify that she
+stopped me properly, can't you, Peter?”
+
+Peter tried to smile. He was older than Linda, and he was thinking
+swiftly, intently.
+
+“Yes, kid,” he said with utmost corroboration, “yes, kid, she stopped
+you, but I can't see that it was necessary literally to scare the life
+out of you till she had you at the point where you were thinking of
+taking off from a mountain or into the sea. Did you really mean that,
+Linda?”
+
+Linda relaxed suddenly. She sank back into the deeply padded seat of the
+Bear Cat. A look of fright and entreaty swept into her dark eyes.
+
+“Yes, Peter, I did mean it,” she said with finality. “I couldn't have
+lived if I had hurt Marian irreparably. She has been hurt so much
+already. And, Peter, it was awfully nice of you to wait about reading
+these letters. Even if she only did it for a joke, I think Marian would
+rather that you had not read them. Now I'll go back home and begin to
+work in earnest on the head piece of 'How to Grow Good Citizens.' And I
+quite agree with you, Peter, that the oath of allegiance, citizenship,
+and the title to a piece of real estate are the prime requisites. People
+have no business comma to our country to earn money that they intend to
+carry away to invest in the development and the strengthening of some
+other country that may some day be our worst enemy. I have not found out
+yet how to say it in a four-by-twelve-inch strip, but by the time I have
+read the article aloud to my skylight along about ten tonight I'll get
+an inspiration; I am sure I shall.”
+
+“Of course you will,” said Peter; “but don't worry about it, dear; don't
+lose sleep. Take things slower. Give time for a little more flesh to
+grow on your bones. And don't forget that while you're helping Donald to
+keep at the head of his classes it's your first job to keep at the head
+of your own.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Linda. “How is the dream coming?”
+
+“Beautifully,” said Peter. “One of these days you're going to come
+rushing around the boulders and down the side of the building to find
+all this debris cleared away and the place for a lawn leveled. I am
+fighting down every possible avenue of expertise on the building in the
+effort to save money to make the brook run and the road wind where you
+have indicated that you want them to follow you.”
+
+Linda looked at Peter while a queer, reflective light gathered in her
+eyes. At last she said soberly: “Well, I don't know, Peter, that you
+should make them so very personal to me as all that.”
+
+“Why not?” asked Peter casually. “Since there is no one else, why not?”
+
+Linda released the clutch and started the car. She backed in front of
+the garage and turned. She was still thinking deeply as she stopped.
+Once again she extended a hand to Peter.
+
+“Thank you a thousand times for not reading these letters, Peter,” she
+said. “I can't express how awfully fine I think it is of you. And if
+it's all right with you, perhaps there's not any real reason why you
+should not run that brook and drive that road the way I think they
+should go. Somebody is going to design them. Why shouldn't I, if it
+pleases you to have me?”
+
+“It pleases me very greatly,” said Peter--“more than anything else I can
+think of in all the world at this minute.”
+
+And then he did a thing that he had done once or twice before. He bent
+back Linda's fingers and left another kiss in the palm of her hand, and
+then he closed her fingers very tightly over it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI. The End of Donald's Contest
+
+The middle of the week Linda had told Katy that she intended stocking
+up the Bear Cat for three and that she would take her along on the next
+Saturday's trip to her canyon kitchen. It was a day upon which she had
+planned to gather greens, vegetables, and roots, and prepare a dinner
+wholly from the wild. She was fairly sure exactly where in nature she
+would find the materials she wanted, but she knew that the search would
+be long and tiring. It would be jolly to have Katy to help her prepare
+the lunch. It would please Katy immensely to be taken; and the original
+things she said in her quaint Irish brogue greatly amused Donald. The
+arrangement had been understood among them for some time, so they all
+started on their journey filled with happy expectations. They closed the
+house and the garage carefully. Linda looked over the equipment of the
+Bear Cat minutely making sure that her field axe, saw, knives, and her
+field glasses were in place. Because more food than usual was to be
+prepared in the kitchen they took along a nest of cooking vessels and a
+broiler. They found Donald waiting before either of them were ready, and
+in great glee, with much laughing and many jests they rolled down the
+valley in the early morning. They drove to the kitchen, spread their
+blankets, set up their table, and arranged the small circular opening
+for their day's occupancy. While Katy and Linda were busy with these
+affairs Donald took the axe and collected a big heap of wood. Then they
+left Katy to burn the wood and have a deep bed of coals ready while they
+started out to collect from the canyon walls, the foot of the mountains,
+and the near-by desert the materials they would use for their dinner.
+
+Just where the desert began to climb the mountain Linda had for a
+long time watched a big bed of amole. Donald used the shovel, she the
+hatchet, and soon they had brought to the surface such a quantity that
+Donald protested.
+
+“But I have two uses for them today,” explained Linda. “They must serve
+for potatoes and they have to furnish our meat.”
+
+“Oh, I get you,” said Donald. “I have always been crazy to try that.”
+
+So he began to dig again enthusiastically.
+
+“Now I'll tell you what I think we had better do,” said Linda. “We will
+skirmish around this side of the mountain and find a very nice tender
+yucca shoot; and then we'll take these back to Katy and let her bury
+them in the ashes and keep up the fire while we forage for the remainder
+of our wild Indian feast.”
+
+Presently they found a yucca head that Linda said was exactly right, a
+delicate pink, thicker than her wrist and two feet in length. With this
+and the amole they ran back to Katy. She knew how to prepare the amole
+for roasting. Linda gave her a few words of instruction concerning the
+yucca. Then from the interior of the Bear Cat she drew a tightly rolled
+section of wire window screening. Just where a deep, wide pool narrowed
+at a rocky defile they sank the screening, jammed it well to the bottom,
+fastened it tight at the sides, and against the current side of it they
+threw leaves, grass, chunks of moss, any debris they could gather that
+would make a temporary dam. Then, standing on one side with her field
+knife, Linda began to slice the remainder of the amole very thin and to
+throw it over the surface of the pool. On the other, Donald pounded
+the big, juicy bulbs to pulp and scattered it broadcast over the water.
+Linda instructed Katy to sit on the bank with a long-handled landing net
+and whenever a trout arose, to snatch it out as speedily as possible,
+being careful not to take more than they would require.
+
+Then the two youngsters, exhilarated with youth, with living, with
+the joy of friendship, with the lure of the valley, with the heady
+intoxication of the salt breeze and the gold of the sunshine, climbed
+into the Bear Cat and went rolling through the canyon and out to the
+valley on the far side. Here they gathered the tenderest heart shoots
+of the lupin until Linda said they had enough. Then to a particular spot
+that she knew on the desert they hurried for the enlarged stems of the
+desert trumpet which was to serve that day for an appetizer in the stead
+of pickles. Here, too, they filled a bucket from the heart of a big
+Bisnaga cactus as a basis for their drink. Among Katherine O'Donovan's
+cooking utensils there was a box of delicious cactus candy made from the
+preserved and sun-dried heart meat of this same fruit which was to serve
+as their confection. On the way back they stopped at the bridge and
+gathered cress for their salad. When they returned to Katy she had five
+fine trout lying in the shade, and with more experienced eyes and a more
+skillful hand Linda in a few minutes doubled this number. Then they tore
+out the dam, rinsed the screen and spread it over a rock to dry. While
+Donald scaled the fish Linda put the greens to cook, prepared the salad
+and set the table. Once, as he worked under her supervision, Linda said
+to Donald: “Now about bread, kid--there's not going to be any bread,
+because the Indians did not have it when they lived the way we are
+living today. When you reach the place where your left hand feels empty
+without a piece of bread in it, just butter up another amole and try
+it. It will serve the same purpose as bread, and be much better for the
+inner man.”
+
+“If you would let me skin these fish,” said Donald, “I could do it much
+faster and make a better job of it.”
+
+“But you shouldn't skin them; you want the skin to hold the meat
+together when it begins to cook tender; and you should be able to peel
+it off and discard it if it burns or gets smoky in the cooking. It's a
+great concession to clean them as we do. The Indians cooked them in the
+altogether and ate the meat from the bones.”
+
+“Oh my tummy!” said Donald. “I always thought there was some dark secret
+about the Indians.”
+
+Linda sat on a rock opposite him and clasped her hands around her knees.
+She looked at him meditatively.
+
+“Did you?” she asked. “Suppose you revise that opinion. Our North
+American Indians in their original state were as fine as any peoples
+that ever have been discovered the round of the globe. My grandfather
+came into intimate contact with them in the early days, and he said that
+their religion, embracing the idea of a great spirit to whom they were
+responsible for their deeds here, and a happy hunting ground to which
+they went as a reward for decent living, was as fine as any religion
+that ever has been practiced by people of any nation. Immorality was
+unknown among them. Family ties were formed and they were binding They
+loved their children and reared them carefully. They were hardy and
+healthful. Until the introduction of whiskey and what we are pleased to
+term civilized methods of living, very few of them died save from war
+or old age. They were free; they were happy. The moping, lazy, diseased
+creature that you find sleeping in the sun around the reservations is a
+product of our civilization. Nice commentary on civilization, isn't it?”
+
+“For heaven's sake, Linda,” said Donald, “don't start any big
+brainstorming trains of thought today! Grant me repose. I have
+overworked my brain for a few months past until I know only one thing
+for certain.”
+
+“All right then, me lad, this is the time for the big secret,” said
+Linda. “I just happened to be in the assembly room on some business
+of my own last Thursday afternoon when my sessions were over, and I
+overheard your professor in trigonometry tell a marl I did not know, who
+seemed to be a friend visiting him, that the son of Judge Whiting was
+doing the finest work that ever had been done in any of the Los Angeles
+high schools, and that undoubtedly you were going to graduate with
+higher honors than any other boy ever had from that school.”
+
+Donald sat thinking this over. He absently lifted an elbow and wiped the
+tiny scales from his face with his shirt sleeve.
+
+“Young woman,” he said solemnly, “them things what you're saying, are
+they 'cross your heart, honest to goodness, so help you,' truth, or are
+they the fruit of a perfervid imagination?”
+
+Linda shook her head vigorously.
+
+“De but', kid,” she said, “de gospel but'. You have the Jap going
+properly. He can't stop you now. You have fought your good fight, and
+you have practically won it. All you have to do is to carry on till the
+middle of June, and you're It.”
+
+“I wish Dad knew,” said Donald in a low voice.
+
+“The Judge does know,” said Linda heartily. “It wasn't fifteen minutes
+after I heard that till I had him on the telephone repeating it as
+fast as I could repeat. Come to think of it, haven't you noticed a
+particularly cocky set of his head and the corksome lightness about his
+heels during the past few days?”
+
+“By Jove, he has been happy about something!” said Donald. “And I
+noticed that Louise and the Mater were sort of cheery and making a
+specialty of the only son and brother.”
+
+“Sure, brother, sure,” said Linda. “Hurry up and scrape those fish and
+let's scamper down the canyon merely for the joy of flying with wings on
+our feet. You're It, young man, just It!”
+
+Donald was sitting on a boulder. On another in front of him he was
+operating on the trout. His hands were soiled; his hair was tousled;
+he was fairly well decorated with fine scales. He looked at Linda
+appealingly.
+
+“Am I 'It' with you, Linda?” he asked soberly.
+
+“Sure you are,” said Linda. “You're the best friend I have.”
+
+“Will you write to me when I go to college this fall?”
+
+“Why, you couldn't keep me from it,” said Linda. “I'll have so many
+things to tell you. And when your first vacation comes we'll make it a
+hummer.”
+
+“I know Dad won't let me come home for my holidays except for the
+midsummer ones,” said Donald soberly. “It would take most of the time
+there would be of the short holidays to travel back and forth.”
+
+“You will have to go very carefully about getting a start,” said Linda,
+“and you should be careful to find the right kind of friends at the very
+start. Christmas and Thanksgiving boxes can always be sent on time to
+reach you. It won't be so long for you as for us; and by the time you
+have Oka Sayye beaten to ravelings you will have such a 'perfect habit'
+that you will start right in with the beating idea. That should keep you
+fairly busy, because most of the men you come up against will be beaters
+themselves.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Donald. “Are you going to start me to college with
+the idea that I have to keep up this beating habit? If I were to be one
+of fifty or a hundred, wouldn't that be good enough?”
+
+“Why, sure,” said Linda, “if you will be satisfied with having me like
+fifty or a hundred as well as I do you.”
+
+“Oh, damn!” said Donald angrily. “Do I have to keep up this top-crust
+business all my days?”
+
+Linda looked at him with a queer smile on her lips.
+
+“Not unless you want to, Donald,” she said quietly; “not unless you
+think you would rather.”
+
+Donald scraped a fish vigorously. Linda sat watching him. Presently the
+tense lines around his eyes vanished. A faint red crept up his neck
+and settled on his left cheek bone. A confused grin slowly widened his
+naturally wide mouth.
+
+“Then it's me for the top crust,” he said conclusively.
+
+“Then it's me for you,” answered Linda in equally as matter-of-fact
+tones; and rising, she gathered up the fish and carried them to Katy
+while Donald knelt beside the chilly stream and scoured his face and
+hands, after which Linda whipped away the scales with an improvised
+brush of willow twigs.
+
+It was such a wonderful day; it was such an unusual and delicious feast.
+Plump brook trout, fresh from icy water, delicately broiled over searing
+wood coals, are the finest of food. Through the meal to the point where
+Donald lay on his back at the far curve of the canyon wall, nibbling a
+piece of cactus candy, everything had been perfect. Nine months would
+be a long time to be gone, but Linda would wait for him, and she would
+write to him.
+
+He raised his head on his elbow and called across to her: “Say, Linda,
+how often will you write to me?”
+
+Linda answered promptly: “Every Saturday night. Saturday is our day.
+I'll tell you what has happened all the week. I'll tell you specially
+what a darned unprofitable day Saturday is when you're three thousand
+miles away.”
+
+Bending over the canyon fireplace, her face red with heat and exertion,
+Katherine O'Donovan caught up her poker and beat up the fire until the
+ashes flew.
+
+“Easy, Katy, easy,” cautioned Linda. “We may want to bury those coals
+and resurrect them to warm up what is left for supper.”
+
+“We'll do no such thing,” said Katy promptly. “What remains goes to feed
+the fish. Next time it's hungry ye are, we're goin' to hit it straight
+to Lilac Valley and fill ourselves with God's own bread and beefsteak
+and paraties. Don't ye think we're goin' to be atin' these haythen
+messes twice in one day.”
+
+To herself she was saying: “The sooner I get you home to Pater Morrison,
+missy, the better I'll be satisfied.”
+
+Once she stood erect, her hands at her belt, her elbows widespread,
+and with narrowed eyes watched the youngsters. Her lips were closed so
+tightly they wrinkled curiously as she turned back to the fireplace.
+
+“Nayther one of them fool kids has come to yet,” she said to herself,
+“and a mighty good thing it is that they haven't.”
+
+Linda was looking speculatively at Donald as he lay stretched on the
+Indian blanket at the base of the cliff. And then, because she was for
+ever busy with Nature, her eyes strayed above him up the side of the
+cliff, noting the vegetation, the scarred rocks, the sheer beauty of the
+canyon wall until they reached the top. Then, for no reason at all,
+she sat looking steadily at a huge boulder overhanging the edge of the
+cliff, and she was wondering how many ages it had hung there and how
+many more it would hang, poised almost in air, when a tiny pebble at its
+base loosened and came rattling and bounding down the canyon face. Every
+nerve in Linda tensed. She opened her mouth, but not a sound came. For a
+breathless second she was paralyzed. Then she shrieked wildly: “Donald,
+Donald, roll under the ledge! Quick, quick!”
+
+She turned to Katy.
+
+“Back, Katy, back!” she screamed. “That boulder is loose; it's coming
+down!”
+
+For months Donald Whiting had obeyed Linda implicitly and instantly. He
+had moved with almost invisible speed at her warning many times before.
+Sometimes it had been a venomous snake, sometimes a yucca bayonet,
+sometimes poison vines, again unsafe footing--in each case instant
+obedience had been the rule. He did hot “question why” at her warning;
+he instantly did as he was told. He, too, had noticed the falling
+pebble. With all the agility of which he was capable he rolled under
+the narrow projecting ledge above him. Katherine O'Donovan was a good
+soldier also. She whirled and ran to the roadway. She had barely reached
+it when, with a grinding crash, down came the huge boulder, carrying
+bushes, smaller rocks, sand, and debris with it. On account of its
+weight it fell straight, struck heavily, and buried itself in the earth
+exactly on the spot upon which Donald had been lying. Linda raised
+terrified eyes to the top of the wall. For one instant a dark object
+peered over it and then drew back. Without thought for herself Linda
+rushed to the boulder, and kneeling, tried to see back of it.
+
+“Donald!” she cried, “Donald, are you all right?”
+
+“Guess I am, unless it hit one foot pretty hard. Feels fast.”
+
+“Can you get out?” she cried, beginning to tear with her hands at the
+stone and the bushes where she thought his head would be.
+
+“I'm fast; but I'm all right,” he panted. “Why the devil did that thing
+hang there for ages, and then come down on me today?”
+
+“Yes, why did it?” gasped Linda. “Donald, I must leave you a minute.
+I've got to know if I saw a head peer over just as that stone came
+down.”
+
+“Be careful what you do!” he cried after her.
+
+Linda sprang to her feet and rushed to the car. She caught out the field
+classes and threw the strap over her head as she raced to the far side
+of the fireplace where the walls were not so sheer. Katherine O'Donovan
+promptly seized the axe, caught its carrying strap lying beside it,
+thrust the handle through, swung it over her own head, dropped it
+between her shoulders, and ripping off her dress skirt she started up
+the cliff after Linda. Linda was climbing so swiftly and so absorbedly
+that she reached the top before she heard a sound behind her. Then she
+turned with a white face, and her mouth dropped open as she saw Katy
+three fourths of the way up the cliff. For one second she was again
+stiff with terror, then, feeling she could do nothing, she stepped back
+out of sight and waited a second until Katy's red head and redder face
+appeared over the edge. Realizing that her authority was of no avail,
+that Katy would follow her no matter where she went or what she did, and
+with no time to argue, Linda simply called to her encouragingly: “Follow
+where I go; take your time; hang tight, old dear, it's dangerous!”
+
+She started around the side of the mountain, heading almost straight
+upward, traveling as swiftly and as noiselessly as possible. Over big
+boulders, on precarious footing, clinging to bushes, they made their way
+until they reached a place that seemed to be sheer above them; certainly
+it was for hundreds of feet below On a point of rock screened by
+overhanging bushes Linda paused until Katy overtook her.
+
+“We are about stalled,” she panted. “Find a good footing and stay where
+you are. I'm going to climb out on these bushes and see if I can get a
+view of the mountain side.”
+
+Advancing a few yards, Linda braced herself, drew around her glasses,
+and began searching the side of the mountain opposite her and below as
+far as she could range with the glasses. At last she gave up.
+
+“Must have gone the other way,” she said to Katy. “I'll crawl back to
+you. We'll go after help and get Donald out. There will be time enough
+to examine the cliff afterward; but I am just as sure now as I will be
+when it is examined that that stone was purposely loosened to a degree
+where a slight push would drop it. As Donald says, there's no reason
+why it should hang there for centuries and fall on him today. Shut your
+eyes, old dear, and back up. We must go to Donald. I rather think it's
+on one of his feet from what he said. Let me take one more good look.”
+
+At that minute from high on the mountain above them a shower of sand and
+pebbles came rattling down. Linda gave Katy one terrified look.
+
+“My God!” she panted. “He's coming down right above us!”
+
+Just how Linda recrossed the bushes and reached Katy she did not know.
+She motioned for her to make her way back as they had come. Katy planted
+her feet squarely upon the rock. Her lower jaw shot out; her eyes were
+aflame. She stood perfectly still with the exception of motioning Linda
+to crowd back under the bushes, and again Linda realized that she had
+no authority; as she had done from childhood when Katy was in earnest,
+Linda obeyed her. She had barely reached the overhanging bushes,
+crouched under them, and straightened herself, when a small avalanche
+came showering down, and a minute later a pair of feet were level with
+her head. Then screened by the bushes, she could have reached out and
+touched Oka Sayye. As his feet found a solid resting place on the ledge
+on which Linda and Katy stood, and while he was still clinging to the
+bushes, Katherine O'Donovan advanced upon him. He had felt that his feet
+were firm, let go his hold, and turned, when he faced the infuriated
+Irishwoman. She had pulled the strap from around her neck, slipped the
+axe from it, and with a strong thrust she planted the head of it against
+Oka Sayye's chest so hard that she almost fell forward. The Jap plunged
+backward among the bushes, the roots of which had supported Linda
+while she used the glasses. Then he fell, sliding among them, snatching
+wildly. Linda gripped the overhanging growth behind which she had been
+screened, and leaned forward.
+
+“He has a hold; he is coming back up, Katy!” she cried.
+
+Katy took another step forward. She looked over the cliff down an
+appalling depth of hundreds of feet. Deliberately she raised the axe,
+circled it round her head and brought it down upon that particular
+branch to which Oka Sayye was clinging. She cut it through, and the axe
+rang upon the stone wall behind it. As she swayed forward Linda reached
+out, gripped Katy and pulled her back.
+
+“Get him?” she asked tersely, as if she were speaking of a rat or a
+rattlesnake.
+
+Katy sank back limply against the wall. Linda slowly turned her around,
+and as she faced the rock, “Squeeze tight against it shut your eyes, and
+keep a stiff upper lip,” she cautioned. “I'm going to work around you; I
+want to be ahead of you.”
+
+She squeezed past Katy, secured the axe and hung it round her own neck.
+She cautioned Katy to keep her eyes shut and follow where she led her,
+then they started on their way back. Linda did not attempt to descend
+the sheer wall by which they had climbed, but making a detour she went
+lower, and in a very short time they were back in the kitchen. Linda
+rushed to the boulder and knelt again, but she could get no response to
+her questions. Evidently Donald's foot was caught and he was unconscious
+from the pain. Squeezing as close as she could, she thrust her arm under
+the ledge until she could feel his head. Then she went to the other
+side, and there she could see that his right foot was pinned under the
+rock. She looked at Katy reassuringly, then she took off the axe and
+handed it to her.
+
+“He's alive,” she said. “Can't kill a healthy youngster to have a
+crushed foot. You stand guard until I take the Bear Cat and bring help.
+It's not far to where I can find people.”
+
+At full speed Linda put the Cat through the stream and out of the canyon
+until she reached cultivated land, where she found a man who would
+gather other men and start to the rescue. She ran on until she found a
+house with a telephone. There she called Judge Whiting, telling him to
+bring an ambulance and a surgeon, giving him explicit directions as
+to where to come, and assuring him that Donald could not possibly be
+seriously hurt. She found time to urge, also, that before starting he
+set in motion any precautions he had taken for Donald's protection. She
+told him where she thought what remained of Oka Sayye could be found.
+And then, as naturally and as methodically as she had done all the rest,
+she called Peter Morrison and told him that she was in trouble and where
+he could find her.
+
+And because Peter had many miles less distance to travel than the others
+she had summoned, he arrived first. He found Linda and Katy had burrowed
+under the stone until they had made an opening into which the broken
+foot might sink so that the pain of the pressure would be relieved.
+Before the rock, with picks and shovels, half a dozen sympathetic
+farmers from ranches and cultivated land at the mouth of the canyon were
+digging furiously to make an opening undermining the boulder so that it
+could be easily tipped forward. Donald was conscious and they had been
+passing water to him and encouraging him with the report that his father
+and a good surgeon would be there very soon. Katherine O'Donovan had
+crouched at one side of the boulder, supporting the hurt foot. She was
+breathing heavily and her usually red face was a ghastly green. Linda
+had helped her to resume the skirt of her dress. At the other side of
+the rock the girl was reaching to where she could touch Donald's head
+or reassuringly grip the hand that he could extend to her. Peter seized
+Linda's axe and began hewing at the earth and rock in order to help in
+the speedy removal of the huge boulder. Soon Judge Whiting, accompanied
+by Doctor Fleming, the city's greatest surgeon, came caring into the
+canyon and stopped on the roadway when he saw the party. The Judge
+sprang from the car, leaped the stream, and started toward them. In an
+effort to free his son before his arrival, all the men braced themselves
+against the face of the cliff and pushed with their combined strength.
+The boulder dropped forward into the trench they had dug for it enough
+to allow Peter to crowd his body between it and the cliff and lift
+Donald's head and shoulders. Linda instantly ran around the boulder,
+pushed her way in, and carefully lifting Donald's feet, she managed to
+work the lithe slenderness of her body through the opening, so that they
+carried Donald out and laid him down in the open. He was considerably
+dazed and shaken, cruelly hurt, but proved himself a game youngster of
+the right mettle. He raised himself to a sitting posture, managing a
+rather stiff-lipped smile for his father and Linda. The surgeon
+instantly began cutting to reach the hurt foot, while Peter Morrison
+supported the boy's head and shoulders on one side, his father on the
+other.
+
+An exclamation of dismay broke from the surgeon's lips. He looked at
+Judge Whiting and nodded slightly. The men immediately picked up Donald
+and carried him to the ambulance. Katherine O'Donovan sat down suddenly
+and buried her face in the skirt of her dress. Linda laid a reassuring
+hand on her shoulder.
+
+“Don't, Katy,” she said. “Keep up your nerve; you're all right, old
+dear. Donald's fine. That doesn't mean anything except that his foot
+is broken, so he won't be able, and it won't be necessary for him,
+to endure the pain of setting it in a cast without an anesthetic; and
+Doctor Fleming can work much better where he has every convenience. It's
+all right.”
+
+The surgeon climbed into the ambulance and they started on an emergency
+run to the hospital. As the car turned and swept down the canyon, for
+no reason that she could have explained, Linda began to shake until her
+teeth clicked. Peter Morrison sprang back across the brook, and running
+to her side, he put his arm around her and with one hand he pressed her
+head against his shoulder, covering her face.
+
+“Steady, Linda,” he said quietly, “steady. You know that he is all
+right. It will only be a question of a short confinement.”
+
+Linda made a brave effort to control herself. She leaned against Peter
+and held out both her hands.
+
+“I'm all right,” she chattered. “Give me a minute.”
+
+Judge Whiting came to them.
+
+“I am getting away immediately,” he said. “I must reach Louise and
+Mother before they get word of this. Doctor Fleming will take care of
+Donald all right. What happened, Linda? Can you tell me?”
+
+Linda opened her lips and tried to speak, but she was too breathless,
+too full of excitement, to be coherent. To her amazement Katherine
+O'Donovan scrambled to her feet, lifted her head and faced the Judge.
+She pointed to the fireplace.
+
+“I was right there, busy with me cookie' utensils,” she said, “Miss
+Linda was a-sittin, on that exact spot, they jist havin finished atin'
+some of her haythen messes; and the lad was lyin, square where the
+boulder struck, on the Indian blanket, atin' a pace of cactus candy. And
+jist one pebble came rattlin' down, but Miss Linda happened to be
+lookin', and she scramed to the b'y to be rollin' under where ye found
+him; so he gave a flop or two, and it's well that he took his orders
+without waitin' to ask the raison for them, for if he had, at the
+prisint minute he would be about as thick as a shate of writing paper.
+The thing dropped clear and straight and drove itself into the earth and
+stone below it, as ye see.”
+
+Katherine O'Donovan paused.
+
+“Yes,” said the Judge. “Anything else?”
+
+“Miss Linda got to him and she made sure he had brathin' space and he
+wasn't hurt bad, and then she told him he had got to stand it, because,
+sittin' where she did, she faced the cliff and she thought she had seen
+someone. She took the telescope and started climbin', and I took the axe
+and I started climbin' after her.”
+
+Katy broke down and emitted a weird Irish howl. Linda instantly braced
+herself, threw her arms around Katy, and drew her head to her shoulder.
+She looked at Judge Whiting and began to talk.
+
+“I can show you where she followed me, straight up the face of the
+canyon, almost,” she said. “And she never had tried to climb a canyon
+side for a yard, either, but she came up and over after me, like a cat.
+And up there on a small ledge Oka Sayye came down directly above us. I
+couldn't be mistaken. I saw him plainly. I know him by sight as well as
+I do any of you. We heard the stones coming down before him, and we knew
+someone was going to be on us who was desperate enough to kill. When he
+touched our level and turned to follow the ledge we were on, I pushed
+him over.”
+
+Katy shook off Linda's protecting arm and straightened suddenly.
+
+“Why, ye domned little fool, ye!” she screamed. “Ye never told a lie
+before in all your days! Judge Whiting, I had the axe round me neck by
+the climbin' strap, and I got it in me fingers when we heard the crature
+comin', and against his chist I set it, and I gave him a shove that sint
+him over. Like a cat he was a-clingin' and climbin', and when I saw him
+comin' up on us with that awful face of his, I jist swung the axe like I
+do when I'm rejoocin' a pace of eucalyptus to fireplace size, and whack!
+I took the branch supportin' him, and a dome' good axe I spoiled din'
+it.”
+
+Katy folded her arms, lifted her chin higher than it ever had been
+before, and glared defiance at the Judge.
+
+“Now go on,” she said, “and decide what ye'll do to me for it.”
+
+The Judge reached over and took both Katherine O'Donovan's hands in a
+firm grip.
+
+“You brave woman!” he said. “If it lay in my power, I would give you the
+Carnegie Medal. In any event I will see that you have a good bungalow
+with plenty of shamrock on each side of your front path, and a fair
+income to keep you comfortable when the rheumatic days are upon you.”
+
+“I am no over-feeder,” said Katy proudly. “I'm daily exercisin' me
+muscles enough to kape them young. The rheumatism I'll not have. And
+nayther will I have the house nor the income. I've saved me money; I've
+an income of me own.”
+
+“And as for the bungalow,” interrupted Linda, “Katherine, as I have
+mentioned frequently before is my father, and my mother, and my whole
+family, and her front door is mine.”
+
+“Sure,” said Katy proudly. “When these two fine people before you set
+up their hearthstone, a-swapin' it I'll be, and carin' for their
+youngsters; but, Judge, I would like a bit of the shamrock. Ye might be
+sendin' me a start of that, if it would plase Your Honor.”
+
+Judge Whiting looked intently at Katherine O'Donovan. And then, as if
+they had been on the witness stand, he looked searchingly at Linda. But
+Linda was too perturbed, too accustomed to Katy's extravagant nonsense
+even to notice the purport of what she had said. Then the Judge turned
+his attention to Peter Morrison and realized that at least one of the
+parties to Katherine's proposed hearthstone had understood and heartily
+endorsed her proposal.
+
+“I will have to be going. The boy and his mother will need me,” he said.
+“I will see all of you later.”
+
+Then he sprang across the brook and sent his car roaring down the canyon
+after the ambulance.
+
+Once more Katy sank to the ground. Linda looked at her as she buried her
+face and began to wail.
+
+“Peter,” she said quietly, “hunt our belongings and pack them in the
+Bear Cat the best you can. Excuse us for a few minutes. We must act this
+out of our systems.”
+
+Gravely she sat down beside Katy, laid her head on her shoulder, and
+began to cry very nearly as energetically as Katy herself. And that was
+the one thing which was most effective in restoring Katy's nerves. Tears
+were such an unaccustomed thing with Linda that Katy controlled herself
+speedily so that she might be better able to serve the girl. In a few
+minutes Katy had reduced her emotions to a dry sniffle. She lifted her
+head, groped for her pocket, and being unable to find it for the very
+good reason that she was sitting upon it, she used her gingham hem as
+a handkerchief. Once she had risen to the physical effort of wiping her
+eyes, she regained calmness rapidly. The last time she applied the
+hem she looked at Peter, but addressed the Almighty in resigned tones:
+“There, Lord, I guess that will do.”
+
+In a few minutes she was searching the kitchen, making sure that no
+knives, spoons, or cooking utensils were lost. Missing her support,
+Linda sat erect and endeavored to follow Katy's example. Her eyes
+met Peter's and when she saw that his shoulders were shaking, a dry,
+hysterical laugh possessed her.
+
+“Yes, Katy,” she panted, “that WILL do, and remember the tears we are
+shedding are over Donald's broken foot, and because this may interfere
+with his work, though I don't think it will for long.”
+
+“When I cry,” said Katy tersely, “I cry because I feel like it. I wasn't
+wapin' over the snake that'd plan a death like that for anyone”--Katy
+waved toward the boulder--“and nayther was I wastin' me tears over the
+fut of a kid bein' jommed up a trifle.”
+
+“Well, then, Katy,” asked Linda tremulously, “why were you crying?”
+
+“Well, there's times,” said Katy judicially, “when me spirits tell me I
+would be the better for lettin' off a wee bit of stame, and one of them
+times havin' arrived, I jist bowed me head to it, as is in accordance
+with the makings of me. Far be it from me to be flyin' in the face of
+Providence and sayin' I won't, when all me interior disposhion says to
+me: 'Ye will!'”
+
+“And now, Linda,” said Peter, “can you tell us why you were crying?”
+
+“Why, I think,” said Linda, “that Katy has explained sufficiently for
+both of us. It was merely time for us to howl after such fearful nerve
+strain, so we howled.”
+
+“Well, that's all right,” said Peter. “Now I'll tell you something. If
+you had gone away in that ambulance to an anesthetic and an operation,
+no wildcat that ever indulged in a hunger hunt through this canyon could
+have put up a howl equal to the one that I would have sent up.”
+
+“Peter,” said Linda, “there is nothing funny about this; it's no tame
+for jest. But do men have nerves? Would you really?”
+
+“Of course I would,” said Peter.
+
+“No, you wouldn't,” contradicted Linda. “You just say that because you
+want to comfort us for having broken down, instead of trying to tease us
+as most men would.”
+
+“He would, too!” said Katy, starting to the Bear Cat with a load of
+utensils. “Now come on; let's go home and be gettin' craned up and ready
+for what's goin' to happen to us. Will they be jailin' us, belike, Miss
+Linda?”
+
+Linda looked at Peter questioningly.
+
+“No,” he said quietly. “It is very probable that the matter never will
+be mentioned to you again, unless Judge Whiting gets hold of some clue
+that he wishes to use as an argument against matured Japs being admitted
+in the same high-school classes with our clean, decent, young Americans.
+They stopped that in the grades several years ago, I am told.”
+
+Before they could start back to Lilac Valley a car stopped in the canyon
+and a couple of men introducing themselves as having come from Judge
+Whiting interviewed Katy and Linda exhaustively. Then Linda pointed out
+to them an easier but much longer route by which they might reach the
+top of the canyon to examine the spot from which the boulder had fallen.
+She showed them where she and Katy had ascended, and told them where
+they would be likely to find Oka Sayye.
+
+When it came to a question of really starting, Linda looked with
+appealing eyes at Peter.
+
+“Peter,” she said, “could we fix it any way so you could drive Katy and
+me home? For the first time since I have begun driving this spring I
+don't feel equal to keeping the road.”
+
+“Of course,” said Peter. “I'll take your car to the nearest farmhouse
+and leave it, then I'll take you and Katy in my car.”
+
+Late that evening Judge Whiting came to Lilac Valley with his wife and
+daughter to tell Linda that the top of the cliff gave every evidence
+of the stone having been loosened previously, so that a slight
+impetus would send it crashing down at the time when Donald lay in his
+accustomed place directly in the line of its fall. His detectives had
+found the location of the encounter and they had gone to the bottom of
+the cliff, a thousand feet below, but they had not been able to find any
+trace of Oka Sayye. Somewhere in waiting there had been confederates who
+had removed what remained of him. On the way home Mrs. Whiting said to
+her husband: “Judge, are you very sure that what the cook said to you
+this afternoon about Miss Strong and Mr. Morrison is true?”
+
+“I am only sure of its truth so far as he is concerned,” replied the
+Judge. “What he thought about Linda was evident. I am very sorry. She is
+a mighty fine girl and I think Donald is very much interested in her.”
+
+“Yes, I think so, too,” said Donald's mother. “Interested; but he has
+not even a case of first love. He is interested for the same reason you
+would be or I would be, because she is intellectually so stimulating.
+And you have to take into consideration the fact that in two or three
+years more she will be ready for marriage and a home of her own, and
+Donald will still be in school with his worldly experience and his
+business education not yet begun. The best thing that can happen to
+Donald is just to let his infatuation for her die a natural death, with
+the quiet assistance of his family.”
+
+The Judge's face reddened slightly.
+
+“Well, I would like mighty well to have her in the family,” he said.
+“She's a corking fine girl. She would make a fine mother of fine men. I
+haven't a doubt but that with the power of his personality and the power
+of his pen and the lure of propinquity, Peter Morrison will win her, but
+I hate it. It's the best chance the boy ever will have.”
+
+ And then Louise spoke up softly.
+
+“Donald hasn't any chance, Dad,” she said quietly, “and he never did
+have. I have met Peter Morrison myself and I would be only too glad if
+I thought he was devoted to me. I'll grant that Linda Strong is a fine
+girl, but when she wakes up to the worth of Peter Morrison and to a
+realization of what other women would be glad to be to him, she will
+merely reach out and lay possessive hands upon what already belongs to
+her.”
+
+It was a curious thing that such occurrences as the death of Oka Sayye
+and the injury to Donald could take place and no one know about them.
+Yet the papers were silent on the subject and so were the courts. Linda
+and Katy were fully protected. The confederates of Oka Sayye for reasons
+of their own preferred to keep very quiet.
+
+By Monday Donald, with his foot in a plaster cast, was on a side veranda
+of his home with a table beside him strewn with books and papers. An
+agreement had been made that his professors should call and hear his
+recitations for a few days until by the aid of a crutch and a cane he
+could resume his place in school. Linda went to visit him exactly as she
+would have gone to see Marian in like circumstances. She succeeded in
+making all of the Whiting family her very devoted friends.
+
+One evening, after he had been hobbling about for over a week, Linda and
+Peter called to spend the evening, and a very gay and enjoyable evening
+it was. And yet when it was over and they had gone away together Donald
+appeared worried and deeply thoughtful. When his mother came to his room
+to see if the foot was unduly painful or there was anything she could do
+to make him more comfortable, he looked at her belligerently.
+
+“Mother,” he said, “I don't like Peter Morrison being so much with my
+girl.”
+
+Mrs. Whiting stood very still. She thought very fast. Should she
+postpone it or should she let the boy take all of his hurts together?
+Her heart ached for him and yet she felt that she knew what life had in
+store for him concerning Linda. So she sat on the edge of the bed and
+began to talk quietly, plainly, reasonably. She tried to explain nature
+and human nature and what she thought the laws of probability were in
+the case. Donald lay silent. He said nothing until she had finished all
+she had to say, and then he announced triumphantly: “You're all wrong.
+That is what would happen if Linda were a girl like any of the other
+girls in her class, or like Louise. But she has promised that she would
+write to me every Saturday night and she has said that she thinks more
+of me than of any of the other boys.”
+
+“Donald dear,” said Mrs. Whiting, “you're not 'in love' with Linda
+yourself, and neither is she with you. By the time you are ready to
+marry and settle down in life, Linda in all probability will be married
+and be the mother of two or three babies.”
+
+“Yes, like fun she will,” said Donald roughly.
+
+“Have you asked her whether she loves you?” inquired Mrs. Whiting.
+
+“Oh, that 'love' business,” said Donald, “it makes me tired! Linda and
+I never did any mushing around. We had things of some importance to talk
+about and to do.”
+
+A bit of pain in Mrs. Whiting's heart eased. It was difficult to keep
+her lips quiet and even.
+
+“You haven't asked her to marry you, then?” she said soberly. “Oh good
+Lord,” cried Donald, “'marry!' How could I marry anyone when I haven't
+even graduated from high school and with college and all that to come?”
+
+“That is what I have been trying to tell you,” said his mother evenly.
+“I don't believe you have been thinking about marriage and I am
+absolutely certain that Linda has not, but she is going to be made to
+think about it long before you will be in such financial position that
+you dare. That is the reason I am suggesting that you think about these
+things seriously and question yourself as to whether you would be doing
+the fair thing by Linda if you tried to tie her up in an arrangement
+that would ask her to wait six or eight years yet before you would be
+ready.”
+
+“Well, I can get around faster than that,” said Donald belligerently.
+
+“Of course you can,” agreed his mother. “I made that estimate fully a
+year too long. But even in seven years Linda could do an awful lot of
+waiting; and there are some very wonderful girls that will be coming up
+six or seven years from now here at home. You know that hereafter all
+the girls in the world are going to be very much more Linda's kind of
+girls than they have been heretofore. The girls who have lived through
+the war and who have been intimate with its sorrow and its suffering
+and its terrible results to humanity, are not going to be such heedless,
+thoughtless, not nearly such selfish, girls as the world has known in
+the decade just past. And there is going to be more outdoor life,
+more nature study. There are going to be stronger bodies, better food,
+better-cared-for young people; and every year educational advantages are
+going to be greater. If you can bring yourself to think about giving up
+the idea of there ever existing any extremely personal thing between you
+and Linda, I am very sure I could guarantee to introduce you to a girl
+who would be quite her counterpart, and undoubtedly we could meet one
+who would be handsomer.”
+
+Donald punched his pillow viciously.
+
+“That's nice talk,” he said, “and it may be true talk. But in the first
+place I wish that Peter Morrison would let my girl alone, and in the
+second place I don't care if there are a thousand just as nice girls
+or even better-looking girls than Linda, though any girl would be going
+some if she were nicer and better looking than Linda. But I am telling
+you that when my foot gets better I am going to Lilac Valley and tell
+him where to head in, and I'll punch his head if he doesn't do it
+promptly.”
+
+“Of course you will,” said his mother reassuringly; “and I'll go with
+you and we'll see to it that he attends strictly to his own affairs.”
+
+Donald burst out laughing, exactly as his mother in her heart had hoped
+that he would.
+
+“Yes, I've got a hand-painted picture of myself starting to Lilac Valley
+to fight a man who is butting in with my girl, and taking my mother
+along to help me beat him up,” he said.
+
+Mrs. Whiting put her arms around her boy, kissed him tenderly, and
+smoothed his hair, and then turned out the lights and slipped from the
+room. But in the clear moonlight as she closed the door she could see
+that a boyish grin was twisting his lips, and she went down to tell the
+Judge that he need not worry. If his boy were irreparably hurt anywhere,
+it was in his foot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest
+
+The following weeks were very happy for Linda. When the cast was removed
+from Donald's foot and it was found that a year or two of care would
+put him even on the athletic fields and the dancing floor again, she was
+greatly relieved.
+
+She lacked words in which to express her joy that Marian was rapidly
+coming into happiness. She was so very busy with her school work, with
+doing all she could to help Donald with his, with her “Jane Meredith”
+ articles, with hunting and working out material for her book, that she
+never had many minutes at a time for introspection. When she did have
+a few she sometimes pondered deeply as to whether Marian had been
+altogether sincere in the last letter she had written her in their
+correspondence, but she was so delighted in the outcome that if she did
+at times have the same doubt in a fleeting form that had not been in
+the least fleeting with Peter Morrison, she dismissed it as rapidly as
+possible. When things were so very good as they were at that time, why
+try to improve them?
+
+One evening as she came from school, thinking that she would take Katy
+for a short run in the Bear Cat before dinner, she noticed a red head
+prominent in the front yard as she neared home. When she turned in at
+the front walk and crossed the lawn she would have been willing to wager
+quite a sum that Katy had been crying.
+
+“Why, old dear,” said Linda, putting her arms around her, “if anything
+has gone wrong with you I will certainly take to the warpath, instanter.
+I can't even imagine what could be troubling you.” Linda lowered her
+voice. “Nothing has come up about Oka Sayye?”
+
+Katy shook her head.
+
+“I thought not,” said Linda. “Judge Whiting promised me that what use he
+made of that should be man's business and exploited wholly for the
+sake of California and her people. He said we shouldn't be involved. I
+haven't been worried about it even, although I am willing to go upon
+the stand and tell the whole story if it will be any help toward putting
+right what is at present a great wrong to California.”
+
+“Yes, so would I,” said Katy. “I'm not worryin' meself about the little
+baste any more than I would if it had been a mad dog foaming up that
+cliff at ye.”
+
+“Then what is it?” asked Linda. “Tell me this minute.”
+
+“I dunno what in the world you're going to think,” said Katy “I dunno
+what in the world you're going to do.”
+
+Her face was so distressed that Linda's nimble brain flew to a
+conclusion. She tightened her arm across Katy's shoulder.
+
+“By Jove, Katy!” she said breathlessly. “Is Eileen in the house?”
+
+Katy nodded.
+
+“Has she been to see John and made things right with him?”
+
+Katy nodded again.
+
+“He's in there with her waitin' for ye,” she said.
+
+It was a stunned Linda who slowly dropped her arm, stood erect, and
+lifted her head very high. She thought intently.
+
+“You don't mean to tell me,” she said, “that you have been CRYING over
+her?”
+
+Katy held out both hands.
+
+“Linda,” she said, “she always was such a pretty thing, and her ma
+didn't raise her to have the sense of a peewee. If your pa had been let
+take her outdoors and grow her in the sun and the air, she would have
+been bigger and broader, an' there would have been the truth of God's
+sunshine an' the glory of His rain about her. Ye know, Linda, that she
+didn't ever have a common decent chance. It was curls that couldn't be
+shook out and a nose that dassen't be sunburned and shoes that mustn't
+be scuffed and a dress that shouldn't be mussed, from the day she was
+born. Ye couldn't jist honest say she had ever had a FAIR chance, now
+could ye?”
+
+“No,” said Linda conclusively, “no, Katherine O'Donovan, you could not.
+But what are we up against? Does she want to come back? Does she want to
+stay here again?”
+
+“I think she would like to,” said Katy. “You go in and see her for
+yourself, lambie, before ye come to any decision.”
+
+“You don't mean,” said Linda in a marveling tone, “that she has been
+homesick, that she has come back to us because she would like to be with
+us again?”
+
+“You go and see her for yourself; and if you don't say she is the
+worst beat out and the tiredest mortal that ye have ever seen you'll be
+surprisin' me. My God, Linda, they ain't nothin' in bein' rich if it can
+do to a girl what has been done to Eileen!”
+
+“Oh, well,” said Linda impatiently, “don't condemn all money because
+Eileen has not found happiness with it. The trouble has been that
+Eileen's only chance to be rich came to her through the wrong kind of
+people.”
+
+“Well, will ye jist tell me, then,” said Katy, “how it happened that
+Eileen's ma was a sister to that great beef of a man, which same is hard
+on self-rayspectin' beef; pork would come nearer.”
+
+“Yes,” said Linda, “I'll tell you. Eileen's mother had a big streak of
+the same coarseness and the same vulgarity in HER nature, or she could
+not have reared Eileen as she did. She probably had been sent to school
+and had better advantages than the boy through a designing mother of
+her own. Her first husband must have been a man who greatly refined and
+educated her. We can't ever get away from the fact that Daddy believed
+in her and loved her.”
+
+“Yes,” said Katy, “but he was a fooled man. She wasn't what we thought
+she was. Many's the time I've stood injustice about the accounts and
+household management because I wouldn't be wakin' him up to what he was
+bound to for life.”
+
+“That doesn't help us,” said Linda. “I must go in and face them.”
+
+She handed her books to Katy, and went into the living room She
+concentrated on John Gilman first, and a wee qualm of disgust crept
+through her soul when she saw that after weeks of suffering he was once
+more ready to devote himself to Eileen. Linda marveled at the power a
+woman could hold over a man that would force him to compromise with his
+intellect, his education and environment. Then she turned her attention
+to Eileen, and the shock she received was informing. She studied her an
+instant incredulously, then she went to her and held out her hand.
+
+“How do you do?” she said as cordially as was possible to her. “This is
+unexpected.”
+
+Her mind was working rapidly, yet she could not recall ever having seen
+a woman quite so beautiful as Eileen. She was very certain that the
+color on her cheeks was ebbing and rising with excitement; it was no
+longer so deep as to be stationary. She was very certain that her eyes
+had not been darkened as to lids or waxed as to lashes. Her hair was
+beautifully dressed in sweeping waves with scarcely any artificial work
+upon it. Her dress was extremely tasteful and very expensive. There
+was no simper on her lips, nothing superficial. She was only a tired,
+homesick girl. As Linda looked at her she understood why Katy had cried
+over her. She felt tears beginning to rise in her own heart. She put
+both arms protectingly around Eileen.
+
+“Why, you poor little thing,” she said wonderingly, “was it so damn' bad
+as all that?”
+
+Eileen stood straight. She held herself rigidly. She merely nodded. Then
+after a second she said: “Worse than anything you could imagine, Linda.
+Being rich with people who have grown rich by accident is a dreadful
+experience.”
+
+“So I have always imagined,” said Linda. And then in her usual downright
+way she asked: “Why did you come, Eileen? Is there anything you wanted
+of me?”
+
+Eileen hesitated. It was not in Linda's heart to be mean.
+
+“Homesick, little sister?” she asked lightly “Do you want to come here
+while you're getting ready to make a home for John? Is that it?”
+
+Then Eileen swayed forward suddenly, buried her face in Linda's breast,
+and for the first time in her life Linda saw and heard her cry, not from
+selfishness, not from anger, not from greed, but as an ordinary human
+being cries when the heart is so full that nature relieves itself with
+tears. Linda closed her arms around her and smiled over her head at John
+Gilman.
+
+“Finish all of it before you stop,” she advised. “It's all right. You
+come straight home. You didn't leave me any word, and I didn't know what
+to do with your things, but I couldn't feel that you would want to give
+up such beautiful things that you had so enjoyed. We had planned for
+Marian to spend her summer vacation here so I put her things in your
+suite and I had moved mine into the guest room, but I have had my room
+done over and the guest room things are in there, and every scrap of
+yours is carefully put away. If that will do, you are perfectly welcome
+to it.”
+
+Eileen wiped her eyes.
+
+“Anything,” she sobbed. “I'd rather have Katy's room than be shamed and
+humiliated and hurt any further. Linda, I would almost like you to
+know my Aunt Callie, because you will never understand about her if you
+don't. Her favorite pastime was to tell everyone we met how much the
+things I wore cost her.”
+
+Linda released Eileen with a slight shake.
+
+“Cheer up!” she said. “We'll all have a gorgeous time together. I
+haven't the slightest ambition to know more than that about your Aunt
+Callie. If my brain really had been acting properly I would never have
+dismantled your room. I would have known that you could not endure her,
+and that you would come home just as you should. It's all right, John,
+make yourself comfortable. I don't know what Katy has for dinner but she
+can always find enough for an extra couple. Come Eileen, I'll help you
+to settle. Where is your luggage?”
+
+“I brought back, Linda, just what I have on,” said Eileen. “I will begin
+again where I left off. I realize that I am not entitled to anything
+further from the Strong estate, but Uncle was so unhappy and John says
+it's all right--really I am the only blood heir to all they have; I
+might as well take a comfortable allowance from it. I am to go to see
+them a few days of every month. I can endure that when I know I have
+John and you to come back to.”
+
+When Eileen had been installed in Linda's old room Linda went down to
+the kitchen, shut the door behind her, and leaning against it, laid her
+hand over her mouth to suppress a low laugh.
+
+“Katy,” she said, “I've been and gone and done it; I have put the
+perfect lady in my old room. That will be a test of her sincerity--even
+dainty and pretty as it is since it's been done over. If she is sincere
+enough to spend the summer getting ready to marry John Gilman--why that
+is all right, old girl. We can stand it, can't we?”
+
+“Yes,” said Katy, “it's one of them infernal nuisances but we can
+stand it. I'm thinkin', from the looks of John Gilman and his manner of
+spakin', that it ain't goin' to be but a very short time that he'll be
+waitin'.”
+
+“Katy,” said Linda, “isn't this the most entertaining world? Doesn't it
+produce the most lightning-like changes, and don't the most unexpected
+things happen? Sort of dazes me. I had planned to take a little run with
+you and the Cat. Since we are having--no, I mustn't say guests--since
+John and Eileen have come home, I'll have to give up that plan until
+after dinner, and then we'll go and take counsel with our souls and see
+if we can figure out how we are going to solve this equation; and if you
+don t know what an equation is, old dear heart, it's me with a war-club
+and you with a shillalah and Eileen between us, and be 'damned' to us if
+we can't make an average, ordinary, decent human being out of her. Pin
+an apron on her in the morning, Katy, and hand her a dust cloth and tell
+her to industrialize. We will help her with her trousseau, but she SHALL
+help us with the work.”
+
+“Ye know, lambie,” whispered Katy suddenly, “this is a burnin' shame.
+The one thing I DIDN'T think about is that book of yours. What about
+it?”
+
+“I scarcely know,” said Linda; “it's difficult to say. Of course we
+can't carry out the plans we had made to work here, exactly as we had
+intended, with Eileen in the house preparing to be married. But she
+tells me that her uncle has made her a generous allowance, so probably
+it's environment and love she is needing much more than help. It is
+barely possible, Katy, that after I have watched her a few days, if
+I decide she is in genuine, sincere, heart-whole earnest, I might
+introduce her and John to my friend, 'Jane.' It is probable that if I
+did, Eileen would not expect me to help her, and at the same time she
+wouldn't feel that I was acting indifferently because I did not. We'll
+wait awhile, Katy, and see whether we skid before we put on the chains.”
+
+“What about Marian?” inquired Katy.
+
+“I don't know,” said Linda thoughtfully. “If Marian is big enough to
+come here and spend the summer under the same roof with Eileen and John
+Gilman, and have a really restful, enjoyable time out of it, she is
+bigger than I am. Come up to the garret; I think Eileen has brought no
+more with her than she took away. We'll bring her trunk down, put it
+in her room and lay the keys on top. Don't begin by treating her as a
+visitor; treat her as if she were truly my sister. Tell her what you
+want and how you want it, exactly as you tell me and as I tell you. If
+you see even a suspicion of any of the former objectionable tendencies
+popping up, let's check them quick and hard, Katy.”
+
+For a week Linda watched Eileen closely. At the end of that time she was
+sincere in her conviction that Eileen had been severely chastened. When
+she came in contact with Peter Morrison or any other man they met she
+was not immediately artificial. She had learned to be as natural with
+men as with other women. There were no pretty postures, no softened
+vocal modulations, no childish nonsense on subjects upon which
+the average child of these days displays the knowledge of the
+past-generation grandmother. When they visited Peter Morrison's house it
+was easy to see that Eileen was interested, more interested than any
+of them ever before had seen her in any subject outside of clothing and
+jewels. Her conduct in the Strong home had been irreproachable. She had
+cared for her own room, quietly undertaken the duties of dusting and
+arranging the rooms and cutting and bringing in flowers. She had gone to
+the kitchen and wiped dishes and asked to be taught how to cook things
+of which John was particularly fond. She had been reasonable in the
+amount of time she had spent on her shopping, and had repeatedly gone to
+Linda and shown interest in her concerns. The result was that Linda at
+once displayed the same interest in anything pertaining to Eileen.
+
+One afternoon Linda came home unusually early. She called for Eileen,
+told her to tie on her sunshade and be ready for a short ride. Almost
+immediately she brought around the Bear Cat and when they were seated
+side by side headed it toward the canyon. She stopped at the usual
+resting place, and together she and Eileen walked down the light-dappled
+road bed. She pointed out things to Eileen, telling her what they were,
+to what uses they could be put, while at the same time narrowly watching
+her. To her amazement she found that Eileen was interested, that she was
+noticing things for herself, asking what they were. She wanted to know
+the names of the singing birds. When a big bird trailed a waving shadow
+in front of her Linda explained how she might distinguish an eagle from
+a hawk, a hawk from a vulture, a sea bird from those of the land. When
+they reached the bridge Linda climbed down the embankment to gather
+cress. She was moved to protest when Eileen followed and without saying
+a word began to assist her, but she restrained herself, for it suddenly
+occurred to her that it would be an excellent thing for Eileen to think
+more of what she was doing and why she was doing it than about whether
+she would wet her feet or muddy her fingers. So the protest became an
+explanation that it was rather late for cress: the leaves toughened when
+it bloomed and were too peppery. The only way it could be used agreeably
+was to work along the edges and select the small tender shoots that had
+not yet matured to the flowering point. When they had an armload they
+went back to the car, and without any explanation Linda drove into
+Los Angeles and stopped at the residence of Judge Whiting, not telling
+Eileen where she was.
+
+“Friends of mine,” said Linda lightly as she stepped from the car.
+“Fond of cress salad with their dinner. They prepare it after the Jane
+Meredith recipe to which you called my attention, in Everybody's Home
+last winter. Come along with me.”
+
+Eileen stepped from the car and followed. Linda led the way round the
+sidewalk to where her quick ear had located voices on the side lawn.
+She stopped at the kitchen door, handed in the cress, exchanged a few
+laughing words with the cook, and then presented herself at the door of
+the summerhouse. Inside, his books and papers spread over a worktable,
+sat Donald Whiting. One side of him his mother was busy darning his
+socks; on the other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk
+and small squares of gaily colored linen. Linda entered with exactly
+the same self-possession that characterized her at home. She shook hands
+with Mrs. Whiting, Mary Louise, and Donald, and then she said quietly:
+“Eileen and I were gathering cress and we stopped to leave you some
+for your dinner.” With this explanation she introduced Eileen to Mrs.
+Whiting. Mary Louise immediately sprang up and recalled their meeting at
+Riverside. Donald remembered a meeting he did not mention. It was only a
+few minutes until Linda was seated beside Donald, interesting herself
+in his lessons. Eileen begged to be shown the pretty handkerchiefs that
+Mary Louise was making. An hour later Linda refused an invitation to
+dinner because Katy would be expecting them. When she arose to go,
+Eileen was carrying a small square of blue-green linen. Carefully pinned
+to it was a patch of white with a spray of delicate flowers outlined
+upon it, and a skein of pink silk thread. She had been initiated into
+the thrillingly absorbing feminine accomplishment of making sport
+handkerchiefs. When they left Eileen was included naturally, casually,
+spontaneously, in their invitation to Linda to run in any time she
+would. Mary Louise had said she would ride out with Donald in few days
+and see how the handkerchiefs were coming on, and more instruction and
+different stitches and patterns were necessary, she would love to
+teach them. So Linda realized that Mary Louise had been told about the
+trousseau. She knew, even lacking as she was in feminine sophistication,
+that there were two open roads to the heart of a woman. One is a wedding
+and the other is a baby. The lure of either is irresistible.
+
+As the Bear Cat glided back to Lilac Valley, Eileen sat silent. For ten
+years she had coveted the entree to the Whiting home perhaps more than
+any other in the city. Merely by being simple and natural, by living her
+life as life presented itself each day, Linda with no effort whatever
+had made possible to Eileen the thing she so deeply craved. Eileen was
+learning a new lesson each day--some days many of them--but none
+was more amazing more simple, or struck deeper into her awakened
+consciousness. As she gazed with far-seeing eye on the blue walls of the
+valley Eileen was taking a mental inventory of her former self. One by
+one she was arraigning all the old tricks she had used in her trade of
+getting on in the world. One by one she was discarding them in favor of
+honesty, unaffectedness, and wholesome enjoyment.
+
+Because of these things Linda came home the next afternoon and left a
+bundle on Eileen's bed before she made her way to her own room to busy
+herself with a head piece for Peter's latest article. She had taken down
+the wasp picture and while she had not destroyed it she had turned the
+key of a very substantial lock upon it. She was hard at work when she
+heard steps on the stairs. When Eileen entered, Linda smiled quizzically
+and then broke into an unaffected ejaculation.
+
+“Ripping!” she cried. “Why, Eileen, you're perfectly topping.”
+
+Eileen's face flamed with delight. She was a challenging little figure.
+None of them was accustomed to her when she represented anything more
+substantial than curls and ruffles.
+
+Linda reached for the telephone, called Gilman, and asked him if he
+could go to the beach for supper that evening. He immediately replied
+that he would. Then she called Peter Morrison and asked him the same
+question and when Peter answered affirmatively she told him to bring
+his car. Then she hastily put on her own field clothes and ran to the
+kitchen to fill the lunch box. To Katy's delight Linda told her there
+would be room for her and that she needed her.
+
+It was evening and the sun was moving slowly toward the horizon when
+they stopped the cars and went down on the white sands of Santa Monica
+Bay. Eileen had been complimented until she was in a glow of delight.
+She did not notice that in piling things out of the car for their beach
+supper Linda had handed her a shovel and the blackened iron legs of a
+broiler. Everyone was loaded promiscuously as they took up their march
+down to as near the water's edge as the sands were dry. Peter and John
+gathered driftwood. Linda improvised two cooking places, one behind a
+rock for herself, the other under the little outdoor stove for Katy.
+Eileen was instructed as to how to set up the beach table, spread the
+blankets beside it, and place the food upon it. While Katy made coffee
+and toasted biscuit Linda was busy introducing her party to brigand
+beefsteak upon four long steel skewers. The day had been warm. The light
+salt breeze from the sea was like a benediction. Friendly gulls gathered
+on the white sands around them. Cunning little sea chickens worked in
+accord with the tide: when the waves advanced they rose above them on
+wing; when they retreated they scampered over the wet sand, hunting any
+small particles of food that might have been carried in. Out over the
+water big brown pelicans went slowly fanning homeward; and white sea
+swallows drew wonderful pictures on the blue night sky with the tips of
+their wings. For a few minutes at the reddest point of its setting the
+sun painted a marvelous picture in a bank of white clouds. These piled
+up like a great rosy castle, and down the sky roadway before it came a
+long procession of armored knights, red in the sun glow and riding huge
+red horses. Then the colors mixed and faded and a long red bridge for a
+short time spanned the water, ending at their feet. The gulls hunted
+the last scrap thrown them and went home. The swallows sought their high
+cliffs. The insidiously alluring perfume of sand verbena rose like
+altar incense around them. Gilman spread a blanket, piled the beach fire
+higher, and sitting beside Eileen, he drew her head to his shoulder
+and put his arm around her. Possibly he could have been happier in a
+careless way if he had never suffered. It is very probable that the
+poignant depth of exquisite happiness he felt in that hour never would
+have come to him had he not lost Eileen and found her again so much
+more worth loving. Linda wandered down the beach until she reached the
+lighthouse rocks. She climbed on a high one and sat watching the sea as
+it sprayed just below. Peter Morrison followed her.
+
+“May I come up?” he asked.
+
+“Surely,” said Linda, “this belongs to the Lord; it isn't mine.”
+
+So Peter climbed up and sat beside her.
+
+“How did the landscape appeal to you when you left the campfire?”
+ inquired Linda.
+
+“I should think the night cry might very well be Eight o'clock and all's
+well,” answered Peter.
+
+“'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world?'” Linda put it in the
+form of a question.
+
+“It seems to be for John and Eileen,” said Peter.
+
+“It is for a number of people,” said Linda. “I had a letter from Marian
+today. I had written her to ask if she would come to us for the summer,
+in spite of the change in our plans; but Mr. Snow has made some plans of
+his own. He is a very astute individual. He wanted Marian to marry him
+at once and she would not, so he took her for a short visit to see his
+daughter at her grandmother's home in the northern part of the state.
+Marian fell deeply in love with his little girl, and of course those
+people found Marian charming, just as right-minded people would
+find her. When she saw how the little girl missed her father and how
+difficult it was for him to leave her, and when she saw how she would be
+loved and appreciated in that fine family, she changed her mind. Peter,
+we are going to be invited to San Francisco to see them married very
+shortly. Are you glad or sorry?”
+
+“I am very glad,” said Peter heartily. “I make no concealment of my
+admiration for Miss Thorne but I am very glad indeed that it is not her
+head that is to complete the decoration when you start the iris marching
+down my creek banks.”
+
+“Well, that's all right,” said Linda. “Of course you should have
+something to say about whose head finished that picture. I can't
+contract to do more than set the iris. The thing about this I dread is
+that Marian and Eugene are going to live in San Francisco, and I did so
+want her to make her home in Lilac Valley.”
+
+“That's too bad,” said Peter sympathetically. “I know how you appreciate
+her, how deeply you love her. Do you think the valley will ever be right
+for you without her, Linda?”
+
+“It will have to be,” said Linda. “I've had to go on without Father,
+you know. If greater happiness seems to be in store for Marian in San
+Francisco, all I can do is to efface myself and say 'Amen.' When the
+world is all right for Marian, it is about as near all right as it
+can be for me. And did you ever see much more sincerely and clearly
+contented people than John and Eileen are at the present minute?”
+
+Peter looked at Linda whimsically. He lowered his voice as if a sea
+urchin might hear and tattle.
+
+“What did you do about the wasp, Linda?” he whispered.
+
+“I delicately erased the stinger, fluffed up a ruffle, and put the
+sketch under lock and key. I should have started a fire with it, but
+couldn't quite bring myself to let it go, yet.”
+
+“Is she going to hold out?” asked Peter.
+
+“She'll hold out or get her neck wrung,” said Linda. “I truly think she
+has been redeemed. She has been born again. She has a new heart and a
+new soul and a new impulse and a right conception of life. Why, Peter,
+she has even got a new body. Her face is not the same.”
+
+“She is much handsomer,” said Peter.
+
+“Isn't she?” cried Linda enthusiastically. “And doesn't having a soul
+and doesn't thinking about essential things make the most remarkable
+difference in her? It is worth going through a fiery furnace to come out
+new like that. I called her Abednego the other day, but she didn't know
+what I meant.”
+
+Then they sat silent and watched the sea for a long time.  By and by the
+night air grew chill. Peter slipped from the rock and went up the beach
+and came back with an Indian blanket. He put it very carefully around
+Linda's shoulders, and when he went to resume his seat beside her he
+found one of her arms stretching it with a blanket corner for him. So he
+sat down beside her and drew the corner over his shoulder; and because
+his right arm was very much in his way, and it would have been very
+disagreeable if Linda had slipped from the rock and fallen into the
+cold, salt, unsympathetic Pacific at nine o'clock at night--merely to
+dispose of the arm comfortably and to ensure her security, Peter put it
+around Linda and drew her up beside him very close. Linda did not seem
+to notice. She sat quietly looking at the Pacific and thinking her own
+thoughts. When the fog became damp and chill, she said they must be
+going, and so they went back to their cars and drove home through the
+sheer wonder of the moonlight, through the perfume of the orange
+orchards, hearing the night song of the mockingbirds.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris
+
+A few days later Linda and Peter went to San Francisco and helped
+celebrate the marriage of Marian and Eugene Snow. They left Marian in a
+home carefully designed to insure every comfort and convenience she ever
+had planned, furnished in accordance with her desires. Both Linda and
+Peter were charmed with little Deborah Snow; she was a beautiful and an
+appealing child.
+
+“It seems to me,” said Linda, on the train going home, “that Marian will
+get more out of life, she will love deeper, she will work harder, she
+will climb higher in her profession than she would have done if she had
+married John. It is difficult sometimes, when things are happening, to
+realize that they are for the best, but I really believe this thing has
+been for the level best. I think Marian is going to be a bigger woman in
+San Francisco than she ever would have been in Lilac Valley. With that
+thought I must reconcile myself.”
+
+“And what about John?” asked Peter. “Is he going to be a bigger man with
+Eileen than he would have been with Marian?”
+
+“No,” said Linda, “he is not. He didn't do right and he'll have penalty
+to pay. Eileen is developing into a lovable and truly beautiful woman,
+but she has not the intellect, nor the education, nor the impulse to
+stimulate a man's mental processes and make him outdo himself the way
+Marian will. John will probably never know it, but he will have to do
+his own stimulating; he will have to vision life for himself. He will
+have to find his high hill and climb it with Eileen riding securely on
+his shoulders. It isn't really the pleasantest thing in the world, it
+isn't truly the thing I wanted to do this summer--helping them out--but
+it has seemed to be the work at hand, the thing Daddy probably would
+have wanted me to do, so it's up to me to do all I can for them, just
+as I did all I could for Donald. One thing I shall always be delighted
+about. With my own ears I heard the pronouncement: Donald had the Jap
+beaten; he was at the head of his class before Oka Sayye was eliminated.
+The Jap knew it. His only chance lay in getting rid of his rival. Donald
+can take the excellent record he has made in this race to start on this
+fall when he commences another battle against some other man's brain for
+top honors in his college.”
+
+“Will he start with the idea that he wants to be an honor man?”
+
+Linda laughed outright.
+
+“I think,” she said, “his idea was that if he were one of fifty or one
+hundred leading men it would be sufficient, but I insisted that if he
+wanted to be first with me, he would have to be first in his school
+work.”
+
+“I see,” said Peter. “Linda, have you definitely decided that when you
+come to your home-making hour, Donald is the man with whom you want to
+spend the remainder of your life?”
+
+“Oh, good gracious!” said Linda. “Who's talking about 'homes' and
+'spending the remainder of lives'? Donald and I are school friends, and
+we are good companions. You're as bad as Eileen. She's always trying
+to suggest things that nobody else ever thought of, and now Katy's
+beginning it too.”
+
+“Sapheads, all!” said Peter. “Well, allow me to congratulate you on
+having given Donald his spurs. I think it's a very fine thing for him
+to start to college with the honor idea in his head. What about your
+Saturday excursions?”
+
+“They have died an unnatural death,” said Linda. “Don and I fought for
+them, but the Judge and Mrs. Whiting and Mary Louise were terrified
+for fear a bone might slip in Don's foot, or some revengeful friend or
+relative of Oka Sayye lie in wait for us. They won't hear of our going
+any more. I go every Saturday and take Donald for a very careful drive
+over a smooth road with the Bear Cat cursing our rate of speed all the
+way. All the fun's spoiled for all three of us.”
+
+“Think I would be any good as a substitute when it comes to field work?”
+ inquired Peter casually. “I have looked at your desert garden so much I
+would know a Cotyledon if I saw it. I believe I could learn.”
+
+“You wouldn't have time to bother,” objected Linda. “You're a man, with
+a man's business to transact in the world. You have to hustle and earn
+money to pay for the bridge and changing the brook.”
+
+“But I had money to pay for the brook and the bridge before I agreed to
+them,” said Peter.
+
+“Well, then,” said Linda, “you should begin to hunt old mahogany and
+rugs.”
+
+“I hadn't intended to,” said Peter; “if they are to be old, I won't have
+to do more than to ship them. In storage in Virginia there are some very
+wonderful old mahogany and rosewood and rugs and bric-a-brac enough to
+furnish the house I am building. The stuff belonged to a little old aunt
+of mine who left it to me in her will, and it was with those things
+in mind that I began my house. The plans and finishing will fit that
+furniture beautifully.”
+
+“Why, you lucky individual!” said Linda. “Nowhere in the world is there
+more beautiful furniture than in some of those old homes in Virginia.
+There are old Flemish and Dutch and British and Italian pieces that
+came into this country on early sailing vessels for the aristocrats. You
+don't mean that kind of stuff, do you, Peter?”
+
+“That is precisely the kind of stuff I do mean,” answered Peter.
+
+“Why Peter, if you have furniture like that,” cried Linda, “then all you
+need is Mary Louise.”
+
+“Linda,” said Peter soberly, “you are trespassing on delicate ground
+again. You selected one wife for me and your plan didn't work. When that
+furniture arrives and is installed I'll set about inducing the lady of
+my dreams to come and occupy my dream house, in my own way. I never did
+give you that job. It was merely assumed on your part.”
+
+“So it was,” said Linda. “But you know I could set that iris and run
+that brook with more enthusiasm if I knew the lady who was to walk
+beside it.”
+
+“You do,” said Peter. “You know her better than anyone else, even better
+than I. Put that in your mental pipe and smoke it!”
+
+“Saints preserve us!” cried Linda. “I believe the man is planning to
+take Katy away from me.”
+
+“Not FROM you,” said Peter, “WITH you.”
+
+“Let me know about it before you do it,” said Linda with a careless
+laugh.
+
+“That's what I'm doing right now,” said Peter.
+
+“And I'm going to school,” said Linda.
+
+“Of course,” said Peter, “but that won't last forever.”
+
+Linda entered enthusiastically upon the triple task of getting Donald in
+a proper frame of mind to start to college with the ambition to do good
+work, of marrying off Eileen and John Gilman, and of giving her best
+brain and heart to Jane Meredith. When the time came, Donald was ready
+to enter college comfortable and happy, willing to wait and see what
+life had in store for him as he lived it.
+
+When she was sure of Eileen past any reasonable doubt Linda took her and
+John to her workroom one evening and showed them her book contract and
+the material she had ready, and gave them the best idea she could
+of what yet remained to be done. She was not prepared for their
+wholehearted praise, for their delight and appreciation.
+
+Alone, they took counsel as to how they could best help her, and decided
+that to be married at once and take a long trip abroad would be the best
+way. That would leave Linda to work in quiet and with no interruption
+to distract her attention. They could make their home arrangements when
+they returned.
+
+When they had gone Linda worked persistently, but her book was not
+completed and the publishers were hurrying her when the fall term
+of school opened. By the time the final chapter with its exquisite
+illustration had been sent in, the first ones were coming back in proof,
+and with the proof came the materialized form of Linda's design for her
+cover, and there was no Marian to consult about it. Linda worked until
+she was confused. Then she piled the material in the Bear Cat and headed
+up Lilac Valley. As she came around the curve and turned from the public
+road she saw that for the first time she might cross her bridge; it was
+waiting for her. She heard the rejoicing of the water as it fell from
+stone to stone where it dipped under the road, and as she swung across
+the bridge she saw that she might drive over the completed road which
+had been finished in her weeks of absence. The windows told another
+story. Peter's furniture had come and he had been placing it without
+telling her. She found the front door standing wide open, so she walked
+in. With her bundle on her arm she made her way to Peter's workroom.
+When he looked up and saw her standing in his door he sprang to his feet
+and came to meet her.
+
+“Peter,” she said, “I've taken on more work than I can possibly finish
+on time, and I'm the lonesomest person in California today.”
+
+“I doubt that,” said Peter gravely. “If you are any lonesomer than I am
+you must prove it.”
+
+“I have proved it,” said Linda quietly. “If you had been as lonesome as
+I am you would have come to me. As it is, I have come to you.”
+
+“I see,” said Peter rather breathlessly. “What have you there, Linda?
+Why did you come?”
+
+“I came for two reasons,” said Linda. “I want to ask you about this
+stuff. Several times this summer you have heard talk about Jane Meredith
+and the Everybody's Home articles. Ever read any of them, Peter?”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter, “I read all of them. Interested in home stuff these
+days myself.”
+
+“Well,” said Linda, dumping her armload before Peter, “there's the proof
+and there's the illustration and there's the cover design for a book to
+be made from that stuff. Peter, make your best boy and say 'pleased to
+meet you' to Jane Meredith.”
+
+Peter secured both of Linda's hands and held them. First he looked at
+her, then he looked at the material she had piled down in front of him.
+
+“Never again,” said Peter in a small voice, “will I credit myself with
+any deep discernment, any keen penetration. How I could have read that
+matter and looked at those pictures and not seen you in and through
+and over them is a thing I can't imagine. It's great, Linda, absolutely
+great! Of course I will help you any way in the world I can. And what
+else was it you wanted? You said two things.”
+
+“Oh, the other doesn't amount to much,” said Linda. “I only wanted the
+comfort of knowing whether, as soon as I graduate, I may take Katy and
+come home, Peter.”
+
+From previous experience with Linda, Peter had learned that a girl
+reared by men is not as other women. He had supposed the other thing
+concerning which she had wanted to appeal to him was on par with her
+desire for sympathy and help concerning her book. At her question, with
+her eyes frankly meeting his, Peter for an instant felt lightheaded. He
+almost dodged, he was so sweepingly taken unawares. Linda was waiting
+and his brain was not working. He tried to smile, but he knew she would
+not recognize as natural the expression of that whirling moment. She saw
+his hesitation.
+
+“Of course, if you don't want us, Peter--”
+
+Peter found his voice promptly. Only his God knew how much he wanted
+Linda, but there were conditions that a man of Peter's soul-fiber
+could not endure. More than life he wanted her, but he did not want
+her asleep. He did not want to risk her awakening to a spoiled life and
+disappointed hopes.
+
+“But you remember that I told you coming home from San Francisco that
+you knew the Lady of my Iris better than anyone else, and that I was
+planning to take Katy, not from you, but with you.”
+
+“Of course I remember,” said Linda. “That is why when Marian and Eileen
+and Donald and all my world went past and left me standing desolate, and
+my work piled up until I couldn't see my way, I just started right out
+to ask you if you would help me with the proof. Of course I knew you
+would be glad to do that and I thought if you really meant in your
+heart that I was the one to complete your iris procession, it would be a
+comfort to me during the hard work and the lonesome days to have it put
+in two-syllable English. Marian said that was the only real way--”
+
+“And Marian is eminently correct. You will have to give me an ordinary
+lifetime, Linda, in which to try to make you understand exactly what
+this means to me. Perhaps I'll even have to invent new words in which to
+express myself.”
+
+“Oh, that's all right,” said Linda. “It means a lot to me too. I can't
+tell you how much I think of you. That first day, as soon as I put down
+the Cotyledon safely and tucked in my blouse, I would have put my hand
+in yours and started around the world, if you had asked me to. I have
+the very highest esteem for you, Peter.”
+
+“Esteem, yes,” said Peter slowly. “But Linda-girl, isn't the sort of
+alliance I am asking you to enter with me usually based on something a
+good bit stronger than 'esteem'?”
+
+“Yes, I think it is,” said Linda. “But you needn't worry. I only wanted
+the comfort of knowing that I was not utterly alone again, save for
+Katy. I'll stick to my book and to my fight for Senior honors all
+right.”
+
+Peter was blinking his eyes and fighting to breathe evenly. When he
+could speak he said as smoothly as possible: “Of course, Linda. I'll
+do your proof for you and you may put all your time on class honors.
+It merely occurred to me to wonder whether you realized the full and
+ultimate significance of what we are saying; exactly what it means to me
+and to you.”
+
+ “Possibly not, Peter,” said Linda, smiling on him with utter
+confidence. “Everyone says I am my father's daughter, and Father didn't
+live to coach me on being your iris decoration, as a woman would; but,
+Peter, when the time comes, I have every confidence in your ability to
+teach me what you would like me to know yourself. Don't you agree with
+me, Peter?”
+
+Making an effort to control himself Peter gathered up the material Linda
+had brought and taking her arm he said casually: “I thoroughly agree
+with you, dear. You are sanely and health fully and beautifully right.
+Now let's go and take Katy into our confidence, and then you shall show
+me your ideas before I begin work on your proof. And after this, instead
+of you coming to me I shall always come to you whenever you can spare a
+minute for me.”
+
+Linda nodded acquiescence.
+
+“Of course! That would be best,” she said. “Peter, you are so
+satisfyingly satisfactory.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Her Father's Daughter, by Gene Stratton-Porter
+
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+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Her Father's Daughter, by Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Her Father's Daughter
+
+Author: Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+Release Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #904]
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianne Bean, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Gene Stratton-Porter
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_LIST"> List of Characters </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;"What Kind of
+        Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?&rdquo; <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0002">
+        CHAPTER II. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The House of
+        Dreams <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Linda
+        Starts a Revolution <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+        Smoke of Battle <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Jane
+        Meredith <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Trying
+        Yucca <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+        Bear Cat <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;One
+        Hundred Per Cent Plus <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X.
+        </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Katy to the Rescue <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0011">
+        CHAPTER XI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Assisting Providence <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The Lay of the Land
+        <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Leavening
+        the Bread of Life <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Saturday's
+        Child <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Linda's
+        Hearthstone <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Producing
+        the Evidence <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        Rock and a Flame <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Spanish
+        Iris <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+        Official Bug-Catcher <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX.
+        </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The Cap Sheaf <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0021">
+        CHAPTER XXI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Shifting the Responsibility <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The End of Marian's
+        Contest <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+        Day of Jubilee <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Linda's
+        First Party <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Buena
+        Moza <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        Mouse Nest <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+        Straight and Narrow <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII.
+        </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Putting It Up to Peter <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0029">
+        CHAPTER XXIX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Katy Unburdens Her Mind <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Peter's Release <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The End of
+        Donald's Contest <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;How
+        the Wasp Built Her Nest <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER
+        XXXIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The Lady of the Iris <br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_LIST" id="link2H_LIST">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      List of Characters
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     LINDA STRONG, Her Father's Daughter
+     DR. ALEXANDER STRONG, a Great Nerve Specialist
+     MRS. STRONG, His Wife
+     EILEEN STRONG, Having
+     Social Aspirations
+     MR. AND MRS. THORNE, Neighbors of the Strongs
+     MARIAN THORNE, a Dreamer of Houses
+     JOHN GILMAN, a Man of Law
+     PETER MORRISON, an Author
+     HENRY ANDERSON, an Architect
+     DONALD WHITING, a High School Senior
+     MARY LOUISE WHITING, His Sister
+     JUDGE AND MRS. WHITING, a Man of Law and a Woman of Culture
+     KATHERINE O' DONOVAN, the Strong Cook
+     OKA SAYYE, a High School Senior
+     JAMES HEITMAN, Accidentally Rich
+     MRS. CAROLINE HEITMAN, His Wife
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &ldquo;What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;What makes you wear such funny shoes?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      Linda Strong thrust forward a foot and critically examined the narrow
+      vamp, the projecting sole, the broad, low heel of her well-worn brown
+      calfskin shoe. Then her glance lifted to the face of Donald Whiting, one
+      of the most brilliant and popular seniors of the high school. Her eyes
+      narrowed in a manner habitual to her when thinking intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never you mind my shoes,&rdquo; she said deliberately. &ldquo;Kindly fix your
+      attention on my head piece. When you see me allowing any Jap in my class
+      to make higher grades than I do, then I give you leave to say anything you
+      please concerning my head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An angry red rushed to the boy's face. It was an irritating fact that in
+      the senior class of that particular Los Angeles high school a Japanese boy
+      stood at the head. This was embarrassing to every senior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said Donald Whiting, &ldquo;I call that a mean thrust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a particular reason,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I have 'a particular reason',&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;for being interested in
+      your shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laughed suddenly. When Linda laughed, which was very seldom, those
+      within hearing turned to look at her. Hers was not a laugh that can be
+      achieved. There were a few high places on the peak of Linda's soul, and on
+      one of them homed a small flock of notes of rapture; notes as sweet as the
+      voice of the white-banded mockingbird of Argentina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How surprising!&rdquo; exclaimed Linda. &ldquo;We have been attending the same school
+      for three years; now, you stop me suddenly to tell me that you are
+      interested in the shape of my shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been watching them all the time,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;Can't understand
+      why any girl wants to be so different. Why don't you dress your hair the
+      same as the other girls and wear the same kind of clothes and shoes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now look here,&rdquo; interposed Linda &ldquo;You are flying the track.I am willing
+      to justify my shoes, if I can, but here you go including my dress and a
+      big psychological problem, as well; but I think perhaps the why of the
+      shoes will explain the remainder. Does the name 'Alexander Strong' mean
+      anything to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The great nerve specialist?&rdquo; asked Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;The man who was the author of half-dozen books that
+      have been translated into many foreign tongue' and are used as authorities
+      all over the world. He happened to be my father There are two children in
+      our family. I have a sister four years older than I am who is exactly like
+      Mother, and she and Mother were inseparable. I am exactly like Father;
+      because we understood each other, and because both of us always new,
+      although we never mentioned it; that Mother preferred my sister Eileen to
+      me, Father tried to make it up to me, so from the time I can remember I
+      was at his heels. It never bothered him to have me playing around in the
+      library while he was writing his most complicated treatise. I have waited
+      in his car half a day at a time, playing or reading, while he watched a
+      patient or delivered a lecture at some medical college. His mental
+      relaxation was to hike or to motor to the sea, to the mountains, to the
+      canyons or the desert, and he very seldom went without me even on long
+      trips when he was fishing or hunting with other men. There was not much to
+      know concerning a woman's frame or he psychology that Father did not know,
+      so there were two reason why he selected my footwear as he did. One was
+      because he be believed high heels and pointed toes an outrage against the
+      nervous province, and the other was that I could not possibly have kept
+      pace with him except in shoes like these. No doubt, they are the same kind
+      I shall wear all my life, for walking. You probably don't know it, but my
+      home lies near the middle of Lilac Valley and I walk over a mile each
+      morning and evening to and from the cars. Does this sufficiently explain
+      my shoes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think you'd feel queer,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect I would if I had time to brood over it,&rdquo; Linda replied, &ldquo;but I
+      haven't. I must hustle to get to school on time in the morning. It's
+      nearly or quite dark before I reach home in the evening. My father
+      believed in having a good time. He had superb health, so he spent most of
+      what he made as it came to him. He counted on a long life. It never
+      occurred to him that a little piece of machinery going wrong would plunge
+      him into Eternity in a second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I remember!&rdquo; cried the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's face paled slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it happened four years ago and I haven't gotten away
+      from the horror of it yet, enough ever to step inside of a motor car; but
+      I am going to get over that one of these days. Brakes are not all
+      defective, and one must take one's risks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just bet I would,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;Motoring is one of the greatest
+      pleasures of modern life. I'll wager it makes some of the gay old boys,
+      like Marcus Aurelius for example, want to turn over in their graves when
+      they see us flying along the roads of California the way we do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I was getting at,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;was a word of reply to the remainder
+      of your indictment against me. Dad's income stopped with him, and
+      household expenses went on, and war came, so there isn't enough money to
+      dress two of us as most of the high school girls are dressed. Eileen is so
+      much older that it's her turn first, and I must say she is not at all
+      backward about exercising her rights. I think that will have to suffice
+      for the question of dress but you may be sure that I am capable of wearing
+      the loveliest dress imaginable, that would be for a school girl, if I had
+      it to wear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there's the little 'fly in your ointment'&mdash;'dress that would be
+      suitable.' I bet in your heart you think the dresses that half the girls
+      in high school are wearing are NOT SUITABLE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Commendable perspicacity, O learned senior,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;and amazingly
+      true. In the few short years I had with Daddy I acquired a fixed idea as
+      to what kind of dress is suitable and sufficiently durable to wear while
+      walking my daily two miles. I can't seem to become reconciled to the
+      custom of dressing the same for school as for a party. You get my idea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I get it all right enough,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;but I must think awhile before
+      I decide whether I agree with you. Why should you be right, and hundreds
+      of other girls be wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll wager your mother would agree with me,&rdquo; suggested Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did yours?&rdquo; asked Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halfway,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;She agreed with me for me, but not for
+      Eileen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And not for my sister,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;She wears the very foxiest clothes
+      that Father can afford to pay for, and when she was going to school she
+      wore them without the least regard as to whether she was going to school
+      or to a tea party or a matinee. For that matter she frequently went to all
+      three the same day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that brings us straight to the point concerning you,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure enough!&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;There is me to be considered! What is it you
+      have against me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked at him meditatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You SEEM exceptionally strong,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;No doubt are good in
+      athletics. Your head looks all right; it indicates brains. What I want to
+      know is why in the world you don't us them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you getting at, anyway?&rdquo; asked Donald, with more than a hint of
+      asperity in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am getting at the fact,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that a boy as big as you and as
+      strong as you and with as good brain and your opportunity has allowed a
+      little brown Jap to cross the Pacific Ocean and a totally strange country
+      to learn a language foreign to him, and, and, with the same books and the
+      same chances, to beat you at your own game. You and every other boy in
+      your classes ought to thoroughly ashamed of yourselves. Before I would let
+      a Jap, either boy or girl, lead in my class, I would give up going to
+      school and go out and see if I could beat him growing lettuce and
+      spinach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all very well to talk,&rdquo; said Donald hotly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it's better to make good what you say,&rdquo; broke in Linda, with equal
+      heat. &ldquo;There are half a dozen Japs in my classes but no one of them is
+      leading, you will notice, if I do wear peculiar shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you would be going some if you beat the leading Jap in the senior
+      class,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I would go some,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I'd beat him, or I'd go straight up
+      trying. You could do it if you'd make up your mind to. The trouble with
+      you is that you're wasting your brain on speeding an automobile, on
+      dances, and all sorts of foolishness that is not doing you any good in any
+      particular way. Bet you are developing nerves smoking cigarettes. You are
+      not concentrating. Oka Sayye is not thinking of a thing except the triumph
+      of proving to California that he is head man in one of the Los Angeles
+      high schools. That's what I have got against you, and every other white
+      boy in your class, and in the long run it stacks up bigger than your
+      arraignment of my shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, darn your shoes!&rdquo; cried Donald hotly. &ldquo;Forget 'em! I've got to move
+      on or I'll be late for trigonometry, but I don't know when I've had such a
+      tidy little fight with a girl, and I don't enjoy feeling that I have been
+      worsted. I propose another session. May I come out to Lilac Valley
+      Saturday afternoon and flay you alive to pay up for my present
+      humiliation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, if your mother happened to be motoring that way and would care to
+      call, I think that would be fine,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for the Lord's sake!&rdquo; exclaimed the irate senior. &ldquo;Can't a fellow
+      come and fight with you without being refereed by his mother? Shall I
+      bring Father too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only thought,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;that you would like your mother to
+      see the home and environment of any girl whose acquaintance you made, but
+      the fight we have coming will in all probability be such a pitched battle
+      that when I go over the top, you won't ever care to follow me and start
+      another issue on the other side. You're dying right now to ask why I wear
+      my hair in braids down my back instead of in cootie coops over my ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't give a hang,&rdquo; said Donald ungallantly, &ldquo;as to how you; wear your
+      hair, but I am coming Saturday to fight, and I don't think Mother will
+      take any greater interest in the matter than to know that I am going to do
+      battle with a daughter of Doctor I Strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a very nice compliment to my daddy, thank you, said Linda,
+      turning away and proceeding in the direction of her own classrooms. There
+      was a brilliant sparkle in her eyes and she sang in a muffled voice, yet
+      distinctly enough to be heard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes, And you may wear them if you
+      choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By gracious! She's no fool,&rdquo; he said to himself. In three minutes'
+      unpremeditated talk the &ldquo;Junior Freak,&rdquo; as he mentally denominated her,
+      had managed to irritate him, to puncture his pride, to entertain and amuse
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder&mdash;&rdquo; he said as he went his way; and all day he kept on
+      wondering, when he was not studying harder than ever before in all his
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night Linda walked slowly along the road toward home. She was not
+      seeing the broad stretch of Lilac Valley, on every hand green with spring,
+      odorous with citrus and wild bloom, blue walled with lacy lilacs veiling
+      the mountain face on either side; and she was not thinking of her plain,
+      well-worn dress or her common-sense shoes. What she was thinking was of
+      every flaying, scathing, solidly based argument she could produce the
+      following Saturday to spur Donald Whiting in some way to surpass Oka
+      Sayye. His chance remark that morning, as they stood near each other
+      waiting a few minutes in the hall, had ended in his asking to come to see
+      her, and she decided as she walked homeward that his first visit in all
+      probability would be his last, since she had not time to spare for boys,
+      when she had so many different interests involved; but she did decide very
+      finely in her own mind that the would make that visit a memorable one for
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In arriving at this decision her mind traveled a number of devious roads.
+      The thought that she had been criticized did not annoy her as to the kind
+      of criticism, but she did resent the quality of truth about it. She was
+      right in following the rules her father had laid down for her health and
+      physical well-being, but was it right that she should wear shoes scuffed,
+      resoled, and even patched, when there was money enough for Eileen to have
+      many pairs of expensive laced boots, walking shoes, and fancy slippers?
+      She was sure she was right in wearing dresses suitable for school, but was
+      it right that she must wear them until they were sunfaded, stained, and
+      disreputable? Was it right that Eileen should occupy their father and
+      mother's suite, redecorated and daintily furnished according to her own
+      taste, to keep the parts of the house that she cared to use decorated with
+      flowers and beautifully appointed, while Linda must lock herself in a
+      small stuffy bedroom room, dingy and none too comfortable, when in
+      deference to her pride she wished to work in secret until she learned
+      whether she could succeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she began thinking, and decided that the only available place in the
+      house for her use was the billiard room. She made up her mind that she
+      would demand the sole right to this big attic room. She would sell the
+      table and use the money to buy herself a suitable worktable and a rug. She
+      would demand that Eileen produce enough money for better clothing for her,
+      and then she remembered what she had said to Donald Whiting about
+      conquering her horror for a motor car. Linda turned in at the walk leading
+      to her home, but she passed the front entrance and followed around to the
+      side. As she went she could hear voices in the living room and she knew
+      that Eileen was entertaining some of her many friends; for Eileen was that
+      peculiar creature known as a social butterfly. Each day of her life
+      friends came; or Eileen went&mdash;mostly the latter, for Eileen had a
+      knack of management and she so managed her friends that, without their
+      realizing it, they entertained her many times while she entertained them
+      once. Linda went to the kitchen, Laid her books and package of mail on the
+      table, and, walking over to the stove, she proceeded deliberately and
+      heartily to kiss the cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy, me darlin',&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;look upon your only child. Do you notice a
+      'lean and hungry look' on her classic features?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy turned adoring eyes to the young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's growing so fast ye are, childie,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It's only a little
+      while to dinner, and there's company tonight, so hadn't ye better wait and
+      not spoil your appetite with piecing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there going to be anything 'jarvis'?&rdquo; inquired Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      '&ldquo;I'd say there is,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;John Gilman is here and two friends of
+      Eileen's. It's a near banquet, lassie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'll wait,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I want the keys to the garage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy handed them to her and Linda went down the back walk beneath an arch
+      of tropical foliage, between blazing walls of brilliant flower faces,
+      unlocked the garage, and stood looking at her father's runabout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the revolution that had taken place in their home after the passing of
+      their father and mother, Eileen had dominated the situation and done as
+      she pleased, with the exception of two instances. Linda had shown both
+      temper and determination at the proposal to dismantle the library and
+      dispose of the cars. She had told Eileen that she might take the touring
+      car and do as she pleased with it. For her share she wanted her father's
+      roadster, and she meant to have it. She took the same firm stand
+      concerning the Library. With the rest of the house Eileen might do as she
+      would. The library was to remain absolutely untouched and what it
+      contained was Linda's. To this Eileen had agreed, but so far Linda had
+      been content merely to possess her property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lately, driven by the feeling that she must find a way in which she could
+      earn money, she had been secretly working on some plans that she hoped
+      might soon yield her small returns. As for the roadster, she as well as
+      Eileen had been horror-stricken when the car containing their father and
+      mother and their adjoining neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Thorne, driven by
+      Marian Thorne, the playmate and companion from childhood of the Strong
+      girls, had become uncontrollable and plunged down the mountain in a
+      disaster that had left only Marian, protected by the steering gear, alive.
+      They had simply by mutual agreement begun using the street cars when they
+      wanted to reach the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood looking at the roadster, jacked up and tucked under a heavy
+      canvas tent that she and her father had used on their hunting and fishing
+      trips. After a long time she laid strong hands on the canvas and dragged
+      it to one side. She looked the car over carefully and then, her face very
+      white and her hands trembling, she climbed into it and slowly and
+      mechanically went through the motions of starting it. For another intent
+      period she sat with her hands on the steering gear, staring straight
+      ahead, and then she said slowly: &ldquo;Something has got to be done. It's not
+      going to be very agreeable, but I am going to do it. Eileen: has had
+      things all her own way long enough. I am getting such a big girl I ought
+      to have a few things in my life as I want them. Something must be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda proceeded to do something. What she did was to lean forward,
+      rest her head upon the steering wheel and fight to keep down deep, pitiful
+      sobbing until her whole slender body twisted in the effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was yielding to a breaking up after four years of endurance, for the
+      greater part in silence. As the months of the past year had rolled their
+      deliberate way, Linda had begun to realize that the course her elder
+      sister had taken was wholly unfair to her, and slowly a tumult of revolt
+      was growing in her soul. Without a doubt the culmination had resulted from
+      her few minutes' talk with Donald Whiting in the hall that morning. It had
+      started Linda to thinking deeply, and the more deeply she thought the
+      clearly she saw the situation. Linda was a loyal soul and her heart was
+      honest. She was quite willing that Eileen should: exercise her rights as
+      head of the family, that she should take the precedence to which she was
+      entitled by her four years' seniority, that she should spend the money
+      which accrued monthly from their father's estate as she saw fit, up to a
+      certain point. That point was where things ceased to be fair or to be
+      just. If there had been money to do no more for Eileen than had been done
+      for Linda, it would not have been in Linda's heart to utter a complaint.
+      She could have worn scuffed shoes and old dresses, and gone her way with
+      her proud young head held very high and a jest on her lips; but when her
+      mind really fastened on the problem and she began to reason, she could not
+      feel that Eileen was just to her or that she was fair in her
+      administration of the money which should have been divided more nearly
+      equally between them, after the household expenses had been paid. Once
+      rebellion burned in her heart the flames leaped rapidly, and Linda began
+      to remember a thousand small things that she had scarcely noted at the
+      time of their occurrence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was leaning on the steering wheel, tired with nerve strain, when she
+      heard Katy calling her, and realized that she was needed in the kitchen.
+      As a matter of economy Eileen, after her parents' passing, had dismissed
+      the housemaid, and when there were guests before whom she wished to make a
+      nice appearance Linda had been impressed either to wait on the table or to
+      help in the kitchen in order that Katy might attend the dining room, so
+      Linda understood what was wanted when Katy called her. She ran her fingers
+      over the steering wheel, worn bright by the touch of her father's and her
+      own hands, and with the buoyancy of youth, found comfort. Once more she
+      mechanically went through the motions of starting the car, then she
+      stepped down, closed the door, and stood an instant thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're four years behind the times,&rdquo; she said slowly. &ldquo;No doubt there's a
+      newer and a better model; I suspect the tires are rotten, but the last day
+      I drove you for Daddy you purred like a kitten, and ran like a clock, and
+      if you were cleaned and oiled and put in proper shape, there's no reason
+      in the world why I should not drive you again, as I have driven you
+      hundreds of miles when Daddy was tired or when he wanted to teach me the
+      rules of good motoring, and the laws of the road. I can do it all right. I
+      have got to do it, but it will be some time before I'll care to tackle the
+      mountains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the cover on the floor, she locked the door and returned to the
+      kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Katy, what is the programme?&rdquo; she inquired as lightly as she
+      could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy had been cook in the Strong family ever since they had moved to Lilac
+      Valley. She had obeyed Mrs. Strong and Eileen. She had worshiped the
+      Doctor and Linda It always had been patent to her eyes that Mrs. Strong
+      was extremely partial to Eileen, so Katy had joined forces with the Doctor
+      in surreptitiously doing everything her warm Irish heart prompted to
+      prevent Linda from feeling neglected. Her quick eyes saw the traces of
+      tears on Linda's face, and she instantly knew that the trip the girl had
+      made to the garage was in some way connected with some belongings of her
+      father's, so she said: &ldquo;I am serving tonight but I want you to keep things
+      smoking hot and to have them dished up ready for me so that everything
+      will go smoothly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would happen,&rdquo; inquired Linda, &ldquo;if everything did NOT go smoothly?
+      Katy, do you think the roof would blow straight up if I had MY way about
+      something, just for a change?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think the roof would stay right where it belongs,&rdquo; said Katy with a
+      chuckle, &ldquo;but I do think its staying there would not be because Miss
+      Eileen wanted it to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Linda deliberately, &ldquo;we won't waste any time on thinking We
+      are going to have some positive knowledge on the subject pretty
+      immediately. I don't feel equal to starting any domestic santana today,
+      but the forces are gathering and the blow is coming soon. To that I have
+      firmly made up my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not the least mite I'm blaming you, honey,&rdquo; said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye've got to be such a big girl that it's only fair things in this house
+      should go a good deal different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Marian to be here?&rdquo; asked Linda as she stood beside the stove peering
+      into pans and kettles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Eileen didn't say,&rdquo; replied Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's eyes reddened suddenly. She slammed down a lid with vicious
+      emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is another deal Eileen's engineered,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that is just about
+      as wrong as anything possibly can be. What makes me the maddest about it
+      is that John Gilman will let Eileen take him by the nose and lead him
+      around like a ringed calf. Where is his common sense? Where is his
+      perception? Where is his honor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now wait, dearie,&rdquo; said Katy soothingly, &ldquo;wait. John Gilman is a mighty
+      fine man. Ye know how your father loved him and trusted him and gave him
+      charge of all his business affairs. Ye mustn't go so far as to be
+      insinuating that he is lacking in honor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that was not fair. I don't in the least know that he
+      ever ASKED Marian to marry him; but I do know that as long as he was a
+      struggling, threadbare young lawyer Marian was welcome to him, and they
+      had grand times together. The minute he won the big Bailey suit and came
+      into public notice and his practice increased until he was independent,
+      that minute Eileen began to take notice, and it looks to me now as if she
+      very nearly had him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so far as I can see,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;Miss Marian is taking it without a
+      struggle. She is not lifting a finger or making a move to win him back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course she isn't!&rdquo; said Linda indignantly. &ldquo;If she thought he
+      preferred some other girl to her, she would merely say: 'If John has
+      discovered that he likes Eileen the better, why, that is all right; but
+      there wouldn't be anything to prevent seeing Eileen take John from hurting
+      like the deuce. Did you ever lose a man you loved, Katy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I did not!&rdquo; said Katy emphatically. &ldquo;We didn't do any four or five
+      years' philanderin' to see if a man 'could make good' when I was a
+      youngster. When a girl and her laddie stood up to each other and looked
+      each other straight in the eye and had the great understanding, there
+      weren't no question of whether he could do for her what her father and
+      mither had been doing, nor of how much he had to earn before they would be
+      able to begin life together. They just caught hands and hot-footed it to
+      the praste and told him to read the banns the next Sunday, and when the
+      law allowed they was man and wife and taking what life had for them the
+      way it came, and together. All this philanderin' that young folks do
+      nowadays is just pure nonsense, and waste of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; laughed Linda. &ldquo;When my brave comes along with his blanket I'll
+      just step under, and then if anybody tries to take my man I'll have the
+      right to go on the warpath and have a scalping party that would be some
+      satisfaction to the soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they served the dinner, and when the guests had left the dining room,
+      Katy closed the doors, and brought on the delicacies she had hidden for
+      Linda and patted and cajoled her while she ate like any healthy, hungry
+      young creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;'Ave, atque vale!' Cotyledon!&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      Linda slid down the side of the canyon with the deftness of the expert. At
+      the first available crevice she thrust in her Alpine stick, and bracing
+      herself, gained a footing. Then she turned and by use of her fingers and
+      toes worked her way back to the plan, she had passed. She was familiar
+      with many members of she family, but such a fine specimen she seldom had
+      found and she could not recall having seen it in all of her botanies.
+      Opposite the plant she worked out a footing, drove her stick deep at the
+      base of a rock to brace herself, and from the knapsack on her back took a
+      sketchbook and pencil and began rapidly copying the thick fleshy leaves of
+      the flattened rosette, sitting securely at the edge of a rock. She worked
+      swiftly and with breathless interest. When she had finished the flower she
+      began sketching in the moss-covered face of the boulder against which it
+      grew, and other bits of vegetation near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, Coty,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it is very probable that I can come a few
+      simoleons with you. You are becoming better looking ever minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a touch of color she margined one side of her drawing with a little
+      spray of Pentstemon whose bright tubular flower the canyon knew as
+      &ldquo;hummingbird's dinner horn.&rdquo; That gave, her the idea of introducing a
+      touch of living interest, so bearing down upon the flowers from the upper
+      right-hand corner of her drawing she deftly sketched in a ruby-throated
+      hummingbird, and across the bottom of the sheet the lace of a few leaves
+      of fern. Then she returned the drawing and pencil to her knapsack, and
+      making sure of her footing, worked her way forward. With her long slender
+      fingers she began teasing the plant loose from the rock and the
+      surrounding soil. The roots penetrated deeper than she had supposed and in
+      her interest she forgot her precarious footing and pulled hard. The plant
+      gave way unexpectedly, and losing her balance, Linda plunged down the side
+      of the canyon catching wildly at shrubs and bushes and bruising herself
+      severely on stones, finally landing in a sitting posture on the road that
+      traversed the canyon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not seriously hurt, but she did not present a picturesque figure
+      as she sprawled in the road, her booted feet thrust straight before her,
+      one of her long black braids caught on a bush at her back, her blouse
+      pulled above her breeches, the contents of her knapsack decorating the
+      canyon side and the road around her; but high in one hand, without break
+      or blemish, she triumphantly held aloft the rare Cotyledon. She shrugged
+      her shoulders, wiggled her toes, and moved her arms to assure herself that
+      no bones were broken; then she glanced at her drawings and the fruits of
+      her day's collecting scattered on the roadside around her. She was in the
+      act of rising when a motor car containing two young men shot around a
+      curve of the canyon, swerved to avoid running over her, and stopped as
+      abruptly as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a girl!&rdquo; cried the driver, and both men sprang to the road and
+      hurried to Linda's assistance. Her dark cheeks were red with
+      mortification, but she managed to recover her feet and tuck in her blouse
+      before they reached her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We heard you coming down,&rdquo; said the elder of the young men, &ldquo;and we
+      thought you might be a bear. Are you sure you're not hurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood before them, a lithe slender figure, vivid with youth and
+      vitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am able to stand,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so of course I haven't broken any bones.
+      I think I am fairly well battered, but you will please to observe that
+      there isn't a scratch on Cotyledon, and I brought her down&mdash;at least
+      I think it's she&mdash;from the edge of that boulder away up there. Isn't
+      she a beauty? Only notice the delicate frosty 'bloom' on her leaves!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should prefer,&rdquo; said the younger of the men, &ldquo;to know whether you have
+      any broken bones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure I am all right,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;I have falling down mountains
+      reduced to an exact science. I'll bet you couldn't slide that far and
+      bring down Coty without a scratch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, which is the more precious,&rdquo; said the young man. &ldquo;Yourself or the
+      specimen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the specimen!&rdquo; answered Linda in impatience. &ldquo;California is full of
+      girls; but this is the finest Cotyledon of this family I have ever seen.
+      Don't mistake this for any common stonecrop. It looks to me like an
+      Echeveria. I know what I mean to do with the picture I have made of her,
+      and I know exactly where she is going to grow from this day on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there any way we can help you?&rdquo; inquired the elder of the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time Linda glanced at him, and her impression was that he
+      was decidedly attractive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you!&rdquo; she answered briskly. &ldquo;I am going to climb back up to the
+      boulder and collect the belongings I spilled on the way down. Then I am
+      going to carry Coty to the car line in a kind of triumphal march, because
+      she is the rarest find that I have ever made. I hope you have no dark
+      designs on Coty, because this is 'what the owner had to do to redeem
+      her.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda indicated her trail down the canyon side, brushed soil and twigs
+      from her trousers, turned her straight young back, carefully set down her
+      specimen, and by the aid of her recovered stick began expertly making her
+      way up the canyon side. &ldquo;Here, let me do that,&rdquo; offered the younger man.
+      &ldquo;You rest until I collect your belongings.&rdquo; Linda glanced back over her
+      shoulder. &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have a mental inventory of all the
+      pencils and knives and trowels I must find. You might overlook the most
+      important part of my paraphernalia; and really I am not damaged. I'm
+      merely hurt. Good-bye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda started back up the side of the canyon, leaving the young men to
+      enter their car and drive away. For a minute both of them stood watching
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will girls be wearing and doing next?&rdquo; asked the elder of the two as
+      he started his car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have a girl wear when she is occupied with coasting down
+      canyons?&rdquo; said his friend. &ldquo;And as for what she is doing, it's probable
+      that every high-school girl in Los Angeles has a botanical collection to
+      make before she graduates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see!&rdquo; said the man driving. &ldquo;She is only a high-school kid, but did you
+      notice that she is going to make an extremely attractive young woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I noticed just that; I noticed it very particularly,&rdquo; answered the
+      younger man. &ldquo;And I noticed also that she either doesn't know it, or
+      doesn't give a flip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda collected her belongings, straightened her hair and clothing, and,
+      with her knapsack in place, and leaning rather on heavily on her walking
+      stick, made her way down the road to the abutment of a small rustic bridge
+      where she stopped to rest. The stream at her feet was noisy and icy cold.
+      It rushed through narrow defiles in the rock, beat itself to foam against
+      the faces a of the big stones, fell over jutting cliffs, spread in
+      whispering pools, wound back and forth across the road at its will,
+      singing every foot of its downward way and watering beds of crisp, cool
+      miners' lettuce, great ferns, and heliotrope, climbing clematis, soil and
+      blue-eyed grass. All along its length grew willows, and in a few places
+      white-bodied sycamores. Everywhere over the walls red above it that
+      vegetation could find a footing grew mosses, vines, flowers, and shrubs.
+      On the shadiest side homed most of the ferns and the Cotyledon. In the
+      sun, larkspur, lupin, and monkey flower; everywhere wild rose, holly,
+      mahogany, gooseberry, and bayoneted yucca all intermingling in a curtain
+      of variegated greens, brocaded with flower arabesques of vivid red, white,
+      yellow, and blue. Canyon wrens and vireos sang as they nested. The air was
+      clear, cool, and salty from the near-by sea. Myriad leaf shadows danced on
+      the black roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed the
+      wavering image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea swallow. Linda
+      studied the canyon with intent eyes, but bruised flesh pleaded, so
+      reluctantly she arose, shouldered her belongings, and slowly followed the
+      road out to the car line that passed through Lilac Valley, still carefully
+      bearing in triumph the precious Cotyledon. An hour later she entered the
+      driveway of her home. She stopped to set her plant carefully in the wild
+      garden she and her father had worked all her life at collecting, then
+      followed the back porch and kitchen route.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever have ye been doing to yourself, honey?&rdquo; cried Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came a cropper down Multiflores Canyon where it is so steep that it
+      leans the other way. I pretty well pulverized myself for a pulverulent,
+      Katy, which is a poor joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now ain't that just my luck!&rdquo; wailed Katy, snatching a cake cutter and
+      beginning hurriedly to stamp out little cakes from the dough before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't understand in exactly what way,&rdquo; said Linda, absently
+      rubbing her elbows and her knees. &ldquo;Seems to me it's my promontories that
+      have been knocked off, not yours, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and ain't it just like ye,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;to be coming in late, and
+      all banged up when Miss Eileen has got sudden notice that there is going
+      to be company again and I have an especial dinner to serve, and never in
+      the world can I manage if ye don't help me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, who is coming now?&rdquo; asked Linda, seating herself on the nearest
+      chair and beginning to unfasten her boots slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, first of all, there is Mr. Gilman, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Of course,'&rdquo; conceded Linda. &ldquo;If he tried to get past our house, Eileen
+      is perfectly capable of setting it on fire to stop him. She's got him
+      'vamped' properly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh I don't know that ye should say just that,&rdquo; said Katy &ldquo;Eileen is a
+      mighty pretty girl, and she is SOME manager.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can stake your hilarious life she is,&rdquo; said Linda, viciously kicking
+      a boot to the center of the kitchen. &ldquo;She can manage to go downtown for
+      lunch and be invited out to dinner thirteen times a week, and leave us at
+      home to eat bread and milk, bread heavily stressed. She can manage to get
+      every cent of the income from the property in her fingers, and a great big
+      girl like me has to go to high school looking so tacky that even the boys
+      are beginning to comment on it. Manage, I'll say she can manage, not to
+      mention managing to snake John Gilman right out of Marian's fingers. I
+      doubt if Marian fully realizes yet that she's lost her man; and I happen
+      to know that she just plain loved John!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The second boot landed beside the first, then Linda picked them both up
+      and started toward the back hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honey, are ye too bad hurt to help me any?&rdquo; asked Katy, as she passed
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Give me a few minutes to take a bath and
+      step into my clothes and then I'll be on the job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a black scowl on her face, Linda climbed the dingy back stairway in
+      her stocking-feet. At the head of the stairs she paused one minute,
+      glanced at the gloom of her end of the house, then she turned and walked
+      to the front of the hall where there were potted ferns, dainty white
+      curtains, and bright rugs. The door of the guest room stood open and she
+      could see that it was filled with fresh flowers and ready for occupancy.
+      The door of her sister's room was slightly ajar and she pushed it open and
+      stood looking inside. In her state of disarray she made a shocking
+      contrast to the flowerlike figure busy before a dressing table. Linda was
+      dark, narrow, rawboned, overgrown in height, and forthright of
+      disposition. Eileen was a tiny woman, delicately moulded, exquisitely
+      colored, and one of the most perfectly successful tendrils from the
+      original clinging vine in her intercourse with men, and with such women as
+      would tolerate the clinging-vine idea in the present forthright days. With
+      a strand of softly curled hair in one hand and a fancy pin in the other,
+      Eileen turned a disapproving look upon her sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the great idea?&rdquo; demanded Linda shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's perfectly splendid,&rdquo; answered Eileen. &ldquo;John Gilman's best friend
+      is motoring around here looking for a location to build a home. He is an
+      author and young and good looking and not married, and he thinks he would
+      like to settle somewhere near Los Angeles. Of course John would love to
+      have him in Lilac Valley because he hopes to build a home here some day
+      for himself. His name is Peter Morrison and John says that his articles
+      and stories have horse sense, logic, and humor, and he is making a lot of
+      money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then God help John Gilman, if he thinks now that he is in love with you,&rdquo;
+       said Linda dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen arched her eyebrows, thinned to a hair line, and her lips drew
+      together in disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I can't understand,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;is how you can be so unspeakably
+      vulgar, Linda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laughed sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this Peter Morrison and John are our guests for dinner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;I am going to show them this valley inside and out.
+      I'm so glad it's spring. We're at our very best. It would be perfectly
+      wonderful to have an author for a neighbor, and he must be going to build
+      a real house, because he has his architect with him; and John says that
+      while he is young, he has done several awfully good houses. He has seen a
+      couple of them in in San Francisco.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up the flue goes Marian's chance of drawing the plans for John Gilman's
+      house,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have heard him say a dozen times he would not build a
+      house unless Marian made the plans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen deftly placed the strand of hair and set the jewelled pin with
+      precision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just possibly things have changed slightly,&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I observe that they have. Marian has sold the home she
+      adored. She is leaving friends she loved and trusted, and who were
+      particularly bound to her by a common grief without realizing exactly how
+      it is happening. She certainly must know that you have taken her lover,
+      and I have not a doubt but that is the reason she has discovered she can
+      no longer work at home, that she must sell her property and spend the
+      money cooped up in a city, to study her profession further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; said Eileen, her face pale with anger, &ldquo;you are positively
+      insufferable. Will you leave my room and close the door after you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Katy has just informed me,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that this dinner party
+      doesn't come off without my valued assistance, and before I agree to
+      assist, I'll know ONE thing. Are you proposing to entertain these three
+      men yourself, or have you asked Marian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen indicated an open note lying on her dressing table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know they were coming until an hour ago,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;<i>I</i>
+      barely had time to fill the vases and dust, and then I ran up to dress so
+      that there would be someone presentable when they arrive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then, we'll agree that this is a surprise party, but if John
+      Gilman has told you so much about them, you must have been expecting them,
+      and in a measure prepared for them at any time. Haven't you talked it over
+      with Marian, and told her that you would want her when they came?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen was extremely busy with another wave of hair. She turned her back
+      and her voice was not quite steady as she answered. &ldquo;Ever since Marian got
+      this 'going to the city to study' idea in her head I have scarcely seen
+      her. She had an awful job to empty the house, and pack such things as she
+      wants to keep, and she is working overtime on a very special plan that she
+      thinks maybe she'll submit in a prize competition offered by a big firm of
+      San Francisco architects, so I have scarcely seen her for six weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you never once went over to help her with her work, or to encourage
+      her or to comfort her? You can't think Marian can leave this valley and
+      not be almost heartbroken,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;You just make me almost wonder at
+      you. When you think of the kind of friends that Marian Thorne's father and
+      mother, and our father and mother were, and how we children were reared
+      together, and the good times we have had in these two houses&mdash;and
+      then the awful day when the car went over the cliff, and how Marian clung
+      to us and tried to comfort us, when her own health was broken&mdash;and
+      Marian's the same Marian she has always been, only nicer every day&mdash;how
+      you can sit there and say you have scarcely seen her in six of the hardest
+      weeks of her life, certainly surprises me. I'll tell you this: I told Katy
+      I would help her, but I won't do it if you don't go over and make Marian
+      come tonight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen turned to her sister and looked at her keenly. Linda's brow was
+      sullen, and her jaw set.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bed would look mighty good to me and I will go and get into mine this
+      minute if you don't say you will go and ask her, in such a way that she
+      comes,&rdquo; she threatened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen hesitated a second and then said: &ldquo;All right, since you make such a
+      point of it I will ask her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Then I'll help Katy the very best I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. The House of Dreams
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In less than an hour, Linda was in the kitchen, dressed in an old green
+      skirt and an orange blouse. Katy pinned one of her aprons on the girl and
+      told her that her first job was to set the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Miss Eileen has given most particular orders that I use the very best
+      of everything. Lay the table for four, and you are to be extremely careful
+      in serving not to spill the soup.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood very quietly for a second, her heavy black brows drawn
+      together in deep thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did Eileen issue these instructions?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not five minutes ago,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;She just left me kitchen and I'll say
+      I never saw her lookin' such a perfect picture. That new dress of hers is
+      the most becoming one she has ever had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost unconsciously, Linda's hand reached to the front of her well-worn
+      blouse, and she glanced downward at her skirt and shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um-hm,&rdquo; she said meditatively, &ldquo;another new dress for Eileen, which means
+      that I will get nothing until next month's allowance comes in, if I do
+      then. The table set for four, which, interpreted, signifies that she has
+      asked Marian in such a way that Marian won't come. And the caution as to
+      care with the soup means that I am to serve my father's table like a paid
+      waitress. Katy, I have run for over three years on Eileen's schedule, but
+      this past year I am beginning to use my brains and I am reaching the place
+      of self-assertion. That programme won't do, Katy. It's got to be
+      completely revised. You just watch me and see how I follow those
+      instructions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda marched out of the kitchen door and started across the lawn in
+      the direction of a big brown house dimly outlined through widely spreading
+      branches of ancient live oaks, palm, and bamboo thickets. She entered the
+      house without knocking and in the hall uttered a low penetrating whistle.
+      It was instantly answered from upstairs. Linda began climbing, and met
+      Marian at the top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Marian,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I had no idea you were so far along. The house
+      is actually empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Practically everything went yesterday,&rdquo; answered Marian. &ldquo;Those things of
+      Father's and Mother's and my own that I wish to keep I have put in
+      storage, and the remainder went to James's Auction Rooms. The house is
+      sold, and I am leaving in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that explains,&rdquo; questioned Linda, &ldquo;why you refused Eileen's
+      invitation to dinner tonight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary,&rdquo; answered Marian, &ldquo;an invitation to dinner tonight would
+      be particularly and peculiarly acceptable to me, since the kitchen is
+      barren as the remainder of the house, and I was intending to slip over
+      when your room was lighted to ask if I might spend the night with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda suddenly gathered her friend in her arms and held her tight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, thank heaven that you felt sufficiently sure of me to come to me
+      when you needed me. Of course you shall spend the night with me; and I
+      must have been mistaken in thinking Eileen had been here. She probably
+      will come any minute. There are guests for the night. John is bringing
+      that writer friend of his. Of course you know about him. It's Peter
+      Morrison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian nodded her head. &ldquo;Of course! John has always talked of him. He had
+      some extremely clever articles in The Post lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he is one,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;and an architect who is touring with him
+      is two; they are looking for a location to build a house for the writer.
+      You can see that it would be a particularly attractive feather in our cap
+      if he would endorse our valley sufficiently to home in it. So Eileen has
+      invited them to sample our brand of entertainment, and in the morning no
+      doubt she will be delighted to accompany them and show them all the
+      beautiful spots not yet preempted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, heavens,&rdquo; cried Marian, &ldquo;I'm glad I never showed her my spot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you are particular about wanting a certain place I sincerely
+      hope you did not,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure I never did,&rdquo; answered Marian. &ldquo;I so love one spot that I have
+      been most secretive about it. I am certain I never went further than to
+      say there was a place on which I would love to build for myself the house
+      of my dreams. I have just about finished getting that home on paper, and I
+      truly have high hopes that I may stand at least a fair chance of winning
+      with it the prize Nicholson and Snow are offering. That is one of the
+      reasons why I am hurrying on my way to San Francisco much sooner than I
+      had expected to go. I haven't a suitable dinner dress because my trunks
+      have gone, but among such old friends it won't matter. I have one fussy
+      blouse in my bag, and I'll be over as soon as I can see to closing up the
+      house and dressing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda hurried home, and going to the dining room, she laid the table for
+      six in a deft and artistic manner. She filled a basket with beautiful
+      flowers of her own growing for a centerpiece, and carefully followed
+      Eileen's instruction to use the best of everything. When she had finished
+      she went to the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;take a look at my handiwork.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's just lovely,&rdquo; said Katy heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite agree with you,&rdquo; answered Linda, &ldquo;and now in pursuance of a
+      recently arrived at decision, I have resigned, vamoosed, quit, dead
+      stopped being waitress for Eileen. I was seventeen my last birthday.
+      Hereafter when there are guests I sit at my father's table, and you will
+      have to do the best you can with serving, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it's just exactly right ye are,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;I'll do my best, and if
+      that's not good enough, Miss Eileen knows what she can do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now listen to you,&rdquo; laughed Linda. &ldquo;Katy, you couldn't be driven to leave
+      me, by anything on this earth that Eileen could do; you know you
+      couldn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy chuckled quietly. &ldquo;Sure, I wouldn't be leaving ye, lambie,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;We'll get everything ready, and I can serve I six as nicely as anyone.
+      But you're not forgetting that Miss Eileen said most explicit to lay the
+      table for FOUR?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not forgetting,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;For Eileen's sake I am I sorry to say
+      that her ship is on the shoals. She is not going to have clear sailing
+      with little sister Linda any longer. This is the year of woman's rights,
+      you know, Katy, and I am beginning to realize that my rights have been
+      badly infringed upon for lo these many years. If Eileen chooses to make a
+      scene before guests, that is strictly up to Eileen. Now what is it you
+      want me to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy directed and Linda worked swiftly. Soon they heard a motor stop, and
+      laughing voices told them that the guests had arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I wonder,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;whether Marian is here yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that minute Marian appeared at the kitchen door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; she said breathlessly, &ldquo;I am feeling queer about this. Eileen
+      hasn't been over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all right,&rdquo; said Linda casually. &ldquo;The folks have come, and she
+      was only waiting to make them a bit at home before she ran after you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was not allowing me much time to dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's 'cause she knew you did not need it,&rdquo; retorted Linda. &ldquo;The more
+      you fuss up, the less handsome you are, and you never owned anything in
+      your life so becoming as that old red blouse. So farewell, Katy, we're due
+      to burst into high society tonight. We're going to help Eileen vamp a
+      lawyer, and an author, and an architect, one apiece. Which do you prefer,
+      Marian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take the architect,&rdquo; said Marian. &ldquo;We should have something in
+      common since I am going to be a great architect myself one of these days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that is too bad,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I'll have to rearrange the table if
+      you insist, because I took him, and left you the author, and it was for
+      love of you I did it. I truly wanted him myself, all the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They stopped in the dining room and Marian praised Linda's work in laying
+      the table; and then, together they entered the living room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the moment of their entrance, Eileen was talking animatedly about the
+      beauties of the valley as a location for a happy home. When she saw the
+      two girls she paused, the color swiftly faded from her face, and Linda,
+      who was watching to see what would happen, noticed the effort she made at
+      self-control, but she was very sure that their guests did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It never occurred to Linda that anyone would consider good looks in
+      connection with her overgrown, rawboned frame and lean face, but she was
+      accustomed to seeing people admire Marian, for Marian was a perfectly
+      modeled woman with peach bloom cheeks, deep, dark eyes, her face framed in
+      a waving mass of hair whose whiteness dated from the day that the brakes
+      of her car failed and she plunged down the mountain with her father beside
+      her, and her mother and Doctor and Mrs. Strong in the back seat. Ten days
+      afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin white. Now it
+      framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos. &ldquo;Striking&rdquo; was
+      perhaps the one adjective which would best describe her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman came hastily to greet them. Linda, after a swift glance at
+      Eileen, turned astonished eyes on their guests. For one second she looked
+      at the elder of them, then at the younger. There was no recognition in her
+      eyes, and there was a decided negative in a swift movement of her head.
+      Both men understood that she did not wish them to mention that they ever
+      had seen her previously. For an instant there was a strained situation.
+      Eileen was white with anger. John Gilman was looking straight at Marian,
+      and in his soul he must have wondered if he had been wise in neglecting
+      her for Eileen. Peter Morrison and his architect, Henry Anderson, had two
+      things to think about. One was the stunning beauty of Marian Thorne as she
+      paused in the doorway, the light misting her white hair and deepening the
+      tints of her red waist The other was why the young girl facing them had
+      forbidden them to reveal that two hours before they had seen her in the
+      canyon. Katy, the efficient life-saver of the Strong family, announced
+      dinner, and Linda drew back the curtains and led the way to the dining
+      room, saying when they had arrived: &ldquo;I didn't have time in my hour's
+      notice to make elaborate place cards as I should have liked to do, so
+      these little pen sketches will have to serve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To cover his embarrassment and to satisfy his legal mind, John Gilman
+      turned to Linda, asking: &ldquo;Why 'an hour'? I told Eileen a week ago I was
+      expecting the boys today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that does not prove that Eileen mentioned it to me,&rdquo; answered Linda
+      quietly; &ldquo;so you must find your places from the cards I could prepare in a
+      hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This same preparation of cards at the round table placed Eileen between
+      the architect and the author, Marian between the author and John Gilman,
+      and Linda between Gilman and the architect, which added one more tiny gale
+      to the storm of fury that was raging in the breast of white-faced Eileen.
+      The situation was so strained that without fully understanding it, Marian,
+      who was several years older than either of the Strong sisters, knew that
+      although she was tired to the point of exhaustion she should muster what
+      reserve force she could to the end of making the dinner party particularly
+      attractive, because she was deeply interested in drawing to the valley
+      every suitable home seeker it was possible to locate there. It was the
+      unwritten law of the valley that whenever a home seeker passed through,
+      every soul who belonged exerted the strongest influence to prove that the
+      stars hung lower and shone bigger and in bluer heavens than anywhere else
+      on earth; that nowhere could be found air to equal the energizing salt
+      breezes from the sea, snow chilled, perfumed with almond and orange; that
+      the sun shone brighter more days in the year, and the soil produced a
+      greater variety of vegetables and fruits than any other spot of the same
+      size on God's wonderful footstool. This could be done with unanimity and
+      enthusiasm by every resident of Lilac Valley for the very simple reason
+      that it was the truth. The valley stood with its steep sides raying blue
+      from myriad wild lilacs; olives and oranges sloped down to the flat floor,
+      where cultivated ranches and gardens were so screened by eucalyptus and
+      pepper trees, palm and live oak, myriads of roses of every color and
+      variety, and gaudy plants gathered there from the entire girth of the
+      tropical world, that to the traveler on the highway trees and flowers
+      predominated. The greatest treasure of the valley was the enthusiastic
+      stream of icy mountain water that wandered through the near-by canyon and
+      followed the length of the valley on its singing, chuckling way to the
+      ocean. All the residents of Lilac Valley had to do to entrance strangers
+      with the location was to show any one of a dozen vantage points, and let
+      visitors test for themselves the quality of the sunshine and air, and
+      study the picture made by the broad stretch of intensively cultivated
+      valley, walled on either side by mountains whose highest peaks were often
+      cloud-draped and for ever shifting their delicate pastel shades from gray
+      to blue, from lavender to purple, from tawny yellow to sepia, under the
+      play of the sun and clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not been seated three minutes before Linda realized from her
+      knowledge of Eileen that the shock had been too great, if such a thing
+      might be said of so resourceful a creature as Eileen. Evidently she was
+      going to sulk in the hope that this would prove that any party was a
+      failure at which she did not exert herself to be gracious. It had not been
+      in Linda's heart to do more than sit quietly in the place belonging by
+      right to her, but when she realized what was going to happen, she sent
+      Marian one swift appealing glance, and then desperately plunged into
+      conversation to cover Eileen's defection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been told,&rdquo; she said, addressing the author, &ldquo;that you are looking
+      for a home in California. Is this true, or is it merely that every good
+      Californian hopes this will happen when any distinguished Easterner comes
+      our way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can scarcely answer you,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison, &ldquo;because my ideas on the
+      subject are still slightly nebulous, but I am only too willing to see them
+      become concrete.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have struck exactly the right place,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;We have concrete
+      by the wagon load in this valley and we are perfectly willing to donate
+      the amount required to materialize your ideas. Do you dream of a whole
+      ranch or only a nest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact is,&rdquo; answered Peter Morrison with a most attractive drawl
+      in his slow speech, &ldquo;the fact is the dimensions of my dream must fit my
+      purse. Ever since I finished college I have been in newspaper work and I
+      have lived in an apartment in New York except while I was abroad. When I
+      came back my paper sent me to San Francisco and from there I motored down
+      to see for myself if the wonderful things that are written about Los
+      Angeles County are true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not much of a compliment to us,&rdquo; said Linda slowly. &ldquo;How do you
+      think we would dare write them if they were not true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This caused such a laugh that everyone felt much easier. Marian turned her
+      dark eyes toward Peter Morrison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda and I are busy people,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We waste little time in
+      indirections, so I hope it's not out of the way for me to ask
+      straightforwardly if you are truly in earnest, about wanting a home in
+      Lilac Valley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'll have to answer you,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;that I have an attractive
+      part of the 'makin's' and I am in deadly earnest about wanting a home
+      somewhere. I am sick in my soul of narrow apartments and wheels and the
+      rush and roar of the city. There was a time when I ate and drank it. It
+      was the very breath of life to me. I charged on Broadway like a
+      caterpillar tank charging in battle; but it is very remarkable how quickly
+      one changes in this world. I have had some success in my work, and the
+      higher I go, the better work I feel I can do in a quiet place and among
+      less enervating surroundings. John and I were in college together,
+      roommates, and no doubt he has told you that we graduated with the same
+      class. He has found his location here and I would particularly enjoy
+      having a home near him. They tell me there are well-trained servants to
+      look after a house and care for a bachelor, so I truly feel that if I can
+      find a location I would like, and if Henry can plan me a house, and I can
+      stretch my purse to cover the investment, that there is a very large
+      possibility that somewhere within twenty miles of Los Angeles I may find
+      the home of my dreams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would almost expect,&rdquo; said Marian, &ldquo;that a writer would say something
+      more original. This valley is filled with people who came here saying
+      precisely what you have said; and the lure of the land won them and here
+      they are, shameless boosters of California.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why shameless?&rdquo; inquired Henry Anderson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because California so verifies the wildest statement that can be made
+      concerning her that one may go the limit of imagination without shame,&rdquo;
+       laughed Marian. &ldquo;I try in all my dealings to stick to the straight and
+      narrow path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, kid, don't stick to the straight and narrow,&rdquo; broke in Linda,
+      &ldquo;there's no scenery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen laid down her fork and stared in white-lipped amazement at the two
+      girls, but she was utterly incapable of forgetting herself and her neatly
+      arranged plans to have the three cultivated and attractive young men all
+      to herself for the evening. She realized too, from the satisfaction
+      betrayed in the glances these men were exchanging among each other, the
+      ease with which they sat, and the gusto with which they ate the food Katy
+      was deftly serving them, that something was happening which never had
+      happened at the Strong table since she had presided as its head, her sole
+      endeavor having been to flatter her guests or to extract flattery for
+      herself from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what makes this valley so adorable,&rdquo; said Marian when at last she
+      could make herself heard. &ldquo;It is neither straight nor narrow. The wing of
+      a white sea swallow never swept a lovelier curve on the breast of the
+      ocean than the line of this valley. My mother was the dearest little
+      woman, and she used to say that this valley was outlined by a gracious
+      gesture from the hand of God in the dawn of Creation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Morrison deliberately turned in his chair, his eyes intent on
+      Marian's earnest face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You almost make me want to say, in the language of an old hymn I used to
+      hear my mother sing, 'Here will I set up my rest.' With such a name as
+      Lilac Valley and with such a thought in the heart concerning it, I
+      scarcely feel that there is any use in looking further. How about it,
+      Henry? Doesn't it sound conclusive to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly does,&rdquo; answered Henry Anderson, &ldquo;and from what I could see
+      as we drove in, it looks as well as it sounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Morrison turned to his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gilman,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're a lawyer; you should know the things I'd like
+      to. Are there desirable homesites still to be found in the valley, and
+      does the inflation of land at the present minute put it out of my reach?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that is on a par with the average question asked a lawyer,&rdquo;
+       answered Gilman, &ldquo;but part of it I can answer definitely and at once. I
+      think every acre of land suitable for garden or field cultivation is
+      taken. I doubt if there is much of the orchard land higher up remaining
+      and what there is would command a rather stiff price; but if you would be
+      content with some small plateau at the base of a mountain where you could
+      set any sort of a house and have&mdash;say two or three acres, mostly of
+      sage and boulders and greasewood and yucca around it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why in this world are you talking about stones and sage and greasewood?&rdquo;
+       cried Linda. &ldquo;Next thing they'll be asking about mountain lions and
+      rattlesnakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Gilman, &ldquo;I fear none of us has remembered to
+      present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist. She got her start from her
+      father, who was one of the greatest nerve specialists the world ever has
+      known. She knows every inch of the mountains, the canyons and the desert.
+      She always says that she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe, while her
+      father hunted the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland. What should I
+      have said when describing a suitable homesite for Peter, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have assumed that immediately, Peter,&rdquo;&mdash;Linda lifted her
+      eyes to Morrison's face with a sparkle of gay challenge, and by way of
+      apology interjected&mdash;&ldquo;I am only a kid, you know, so I may call John's
+      friend Peter&mdash;you should have assumed that sage and greasewood would
+      simply have vanished from any home location chosen by Peter, leaving it
+      all lacy blue with lilac, and misty white with lemonade bush, and lovely
+      gold with monkey flower, and purple with lupin, and painted blood red with
+      broad strokes of Indian paint brush, and beautifully lighted with feathery
+      flames from Our Lord's Candles, and perfumy as altar incense with wild
+      almond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my soul,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison. &ldquo;Good people, I have located. I have
+      come to stay. I would like three acres but I could exist with two; an acre
+      would seem an estate to me, and my ideas of a house, Henry, are
+      shriveling. I did have a dream of something that must have been precious
+      near a home. There might have been an evanescent hint of flitting
+      draperies and inexperienced feet in it, but for the sake of living and
+      working in such a location as Miss Linda describes, I would gladly cut my
+      residence to a workroom and a sleeping room and kitchen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't do,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;A house is not a house in California without a
+      furnace and a bathroom. We are cold as blue blazes here when the sun goes
+      down and the salty fog creeps up from the sea, and the icy mist rolls down
+      from the mountains to chill our bones; and when it has not rained for six
+      months at a stretch, your own private swimming pool is a comfort. This to
+      add verisimilitude to what everyone else in Lilac Valley is going to tell
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't thought I would need a fire,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;and I was depending
+      on the ocean for my bathtub. I am particularly fond of a salt rub.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So far, Eileen had not deigned to enter the conversation. It was all so
+      human, so far from her ideas of entertaining that the disapproval on her
+      lips was not sufficiently veiled to be invisible, and John Gilman,
+      glancing in her direction, realized that he was having the best time he
+      had ever had in the Strong household since the passing of his friends,
+      Doctor and Mrs. Strong, vaguely wondered why. And it occurred to him that
+      Linda and Marian were dominating the party. He said the most irritating
+      thing possible in the circumstances: &ldquo;I am afraid you are not feeling well
+      this evening, Eileen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen laughed shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one perfect thing about me,&rdquo; she said with closely cut precision, &ldquo;is
+      my health. I haven't the faintest notion what it means to be ill. I am
+      merely waiting for the conversation to take a I turn where I can join in
+      it intelligently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, bless the child!&rdquo; exclaimed Linda. &ldquo;Can't you talk intelligently
+      about a suitable location for a home? On what subject is a woman supposed
+      to be intelligent if she is not at her best on the theme of home. If you
+      really are not interested you had better begin to polish up, because it
+      appeals to me that the world goes just so far in one direction, and then
+      it whirls to the right-about and goes equally as far in the opposite
+      direction. If Daddy were living I think he would say we have reached the
+      limit with apartment house homes minus fireplaces, with restaurant dining
+      minus a blessing, with jazz music minus melody, with jazz dancing minus
+      grace, with national progress minus cradles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda!&rdquo; cried Eileen indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;Do I get the shillalah for that? Weren't
+      all of us rocked in cradles? I think that the pendulum has swung far and
+      it is time to swing back to where one man and one woman choose any little
+      spot on God's footstool, build a nest and plan their lives in accord with
+      personal desire and inclination instead of aping their neighbors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; cried Henry Anderson. &ldquo;Miss Linda, if you see any suitable spot,
+      and you think I would serve for a bug-catcher, won't you please stake the
+      location?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know about that,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Would it be the old case of
+      'I furnish the bread and you furnish the water'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison, &ldquo;it would not. Henry is doing mighty well. I
+      guarantee that he would furnish a cow that would produce real cream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How joyous!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I feel quite competent to manage the bread
+      question. We'll call that settled then. When I next cast an appraising eye
+      over my beloved valley, I shan't select the choicest spot in it for Peter
+      Morrison to write a book in; and I want to warn you people when you go
+      hunting to keep a mile away from Marian's plot. She has had her location
+      staked from childhood and has worked on her dream house until she has it
+      all ready to put the ice in the chest and scratch the match for the living
+      room fire-logs. The one thing she won't ever tell is where her location
+      is, but wherever it is, Peter Morrison, don't you dare take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't for the world,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison gravely. &ldquo;If Miss Thorne
+      will tell me even on which side of the valley her location lies, I will
+      agree to stay on the other side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well there is one thing you can depend upon,&rdquo; said the irrepressible
+      Linda before Marian had time to speak. &ldquo;It is sure to be on the sunny
+      side. Every living soul in California is looking for a place in the sun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will make a note of it,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison. &ldquo;But isn't there
+      enough sun in all this lovely valley that I may have a place in it too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go straight ahead and select any location you like,&rdquo; said Marian. &ldquo;I
+      give you the freedom of the valley. There's not one chance in ten thousand
+      that you would find or see anything attractive about the one secluded spot
+      I have always hoped I might some day own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is not fooling, then?&rdquo; asked Peter Morrison. &ldquo;You truly have a place
+      selected where you would like to live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She truly has the spot selected and she truly has the house on paper and
+      it truly is a house of dreams,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I dream about it myself. When
+      she builds it and lives in it awhile and finds out all the things that are
+      wrong with it, then I am going to build one like it, only I shall
+      eliminate all the mistakes she has made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have often wondered,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson, &ldquo;if such a thing ever
+      happened as that people built a house and lived in it, say ten years, and
+      did not find one single thing about it that they would change if they had
+      it to build over again. I never have heard of such a case. Have any of
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure no one has,&rdquo; said John Gilman meditatively, &ldquo;and it's a queer
+      thing. I can't see why people don't plan a house the way they want it
+      before they build.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian turned to him&mdash;the same Marian he had fallen in love with when
+      they were children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mightn't it be,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;that it is due to changing conditions caused
+      by the rapid development of science and invention? If one had built the
+      most perfect house possible five years ago and learned today that
+      infinitely superior lighting and heating and living facilities could be
+      installed at much less expense and far greater convenience, don't you
+      think that one would want to change? Isn't life a series of changes?
+      Mustn't one be changing constantly to keep abreast of one's day and age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, surely,&rdquo; answered Gilman, &ldquo;and no doubt therein lies at least part
+      of the answer to Anderson's question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; added Marian, &ldquo;things happen in families. Sometimes more
+      babies than they expect come to newly married people and they require more
+      room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My goodness, yes!&rdquo; broke in Linda. &ldquo;Just look at Sylvia Townsend&mdash;twins
+      to begin with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda!&rdquo; breathed Eileen, aghast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So glad you like my name, dear,&rdquo; murmured Linda sweetly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; continued Marian, &ldquo;changes come to other people as they have
+      to me. I can't say that I had any fault to find with either the comforts
+      or the conveniences of Hawthorne House until Daddy and Mother were swept
+      from it at one cruel sweep; and after that it was nothing to me but a
+      haunted house, and I don't feel that I can be blamed for wanting to leave
+      it. I will be glad to know that there are people living in it who won't
+      see a big strong figure meditatively smoking before the fireplace and a
+      gray dove of a woman sitting on the arm of his chair. I will be glad, if
+      Fate is kind to me and people like my houses, to come back to the valley
+      when I can afford to and build myself a home that has no past&mdash;a
+      place, in fact, where I can furnish my own ghost, and if I meet myself on
+      the stairs then I won't be shocked by me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think there is a soul in the valley who blames you for selling
+      your home and going, Marian,&rdquo; said Linda soberly. &ldquo;I think it would be
+      foolish if you did not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The return to the living room brought no change. Eileen pouted while Linda
+      and Marian thoroughly enjoyed themselves and gave the guests a most
+      entertaining evening. So disgruntled was Eileen, when the young men had
+      gone, that she immediately went to her room, leaving Linda and Marian to
+      close the house and make their own arrangements for the night. Whereupon
+      Linda deliberately led Marian to the carefully dusted and flower-garnished
+      guest room and installed her with every comfort and convenience that the
+      house afforded. Then bringing her brushes from her own room, she and
+      Marian made themselves comfortable, visiting far into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if Peter Morrison will go to a real estate man in
+      the morning and look over the locations remaining in Lilac Valley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think he will,&rdquo; said Marian conclusively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that we did a whole lot of talking about
+      homes tonight; which reminds me, Marian, in packing have you put in your
+      plans? Have you got your last draft with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Marian, &ldquo;it's in one of the cases. I haven't anything but
+      two or three pencil sketches from which I drew the final plans as I now
+      think I'll submit them for the contest. Wouldn't it be a tall feather in
+      my cap, Linda, if by any chance l I should win that prize?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be more than a feather,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It would be a whole cap,
+      and a coat to wear with it, and a dress to match the coat, and slippers to
+      match the dress, and so forth just like 'The House That Jack Built.' Have
+      you those sketches, Marian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening her case, Marian slid from underneath the garments folded in it,
+      several sheets on which were roughly penciled sketches of the exterior of
+      a house&mdash;on the reverse, the upstairs and downstairs floor plans; and
+      sitting down, she explained these to Linda. Then she left them lying on a
+      table, waiting to be returned to her case before she replaced her clothes
+      in the morning. Both girls were fast asleep when a mischievous wind
+      slipped down the valley, and lightly lifting the top sheet, carried it
+      through the window, across the garden, and dropped it at the foot of a
+      honey-dripping loquat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because they had talked until late in the night of Marian's plans and
+      prospects in the city, of Peter Morrison's proposed residence in the
+      valley, of how lonely Linda would be without Marian, of everything
+      concerning their lives except the change in Eileen and John Gilman, the
+      two girls slept until late in the morning, so that there were but a few
+      minutes remaining in which Marian might dress, have a hasty breakfast and
+      make her train. In helping her, it fell to Linda to pack Marian's case.
+      She put the drawings she found on the table in the bottom, the clothing
+      and brushes on top of them, and closing the case, carried it herself until
+      she delivered it into the porter's hands as Marian boarded her train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. Linda Starts a Revolution
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The last glimpse Marian Thorne had of Linda was as she stood alone, waving
+      her hand, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, her final word cheery and
+      encouraging. Marian smiled and waved in return until the train bore her
+      away. Then she sat down wearily and stared unseeingly from a window. Life
+      did such very dreadful things to people. Her girlhood had been so happy.
+      Then came the day of the Black Shadow, but in her blackest hour she had
+      not felt alone. She had supposed she was leaning on John Gilman as
+      securely as she had leaned on her father. She had learned, with the loss
+      of her father, that one cannot be sure of anything in this world least of
+      all of human life. Yet in her darkest days she had depended on John
+      Gilman. She had every reason to believe that it was for her that he
+      struggled daily to gain a footing in his chosen profession. When success
+      came, when there was no reason that Marian could see why they might not
+      have begun life together, there had come a subtle change in John, and that
+      change had developed so rapidly that in a few weeks' time, she was forced
+      to admit that the companionship and loving attentions that once had been
+      all hers were now all Eileen's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat in the train, steadily carrying her mile after mile farther from
+      her home, and tried to think what had happened and how and why it had
+      happened. She could not feel that she had been wrong in her estimate of
+      John Gilman. Her valuation of him had been taught her by her father and
+      mother and by Doctor and Mrs. Strong and by John Gilman himself. Dating
+      from the time that Doctor Strong had purchased the property and built a
+      home in Lilac Valley beside Hawthorne House, Marian had admired Eileen and
+      had loved her. She was several years older than the beautiful girl she had
+      grown up beside. Age had not mattered; Eileen's beauty had not mattered.
+      Marian was good looking herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She always had known that Eileen had imposed upon her and was selfish with
+      her, but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully maneuvered, her
+      selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in retrospection
+      felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a small part of it. She
+      never had been able to see the inner workings of Eileen's heart. She was
+      not capable of understanding that when John Gilman was poor and struggling
+      Eileen had ignored him. It had not occurred to Marian that when the
+      success for which he struggled began to come generously, Eileen would
+      begin to covet the man she had previously disdained. She had always
+      striven to find friends among people of wealth and distinction. How was
+      Marian to know that when John began to achieve wealth and distinction,
+      Eileen would covet him also?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian could not know that Eileen had studied her harder than she ever
+      studied any book, that she had deliberately set herself to make the most
+      of every defect or idiosyncrasy in Marian, at the same time offering
+      herself as a charming substitute. Marian was prepared to be the mental,
+      the spiritual, and the physical mate of a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen was not prepared to be in truth and honor any of these. She was
+      prepared to make any emergency of life subservient to her own selfish
+      desires. She was prepared to use any man with whom she came in contact for
+      the furtherance of any whim that at the hour possessed her. What she
+      wanted was unbridled personal liberty, unlimited financial resources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian, almost numbed with physical fatigue and weeks of mental strain,
+      came repeatedly against the dead wall of ignorance when she tried to
+      fathom the change that had taken place between herself and John Gilman and
+      between herself and Eileen. Daniel Thorne was an older man than Doctor
+      Strong. He had accumulated more property. Marian had sufficient means at
+      her command to make it unnecessary for her to acquire a profession or work
+      for her living, but she had always been interested in and loved to plan
+      houses and help her friends with buildings they were erecting. When the
+      silence and the loneliness of her empty home enveloped her, she had begun,
+      at first as a distraction, to work on the drawings for a home that an
+      architect had made for one of her neighbors. She had been able to suggest
+      so many comforts and conveniences, and so to revise these plans that, at
+      first in a desultory way, later in real earnest, she had begun to draw
+      plans for houses. Then, being of methodical habit and mathematical mind,
+      she began scaling up the plans and figuring on the cost of building, and
+      so she had worked until she felt that she was evolving homes that could be
+      built for the same amount of money and lived in with more comfort and
+      convenience than the homes that many of her friends were having planned
+      for them by architects of the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To one spot in the valley she had gone from childhood as a secret place in
+      which to dream and study. She had loved that retreat until it had become a
+      living passion with her. The more John Gilman neglected her, the more she
+      concentrated upon her plans, and when the hour came in which she realized
+      what she had lost and what Eileen had won, she reached the decision to
+      sell her home, go to the city, and study until she knew whether she really
+      could succeed at her chosen profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she would come back to the valley, buy the spot she coveted, build
+      the house of which she dreamed, and in it she would spend the remainder of
+      her life making homes for the women who knew how to hold the love of men.
+      When she reached the city she had decided that if one could not have the
+      best in life, one must be content with the next best, and for her the next
+      best would be homes for other people, since she might not materialize the
+      home she had dreamed for John Gilman and herself. She had not wanted to
+      leave the valley. She had not wanted to lose John Gilman. She had not
+      wanted to part with the home she had been reared in. Yet all of these
+      things seemed to have been forced upon her. All Marian knew to do was to
+      square her shoulders, take a deep breath, put regrets behind her, and move
+      steadily toward the best future she could devise for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She carried letters of introduction to the San Francisco architects,
+      Nicholson and Snow, who had offered a prize for the best house that could
+      be built in a reasonable time for fifteen thousand dollars. She meant to
+      offer her plans in this competition. Through friends she had secured a
+      comfortable place in which to live and work. She need undergo no hardships
+      in searching for a home, in clothing herself, in paying for instruction in
+      the course in architecture she meant to pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Concerning Linda she could not resist a feeling of exultation. Linda was
+      one of the friends in Lilac Valley about whom Marian could think
+      wholeheartedly and lovingly. Sometimes she had been on the point of making
+      a suggestion to Linda, and then she had contented herself with waiting in
+      the thought that very soon there must come to the girl a proper sense of
+      her position and her rights. The experience of the previous night taught
+      Marian that Linda had arrived. She would no longer be the compliant little
+      sister who would run Eileen's errands, wait upon her guests and wear
+      disreputable clothing. When Linda reached a point where she was capable of
+      the performance of the previous night, Marian knew that she would proceed
+      to live up to her blue china in every ramification of life. She did not
+      know exactly how Linda would follow up the assertion of her rights that
+      she had made, but she did know that in some way she would follow it up,
+      because Linda was a very close reproduction of her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been almost constantly with him during his life, very much alone
+      since his death. She was a busy young person. From Marian's windows she
+      had watched the business of carrying on the wild-flower garden that Linda
+      and her father had begun. What the occupation was that kept the light
+      burning in Linda's room far into the night Marian did not know. For a long
+      time she had supposed that her studies were difficult for her, and when
+      she had asked Linda if it were not possible for her to prepare her lessons
+      without so many hours of midnight study she had caught the stare of frank
+      amazement with which the girl regarded her and in that surprised, almost
+      grieved look she had realized that very probably a daughter of Alexander
+      Strong, who resembled him as Linda resembled him, would not be compelled
+      to overwork to master the prescribed course of any city high school. What
+      Linda was doing during those midnight hours Marian did not know, but she
+      did know that she was not wrestling with mathematics and languages&mdash;at
+      least not all of the time. So Marian knowing Linda's gift with a pencil,
+      had come to the conclusion that she was drawing pictures; but
+      circumstantial evidence was all she had as a basis for her conviction.
+      Linda went her way silently and alone. She was acquainted with everyone
+      living in Lilac Valley, frank and friendly with all of them; aside from
+      Marian she had no intimate friend. Not another girl in the valley cared to
+      follow Linda's pursuits or to cultivate the acquaintance of the breeched,
+      booted girl, constantly devoting herself to outdoor study with her father
+      during his lifetime, afterward alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant after Marian had boarded her train Linda stood looking at
+      it, her heart so heavy that it pained acutely. She had not said one word
+      to make Marian feel that she did not want her to go. Not once had she put
+      forward the argument that Marian's going would leave her to depend
+      entirely for human sympathy upon the cook, and her guardian, also
+      administrator of the Strong estate, John Gilman. So long as he was
+      Marian's friend Linda had admired John Gilman. She had gone to him for
+      some measure of the companionship she had missed in losing her father.
+      Since Gilman had allowed himself to be captivated by Eileen, Linda had
+      harbored a feeling concerning him almost of contempt. Linda was so
+      familiar with every move that Eileen made, so thoroughly understood that
+      there was a motive back of her every action, that she could not see why
+      John Gilman, having known her from childhood, should not understand her
+      also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had decided that the time had come when she would force Eileen to give
+      her an allowance, however small, for her own personal expenses, that she
+      must in some way manage to be clothed so that she was not a matter of
+      comment even among the boys of her school, and she could see no reason why
+      the absolute personal liberty she always had enjoyed so long as she
+      disappeared when Eileen did not want her and appeared when she did, should
+      not extend to her own convenience as well as Eileen's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life was a busy affair for Linda. She had not time to watch Marian's train
+      from sight. She must hurry to the nearest street car and make all possible
+      haste or she would be late for her classes. Throughout the day she worked
+      with the deepest concentration, but she could not keep down the knowledge
+      that Eileen would have things to say, possibly things to do, when they met
+      that evening, for Eileen was capable of disconcerting hysteria. Previously
+      Linda had remained stubbornly silent during any tirade in which Eileen
+      chose to indulge. She had allowed herself to be nagged into doing many
+      things that she despised, because she would not assert herself against
+      apparent injustice. But since she had come fully to realize the results of
+      Eileen's course of action for Marian and for herself, she was deliberately
+      arriving at the conclusion that hereafter she would speak when she had a
+      defense, and she would make it her business to let the sun shine on any
+      dark spot that she discovered in Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda knew that if John Gilman were well acquainted with Eileen, he could
+      not come any nearer to loving her than she did. Such an idea as loving
+      Eileen never had entered Linda's thoughts. To Linda, Eileen was not
+      lovable. That she should be expected to love her because they had the same
+      parents and lived in the same home seemed absurd. She was slightly
+      disappointed, on reaching home, to find that Eileen was not there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will the lady of the house dine with us this evening? she asked as she
+      stood eating an apple in the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't say,&rdquo; answered Katy. &ldquo;Have ye had it out about last night
+      yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;That is why I was asking about her. I want to clear
+      the atmosphere before I make my new start in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, don't ye be going too far, lambie,&rdquo; cautioned Katy &ldquo;Ye young things
+      make such an awful serious business of life these days. In your scramble
+      to wring artificial joy out of it you miss all the natural joy the good
+      God provided ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me, Katy,&rdquo; said Linda slowly, &ldquo;that you should put that
+      statement the other way round. It seems that life makes a mighty serious
+      business for us young things, and it seems to me that if we don't get the
+      right start and have a proper foundation life Is going to be spoiled for
+      us. One life is all I've got to live in this world, and I would like it to
+      be the interesting and the beautiful kind of life that Father lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda dropped to a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, leaning forward and looking intently into the earnest
+      face of the woman before her, &ldquo;Katy, I have been thinking an awful lot
+      lately. There is a question you could answer for me if you wanted to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't see any raison,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;why I shouldn't answer ye any
+      question ye'd be asking me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's eyes narrowed as they did habitually in deep thought She was
+      looking past Katy down the sunlit spaces of the wild garden that was her
+      dearest possession, and then her eyes strayed higher to where the blue
+      walls that shut in Lilac Valley ranged their peaks against the sky.
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, scarcely above her breath, &ldquo;was Mother like Eileen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy stiffened. Her red face paled slightly. She turned her back and
+      slowly slid into the oven the pie she was carrying. She closed the door
+      with more force than was necessary and then turned and deliberately
+      studied Linda from the top of her shining black head to the tip of her
+      shoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some,&rdquo; she said tersely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know 'some',&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but you know I was too young to pay
+      much attention, and Daddy managed always to make me so happy that I never
+      realized until he was gone that he not only had been my father but my
+      mother as well. You know what I mean, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Katy deliberately, &ldquo;I know what ye mean, lambie, and I'll tell
+      ye the truth as far as I know it. She managed your father, she pampered
+      him, but she deceived him every day, just about little things. She always
+      made the household accounts bigger than they were, and used the extra
+      money for Miss Eileen and herself&mdash;things like that. I'm thinkin' he
+      never knew it. I'm thinking he loved her deeply and trusted her complete.
+      I know what ye're getting at. She was not enough like Eileen to make him
+      unhappy with her. He might have been if he had known all there was to
+      know, but for his own sake I was not the one to give her away, though she
+      constantly made him think that I was extravagant and wasteful in me work.&rdquo;
+       Linda's eyes came back from the mountains and met Katy's straightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;did you ever see sisters as different as Eileen and I
+      are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't think I ever did,&rdquo; said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It puzzles me,&rdquo; said Linda slowly. &ldquo;The more I think about it, the less I
+      can understand why, if we are sisters, we would not accidentally resemble
+      each other a tiny bit in some way, and I must say I can't see that we do
+      physically or mentally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;ye were just as different as ye are now when I came to
+      this house new and ye were both little things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we are going to be as different and to keep on growing more different
+      every day of our lives, because red war breaks out the minute Eileen comes
+      home. I haven't a notion what she will say to me for what I did last night
+      and what I am going to do in the future, but I have a definite idea as to
+      what I am going to say to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, easy; ye go easy, lambie,&rdquo; cautioned Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't regret it,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if I took Eileen by the shoulders and
+      shook her till I shook the rouge off her cheek, and the brilliantine off
+      her hair, and a million mean little subterfuges out of her soul. You know
+      Eileen is lovely when she is natural, and if she would be
+      straight-off-the-bat square, I would be proud to be her sister. As it is,
+      I have my doubts, even about this sister business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Linda, child, ye are just plain crazy,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;What kind of
+      notions are you getting into your head?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear the front door,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;and I am going to march straight to
+      battle. She's going up the front stairs. I did mean to short-cut up the
+      back, but, come to think of it, I have served my apprenticeship on the
+      back stairs. I believe I'll ascend the front myself. Good-bye, darlin',
+      wish me luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda swung Katy around, hugged her tight, and dropped a kiss on the top
+      of her faithful head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye just stick right up for your rights,&rdquo; Katy advised her. &ldquo;Ye're a great
+      big girl. 'Tain't going to be long till ye're eighteen. But mind your old
+      Katy about going too far. If ye lose your temper and cat-spit, it won't
+      get ye anywhere. The fellow that keeps the coolest can always do the best
+      headwork.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I get you,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;and that is good advice for which I thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. The Smoke of Battle
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda walked down the hall, climbed the front stairs, and presented
+      herself at Eileen's door, there to receive one of the severest shocks of
+      her young life. Eileen had tossed her hat and fur upon a couch, seated
+      herself at her dressing table, and was studying her hair in the effort to
+      decide whether she could fluff it up sufficiently to serve for the evening
+      or whether she must take it down and redress it. At Linda's step in the
+      doorway she turned a smiling face upon her and cried: &ldquo;Hello, little
+      sister, come in and tell me the news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stopped as if dazed. The wonderment in which she looked at Eileen
+      was stamped all over her. A surprised braid of hair hung over one of her
+      shoulders. Her hands were surprised, and the skirt of her dress, and her
+      shoes flatly set on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll be darned!&rdquo; she ejaculated, and then walked to where she could
+      face Eileen, and seated herself without making any attempt to conceal her
+      amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; said Eileen sweetly, &ldquo;you would stand far better chance of being
+      popular and making a host of friends if you would not be so coarse. I am
+      quite sure you never heard Mama or me use such an expression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For one long instant Linda was too amazed to speak. Then she recovered
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Eileen, you needn't try any 'perfect lady' business on me,&rdquo;
+       she said shortly. &ldquo;Do you think I have forgotten the extent of your
+      vocabulary when the curling iron gets too hot or you fail to receive an
+      invitation to the Bachelors' Ball?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda never had been capable of understanding Eileen. At that minute she
+      could not know that Eileen had been facing facts through the long hours of
+      the night and all through the day, and that she had reached the decision
+      that for the future her only hope of working Linda to her will was to
+      conciliate her, to ignore the previous night, to try to put their
+      relationship upon the old basis by pretending that there never had been a
+      break. She laughed softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On rare occasions, I grant it. Of course a little swear slips out
+      sometimes. What I am trying to point out is that you do too much of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you ever get the idea,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that I wanted to be popular
+      and have hosts of friends? What would I do with them if I had them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, use them, my child, use them,&rdquo; answered Eileen promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's cut this,&rdquo; said Linda tersely. &ldquo;I am not your child. I'm getting to
+      the place where I have serious doubt as to whether I am your sister or
+      not. If I am, it's not my fault, and the same clay never made two objects
+      quite so different. I came up here to fight, and I'm going to see it
+      through. I'm on the warpath, so you may take your club and proceed to
+      battle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have we to fight about?&rdquo; inquired Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every single thing that you have done that was unfair to me all my life,&rdquo;
+       said Linda. &ldquo;Since all of it has been deliberate you probably know more
+      about the details than I do, so I'll just content myself with telling you
+      that for the future, last night marked a change in the relations between
+      us. I am going to be eighteen before so very long, and I have ceased to be
+      your maid or your waitress or your dupe. You are not going to work me one
+      single time when I have got brains to see through your schemes after this.
+      Hereafter I take my place in my father's house and at my father's table on
+      an equality with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen looked at Linda steadily, trying to see to the depths of her soul.
+      She saw enough to convince her that the young creature in front of her was
+      in earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hm,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;have I been so busy that I have failed to notice what a
+      great girl you are getting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Busy!&rdquo; scoffed Linda. &ldquo;Tell that to Katy. It's a kumquat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you are too big,&rdquo; continued Eileen, &ldquo;to be asked to wait on the
+      table any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly am,&rdquo; retorted Linda, &ldquo;and I am also too big to wear such
+      shoes or such a dress as I have on at the present min. ute. I know all
+      about the war and the inflation of prices and the reduction in income, but
+      I know also that if there is enough to run the house, and dress you, and
+      furnish you such a suite of rooms as you're enjoying right now, there is
+      enough to furnish me suitable clothes, a comfortable bedroom and a place
+      where I can leave my work without putting away everything I am doing each
+      time I step from the room. I told you four years ago that you might take
+      the touring car and do what you pleased with it. I have never asked what
+      you did or what you got out of it, so I'll thank you to observe equal
+      silence about anything I choose to do now with the runabout, which I
+      reserved for myself. I told you to take this suite, and this is the first
+      time that I have ever mentioned to you what you spent on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda waved an inclusive hand toward the fully equipped, dainty dressing
+      table, over rugs of pale blue, and beautifully decorated walls, including
+      the sleeping room and bath adjoining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So now I'll ask you to keep off while I do what I please about the
+      library and the billiard room. I'll try to get along without much money in
+      doing what I desire there, but I must have some new clothes. I want money
+      to buy me a pair of new shoes for school. I want a pair of pumps suitable
+      for evenings when there are guests to dinner. I want a couple of
+      attractive school dresses. This old serge is getting too hot and too worn
+      for common decency. And I also want a couple of dresses something like you
+      are wearing, for afternoons and evenings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen stared aghast at Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where,&rdquo; she inquired politely, &ldquo;is the money for all this to come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eileen,&rdquo; said Linda in a low tense voice, &ldquo;I have reached the place where
+      even the BOYS of the high school are twitting me about how I am dressed,
+      and that is the limit. I have stood it for three years from the girls. I
+      am an adept in pretending that I don't see, and I don't hear. I have got
+      to the point where I am perfectly capable of walking into your wardrobe
+      and taking out enough of the clothes there and selling them at a
+      second-hand store to buy me what I require to dress me just plainly and
+      decently. So take warning. I don't know where you are going to get the
+      money, but you are going to get it. If you would welcome a suggestion from
+      me, come home only half the times you dine yourself and your girl friends
+      at tearooms and cafes in the city, and you will save my share that way. I
+      am going to give you a chance to total your budget, and then I demand one
+      half of the income from Father's estate above household expenses; and if I
+      don't get it, on the day I am eighteen I shall go to John Gilman and say
+      to him what I have said to you, and I shall go to the bank and demand that
+      a division be made there, and that a separate bank book be started for
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's amazement on entering the room had been worthy of note. Eileen's
+      at the present minute was beyond description. Dumbfounded was a colorless
+      word to describe her state of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean that,&rdquo; she gasped in a quivering voice when at last she
+      could speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see, Eileen, that you are taken unawares,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I have had
+      four long years to work up to this hour. Hasn't it even dawned on you that
+      this worm was ever going to turn? You know exquisite moths and butterflies
+      evolve in the canyons from very unprepossessing and lowly living worms.
+      You are spending your life on the butterfly stunt. Have I been such a weak
+      worm that it hasn't ever occurred to you that I might want to try a plain,
+      everyday pair of wings sometime myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen's face was an ugly red, her hands were shaking, her voice was
+      unnatural, but she controlled her temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have always known that the time would come,
+      after you finished school and were of a proper age, when you would want to
+      enter society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you never knew anything of the kind,&rdquo; said Linda bluntly, &ldquo;because I
+      have not the slightest ambition to enter society either now or then. All I
+      am asking is to enter the high school in a commonly decent, suitable
+      dress; to enter our dining room as a daughter; to enter a workroom
+      decently equipped for my convenience. You needn't be surprised if you hear
+      some changes going on in the billiard room and see some changes going on
+      in the library. And if I feel that I can muster the nerve to drive the
+      runabout, it's my car, it's up to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda!&rdquo; wailed Eileen, &ldquo;how can you think of such a thing? You wouldn't
+      dare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I haven't dared till the present is no reason why I should
+      deprive myself of every single pleasure in life,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;You spend
+      your days doing exactly what you please; driving that runabout for Father
+      was my one soul-satisfying diversion. Why shouldn't I do the thing I love
+      most, if I can muster the nerve?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda arose, and walking over to a table, picked up a magazine lying among
+      some small packages that Eileen evidently had placed there on entering her
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you subscribing to this?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned in her hands and leafed through the pages of a most attractive
+      magazine, Everybody's Home. It was devoted to poetry, good fiction, and
+      everything concerning home life from beef to biscuits, and from rugs to
+      roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw it on a newsstand,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;I was at lunch with some girls
+      who had a copy and they were talking about some articles by somebody named
+      something&mdash;Meredith, I think it was&mdash;Jane Meredith, maybe she's
+      a Californian, and she is advocating the queer idea that we go back to
+      nature by trying modern cooking on the food the aborigines ate. If we find
+      it good then she recommends that we specialize on the growing of these
+      native vegetables for home use and for export&mdash;as a new industry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Out-Burbanking Burbank, as it were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not that,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;She is not proposing to evolve new forms.
+      She is proposing to show us how to make delicious dishes for luncheon or
+      dinner from wild things now going to waste. What the girls said was so
+      interesting that I thought I'd get a copy and if I see anything good I'll
+      turn it over to Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where's Katy going to get the wild vegetables?&rdquo; asked Linda
+      sceptically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why you might have some of them in your wild garden, or you could easily
+      find enough to try&mdash;all the prowling the canyons you do ought to
+      result in something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it should,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I quite agree with you. Did I understand you
+      to say that I should be ready to go to the bank with you to arrange about
+      my income next week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the color deepened in Eileen's face, again she made a visible effort
+      at self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Linda,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what is the use of being so hard? You will make
+      them think at the bank that I have not treated you fairly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i>?&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;<i>I</i> will make them think? Don't you think it
+      is YOU who will make them think? Will you kindly answer my question?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I show you the books,&rdquo; said Eileen, &ldquo;if I divide what is left after
+      the bills are paid so that you say yourself that it is fair, what more can
+      you ask?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I ought to do is exactly what I have said I would do,&rdquo; she said
+      tersely, &ldquo;but if you are going to put it on that basis I have no desire to
+      hurt you or humiliate you in public. If you do that, I can't see that I
+      have any reason to complain, so we'll call it a bargain and we'll say no
+      more about it until the first of the month, unless the spirit moves you,
+      after taking a good square look at me, to produce some shoes and a school
+      dress instanter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll see what I can do,&rdquo; answered Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;See you at dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to her own room, slipped off her school dress, brushed her hair,
+      and put on the skirt and blouse she had worn the previous evening, these
+      being the only extra clothing she possessed. As she straightened her hair
+      she looked at herself intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My, aren't you coming on!&rdquo; she said to the figure in the glass. &ldquo;Dressing
+      for dinner! First thing you know you'll be a perfect lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. Jane Meredith
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Eileen came down to dinner that evening Linda understood at a glance
+      that an effort was to be made to efface thoroughly from the mind of John
+      Gilman all memory of the Eileen of the previous evening. She had decided
+      on redressing her hair, while she wore one of her most becoming and
+      attractive gowns. To Linda and Katy during the dinner she was simply
+      charming. Having said what she wanted to say and received the assurance
+      she desired, Linda accepted her advances cordially and displayed such
+      charming proclivities herself that Eileen began covertly to watch her, and
+      as she watched there slowly grew in her brain the conviction that
+      something had happened to Linda. At once she began studying deeply in an
+      effort to learn what it might be. There were three paramount things in
+      Eileen's cosmos that could happen to a girl: She could have lovely
+      clothing. Linda did not have it. She could have money and influential
+      friends. Since Marian's going Linda had practically no friend; she was
+      merely acquainted with almost everyone living in Lilac Valley. She could
+      have a lover. Linda had none. But stay! Eileen's thought halted at the
+      suggestion. Maybe she had! She had been left completely, to her own
+      devices when she was not wanted about the house. She had been mingling
+      with hundreds of boys and girls in high school. She might have met some
+      man repeatedly on the street cars, going to and from school. In school she
+      might have attracted the son of some wealthy and influential family; which
+      was the only kind of son Eileen chose to consider in connection with
+      Linda. Through Eileen's brain ran bits of the conversation of the previous
+      evening. She recalled that the men she had intended should spend the
+      evening waiting on her and paying her pretty compliments had spent it
+      eating like hungry men, laughing and jesting with Linda and Marian, giving
+      every evidence of a satisfaction with their entertainment that never had
+      been evinced with the best brand of attractions she had to offer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen was willing to concede that Marian Thorne had been a beautiful
+      girl, and she had known, previous to the disaster, that it was quite as
+      likely that any man might admire Marian's flashing dark beauty as her
+      blonde loveliness. Between them then it would have been merely a question
+      of taste on the part of the man. Since Marian's dark head had turned
+      ashen, Eileen had simply eliminated her at one sweep. That white hair
+      would brand Marian anywhere as an old woman. Very likely no man ever would
+      want to marry her. Eileen was sure she would not want to if she were a
+      man. No wonder John Gilman had ceased to be attracted by a girl's face
+      with a grandmother setting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Linda, Eileen never had considered her at all except as a
+      convenience to serve her own purposes. Last night she had learned that
+      Linda had a brain, that she had wit, that she could say things to which
+      men of the world listened with interest. She began to watch Linda. She
+      appraised with deepest envy the dark hair curling naturally on her
+      temples. She wondered how hair that curled naturally could be so thick and
+      heavy, and she thought what a crown of glory would adorn Linda's head when
+      the day came to coil those long dark braids around it and fasten them with
+      flashing pins. She drew some satisfaction from the sunburned face and lean
+      figure before her, but it was not satisfaction of soul-sustaining quality.
+      There was beginning to be something disquieting about Linda. A roundness
+      was creeping over her lean frame; a glow was beginning to color her lips
+      and cheek bones; a dewy look could be surprised in her dark eyes
+      occasionally. She had the effect of a creature with something yeasty
+      bottled inside it that was beginning to ferment and might effervesce at
+      any minute. Eileen had been so surprised the previous evening and again
+      before dinner, that she made up her mind that hereafter one might expect
+      almost anything from Linda. She would no longer follow a suggestion unless
+      the suggestion accorded with her sense of right and justice. It was barely
+      possible that it might be required to please her inclinations. Eileen's
+      mind worked with unbelievable swiftness. She tore at her subject like a
+      vulture tearing at a feast, and like a vulture she reached the vitals
+      swiftly. She prefaced her question with a dry laugh. Then she leaned
+      forward and asked softly: &ldquo;Linda, dear, why haven't you told me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's eyes were so clear and honest as they met Eileen's that she almost
+      hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little more explicit, please,&rdquo; said the girl quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHO IS HE?&rdquo; asked Eileen abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I haven't narrowed to an individual,&rdquo; said Linda largely &ldquo;You have
+      noticed a flock of boys following me from school and hanging around the
+      front door? I have such hosts to choose from that it's going to take a
+      particularly splendid knight on a snow-white charger&mdash;I think
+      'charger' is the proper word&mdash;to capture my young affections.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen was satisfied. There wasn't any he. She might for a short time yet
+      cut Linda's finances to the extreme limit. Whenever a man appeared on the
+      horizon she would be forced to make a division at least approaching
+      equality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda followed Eileen to the living room and sat down with a book until
+      John Gilman arrived. She had a desire to study him for a few minutes. She
+      was going to write Marian a letter that night. She wanted to know if she
+      could honestly tell her that Gilman appeared lonely and seemed to miss
+      her. Katy had no chance to answer the bell when it rang. Eileen was in the
+      hall. Linda could not tell what was happening from the murmur of voices.
+      Presently John and Eileen entered the room, and as Linda greeted him she
+      did have the impression that he appeared unusually thoughtful and worried.
+      She sat for half an hour, taking slight part in the conversation. Then she
+      excused herself and went to her room, and as she went she knew that she
+      could not honestly write Marian what she had hoped, for in thirty minutes
+      by the clock Eileen's blandishments had worked, and John Gilman was
+      looking at her as if she were the most exquisite and desirable creature in
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly Linda climbed the stairs and entered her room. She slid the bolt of
+      her door behind her, turned on the lights, unlocked a drawer, and taking
+      from it a heap of materials she scattered them over a small table, and
+      picking up her pencil, she sat gazing at the sheet before her for some
+      time. Then slowly she began writing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appeals to me that, far as modern civilization has gone in culinary
+      efforts, we have not nearly reached the limits available to us as I
+      pointed out last month. We consider ourselves capable of preparing and
+      producing elaborate banquets, yet at no time are we approaching anything
+      even to compare in lavishness and delicacy with the days of Lucullus. We
+      are not feasting on baked swans, peacock tongues and drinking our pearls.
+      I am not recommending that we should revive the indulgence of such lavish
+      and useless expenditure, but I would suggest that if we tire with the
+      sameness of our culinary efforts, we at least try some of the new dishes
+      described in this department, established for the sole purpose of their
+      introduction. In so doing we accomplish a multiple purpose. We enlarge the
+      resources of the southwest. We tease stale appetites with a new tang. We
+      offer the world something different, yet native to us. We use modern
+      methods on Indian material and the results are most surprising. In trying
+      these dishes I would remind you that few of us cared for oysters, olives,
+      celery&mdash;almost any fruit or vegetable one could mention on first
+      trial. Try several times and be sure you prepare dishes exactly right
+      before condemning them as either fad or fancy. These are very real,
+      nourishing and delicious foods that are being offered you. Here is a salad
+      that would have intrigued the palate of Lucullus, himself. If you do not
+      believe me, try it. The vegetable is slightly known by a few native
+      mountaineers and ranchers. Botanists carried it abroad where under the
+      name of winter-purslane it is used in France and England for greens or
+      salad, while remaining practically unknown at home. Boiled and seasoned as
+      spinach it makes equally good greens. But it is in salad that it stands
+      pre-eminent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Go to any canyon&mdash;I shall not reveal the name of my particular canyon&mdash;and
+      locate a bed of miner's lettuce (Montia perfoliata). Growing in rank beds
+      beside a cold, clean stream, you will find these pulpy, exquisitely
+      shaped, pungent round leaves from the center of which lifts a tiny head of
+      misty white lace, sending up a palate-teasing, spicy perfume. The crisp,
+      pinkish stems snap in the fingers. Be sure that you wash the leaves
+      carefully so that no lurking germs cling to them. Fill your salad bowl
+      with the crisp leaves, from which the flowerhead has been plucked. For
+      dressing, dice a teacup of the most delicious bacon you can obtain and fry
+      it to a crisp brown together with a small sliced onion. Add to the fat two
+      tablespoons of sugar, half a teaspoon of mustard; salt will scarcely be
+      necessary the bacon will furnish that. Blend the fat, sugar, and mustard,
+      and pour in a measure of the best apple vinegar, diluted to taste. Bring
+      this mixture to the boiling point, and when it has cooled slightly pour it
+      over the lettuce leaves, lightly turning with a silver fork. Garnish the
+      edge of the dish with a deep border of the fresh leaves bearing their lace
+      of white bloom intact, around the edge of the bowl, and sprinkle on top
+      the sifted yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, heaping the diced whites in the
+      center.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda paused and read this over carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all right,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I couldn't make that much better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a few corrections here and there, and picking up a colored
+      pencil, she deftly sketched in a head piece of delicate sprays of miners'
+      lettuce tipped at differing angles, fringy white with bloom. Below she
+      printed: &ldquo;A delicious Indian salad. The second of a series of new dishes
+      to be offered made from materials used by the Indians. Compounded and
+      tested in her own diet kitchen by the author.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Swiftly she sketched a tail piece representing a table top upon which sat
+      a tempting-looking big salad bowl filled with fresh green leaves, rimmed
+      with a row of delicate white flowers, from which you could almost scent a
+      teasing delicate fragrance arising; and beneath, in a clear, firm hand,
+      she stroked in the name, Jane Meredith. She went over her work carefully,
+      then laid it flat on a piece of cardboard, shoved it into an envelope,
+      directed it to the editor of Everybody's Home, laid it inside her
+      geometry, and wrote her letter to Marian before going to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning on her way to the street car she gaily waved to a passing
+      automobile going down Lilac Valley, in which sat John Gilman and Peter
+      Morrison and his architect, and as they were driving in the direction from
+      which she had come, Linda very rightly surmised that they were going to
+      pick up Eileen and make a tour of the valley, looking for available
+      building locations; and she wondered why Eileen had not told her that they
+      were coming. Linda had been right about the destination of the car. It
+      turned in at the Strong driveway and stopped at the door. John Gilman went
+      to ring the bell and learn if Eileen were ready. Peter followed him. Henry
+      Anderson stepped from the car and wandered over the lawn, looking at the
+      astonishing array of bushes, vines, flowers, and trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From one to another he went, fingering the waxy leaves, studying the
+      brilliant flower faces. Finally turning a corner and crossing the wild
+      garden, to which he paid slight attention, he started down the other side
+      of the house. Here an almost overpowering odor greeted his nostrils, and
+      he went over to a large tree covered with rough, dark green, almost
+      brownish, lance-shaped leaves, each branch terminating in a heavy spray of
+      yellowish-green flowers, whose odor was of cloying sweetness. The bees
+      were buzzing over it. It was not a tree with which he was familiar, and
+      stepping back, he looked at it carefully. Then at its base, wind-driven
+      into a crevice between the roots, his attention was attracted to a
+      crumpled sheet of paper, upon which he could see lines that would have
+      attracted the attention of any architect. He went forward instantly,
+      picked up the sheet, and straightening it out he stood looking at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy smoke!&rdquo; he breathed softly. &ldquo;What a find!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at the reverse of the sheet, his face becoming more intent every
+      minute. When he heard Peter Morrison's voice calling him he hastily thrust
+      the paper into his coat pocket; but he had gone only a few steps when he
+      stopped, glanced keenly over the house and lawn, turned his back, and
+      taking the sheet from his pocket, he smoothed it out, folded it carefully,
+      and put it in an inside pocket. Then he joined the party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once they set out to examine the available locations that yet remained
+      in Lilac Valley. Nature provided them a wonderful day of snappy sunshine
+      and heady sea air. Spring favored them with lilac walls at their bluest,
+      broken here and there with the rose-misted white mahogany. The violet
+      nightshade was beginning to add deeper color to the hills in the sunniest
+      wild spots. The panicles of mahonia bloom were showing their gold color.
+      Wild flowers were lifting leaves of feather and lace everywhere, and most
+      agreeable on the cool morning air was a faint breath of California sage.
+      Up one side of the valley, weaving in and out, up and down, over the
+      foothills they worked their way. They stopped for dinner at one of the
+      beautiful big hotels, practically filled with Eastern tourists. Eileen
+      never had known a prouder moment than when she took her place at the head
+      of the table and presided over the dinner which was served to three most
+      attractive specimens of physical manhood, each of whom was unusually well
+      endowed with brain, all flattering her with the most devoted attention.
+      This triumph she achieved in a dining room seating hundreds of people, its
+      mirror-lined walls reflecting her exquisite image from many angles, to the
+      click of silver, and the running accompaniment of many voices. What she
+      had expected to accomplish in her own dining room had come to her before a
+      large audience, in which, she had no doubt, there were many envious women.
+      Eileen rayed loveliness like a Mariposa lily, and purred in utter
+      contentment like a deftly stroked kitten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they parted in the evening Peter Morrison had memoranda of three
+      locations that he wished to consider. That he might not seem to be unduly
+      influenced or to be giving the remainder of Los Angeles County its just
+      due, he proposed to motor around for a week before reaching an ultimate
+      decision, but in his heart he already had decided that somewhere near Los
+      Angeles he would build his home, and as yet he had seen nothing nearly so
+      attractive as Lilac Valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. Trying Yucca
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On her way to school that morning Linda stopped at the post office and
+      pasted the required amount of stamps upon the package that she was mailing
+      to New York. She hurried from her last class that afternoon to the city
+      directory to find the street and number of James Brothers, figuring that
+      the firm with whom Marian dealt would be the proper people for her to
+      consult. She had no difficulty in finding the place for which she was
+      searching, and she was rather agreeably impressed with the men to whom she
+      talked. She made arrangements with their buyer to call at her home in
+      Lilac Valley at nine o'clock the following Saturday morning to appraise
+      the articles with which she wished to part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went to one of the leading book stores of the city and made
+      inquiries which guided her to a reliable second-hand book dealer, and she
+      arranged to be ready to receive his representative at ten o'clock on
+      Saturday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reaching home she took a note book and pencil, and studied the billiard
+      room and the library, making a list of the furniture which she did not
+      actually need. After that she began on the library shelves, listing such
+      medical works as were of a technical nature. Books of fiction, history,
+      art, and biography, and those books written by her father she did not
+      include. She found that she had a long task which would occupy several
+      evenings. Her mind was methodical and she had been with her father through
+      sufficient business transactions to understand that in order to drive a
+      good bargain she must know how many volumes she had to offer and the
+      importance of their authors as medical authorities; she should also know
+      the exact condition of each set of books. Since she had made up her mind
+      to let them go, and she knew the value of many of the big, leather-bound
+      volumes, she determined that she would not sell them until she could
+      secure the highest possible price for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months previously she would have consulted John Gilman and asked him
+      to arrange the transaction for her. Since he had allowed himself to be
+      duped so easily&mdash;or at least it had seemed easy to Linda; for, much
+      as she knew of Eileen, she could not possibly know the weeks of secret
+      plotting, the plans for unexpected meetings, the trumped-up business
+      problems necessary to discuss, the deliberate flaunting of her physical
+      charms before him, all of which had made his conquest extremely hard for
+      Eileen, but Linda, seeing only results, had thought it contemptibly easy&mdash;she
+      would not ask John Gilman anything. She would go ahead on the basis of her
+      agreement with Eileen and do the best she could alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She counted on Saturday to dispose of the furniture. The books might go at
+      her leisure. Then the first of the week she could select such furniture as
+      she desired in order to arrange the billiard room for her study. If she
+      had a suitable place in which to work in seclusion, there need be no hurry
+      about the library. She conscientiously prepared all the lessons required
+      in her school course for the next day and then, stacking her books, she
+      again unlocked the drawer opened the previous evening, and taking from it
+      the same materials, set to work. She wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Botanists have failed to mention that there is any connection between
+      asparagus, originally a product of salt marshes, and Yucca, a product of
+      the alkaline desert. Very probably there is no botanical relationship, but
+      these two plants are alike in flavor. From the alkaline, sunbeaten desert
+      where the bayonet plant thrusts up a tender bloom head six inches in
+      height, it slowly increases in stature as it travels across country more
+      frequently rain washed, and winds its way beside mountain streams to where
+      in more fertile soil and the same sunshine it develops magnificent
+      specimens from ten to fifteen and more feet in height. The plant grows a
+      number of years before it decides to flower. When it reaches maturity it
+      throws up a bloom stem as tender as the delicate head of asparagus, thick
+      as one's upper arm, and running to twice one's height. This bloom stem in
+      its early stages is colored the pale pink of asparagus, with faint touches
+      of yellow, and hints of blue. At maturity it breaks into a gorgeous head
+      of lavender-tinted, creamy pendent flowers covering the upper third of its
+      height, billowing out slightly in the center, so that from a distance the
+      waxen torch takes on very much the appearance of a flaming candle. For
+      this reason, in Mexico, where the plant flourishes in even greater
+      abundance than in California, with the exquisite poetry common to the
+      tongue and heart of the Spaniard, Yucca Whipplei has been commonly named
+      &ldquo;Our Lord's Candle.&rdquo; At the most delicate time of their growth these
+      candlesticks were roasted and eaten by the Indians. Based upon this
+      knowledge, I would recommend two dishes, almost equally delicious, which
+      may be prepared from this plant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take the most succulent young bloom stems when they have exactly the
+      appearance of an asparagus head at its moment of delicious perfection.
+      With a sharp knife, cut them in circles an inch in depth. Arrange these in
+      a shallow porcelain baking dish, sprinkle with salt, dot them with butter,
+      add enough water to keep them from sticking and burning. Bake until
+      thoroughly tender. Use a pancake turner to slide the rings to a hot
+      platter, and garnish with circles of hard-boiled egg. This you will find
+      an extremely delicate and appetizing dish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second recipe I would offer is to treat this vegetable precisely as
+      you would creamed asparagus. Cut the stalks in six-inch lengths, quarter
+      them to facilitate cooking and handling, and boil in salted water. Drain,
+      arrange in a hot dish, and pour over a carefully made cream sauce. I might
+      add that one stalk would furnish sufficient material for several families.
+      This dish should be popular in southwestern states where the plant grows
+      profusely; and to cultivate these plants for shipping to Eastern markets
+      would be quite as feasible as the shipping of asparagus, rhubarb,
+      artichokes, or lettuce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have found both these dishes peculiarly appetizing, but I should be
+      sorry if, in introducing Yucca as a food, I became instrumental in the
+      extermination of this universal and wonderfully beautiful plant. For this
+      reason I have hesitated about including Yucca among these articles; but
+      when I see the bloom destroyed ruthlessly by thousands who cut it to
+      decorate touring automobiles and fruit and vegetable stands beside the
+      highways, who carry it from its native location and stick it in the
+      parching sun of the seashore as a temporary shelter, I feel that the bloom
+      stems might as well be used for food as to be so ruthlessly wasted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plant is hardy in the extreme, growing in the most unfavorable places,
+      clinging tenaciously to sheer mountain and canyon walls. After blooming
+      and seeding the plant seems to have thrown every particle of nourishment
+      it contains into its development, it dries out and dies (the spongy wood
+      is made into pincushions for the art stores); but from the roots there
+      spring a number of young plants, which, after a few years of growth,
+      mature and repeat their life cycle, while other young plants develop from
+      the widely scattered seeds. The Spaniards at times call the plant Quiota.
+      This word seems to be derived from quiotl, which is the Aztec name for
+      Agave, from which plant a drink not unlike beer is produced, and suggests
+      the possibility that there might have been a time when the succulent
+      flower stem of the Yucca furnished drink as well as food for the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After carefully re-reading and making several minor corrections, Linda
+      picked up her pencil, and across the top of a sheet of heavy paper
+      sketched the peaks of a chain of mountains. Across the base she drew a
+      stretch of desert floor, bristling with the thorns of many different cacti
+      brilliant with their gold, pink, and red bloom, intermingled with fine
+      grasses and desert flower faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the left she painstakingly drew a huge plant of yucca with a perfect
+      circle of bayonets, from the center of which uprose the gigantic flower
+      stem the length of her page, and on the misty bloom of the flaming tongue
+      she worked quite as late as Marian Thorne had ever seen a light burning in
+      her window. When she had finished her drawing she studied it carefully a
+      long time, adding a touch here and there, and then she said softly:
+      &ldquo;There, Daddy, I feel that even you would think that a faithful
+      reproduction Tomorrow night I'll paint it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman saw the light from Linda's window when he brought Eileen home
+      that night, and when he left he glanced that way again, and was surprised
+      to see the room still lighted, and the young figure bending over a
+      worktable. He stood very still for a few minutes, wondering what could
+      keep Linda awake so far into the night, and while his thoughts were upon
+      her he wondered, too, why she did not care to have beautiful clothes such
+      as Eileen wore; and then he went further and wondered why, when she could
+      be as entertaining as she had been the night she joined them at dinner,
+      she did not make her appearance oftener; and then, because the mind is a
+      queer thing, and he had wondered about a given state of affairs, he went a
+      step further, and wondered whether the explanation lay in Linda's
+      inclinations or in Eileen's management, and then his thought fastened
+      tenaciously upon the subject of Eileen's management.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a patient man. He had allowed his reason and better judgment to be
+      swayed by Eileen's exquisite beauty and her blandishments. He did not
+      regret having discovered before it was too late that Marian Thorne was not
+      the girl he had thought her. He wanted a wife cut after the clinging-vine
+      pattern. He wanted to be the dominating figure in his home. It had not
+      taken Eileen long to teach him that Marian was self-assertive and would do
+      a large share of dominating herself. He had thought that he was perfectly
+      satisfied and very happy with Eileen; yet that day he repeatedly had felt
+      piqued and annoyed with her. She had openly cajoled and flirted with Henry
+      Anderson past a point which was agreeable for any man to see his
+      sweetheart go with another man With Peter Morrison she had been
+      unspeakably charming in a manner with which John was very familiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned up his coat collar, thrust his hands in his pockets, and swore
+      softly. Looking straight ahead of him, he should have seen a stretch of
+      level sidewalk, bordered on one hand by lacy, tropical foliage, on the
+      other, by sheets of level green lawn, broken everywhere by the uprising
+      boles of great trees, clumps of rare vines, and rows of darkened homes,
+      attractive in architectural 'design' vine covered, hushed for the night.
+      What he really saw was a small plateau, sun illumined, at the foot of a
+      mountain across the valley, where the lilac wall was the bluest, where the
+      sun shone slightly more golden than anywhere else in the valley, where
+      huge live oaks outstretched rugged arms, where the air had a tang of salt,
+      a tinge of sage, an odor of orange, shot through with snowy coolness,
+      thrilled with bird song, and the laughing chuckle of a big spring breaking
+      from the foot of the mountain. They had left the road and followed a
+      narrow, screened path by which they came unexpectedly into this opening.
+      They had stood upon it in wordless enchantment, looking down the slope
+      beneath it, across the peace of the valley, to the blue ranges beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just where are we?&rdquo; Peter Morrison had asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman had been looking at a view which included Eileen. She lifted
+      her face, flushed and exquisite, to Peter Morrison and answered in a
+      breathless undertone, yet John had distinctly heard her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How wonderful it would be if we were at your house. Oh, I envy the woman
+      who shares this with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had not been anything in particular, yet all day it had teased John
+      Gilman's sensibilities. He felt ashamed of himself for not being more
+      enthusiastic as he searched records and helped to locate the owner of that
+      particular spot. To John, there was a new tone in Peter's voice, a
+      possessive light in his eyes as he studied the location, and made
+      excursions in several directions, to fix in his mind the exact position of
+      the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had indicated what he considered the topographical location for a house&mdash;stood
+      on it facing the valley, and stepped the distance suitably far away to set
+      a garage and figured on a short private road down to the highway. He very
+      plainly was deeply prepossessed with a location John Gilman blamed himself
+      for not having found first. Certainly nature had here grown and walled a
+      dream garden in which to set a house of dreams. So, past midnight, Gilman
+      stood in the sunshine, looking at the face of the girl he had asked to
+      marry him and who had said that she would; and a small doubt crept into
+      his heart, and a feeling that perhaps life might be different for him if
+      Peter Morrison decided to come to Lilac Valley to build his home. Then the
+      sunlight faded, night closed in, but as he went his homeward way John
+      Gilman was thinking, thinking deeply and not at all happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. The Bear Cat
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Friday's child is loving and giving,
+     But Saturday's child must work for a living,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Linda was chanting happily as she entered the kitchen early Saturday
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy, me blessing,&rdquo; she said gaily, &ldquo;did I ever point out to you the
+      interesting fact that I was born on Saturday? And a devilish piece of luck
+      it was, for I have been hustling ever since. It's bad enough to have been
+      born on Monday and spoiled wash day, but I call Saturday the vanishing
+      point, the end of the extreme limit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy laughed, and, as always, turned adoring eyes on Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not needing ye, lambie,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Is it big business in the canyon
+      ye're having today? Shall I be ready to be cooking up one of them
+      God-forsaken Red Indian messes for ye when ye come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda held up a warning finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hiss, Katy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That is a dark secret. Don't you be forgetting
+      yourself and saying anything like that before anyone, or I would be ruined
+      entirely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I did think when ye began it,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;that of all the wild
+      foolishness ye and your pa had ever gone through with, that was the worst,
+      but that last mess ye worked out was so tasty to the tongue that I thought
+      of it a lot, and I'm kind o' hankering for more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda caught Katy and swung her around the kitchen in a wild war dance.
+      Her gayest laugh bubbled clear from the joy peak of her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if you had lain awake all night trying to say something
+      that would particularly please me, you couldn't have done better. That was
+      a quaint little phrase and a true little phrase, and I know a little spot
+      that it will fit exactly. What am I doing today? Well, several things,
+      Katy. First, anything you need about the house. Next, I am going to empty
+      the billiard room and sell some of the excess furniture of the library,
+      and with the returns I am going to buy me a rug and a table and some tools
+      to work with, so I won't have to clutter up my bedroom with my lessons and
+      things I bring in that I want to save. And then I am going to sell the
+      technical stuff from the library and use that money where it will be of
+      greatest advantage to me. And then, Katy, I am going to manicure the Bear
+      Cat and I am going to drive it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda hesitated. Katy stood very still, thinking intently, but finally she
+      said: &ldquo;That's all right; ye have got good common sense; your nerves are
+      steady; your pa drilled ye fine. Many's the time he has bragged to me
+      behind your back what a fine little driver he was making of ye. I don't
+      know a girl of your age anywhere that has less enjoyment than ye. If it
+      would be giving ye any happiness to be driving that car, ye just go ahead
+      and drive it, lambie, but ye promise me here and now that ye will be
+      mortal careful. In all my days I don't think I have seen a meaner-looking
+      little baste of a car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I'll be careful, Katy,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;That car was not bought
+      for its beauty. Its primal object in this world was to arrive. Gee, how we
+      shot curves, and coasted down the canyons, and gassed up on the level when
+      some poor soul went batty from nerve strain! The truth is, Katy, that you
+      can't drive very slowly. You have got to go the speed for which it was
+      built. But I have had my training. I won't forget. I adore that car, Katy,
+      and I don't know how I have ever kept my fingers off it this long. Today
+      it gets a bath and a facial treatment, and when I have thought up some way
+      to meet my big problem, you're going to have a ride, Katy, that will quite
+      uplift your soul. We'll go scooting through the canyons, and whizzing
+      around the mountains, and roaring along the beach, as slick as a white sea
+      swallow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, easy, lambie, easy,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;Ye're planning to speed that thing
+      before ye've got it off the jacks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, that was mere talk,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;But, Katy, this is my great day. I
+      feel in my bones that I shall have enough money by night to get me some
+      new tires, which I must have before I can start out in safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course ye must, honey. I would just be tickled to pieces to let ye
+      have what ye need.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda slid her hand across Katy's lips and gathered her close in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You blessed old darling,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Of course you would, but I don't
+      need it, Katy. I can sit on the floor to work, if I must, and instead of
+      taking the money from the billiard table to buy a worktable, I can buy
+      tires with that. But here's another thing I want to tell you, Katy. This
+      afternoon a male biped is coming to this house, and he's not coming to see
+      Eileen. His name is Donald Whiting, and when he tells you it is, and
+      stands very straight and takes off his hat, and looks you in the eye and
+      says, 'Calling on Miss Linda Strong,' walk him into the living room, Katy,
+      and seat him in the best chair and put a book beside him and the morning
+      paper; and don't you forget to do it with a flourish. He is nothing but a
+      high-school kid, but he's the first boy that ever in all my days asked to
+      come to see me so it's a big event; and I wish to my soul I had something
+      decent to wear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, with all the clothes in this house,&rdquo; said Katy; and then she
+      stopped and shut her lips tight and looked at Linda with belligerent Irish
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; nodded Linda in acquiescence; &ldquo;I know what you think; but
+      never mind. Eileen has agreed to make me a fair allowance the first of the
+      month, and if that isn't sufficient, I may possibly figure up some way to
+      do some extra work that will bring me a few honest pennies, so I can fuss
+      up enough to look feminine at times, Katy. In the meantime, farewell, oh,
+      my belovedest. Call me at half-past eight, so I will be ready for business
+      at nine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda went to the garage and began operations. She turned the hose on
+      the car and washed the dust from it carefully. Then she dried it with the
+      chamois skins as she often had done before. She carefully examined the
+      cushioning, and finding it dry and hard, she gave it a bath of olive oil
+      and wiped and manipulated it. She cleaned the engine with extreme care. At
+      one minute she was running to Katy for kerosene to pour through the engine
+      to loosen the carbon. At another she was telephoning for the delivery of
+      oil, gasoline, and batteries for which she had no money to pay, so she
+      charged them to Eileen, ordering the bill to be sent on the first of the
+      month. It seemed to her that she had only a good start when Katy came
+      after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The business of appraising the furniture was short, and Linda was well
+      satisfied with the price she was offered for it. After the man had gone
+      she showed Katy the pieces she had marked to dispose of, and told her when
+      they would be called for. She ate a few bites of lunch while waiting for
+      the book man, and the results of her business with him quite delighted
+      Linda. She had not known that the value of books had risen with the price
+      of everything else. The man with whom she dealt had known her father. He
+      had appreciated the strain in her nature which made her suggest that he
+      should number and appraise the books, but she must be allowed time to go
+      through each volume in order to remove any scraps of paper or memoranda
+      which her father so frequently left in books to which he was referring. He
+      had figured carefully and he had made Linda a far higher price than could
+      have been secured by a man. As the girl went back to her absorbing task in
+      the garage, she could see her way clear to the comforts and conveniences
+      and the material that she needed for her work. When she reached the car
+      she patted it as if it had been a living creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheer up, nice old thing,&rdquo; she said gaily. &ldquo;I know how to get new tires
+      for you, and you shall drink all the gasoline and oil your tummy can hold.
+      Now let me see. What must I do next? I must get you off your jacks; and
+      oh, my gracious there are the grease cups, and that's a nasty job, but it
+      must be done; and what is the use of Saturday if I can't do it? Daddy
+      often did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda began work in utter absorption. She succeeded in getting the car off
+      the jacks. She was lying on her back under it, filling some of the most
+      inaccessible grease cups, and she was softly singing as she worked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that minute Donald Whiting swung down the street, turned in at the
+      Strong residence, and rang the bell. Eileen was coming down the stairs,
+      dressed for the street. She had inquired for Linda, and Katy had told her
+      that she thought Miss Linda had decided to begin using her car, and that
+      she was in the garage working on it. To Eileen's credit it may be said
+      that she had not been told that a caller was expected. Linda never before
+      had had a caller and, as always, Eileen was absorbed in her own concerns.
+      Had she got the rouge a trifle brighter on one cheek than on the other?
+      Was the powder evenly distributed? Would the veil hold the handmade curls
+      in exactly the proper place? When the bell rang her one thought might have
+      been that some of her friends were calling for her. She opened the door,
+      and when she learned that Linda was being asked for, it is possible that
+      she mistook the clean, interesting, and well-dressed youngster standing
+      before her for a mechanic. What she said was: &ldquo;Linda's working on her car.
+      Go around to the left and you will find her in the garage, and for
+      heaven's sake, get it right before you let her start out, for we've had
+      enough horror in this family from motor accidents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she closed the door before him and stood buttoning her gloves; a
+      wicked and malicious smile spreading over her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just possibly,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that youngster is from a garage, but if he is,
+      he's the best imitation of the real thing that I have seen in these
+      chaotic days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald Whiting stopped at the garage door and looked in, before Linda had
+      finished her grease cups, and in time to be informed that he might wear
+      common-sense shoes if he chose. At his step, Linda rolled her black head
+      on the cement floor and raised her eyes. She dropped the grease cup, and
+      her face reddened deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my Lord!&rdquo; she gasped breathlessly. &ldquo;I forgot to tell Katy when to
+      call me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In that instant she also forgot that the stress of the previous four years
+      had accustomed men to seeing women do any kind of work in any kind of
+      costume; but soon Linda realized that Donald Whiting was not paying any
+      particular attention either to her or to her occupation. He was leaning
+      forward, gazing at the car with positively an enraptured expression on his
+      eager young face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shades of Jehu!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It's a Bear Cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda felt around her head for the grease cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure it's a Bear Cat,&rdquo; she said with the calmness of complete
+      recovery. &ldquo;And it's just about ready to start for its very own cave in the
+      canyon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald Whiting pitched his hat upon the seat, shook off his coat, and sent
+      it flying after the hat. Then he began unbuttoning and turning back his
+      sleeves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, let me do that,&rdquo; he said authoritatively. &ldquo;Gee! I have never yet
+      ridden in a Bear Cat. Take me with you, will you, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; said Linda, pressing the grease into the cup with a little paddle
+      and holding it up to see if she had it well filled. &ldquo;Sure, but there's no
+      use in you getting into this mess, because I have only got two more. You
+      look over the engine. Did you ever grind valves, and do you think these
+      need it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, they don't need it,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;if they were all right when it
+      was jacked up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they were,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It was running like a watch when it went
+      to sleep. But do we dare take it out on these tires?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long has it been?&rdquo; asked Donald, busy at the engine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All of four years,&rdquo; answered Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald whistled softly and started a circuit of the car, kicking the tires
+      and feeling them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you filled them?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I did not want to start the engine until I had finished
+      everything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll look at the valves first and then, if it is
+      all ready, there ought to be a garage near that we can run to carefully,
+      and get tuned up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;There is one only a few blocks down the street
+      where Dad always had anything done that he did not want to do himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's that, then,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda crawled from under the car and stood up, wiping her hands on a bit
+      of waste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what tires cost now?&rdquo; she asked anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have 'em at the garage,&rdquo; answered Donald, &ldquo;and if I were you, I
+      wouldn't get a set; I would get two. I would-put them on the rear wheels.
+      You might be surprised at how long some of these will last. Anyway, that
+      would be the thing to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Linda, in a relieved tone. &ldquo;That would be the thing to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I must be excused a few minutes till I clean up so I am
+      fit to go on the streets. I hope you won't think I forgot you were
+      coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald laughed drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When 'shoes' was the first word I heard,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I did not for a
+      minute think you had forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn't forget,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;What I did do was to become so excited
+      about cleaning up the car that I let time go faster than I thought it
+      could. That was what made me late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, forget it!&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;Run along and jump into something, and
+      let us get our tires and try Kitty out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda reached up and released the brakes. She stepped to one side of the
+      car and laid her hands on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us run it down opposite the kitchen door,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;then you go
+      around to the front, and I'll let you in, and you can read something a few
+      minutes till I make myself presentable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll stay out here and look around the yard and go over the car
+      again,&rdquo; said the boy. &ldquo;What a bunch of stuff you have got growing here; I
+      don't believe I ever saw half of it before.&rdquo; &ldquo;It's Daddy's and my
+      collection,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Some day I'll show you some of the things, and
+      tell you how we got them, and why they are rare. Today I just naturally
+      can't wait a minute until I try my car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it really yours?&rdquo; asked Donald enviously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It's about the only thing on earth that is peculiarly
+      and particularly mine. I haven't a doubt there are improved models, but
+      Daddy had driven this car only about nine months. It was going smooth as
+      velvet, and there's no reason why it should not keep it up, though I
+      suspect that by this time there are later models that could outrun it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know,&rdquo; said the boy. &ldquo;It looks like some little old car to
+      me. I bet it can just skate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it can,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if I haven't neglected something. We'll
+      start carefully, and we'll have the inspector at the salesrooms look it
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda entered the kitchen door to find Katy with everything edible
+      that the house afforded spread before her on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Katy, what are you doing?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was makin' ready,&rdquo; explained Katy, &ldquo;to fix ye the same kind of lunch I
+      would for Miss Eileen. Will ye have it under the live oak, or in the
+      living room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Come upstairs with me, and in the storeroom you'll
+      find the lunch case and the thermos bottles and don't stint yourself,
+      Katy. This is a rare occasion. It never happened before. Probably it will
+      never happen again. Let's make it high altitude while we are at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do my very best with what I happen to have,&rdquo; said Katy; &ldquo;but I warn
+      you right now I am making a good big hole in the Sunday dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't give two whoops,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if there isn't any Sunday dinner.
+      In memory of hundreds of times that we have eaten bread and milk, make it
+      a banquet, Katy, and we'll eat bread and milk tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she took the stairway at a bound, and ran to her room. In a very
+      short time she emerged, clad in a clean blouse and breeches' her climbing
+      boots, her black hair freshly brushed and braided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to have something,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;to shade my eyes. The glare's
+      hard on them facing the sun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Going down the hall she came to the storeroom, opened a drawer' and picked
+      out a fine black felt Alpine hat that had belonged to her father. She
+      carried it back to her room and, standing at the glass, tried it on,
+      pulling it down on one side, turning it up at the other, and striking a
+      deep cleft across the crown. She looked at herself intently for a minute,
+      and then she reached up and deliberately loosened the hair at her temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not half bad, all things considered, Linda,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But, oh, how you
+      do need a tich of color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran down the hall and opened the door to Eileen's room, and going to
+      her chiffonier, pulled out a drawer containing an array of gloves, veils,
+      and ribbons. At the bottom of the ribbon stack, her eye caught the gleam
+      of color for which she was searching, and she deftly slipped out a narrow
+      scarf of Roman stripes with a deep black fringe at the end. Sitting down,
+      she fitted the hat over her knee, picked up the dressing-table scissors,
+      and ripped off the band. In its place she fitted the ribbon, pinning it
+      securely and knotting the ends so that the fringe reached her shoulder.
+      Then she tried the hat again. The result was blissfully satisfactory. The
+      flash of orange, the blaze of red, the gleam of green, were what she
+      needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much, sister mine,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I know you I would be
+      perfectly delighted to loan me this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. One Hundred Per Cent Plus
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Then she went downstairs and walked into the kitchen, prepared for what
+      she would see, by what she heard as she approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Katy's apron tied around his waist, Donald Whiting was occupied in
+      squeezing orange, lemon, and pineapple juice over a cake of ice in a big
+      bowl, preparatory to the compounding of Katy's most delicious brand of
+      fruit punch. Without a word, Linda stepped to the bread board and began
+      slicing the bread and building sandwiches, while Katy hurried her
+      preparations for filling the lunch box. A few minutes later Katy packed
+      them in the car, kissed Linda good-bye, and repeatedly cautioned Donald to
+      make her be careful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the car rolled down the driveway and into the street, Donald looked
+      appraisingly at the girl beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the prevailing custom in Lilac Valley for young ladies to kiss the
+      cook?&rdquo; inquired Donald laughingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you just hush,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Katy is NOT the cook, alone. Katy's my
+      father, and my mother, and my family, and my best friend&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop right there,&rdquo; interposed Donald. &ldquo;That is quite enough for any human
+      to be. Katy's a multitude. She came out to the car with the canteen, and
+      when I offered to help her, without any 'polly foxin',' she just said:
+      'Sure. Come in and make yourself useful.' So I went, and I am expecting
+      amazing results from the job she gave me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to think of it,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I have small experience with anybody's
+      cooking except Katy's and my own, but so far as I know, she can't very
+      well be beaten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carefully she headed the car into the garage adjoining the salesrooms.
+      There she had an ovation. The manager and several of the men remembered
+      her. The whole force clustered around the Bear Cat and began to examine
+      it, and comment on it, and Linda climbed out and asked to have the
+      carburetor adjusted, while the mechanic put on a pair of tires. When
+      everything was satisfactory, she backed to the street, and after a few
+      blocks of experimental driving, she headed for the Automobile Club to
+      arrange for her license and then turned straight toward Multiflores
+      Canyon, but she did not fail to call Donald Whiting's attention to every
+      beauty of Lilac Valley as they passed through. When they had reached a
+      long level stretch of roadway leading to the canyon, Linda glanced
+      obliquely at the boy beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It all comes back as natural as breathing,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I couldn't forget
+      it any more than I could forget how to walk, or to swim. Sit tight. I am
+      going to step on the gas for a bit, just for old sake's sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; said Donald, taking off his hat and giving his head a
+      toss so that the wind might have full play through his hair. &ldquo;But remember
+      our tires are not safe. Better not go the limit until we get rid of these
+      old ones, and have a new set all around.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda settled back in her seat, took a firm grip on the wheel, and started
+      down the broad, smooth highway, gradually increasing the speed. The color
+      rushed to her cheeks. Her eyes were gleaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to it purr!&rdquo; she cried to Donald. &ldquo;If you hear it begin to growl,
+      tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then for a few minutes they rode like birds on the path of the wind.
+      When they approached the entrance to the canyon, gradually Linda slowed
+      down. She turned an exultant flashing face to Donald Whiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a whizzer,&rdquo; said the boy. &ldquo;I'll tell you I don't know what I'd
+      give to have a car like this for my very own. I'll bet not another girl in
+      Los Angeles has a car that can go like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I don't believe I have any business with it,&rdquo; said Linda; &ldquo;but since
+      circumstances make it mine, I am going to keep it and I am going to drive
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you are,&rdquo; said Donald emphatically. &ldquo;Don't you ever let anybody
+      fool you out of this car, because if they wanted to, it would be just
+      because they are jealous to think they haven't one that will go as fast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's not the slightest possibility of my giving it up so long as I can
+      make the engine turn over,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I told you how Father always took
+      me around with him, and there's nothing in this world I am so sure of as I
+      am sure that I am spoiled for a house cat. I have probably less feminine
+      sophistication than any girl of my age in the world, and I probably know
+      more about camping and fishing and the scientific why and wherefore of all
+      outdoors than most of them. I just naturally had such a heavenly time with
+      Daddy that it never has hurt my feelings to be left out of any dance or
+      party that ever was given. The one thing that has hurt is the isolation.
+      Since I lost Daddy I haven't anyone but Katy. Sometimes, when I see a
+      couple of nice, interesting girls visiting with their heads together, a
+      great feeling of envy wells up in my soul, and I wish with all my heart
+      that I had such a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever try to make one?&rdquo; asked Donald. &ldquo;There are mighty fine girls in the
+      high school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen several that I thought I would like to be friends with,&rdquo; said
+      Linda, &ldquo;but I am so lacking in feminine graces that I haven't known how to
+      make advances, in the first place, and I haven't had the courage, in the
+      second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish my sister were not so much older than you,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old is your sister?&rdquo; inquired Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will be twenty-three next birthday,&rdquo; said Donald; &ldquo;and of all the
+      nice girls you ever saw, she is the queen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she assented, &ldquo;I am sure I have heard your sister mentioned. But
+      didn't you tell me she had been reared for society?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I did not,&rdquo; said Donald emphatically. &ldquo;I told you Mother j believed
+      in dressing her as the majority of other girls were dressed, but I didn't
+      say she had been reared for society. She has been reared with an eye
+      single to making a well-dressed, cultured, and gracious woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I call that fine,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Makes me envious of you. Now forget
+      everything except your eyes and tell me what you see. Have you ever been
+      here before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been through a few times before, but seems to me I | never saw it
+      looking quite so pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda drove carefully, but presently Donald uttered an exclamation as she
+      swerved from the road and started down what appeared to be quite a steep
+      embankment and headed straight for the stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit tight,&rdquo; she said tersely. &ldquo;The Bear Cat just loves its cave. It knows
+      where it is going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke through a group of young willows and ran the car! into a tiny
+      plateau, walled in a circle by the sheer sides of the! canyon reaching
+      upward almost out of sight, topped with great jagged overhanging boulders.
+      Crowded to one side, she stopped the car and sat quietly, smiling at
+      Donald Whiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about it?&rdquo; she asked in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy looked around him, carefully examining the canyon walls, and then
+      at the level, odorous floor where one could not step without crushing tiny
+      flowers of white, cerise, blue, and yellow. Big ferns grew along the
+      walls, here and there &ldquo;Our Lord's Candles&rdquo; lifted high torches not yet
+      lighted, the ambitious mountain stream skipped and circled and fell over
+      its rocky bed, while many canyon wrens were singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that anyone driving along here at an ordinary
+      rate of speed would see that car?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Donald, getting her idea, &ldquo;I don't believe they would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, then,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Toe up even and I'll race YoU to the third
+      curve where you see the big white sycamore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald had a fleeting impression of a flash of khaki, a gleam of red, and
+      a wave of black as they started. He ran with all the speed he had ever
+      attained at a track meet. He ran with all his might. He ran until his
+      sides strained and his breath came short; but the creature beside him was
+      not running; she was flying; and long before they neared the sycamore he
+      knew he was beaten, so he laughingly cried to her to stop it. Linda turned
+      to him panting and laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I make that dash every time I come to the canyon, to keep my muscle up,
+      but this is the first time I have had anyone to race with in a long time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then together they slowly walked down the smooth black floor between the
+      canyon walls. As they crossed a small bridge Linda leaned over and looked
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyone at your house care about 'nose twister'?&rdquo; she asked lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, isn't that watercress?&rdquo; asked Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure it is,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Anyone at your house like it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every one of us,&rdquo; answered Donald. &ldquo;We're all batty about cress salad&mdash;and,
+      say, that reminds me of something! If you know so much about this canyon
+      and everything in it, is there any place in it where a fellow could find a
+      plant, a kind of salad lettuce, that the Indians used to use?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might be,&rdquo; said Linda carelessly. &ldquo;For why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't you heard of the big sensation that is being made in feminine
+      circles by the new department in Everybody's Home?&rdquo; inquired Donald.
+      &ldquo;Mother and Mary Louise were discussing it the other day at lunch, and
+      they said that some of the recipes for dishes to be made from stuff the
+      Indians used sounded delicious. One reminded them of cress, and when we
+      saw the cress I wondered if I could get them some of the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might,&rdquo; said Linda drily, &ldquo;if you could give me a pretty good idea of
+      what it is that you want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you know cress, it's queer that you wouldn't know other things in
+      your own particular canyon,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda realized that she had overdone her disinterestedness a trifle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect it's miners' lettuce you want,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Of course I know
+      where there's some, but you will want it as fresh as possible if you take
+      any, so we'll finish our day first and gather it the last thing before we
+      leave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How it started neither of them noticed, but they had not gone far before
+      they were climbing the walls and hanging to precarious footings. Her
+      cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant, her lips laughing, Linda was showing
+      Donald thrifty specimens of that Cotyledon known as &ldquo;old hen and
+      chickens,&rdquo; telling him of the rare Echeveria of the same family, and her
+      plunge down the canyon side while trying to uproot it, exulting that she
+      had brought down the plant without a rift in the exquisite bloom on its
+      leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda told about her fall, and the two men who had passed at that instant,
+      and how she had met them later, and who they were, and what they were
+      doing. Then Donald climbed high for a bunch of larkspur, and Linda showed
+      him how to turn his back to the canyon wall and come down with the least
+      possible damage to his person and clothing. When at last both of them were
+      tired they went back to the car. Linda spread an old Indian blanket over
+      the least flower-grown spot she could select, brought out the thermos
+      bottles and lunch case, and served their lunch. With a glass of fruit
+      punch in one hand and a lettuce sandwich in the other, Donald smiled at
+      Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll agree about Katy. She knows how,&rdquo; he said appreciatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy is more than a cook,&rdquo; said Linda quietly. &ldquo;She is a human being. She
+      has the biggest, kindest heart. When anybody's sick or in trouble she's
+      the greatest help. She is honest; she has principles; she is intelligent.
+      In her spare time she reads good books and magazines. She knows what is
+      going on in the world. She can talk intelligently on almost any subject.
+      It's no disgrace to be a cook. If it were, Katy would be unspeakable. Fact
+      is, at the present minute there's no one in all the world so dear to me as
+      Katy. I always talk Irish with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I call that rough on your sister,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe it is,&rdquo; conceded Linda. &ldquo;I suspect a lady wouldn't have i said
+      that, but Eileen and I are so different. She never has made the slightest
+      effort to prove herself lovable to me, and so I have never learned to love
+      her. Which reminds me&mdash;how did you happen to come to the garage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very beautiful young lady who opened the door mistook me for a
+      mechanic. She told me I would find you working on your car and for
+      goodness' sake to see that it was in proper condition before you drove
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked at him with wide, surprised eyes in which a trace of
+      indignation was plainly discernible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now listen to me,&rdquo; she said deliberately. &ldquo;Eileen is a most sophisticated
+      young lady. If she saw you, she never in this world, thought you were a
+      mechanic sent from a garage presenting yourself at our front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There might have been a spark of malice in the big blue-gray I eyes that
+      carefully appraised me,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your choice of words is good,&rdquo; said Linda, refilling the punch glass.
+      &ldquo;'Appraise' fits Eileen like her glove. She appraises every thing on a
+      monetary basis, and when she can't figure that it's going to be worth an
+      appreciable number of dollars and cents to her&mdash;'to the garage wid
+      it,' as Katy would say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had finished their lunch Linda began packing the box and Donald
+      sat watching her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At this point,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;Daddy always smoked. Do you smoke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a hint of deeper color in the boy's cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did smoke an occasional cigarette,&rdquo; he said lightly, &ldquo;up to the day,
+      not a thousand years ago, when a very emphatic young lady who should have
+      known, insinuated that it was bad for the nerves, and going on the
+      presumption that she knew, I haven't smoked a cigarette since and I'm not
+      going to until I find out whether I can do better work without them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda folded napkins and packed away accessories thoughtfully. Then she
+      looked into the boy's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now we reach the point of our being here together,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It's time
+      to fight, and I am sorry we didn't go at it gas and bomb the minute we
+      met. You're so different from what I thought you were. If anyone had told
+      me a week ago that you would take off your coat and mess with my
+      automobile engine, or wear Katy's apron and squeeze lemons in our kitchen
+      I would have looked him over for Daddy's high sign of hysteria, at least.
+      It's too bad to I have such a good time as I have had this afternoon, and
+      then end with a fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nothing,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;You couldn't have had as good a time as I
+      have had. You're like another boy. A fellow can be just a fellow with you,
+      and somehow you make everything you touch mean something it never meant
+      before. You have made me feel that I would be about twice the man I am if
+      I had spent the time I have wasted in plain jazzing around, hunting
+      Cotyledon or trap-door spiders' nests.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I get you,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It's the difference between a girl reared in an
+      atmosphere of georgette and rouge, and one who has grown up in the canyons
+      with the oaks and sycamores. One is natural and the other is artificial.
+      Most boys prefer the artificial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I did myself,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;but today has taught me that I
+      don't. I think, Linda, that you would make the finest friend a fellow ever
+      had. I firmly and finally decline to fight with you; but for God's sake,
+      Linda, tell me how I can beat that little cocoanut-headed Jap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda slammed down the lid to the lunch box. Her voice was smooth and even
+      but there was battle in her eyes and she answered decisively: &ldquo;Well, you
+      can't beat him calling him names. There is only one way on God's footstool
+      that you can beat him. You can't beat him legislating against him. You
+      can't beat him boycotting him. You can't beat him with any tricks. He is
+      as sly as a cat and he has got a whole bag full of tricks of his own, and
+      he has proved right here in Los Angeles that he has got a brain that is
+      hard to beat. All you can do, and be a man commendable to your own soul,
+      is to take his subject and put your brain on it to such purpose that you
+      cut pigeon wings around him. What are you studying in your classes,
+      anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trigonometry, Rhetoric, Ancient History, Astronomy,&rdquo; answered Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is your course the same as his?&rdquo; inquired Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strangely enough it is,&rdquo; answered Donald. &ldquo;We have been in the same
+      classes all through high school. I think the little monkey&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, you mean,&rdquo; interposed Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Man,'&rdquo; conceded Donald. &ldquo;Has waited until I selected my course all the
+      way through, and then he has announced what he would take. He probably
+      figured that I had somebody with brains back of the course I selected, and
+      that whatever I studied would be suitable for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't a doubt of it,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;They are quick; oh! they are
+      quick; and they know from their cradles what it is that they have in the
+      backs of their heads. We are not going to beat them driving them to Mexico
+      or to Canada, or letting them monopolize China. That is merely
+      temporizing. That is giving them fertile soil on which to take the best of
+      their own and the level best of ours, and by amalgamating the two, build
+      higher than we ever have. There is just one way in all this world that we
+      can beat Eastern civilization and all that it intends to do to us
+      eventually. The white man has dominated by his color so far in the history
+      of the world, but it is written in the Books that when the men of color
+      acquire our culture and combine it with their own methods of living and
+      rate of production, they are going to bring forth greater numbers, better
+      equipped for the battle of life, than we are. When they have got our last
+      secret, constructive or scientific, they will take it, and living in a way
+      that we would not, reproducing in numbers we don't, they will beat us at
+      any game we start, if we don't take warning while we are in the
+      ascendancy, and keep there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there is something to think about,&rdquo; said Donald Whiting, staring
+      past Linda at the side of the canyon as if he had seen the same
+      handwriting on the wall that dismayed Belshazzar at the feast that
+      preceded his downfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see what you're getting at,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had thought that there might
+      be some way to circumvent him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is!&rdquo; broke in Linda hastily. &ldquo;There is. You can beat him, but you
+      have got to beat him in an honorable way and in a way that is open to him
+      as it is to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do anything in the world if you will only tell me how,&rdquo; said Donald.
+      &ldquo;Maybe you think it isn't grinding me and humiliating me properly. Maybe
+      you think Father and Mother haven't warned me. Maybe you think Mary Louise
+      isn't secretly ashamed of me. How can I beat him, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's eyes were narrowed to a mere line. She was staring at the wall
+      back of Donald as if she hoped that Heaven would intercede in her favor
+      and write thereon a line that she might translate to the boy's benefit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been watching pretty sharply,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Take them as a race, as
+      a unit&mdash;of course there are exceptions, there always are&mdash;but
+      the great body of them are mechanical. They are imitative. They are not
+      developing anything great of their own in their own country. They are
+      spreading all over the world and carrying home sewing machines and
+      threshing machines and automobiles and cantilever bridges and submarines
+      and aeroplanes&mdash;anything from eggbeaters to telescopes. They are not
+      creating one single thing. They are not missing imitating everything that
+      the white man can do anywhere else on earth. They are just like the
+      Germans so far as that is concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I get that, all right enough,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;Now go on. What is your
+      deduction? How the devil am I to beat the best? He is perfect, right
+      straight along in everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The red in Linda's cheeks deepened. Her eyes opened their widest. She
+      leaned forward, and with her closed fist, pounded the blanket before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by gracious,&rdquo; she said sternly, &ldquo;you have got to do something new.
+      You have got to be perfect, PLUS.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Perfect, plus?'&rdquo; gasped Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir!&rdquo; said Linda emphatically. &ldquo;You have got to be perfect, plus. If
+      he can take his little mechanical brain and work a thing out till he has
+      got it absolutely right, you have got to go further than that and discover
+      something pertaining to it not hitherto thought of and start something
+      NEW. I tell you you must use your brains. You should be more than an
+      imitator. You must be a creator!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald started up and drew a deep breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, some job I call that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Who do you think I am, the
+      Almighty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;you are not. You are merely His son, created in
+      His own image, like Him, according to the Book, and you have got to your
+      advantage the benefit of all that has been learned down the ages. We have
+      got to take up each subject in your course, and to find some different
+      books treating this same subject. We have got to get at it from a new
+      angle. We must dig into higher authorities. We have got to coach you till,
+      when you reach the highest note possible for the parrot, you can go ahead
+      and embellish it with a few mocking-bird flourishes. All Oka Sayye knows
+      how to do is to learn the lesson in his book perfectly, and he is 100 per
+      cent. I have told you what you must do to add the plus, and you can do it
+      if you are the boy I take you for. People have talked about the 'yellow
+      peril' till it's got to be a meaningless phrase. Somebody must wake up to
+      the realization that it's the deadliest peril that ever has menaced white
+      civilization. Why shouldn't you have your hand in such wonderful work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; said the boy breathlessly, &ldquo;do you realize that you have been
+      saying 'we'? Can you help me? Will you help me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I didn't realize that I had said 'we.' I didn't mean
+      two people, just you and me. I meant all the white boys and girls of the
+      high school and the city and the state and the whole world. If we are
+      going to combat the 'yellow peril' we must combine against it. We have got
+      to curb our appetites and train our brains and enlarge our hearts till we
+      are something bigger and finer and numerically greater than this yellow
+      peril. We can't take it and pick it up and push it into the sea. We are
+      not Germans and we are not Turks. I never wanted anything in all this
+      world worse than I want to see you graduate ahead of Oka Sayye. And then I
+      want to see the white boys and girls of Canada and of England and of
+      Norway and Sweden and Australia, and of the whole world doing exactly what
+      I am recommending that you do in your class and what I am doing personally
+      in my own. I have had Japs in my classes ever since I have been in school,
+      but Father always told me to study them, to play the game fairly, but to
+      BEAT them in some way, in some fair way, to beat them at the game they are
+      undertaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there is one thing you don't take into consideration,&rdquo; said Donald.
+      &ldquo;All of us did not happen to be fathered by Alexander Strong. Maybe we
+      haven't all got your brains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, posher!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I know of a case where a little Indian was
+      picked up from a tribal battlefield in South America and brought to this
+      country and put into our schools, and there was nothing that any white
+      pupil in the school could do that he couldn't, so long as it was imitative
+      work. You have got to be constructive. You have got to work out some way
+      to get ahead of them; and if you will take the history of the white races
+      and go over their great achievements in mechanics, science, art,
+      literature&mdash;anything you choose&mdash;when a white man is
+      constructive, when he does create, he can simply cut circles around the
+      colored races. The thing is to get the boys and girls of today to
+      understand what is going on in the world, what they must do as their share
+      in making the world safe for their grandchildren. Life is a struggle. It
+      always has been. It always will be. There is no better study than to go
+      into the canyons or the deserts and efface yourself and watch life. It's
+      an all-day process of the stronger annihilating the weaker. The one
+      inexorable thing in the world is Nature. The eagle dominates the hawk; the
+      hawk, the falcon; the falcon, the raven; and so on down to the place where
+      the hummingbird drives the moth from his particular trumpet flower. The
+      big snake swallows the little one. The big bear appropriates the desirable
+      cave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is that what you are recommending people to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;it is not. That is wild. We go a step ahead of the
+      wild, or we ourselves become wild. We have brains, and with our brains we
+      must do in a scientific way what Nature does with tooth and claw. In other
+      words, and to be concrete, put these things in the car while I fold the
+      blanket. We'll gather our miners' lettuce and then we'll go home and
+      search Daddy's library and see if there is anything bearing in a higher
+      way on any subject you are taking, so that you can get from it some new
+      ideas, some different angle, some higher light, something that will end in
+      speedily prefacing Oka Sayye's perfect with your pluperfect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. Katy to the Rescue
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Linda delivered Donald Whiting at his door with an armload of books and a
+      bundle of miners' lettuce and then drove to her home in Lilac Valley&mdash;in
+      the eye of the beholder on the floor-level macadam road; in her own eye
+      she scarcely grazed it. The smooth, easy motion of the car, the softly
+      purring engine were thrilling. The speed at which she was going was like
+      having wings on her body. The mental stimulus she had experienced in
+      concentrating her brain on Donald Whiting's problem had stimulated her
+      imagination. The radiant color of spring; the chilled, perfumed, golden
+      air; the sure sense of having found a friend, had ruffled the plumes of
+      her spirit. On the home road Donald had plainly indicated that he would
+      enjoy spending the morrow with her, and she had advised him to take the
+      books she had provided and lock himself in his room and sweat out some
+      information about Monday's lessons which would at least arrest his
+      professor's attention, and lead his mind to the fact that something was
+      beginning to happen. And then she had laughingly added: &ldquo;Tomorrow is
+      Katy's turn. I told the old dear I would take her as soon as I felt the
+      car was safe. Every day she does many things that she hopes will give me
+      pleasure. This is one thing I can do that I know will delight her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next Saturday, then?&rdquo; questioned Donald. And Linda nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure thing. I'll be thinking up some place extra interesting. Come in the
+      morning if you want, and we'll take a lunch and go for the day. Which do
+      you like best, mountains or canyons or desert or sea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like it best wherever what you're interested in takes you,&rdquo; said Donald
+      simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, then,&rdquo; answered Linda, &ldquo;we'll combine business and pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they parted with another meeting arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she reached home she found Katy tearfully rejoicing, plainly
+      revealing how intensely anxious she had been. But when Linda told her that
+      the old tires had held, that the car ran wonderfully, that everything was
+      perfectly safe, that she drove as unconsciously as she breathed, and that
+      tomorrow Katy was to go for a long ride, her joy was incoherent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laughed. She patted Katy and started down the hallway, when she
+      called back: &ldquo;What is this package?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A delivery boy left it special only a few minutes ago. Must be something
+      Miss Eileen bought and thought she would want tomorrow, and then afterward
+      she got this invitation and went on as she was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood gazing at the box. It did look so suspiciously like a dress
+      box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have just about got an irresistible impulse to peep.
+      I was telling Eileen last night of a dress I saw that I thought perfect.
+      It suited me better than any other dress I ever did see. It was at 'The
+      Mode.' This box is from 'The Mode.' Could there be a possibility that she
+      sent it up specially for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she would put your name on it if she meant it for ye,&rdquo; said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One peep would show me whether it is my dress or not,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;and
+      peep I'm going to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She began untying the string.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one thing,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;Miss Eileen's sizes would never fit ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might,&rdquo; conceded Linda. &ldquo;I am taller than she is, but I could wear her
+      waists if I wanted to, and she always alters her skirts herself to save
+      the fees. Glory be! This is my dress, and there's a petticoat and
+      stockings to match it. Why, the nice old thing! I suggested hard enough,
+      but in my heart I hardly thought she would do it. Oh, dear, now if I only
+      had some shoes, and a hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda was standing holding the jacket in one hand, the stockings in the
+      other, her face flaming. Katy drew herself to full height. She reached
+      over and picked the things from Linda's fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ye know that is your dress, lambie,&rdquo; she said authoritatively, &ldquo;ye go
+      right out and get into that car and run to town and buy ye a pair of
+      shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have no credit anywhere and I have no money, yet,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I have,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;and this time ye're going to stop your
+      stubbornness and take enough to get ye what you need. Ye go to the best
+      store in Los Angeles and come back here with a pair of shoes that just
+      match those stockings, and ye go fast, before the stores close. If ye've
+      got to speed a little, do it in the country and do it judacious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy, you're arriving!&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;'Judicious speeding' is one thing I
+      learned better than any other lesson about driving a motor car. Three
+      fourths of the driving Father and I did we were speeding judiciously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy held the skirt to Linda's waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, maybe it's a little shorter than any you have been wearing, but it
+      ain't as short as Eileen and all the rest of the girls your age have them,
+      so that's all right, honey. Slip on your coat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy's fingers were shaking as she lifted the jacket and Linda slipped
+      into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord,&rdquo; she groaned, &ldquo;ye can't be wearing that! The sleeves don't come
+      much below your elbows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will please to observe,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that they are flowing sleeves
+      and they are not intended to come below the elbows; but it's a piece of
+      luck I tried it on, for it reminds me that it's a jacket suit and I must
+      have a blouse. When you get the shoe money, make it enough for a blouse&mdash;two
+      blouses, Katy, one for school and one to fuss up in a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without stopping to change her clothing, Linda ran to the garage and
+      hurried back to the city. It was less than an hour's run, but she made it
+      in ample time to park her car and buy the shoes. She selected a pair of
+      low oxfords of beautiful color, matching the stockings. Then she hurried
+      to one of the big drygoods stores and bought the two waists and an
+      inexpensive straw hat that would harmonize with the suit; a hat small
+      enough to stick, in the wind, with brim enough to shade her eyes. In about
+      two hours she was back with Katy and they were in her room trying on the
+      new clothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It dumbfounds me,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;to have Eileen do this for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had put on the shoes and stockings, a plain georgette blouse of a
+      soft, brownish wood-gray, with a bit of heavy brown silk embroidery
+      decorating the front, and the jacket. The dress was of silky changeable
+      tricolette, the skirt plain. Where a fold lifted and was strongly lighted,
+      it was an exquisite silver-gray; where a shadow fell deeply it was
+      gray-brown. The coat reached half way to the knees. It had a rippling
+      skirt with a row of brown embroidery around it, a deep belt with double
+      buttoning at the waistline, and collar and sleeves in a more elaborate
+      pattern of the same embroidery as the skirt. Linda perched the hat on her
+      head, pulled it down securely, and faced Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then!&rdquo; she challenged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it's a perfect dress!&rdquo; said Katy proudly, &ldquo;and you're just the
+      colleen to wear it. My, but I wisht your father could be seeing ye the
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With almost reverent hands Linda removed the clothing and laid it away.
+      Then she read a letter from Marian that was waiting for her, telling Katy
+      scraps of it in running comment as she scanned the sheets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She likes her boarding place. There are nice people in it. She has got a
+      wonderful view from the windows of her room. She is making friends. She
+      thinks one of the men at Nicholson and Snow's is just fine; he is helping
+      her all he can, on the course she is taking. And she wants us to look
+      carefully everywhere for any scrap of paper along the hedge or around the
+      shrubbery on the north side of the house. One of her three sheets of plans
+      is missing. I don't see where in the world it could have gone, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy spread out her hands in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was not a scrap of a sheet of paper in the room when I cleaned it,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;not a scrap. And if I had seen a sheet flying around the yard I
+      would have picked it up. She just must be mistaken about having lost it
+      here. She must have opened her case on the train and lost it there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put that stuff in the case myself,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and the clothes on top
+      of it, and she wouldn't have any reason for taking those things out on the
+      train. I can't understand, but she did have three rough sketches. She had
+      her heart set on winning that prize and it would be a great help to her,
+      and certainly it was the most comprehensive and convenient plan for a
+      house of that class that I ever have seen. If I ever have a house, she is
+      going to plan it, even if she doesn't get to plan John Gilman's as he
+      always used to say that she should. And by the way, Katy, isn't it kind of
+      funny for Eileen to go away over Sunday when it's his only holiday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she'll telephone him,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;and very like, he'll go down, or
+      maybe he is with her. Ye needn't waste any sympathy on him. Eileen will
+      take care that she has him so long as she thinks she wants him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later it developed that Eileen had secured the invitation because she was
+      able to produce three most eligible men. Not only was John Gilman with the
+      party, but Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson were there as well. It was in
+      the nature of a hastily arranged celebration, because the deal for three
+      acres of land that Peter Morrison most coveted on the small plateau,
+      mountain walled, in Lilac Valley, was in escrow. He had made a payment on
+      it. Anderson was working on his plans. Contractors had been engaged, and
+      on Monday work would begin. The house was to be built as soon as possible,
+      and Peter Morrison had arranged that the garage was to be built first.
+      This he meant to occupy as a residence so that he could be on hand to
+      superintend the construction of the new home and to protect, as far as
+      possible, the natural beauty and the natural growth of the location.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early Sunday morning Linda and Katy, with a full lunch box and a full
+      gasoline tank, slid from the driveway and rolled down the main street of
+      Lilac Valley toward the desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll switch over and strike San Fernando Road,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;and I'll
+      scout around Sunland a bit and see if I can find anything that will
+      furnish material for another new dish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That day was wonderful for Katy. She trotted after Linda over sandy desert
+      reaches, along the seashore, up mountain trails, and through canyons
+      connected by long stretches of motoring that was more like flying than
+      riding. She was tired but happy when she went to bed. Monday morning she
+      was an interested spectator as Linda dressed for school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure, and hasn't the old chrysalis opened up and let out the nicest
+      little lady-bird moth, Katy?&rdquo; inquired Linda as she smoothed her gray-gold
+      skirts. &ldquo;I think myself that this dress is a trifle too good for school.
+      When I get my allowance next week I think I'll buy me a cloth skirt and a
+      couple of wash waists and save this for better; but it really was good of
+      Eileen to take so much pains and send it to me, when she was busy planning
+      a trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy watched Linda go, and she noted the new light in her eyes, the new
+      lift of her head, and the proud sureness of her step, and she wondered if
+      a new dress could do all that for a girl, she scarcely believed that it
+      could. And, too, she had very serious doubts about the dress. She kept
+      thinking of it during the day, and when Eileen came, in the middle of the
+      afternoon, at the first words on her lips: &ldquo;Has my dress come?&rdquo; Katy felt
+      a wave of illness surge through her. She looked at Eileen so helplessly
+      that that astute reader of human nature immediately Suspected something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sent it special,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;because I didn't know at the time that I
+      was going to Riverside and I wanted to work on it. Isn't it here yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Katy prepared to do battle for the child of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was the dress ye ordered sent the one Miss Linda was telling ye about?&rdquo;
+       she asked tersely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;Linda has got mighty good taste. Any dress
+      she admired was sure to be right. She said there was a beautiful dress at
+      'The Mode'. I went and looked, and sure enough there was, a perfect
+      beauty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she wanted the dress for herself,&rdquo; said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not a suitable dress for school,&rdquo; said Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it strikes me,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;that it was just the spittin' image of
+      fifty dresses I've seen ye wear to school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you know about it?&rdquo; demanded Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know just this,&rdquo; said Katy with determination. &ldquo;Ye've had one new dress
+      in the last few days and you're not needin' another. The blessed Virgin
+      only knows when Miss Linda's had a dress. She thought ye'd done yourself
+      proud and sent it for her, and she put it on, and a becoming and a proper
+      thing it was too! I advanced her the money myself and sent her to get some
+      shoes to match it since she had her car fixed and could go in a hurry. A
+      beautiful dress it is, and on her back this minute it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen was speechless with anger. Her face was a sickly white and the
+      rouge spots on her cheeks stood a glaring admission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to tell me&mdash;&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not again,&rdquo; said the daughter of Erin firmly, &ldquo;because I have already
+      told ye wance. Linda's gone like a rag bag since the Lord knows when. She
+      had a right to the dress, and she thought it was hers, and she took it.
+      And if ye ever want any more respect or obedience or love from the kiddie,
+      ye better never let her know that ye didn't intend it for her, for nothing
+      was ever quite so fair and right as that she should have it; and while
+      you're about it you'd better go straight to the store and get her what she
+      is needin' to go with it, or better still, ye had better give her a fair
+      share of the money of which there used to be such a plenty, and let her
+      get her things herself, for she's that tasty nobody can beat her when
+      she's got anything to do with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen turned on Katy in a gust of fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katherine O'Donovan,&rdquo; she said shrilly, &ldquo;pack your trunk and see how
+      quick you can get out of this house. I have stood your insolence for
+      years, and I won't endure it a minute longer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy folded her red arms and lifted her red chin, and a steel-blue light
+      flashed from her steel-gray eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humph!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I'll do nothing of the sort. I ain't working for ye
+      and I never have been no more than I ever worked for your mother. Every
+      lick I ever done in this house I done for Linda and Doctor Strong and for
+      nobody else. Half of this house and everything in it belongs to Linda, and
+      it's a mortal short time till she's of age to claim it. Whichever is her
+      half, that half I'll be staying in, and if ye manage so as she's got
+      nothing to pay me, I'll take care of her without pay till the day comes
+      when she can take care of me. Go to wid ye, ye triflin', lazy,
+      self-possessed creature. Ten years I have itched to tell ye what I thought
+      of ye, and now ye know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Katy's rage increased, Eileen became intimidated. Like every extremely
+      selfish person she was a coward in her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you refuse to go on my orders,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I'll have John Gilman issue
+      his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Katy set her left hand on her left hip, her lower jaw shot past the
+      upper, her doubled right fist shook precious near the tip of Eileen's
+      exquisite little nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm darin' ye,&rdquo; she shouted. &ldquo;I'm just darin' ye to send John Gilman in
+      the sound of my voice. If ye do, I'll tell him every mean and selfish
+      thing ye've done to me poor lambie since the day of the Black Shadow. Send
+      him to me? Holy Mither, I wish ye would! If ever I get my chance at him,
+      don't ye think I won't be tellin' him what he has lost, and what he has
+      got? And as for taking orders from him, I am taking my orders from the
+      person I am working for, and as I told ye before, that's Miss Linda. Be
+      off wid ye, and primp up while I get my supper, and mind ye this, if ye
+      tell Miss Linda ye didn't mean that gown for her and spoil the happy day
+      she has had, I won't wait for ye to send John Gilman to me; I'll march
+      straight to him. Put that in your cigarette and smoke it! Think I've lost
+      me nose as well as me sense?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Katy started a triumphal march to the kitchen and cooled down by the
+      well-known process of slamming pots and pans for half an hour. Soon her
+      Irish sense of humor came to her rescue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, don't I hear myself telling Miss Linda a few days ago to kape her
+      temper, and to kape cool, and to go aisy. Look at the aise of me when I
+      got started. By gracious, wasn't I just itching to wallop her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then every art that Katy possessed was bent to the consummation of
+      preparing a particularly delicious dinner for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda came in softly humming something to herself about the kind of shoes
+      that you might wear if you chose. She had entered the high school that
+      morning with an unusually brilliant color. Two or three girls, who never
+      had noticed her before, had nodded to her that morning, and one or two had
+      said: &ldquo;What a pretty dress you have!&rdquo; She had caught the flash of approval
+      in the eyes of Donald Whiting, and she had noted the flourish with which
+      he raised his hat when he saw her at a distance, and she knew what he
+      meant when he held up a book, past the covers of which she could see
+      protruding a thick fold of white paper. He had foresworn whatever pleasure
+      he might have thought of for Sunday. He had prepared notes on some subject
+      that he thought would further him. The lift of his head, the flourish of
+      his hat, and the book all told Linda that he had struggled and that he
+      felt the struggle had brought an exhilarating degree of success. That had
+      made the day particularly bright for Linda. She had gone home with a
+      feeling of uplift and exultation in her heart. As she closed the front
+      door she cried up the stairway: &ldquo;Eileen, are you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered a rather sulky voice from above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda ascended, two steps at a bound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you over and over, old thing!&rdquo; she cried as she raced down the
+      hallway. &ldquo;Behold me! I never did have a more becoming dress, and Katy
+      loaned me money, till my income begins, to get shoes and a little scuff
+      hat to go with it. Aren't I spiffy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pirouetted in the doorway. Eileen gripped the brush she was wielding,
+      tight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have good taste,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It's a pretty dress, but You're always
+      howling about things being suitable. Do you call that suitable for
+      school?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly is an innovation for me,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but there are dozens
+      of dresses of the same material, only different cut and colors in the high
+      school today. As soon as I get my money I'll buy a skirt and some blouses
+      so I won't have to wear this all the time; but I surely do thank you very
+      much, and I surely have had a lovely day. Did you have a nice time at
+      Riverside?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen slammed down the brush and turned almost a distorted face to Linda.
+      She had temper to vent. In the hour's reflection previous to Linda's
+      coming, she realized that she had reached the limit with Katy. If she
+      antagonized her by word or look, she would go to John Gilman, and Eileen
+      dared not risk what she would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I did not have a lovely time,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I furnished the men for the
+      party and I expected to have a grand time, but the first thing we did was
+      to run into that inflated egotist calling herself Mary Louise Whiting, and
+      like a fool, Janie Brunson introduced her to Peter Morrison. I had paired
+      him with Janie on purpose to keep my eye on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda tried hard but she could not suppress a chuckle: &ldquo;Of course you
+      would!&rdquo; she murmured softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen turned her back. That had been her first confidence to Linda. She
+      was so aggrieved at that moment that she could have told unanswering walls
+      her tribulations. It would have been better if she had done so. She might
+      have been able to construe silence as sympathy. Linda's laughter she knew
+      exactly how to interpret. &ldquo;Served you right,&rdquo; was what it meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't the least notion you would take an interest in anything
+      concerning me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;People can talk all they please about Mary
+      Louise Whiting being a perfect lady but she is a perfect beast. I have met
+      her repeatedly and she has always ignored me, and yesterday she singled
+      out for her special attention the most desirable man in my party&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Most desirable,'&rdquo; breathed Linda. &ldquo;Poor John! I see his second fiasco.
+      Lavender crystals, please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen caught her lip in mortification. She had not intended to say what
+      she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can't claim,&rdquo; she hurried on to cover her confusion, &ldquo;that it
+      was not an ill-bred, common trick for her to take possession of a man of
+      my party, and utterly ignore me. She has everything on earth that I want;
+      she treats me like a dog, and she could give me a glorious time by merely
+      nodding her head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite sure you are mistaken,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;From what I've heard of
+      her, she wouldn't mistreat anyone. Very probably what she does is merely
+      to feel that she is not acquainted with you. You have an unfortunate way,
+      Eileen, of defeating your own ends. If you wanted to attract Mary Louise
+      Whiting, you missed the best chance you ever could have had, at three
+      o'clock Saturday afternoon, when you maliciously treated her only brother
+      as you would a mechanic, ordered him to our garage, and shut our door in
+      his face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen turned to Linda. Her mouth fell open. A ghastly greenish white
+      flooded her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that Donald Whiting was calling on me, and you
+      purposely sent him to the garage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crash down among the vanities of Eileen's dressing table went her lovely
+      head, and she broke into deep and violent sobs. Linda stood looking at her
+      a second, slowly shaking her head. Then she turned and went to her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later in the evening she remembered the Roman scarf and told Eileen of
+      what she had done, and she was unprepared for Eileen's reply: &ldquo;That scarf
+      always was too brilliant for me. You're welcome to it if you want it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Linda gravely, &ldquo;I want it very much indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. Assisting Providence
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Linda went to the library to see to what state of emptiness it had been
+      reduced by the removal of several pieces of furniture she had ordered
+      taken away that day. As she stood on the threshold looking over the room
+      as usual, a throb of loving appreciation of Katy swept through her heart.
+      Katy had been there before her. The room had been freshly swept and
+      dusted, the rugs had been relaid, the furniture rearranged skilfully, and
+      the table stood at the best angle to be lighted either by day or night. On
+      the table and the mantel stood big bowls of lovely fresh flowers. Linda
+      was quite certain that anyone entering the room for the first time would
+      have felt it completely furnished, and she doubted if even Marian would
+      notice the missing pieces. Cheered in her heart, she ran up to the
+      billiard room, and there again Katy had preceded her. The windows were
+      shining. The walls and floor had been cleaned. Everything was in readiness
+      for the new furniture. Her heart full of gratitude, Linda went to her
+      room, prepared her lessons for the next day, and then drew out her writing
+      materials to answer Marian's letter. She wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have an acute attack of enlargement of the heart. So many things have
+      happened since your leaving. But first I must tell you about your sketch.
+      We just know you did not leave it here. Katy says there was not a scrap in
+      our bedroom when she cleaned it; and as she knows you make plans and how
+      precious they are to you, I guarantee she would have saved it if she had
+      found anything looking like a parallelogram on a piece of paper. And I
+      have very nearly combed the lawn, not only the north side, but the west,
+      south, and east; and then I broke the laws and went over to your house and
+      crawled through a basement window and worked my way up, and I have hunted
+      every room in it, but there is nothing there. You must have lost that
+      sketch after you reached San Francisco. I hope to all that's peaceful you
+      did not lay it down in the offices of Nicholson and Snow, or where you
+      take your lessons. I know nothing about architecture, but I do know
+      something about comfort in a home, and I thought that was the most
+      comfortable and convenient-looking house I ever had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I'll go on and tell you all the news, and I don't know which is the
+      bigger piece to burst on you first. Would you be more interested in
+      knowing that Peter Morrison has bought three acres on the other side of
+      the valley from us and up quite a way, or in the astonishing fact that I
+      have a new dress, a perfect love of a dress, really too good for school?
+      You know there was blood in my eye when you left, and I didn't wait long
+      to start action. I have managed to put the fear of God into Eileen's heart
+      so that she has agreed to a reasonable allowance for me from the first of
+      next month; but she must have felt at least one small wave of contrition
+      when I told her about a peculiarly enticing dress I had seen at The Mode.
+      She sent it up right away, and Katy, blessed be her loving footprints,
+      loaned me money to buy a blouse and some shoes to match, so I went to
+      school today looking very like the Great General Average, minus rouge,
+      lipstick, hairdress, and French heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do hope you will approve of two things I have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda recounted the emptying of the billiard room, the inroads in the
+      library, the listing of the technical books, and what she proposed to do
+      with the money. And then, her face slightly pale and her fingers slightly
+      trembling, she wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, Marian dear, I hope you won't be angry with me when I tell you that I
+      have put the Bear Cat into commission and driven it three times already.
+      It is running like the feline it is, and I am being as careful as I can. I
+      know exactly how you will feel. It is the same feeling that has held me
+      all these months, when I wouldn't even let myself think of it. But
+      something happened at school one day, Marian. You know the Whitings? Mary
+      Louise Whiting's brother is in the senior class. He is a six-footer, and
+      while he is not handsome he is going to be a real man when he is fully
+      developed, and steadied down to work. One day last week he made it his
+      business to stop me in the hall and twit me about my shoes, and
+      incidentally to ask me why I didn't dress like the other girls; and some
+      way it came rougher than if it had been one of the girls. The more I
+      thought about it the more wronged I felt, so I ended in a young revolution
+      that is to bring me an income, a suitable place to work in and has brought
+      me such a pretty dress. I think it has brought Eileen to a sense of at
+      least partial justice about money, and it brought me back the Bear Cat.
+      You know the proudest moment of my life was when Father would let me drive
+      the little beast, and it all came back as natural as breathing. Please
+      don't worry, Marian. Nothing shall happen, I promise you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It won't be necessary to tell you that Katy is her darling old self, loyal
+      and steadfast as the sun, and quite as necessary and as comforting to me.
+      And I have a couple of other interests in life that are going to&mdash;I
+      won't say make up for your absence, because nothing could do that&mdash;but
+      they are going to give me something interesting to think about, something
+      agreeable to work at, while you are gone. But, oh, Marian, do hurry. Work
+      all day and part of the night. Be Saturday's child yourself if you must,
+      just so you get home quick, and where your white head makes a beacon light
+      for the truest, lovingest pal you will ever have,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                 LINDA.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Linda laid down the pen, slid down in her chair, and looked from the
+      window across the valley, and she wondered if in her view lay the location
+      that had been purchased by Peter Morrison. She glanced back at her letter
+      and sat looking at the closing lines and the signature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much good that will do her,&rdquo; she commented. &ldquo;When a woman loves a man and
+      loves him with all her heart, as Marian loved John, and when she loses
+      him, not because she has done a single unworthy thing herself, but because
+      he is so rubber spined that he will let another woman successfully
+      intrigue him, a lot of comfort she is going to get from the love of a
+      schoolgirl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's eyes strayed to the window again, and traveled down to the city
+      and up the coast, all the way to San Francisco, and out of the thousands
+      of homes there they pictured a small, neat room, full of Marian's
+      belongings, and Marian herself bending over a worktable, absorbed in the
+      final draft of her precious plans. Linda could see Marian as plainly as
+      she ever had seen her, but she let her imagination run, and she fancied
+      that when Marian was among strangers and where no one knew of John
+      Gilman's defection, that hers might be a very heavy heart, that hers might
+      be a very sad face. Then she went to planning. She had been desolate,
+      heart hungry, and isolated herself. First she had endured, then she had
+      fought; the dawn of a new life was breaking over her hill. She had found
+      work she was eager to do. She could put the best of her brain, the skill
+      of her fingers, the creative impulse of her heart, into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was almost sure that she had found a friend. She had a feeling that
+      when the coming Saturday had been lived Donald Whiting would be her
+      friend. He would want her advice and her help in his work. She would want
+      his companionship and the stimulus of his mind, in hers. What Linda had
+      craved was a dear friend among the girls, but no girl had offered her
+      friendship. This boy had, so she would accept what the gods of time and
+      circumstance provided. It was a very wonderful thing that had happened to
+      her. Now why could not something equally wonderful happen to Marian? Linda
+      wrinkled her brows and thought deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the worst thing in all this world to work and work with nobody to
+      know about it and nobody to care,&rdquo; thought Linda. &ldquo;Marian could break a
+      record if she thought John Gilman cared now as he used to. It's almost a
+      necessary element to her success. If he doesn't care, she ought to be made
+      to feel that somebody cares. This thing of standing alone, since I have
+      found a friend, appeals to me as almost insupportable. Let me think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not long until she had worked out a scheme for putting an interest
+      in Marian's life and giving her something for which to work, until a more
+      vital reality supplanted it. The result was that she took some paper, went
+      down to the library, and opening the typewriter, wrote a letter. She read
+      it over, making many changes and corrections, and then she copied it
+      carefully. When she came to addressing it she was uncertain, but at last
+      she hit upon a scheme of sending it in the care of Nicholson and Snow
+      because Marian had told her that she meant to enter their contest
+      immediately she reached San Francisco, and she would have left them her
+      address. On the last reading of the letter she had written, she decided
+      that it was a manly, straightforward production, which should interest and
+      attract any girl. But how was she to sign it? After thinking deeply for a
+      long time, she wrote &ldquo;Philip Sanders, General Delivery,&rdquo; and below she
+      added a postscript:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To save you the trouble of inquiring among your friends as to who Philip
+      Sanders is, I might as well tell you in the beginning that he isn't. He is
+      merely an assumption under which I shall hide my personality until you let
+      me know whether it is possible that you could become even slightly
+      interested in me, as a small return for the very deep and wholesome
+      interest abiding in my heart for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abiding,&rdquo; said Linda aloud. &ldquo;It seems to me that there is nothing in all
+      the world quite so fine as a word. Isn't 'abiding' a good word? Doesn't it
+      mean a lot? Where could you find one other word that means being with you
+      and also means comforting you and loving you and sympathizing with you and
+      surrounding you with firm walls and a cushioned floor and a starry roof? I
+      love that word. I hope it impresses Marian with all its wonderful
+      meaning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went back to her room, put both letters into her Geometry, and in the
+      morning mailed them. She stood a long time hesitating with the typewritten
+      letter in her hand, but finally dropped it in the letter box also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will just be something,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to make her think that some man
+      appreciates her lovely face and doesn't care if her hair is white, and
+      sees how steadfast and fine she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she slowly repeated, &ldquo;'steadfast,' that is another fine word. It
+      has pearls and rubies all over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After school that evening she visited James Brothers' and was paid the
+      full amount of the appraisement of her furniture. Then she went to an art
+      store and laid in a full supply of the materials she needed for the work
+      she was trying to do. Her fingers were trembling as she handled the boxes
+      of water colors and selected the brushes and pencils for her work, and
+      sheets of drawing paper upon which she could do herself justice. When the
+      transaction was finished, she had a few dollars remaining. As she put them
+      in her pocket she said softly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's gasoline. Poor Katy! I'm glad she doesn't need her money, because
+      she is going to have to wait for the allowance or the sale of the books or
+      on Jane Meredith. But it's only a few days now, so that'll be all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. The Lay of the Land
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Linda entered the street car for her daily ride to Lilac Valley. She
+      noticed Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson sitting beside each other,
+      deeply engrossed in a drawing. She had been accustomed to ride in the open
+      section of the car as she liked the fresh air. She had a fleeting thought
+      of entering the body of the car and sitting where they would see her; and
+      then a perverse spirit in Linda's heart said to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely what Eileen would do. You sit where you belong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon Linda dropped into the first vacant seat she could reach, but it
+      was only a few moments before Peter Morrison, looking up from the plans he
+      was studying, saw her, and lifting his hat, beckoned her to come and sit
+      with him. They made room for her between them and spreading the paper
+      across her lap, all three of them began to discuss the plans for the
+      foundation for Peter's house. Anderson had roughly outlined the grounds,
+      sketching in the trees that were to be saved, the spring, and the most
+      available route for reaching the road. The discussion was as to where the
+      road should logically enter the grounds, and where the garage should
+      stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which reminds me,&rdquo; said Linda&mdash;&ldquo;haven't you your car with you? Or
+      was that a hired one you were touring in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison, &ldquo;but we toured so far, it's in the shop for a
+      general overhauling today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That being the case,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;walk home with me and I'll take you to
+      your place in mine and bring you back to the cars, if you only want to
+      stay an hour or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that would be fine,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;You didn't mention, the other
+      evening, that you had a car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I had been trying to keep cars out of my thought for a
+      long time, but I could endure it no longer the other day, so I got mine
+      out and tuned it up. If you don't mind stacking up a bit, three can ride
+      in it very comfortably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the way it happened that Linda walked home after school that
+      afternoon between Peter Morrison and his architect, brought out the Bear
+      Cat, and drove them to Peter's location.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that day, workmen had been busy under the management of a
+      well-instructed foreman, removing trees and bushes and stones and clearing
+      the spot that had been selected for the garage and approximately for the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soft brownish gray of Linda's dress was exactly the color to intensify
+      the darker brown of her eyes. There was a fluctuating red in her olive
+      cheeks, a brilliant red framing her even white teeth. Once dressed so that
+      she was satisfied with the results, Linda immediately forgot her clothes,
+      and plunged into Morrison's plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said gravely, with Peter perfectly cognizant of the twinkle
+      in her dark eyes, &ldquo;Peter, you may save money in a straight-line road, but
+      you're going to sin against your soul if you build it. You'll have to
+      economize in some other way, and run your road around the base of those
+      boulders, then come in straight to the line here, and then you should
+      swing again and run out on this point, where guests can have one
+      bewildering glimpse of the length of our blue valley, and then whip them
+      around this clump of perfumy lilac and elders, run them to your side
+      entrance, and then scoot the car back to the garage. I think you should
+      place the front of your house about here.&rdquo; Linda indicated where. &ldquo;So long
+      as you're buying a place like this you don't want to miss one single
+      thing; and you do want to make the very most possible out of every beauty
+      you have. And you mustn't fail to open up and widen the runway from that
+      energetic, enthusiastic spring. Carry it across your road, sure. It will
+      cost you another little something for a safe bridge, but there's nothing
+      so artistic as a bridge with a cold stream running under it. And think
+      what a joyful time I'll have, gathering specimens for you of every pretty
+      water plant that grows in my particular canyon. Any time when you're busy
+      in your library and you hear my car puffing up the incline and around the
+      corner and rattling across the bridge, you'll know that I am down here
+      giving you a start of watercress and miners' lettuce and every lovely
+      thing you could mention that likes to be nibbled or loved-up, while it
+      dabbles its toes in the water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Morrison looked at Linda reflectively. He looked for such a long
+      moment that Henry Anderson reached a nebulous conclusion. &ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; he
+      cried. &ldquo;Every one of those suggestions is valuable to an inexperienced
+      man. Morrison, shan't I make a note of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Henry, you shall,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;I am going to push this thing as
+      fast as possible, so far as building the garage is concerned and getting
+      settled in it. After that I don't care if I live on this spot until we
+      know each other by the inch, before I begin building my home. At the
+      present minute it appeals to me that 'home' is about the best word in the
+      language of any nation. I have a feeling that what I build here is going
+      to be my home, very possibly the only one I shall ever have. We must find
+      the spot on which the Lord intended that a house should grow on this
+      hillside, and then we must build that house so that it has a room suitable
+      for a workshop in which I may strive, under the best conditions possible,
+      to get my share of the joy of life and to earn the money that I shall
+      require to support me and entertain my friends; and that sounds about as
+      selfish as anything possibly could. It seems to be mostly 'me' and 'mine,'
+      and it's not the real truth concerning this house. I don't believe there
+      is a healthy, normal man living who has not his dream. I have no
+      hesitation whatever in admitting that I have mine. This house must be two
+      things. It has got to be a concrete workshop for me, and it has got to be
+      an abstract abiding place for a dream. It's rather difficult to build a
+      dream house for a dream lady, so I don't know what kind of a fist I am
+      going to make of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sat down on a boulder and contemplated her shoes for a minute. Then
+      she raised her ever-shifting, eager, young eyes to Peter, and it seemed to
+      him as he looked into them that there were little gold lights flickering
+      at the bottom of their darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's just as easy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;A home is merely a home. It
+      includes a front porch and a back porch and a fireplace and a bathtub and
+      an ice chest and a view and a garden around it; all the rest is
+      incidental. If you have more money, you have more incidentals. If you
+      don't have so much, you use your imagination and think you have just as
+      much on less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I wonder,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;when I find my dream lady, if she will have
+      an elastic imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't you found her yet?&rdquo; asked Linda casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;I haven't found her, and unfortunately she hasn't found
+      me. I have had a strenuous time getting my start in life. It's mostly a
+      rush from one point of interest to another, dropping at any wayside
+      station for refreshment and the use of a writing table. Occasionally I
+      have seen a vision that I have wanted to follow, but I never have had
+      time. So far, the lady of this house is even more of a dream than the
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, don't worry,&rdquo; said Linda comfortingly. &ldquo;The world is full of
+      the nicest girls. When you get ready for a gracious lady I'll find you one
+      that will have an India-rubber imagination and a great big loving heart
+      and Indian-hemp apron strings so that half a dozen babies can swing from
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morrison turned to Henry Anderson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear, Henry?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm destined to have a large family. You must
+      curtail your plans for the workroom and make that big room back of it into
+      a nursery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what I am going to do,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson, &ldquo;is to build a place
+      suitable for your needs. If any dream woman comes to it, she will have to
+      fit herself to her environment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, that isn't a bit nice of you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I don't believe Peter
+      will pay the slightest attention to you. He'll let me make you build a
+      lovely room for the love of his heart, and a great big bright nursery on
+      the sunny side for his small people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never believed,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson, &ldquo;in counting your chickens before
+      they are hatched. There are a couple of acres around Peter's house, and he
+      can build an addition as his needs increase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Messy idea,&rdquo; said Linda promptly. &ldquo;Thing to do, when you build a house,
+      is to build it the way you want it for the remainder of your life, so you
+      don't have to tear up the scenery every few years, dragging in lumber for
+      expansion. And I'll tell you another thing. If the homemakers of this
+      country don't get the idea into their heads pretty soon that they are not
+      going to be able to hold their own with the rest of the world, with no
+      children, or one child in the family, there's a sad day of reckoning
+      coming. With the records at the patent office open to the world, you can't
+      claim that the brain of the white man is not constructive. You can look at
+      our records and compare them with those of countries ages and ages older
+      than we are, which never discovered the beauties of a Dover egg-beater or
+      a washing machine or a churn or a railroad or a steamboat or a bridge. We
+      are head and shoulders above other nations in invention, and just as fast
+      as possible, we are falling behind in the birth rate. The red man and the
+      yellow man and the brown man and the black man can look at our egg-beaters
+      and washing machines and bridges and big guns, and go home and copy them;
+      and use them while rearing even bigger families than they have now. If
+      every home in Lilac Valley had at least six sturdy boys and girls growing
+      up in it with the proper love of country and the proper realization of the
+      white man's right to supremacy, and if all the world now occupied by white
+      men could make an equal record, where would be the talk of the yellow
+      peril? There wouldn't be any yellow peril. You see what I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda lifted her frank eyes to Peter Morrison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, young woman,&rdquo; said Peter gravely, &ldquo;I see what you mean, but this is
+      the first time I ever heard a high-school kid propound such ideas. Where
+      did you get them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got them in Multiflores Canyon from my father to start with,&rdquo; said Linda,
+      &ldquo;but recently I have been thinking, because there is a boy in high school
+      who is making a great fight for a better scholarship record than a Jap in
+      his class. I brood over it every spare minute, day or night, and when I
+      say my prayers I implore high Heaven to send him an idea or to send me one
+      that I can pass on to him, that will help him to beat that Jap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison. &ldquo;We'll have to take time to talk this over.
+      It's barely possible I might be able to suggest something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You let that kid fight his own battles,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson roughly.
+      &ldquo;He's no proper bug-catcher. I feel it in my bones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time, Linda's joy laugh rang over Peter Morrison's
+      possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know about that,&rdquo; she said gaily. &ldquo;He's a wide-awake specimen; he
+      has led his class for four years when the Jap didn't get ahead of him.
+      But, all foolishness aside, take my word for it, Peter, you'll be sorry if
+      you don't build this house big enough for your dream lady and for all the
+      little dreams that may spring from her heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nightmares, you mean,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson. &ldquo;I can't imagine a bunch of
+      kids muddying up this spring and breaking the bushes and using slingshots
+      on the birds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda with scathing sarcasm, &ldquo;and wouldn't our government be
+      tickled to death to have a clear spring and a perfect bush and a singing
+      bird, if it needed six men to go over the top to handle a regiment of
+      Japanese!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Peter Morrison laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, your estimate is too low, Linda,&rdquo; he said in his nicest drawling
+      tone of voice. &ldquo;Believe me, one U. S. kid will never march in a whole
+      regiment of Japanese. They won't lay down their guns and walk to surrender
+      as bunches of Germans did. Nobody need ever think that. They are as good
+      fighters as they are imitators. There's nothing for you to do, Henry, but
+      to take to heart what Miss Linda has said. Plan the house with a suite for
+      a dream lady, and a dining room, a sleeping porch and a nursery big enough
+      for the six children allotted to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not really in earnest?&rdquo; asked Henry Anderson in doubting
+      astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am in the deepest kind of earnest,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison. &ldquo;What Miss
+      Linda says is true. As a nation, our people are pampering themselves and
+      living for their own pleasures. They won't take the trouble or endure the
+      pain required to bear and to rear children; and the day is rolling toward
+      us, with every turn of the planet one day closer, when we are going to be
+      outnumbered by a combination of peoples who can take our own tricks and
+      beat us with them. We must pass along the good word that the one thing
+      America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES AND HEARTS BIG
+      ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our grandfathers, when no joy in
+      life equaled the joy of a new child in the family, and if you didn't have
+      a dozen you weren't doing your manifest duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if that is the way you see the light, we must enlarge this house.
+      As designed, it included every feminine convenience anyway. But when I
+      build my house I am going to build it for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then don't talk any more about being my bug-catcher,&rdquo; said Linda
+      promptly, &ldquo;because when I build my house it's going to be a nest that will
+      hold six at the very least. My heart is perfectly set on a brood of six.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda was quite unaware that the two men were studying her closely, but if
+      she had known what was going on in their minds she would have had nothing
+      to regret, because both of them found her very attractive, and both of
+      them were wondering how anything so superficial as Eileen could be of the
+      same blood as Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are we keeping you too late?&rdquo; inquired Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I am as interested as I can be. Finish everything you
+      want to do before we go. I hope you're going to let me come over often and
+      watch you with your building. Maybe I can get an idea for some things I
+      want to do. Eileen and I have our house divided by a Mason and Dixon line.
+      On her side is Mother's suite, the dining room, the living room and the
+      front door. On mine there's the garage and the kitchen and Katy's bedroom
+      and mine and the library and the billiard room. At the present minute I am
+      interested in adapting the library to my requirements instead of Father's,
+      and I am emptying the billiard room and furnishing it to make a workroom.
+      I have a small talent with a brush and pencil, and I need some bare walls
+      to tack my prints on to dry, and I need numerous places for all the things
+      I am always dragging in from the desert and the canyons; and since I have
+      the Bear Cat running, what I have been doing in that line with a knapsack
+      won't be worthy of mention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it come,&rdquo; inquired Henry Anderson, &ldquo;that you had that car jacked
+      up so long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, hasn't anybody told you,&rdquo; asked Linda, &ldquo;about our day of the Black
+      Shadow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Gilman wrote me when it happened,&rdquo; said Peter softly, &ldquo;but I don't
+      believe it has been mentioned before Henry. You tell him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda turned to Henry Anderson, and with trembling lips and paling cheeks,
+      in a few brief sentences she gave him the details. Then she said to Peter
+      Morrison in a low voice: &ldquo;And that is the why of Marian Thorne's white
+      head. Anybody tell you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That white head puzzled me beyond anything I ever saw,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I meant
+      to ask John about it. He used to talk to me and write to me often about
+      her, and lately he hasn't; when I came I saw the reason, and so you see I
+      felt reticent on the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there's nothing the matter with my tongue,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It's loose
+      at both ends. Marian was an expert driver. She drove with the same calm
+      judgment and precision and graceful skill that she does everything else,
+      but the curve was steep and something in the brakes was defective. It
+      broke with a snap and there was not a thing she could do. Enough was left
+      of the remains of the car to prove that. Ten days afterward her head was
+      almost as white as snow. Before that it was as dark as mine. But her body
+      is just as young and her heart is just as young and her face is even more
+      beautiful. I do think that a white crown makes her lovelier than she was
+      before. I have known Marian ever since I can remember, and I don't know
+      one thing about her that I could not look you straight in the eye and tell
+      you all about. There is not a subterfuge or an evasion or a small mean
+      deceit in her soul. She is the brainiest woman and the biggest woman I
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't a doubt of it,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison. &ldquo;And while you are talking
+      about nice women, we met a mighty fine one at Riverside on Sunday. Her
+      name is Mary Louise Whiting. Do you know her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not personally,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I don't recall that I ever saw her. I know
+      her brother, Donald. He is the high-school boy who is having the wrestle
+      with the Jap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I liked her too,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson. &ldquo;And by the way, Miss Linda,
+      haven't bug-catchers any reputation at all as nest builders? Is it true
+      that among feathered creatures the hen builds the home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's not,&rdquo; said Linda promptly. &ldquo;Male birds make a splendid record
+      carrying nest material. What is true is that in the majority of cases the
+      female does the building.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what I am getting at,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson, &ldquo;is this. Is there
+      anything I can do to help you with that billiard room that you're going to
+      convert to a workroom? What do you lack in it that you would like to have?
+      Do you need more light or air, or a fireplace, or what? When you take us
+      to the station, suppose you drive us past your house and give me a look at
+      that room and let me think over it a day or two. I might be able to make
+      some suggestion that would help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that is positively sweet of you,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I never thought of
+      such a thing as either comfort or convenience. I thought I had to take
+      that room as it stands and do the best I could with it, but since you
+      mention it, it's barely possible that more air might be agreeable and also
+      more light, and if there could be a small fireplace built in front of the
+      chimney where it goes up from the library fireplace, it certainly would be
+      a comfort, and it would add something to the room that nothing else could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No workroom really has a soul if you can't smell smoke and see red when
+      you go to it at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You little outdoor heathen,&rdquo; laughed Peter Morrison. &ldquo;One would think you
+      were an Indian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a fairly good Indian,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I have been scouting around with
+      my father a good many years. How about it, Peter? Does the road go
+      crooked?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;the road goes crooked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does the bed of the spring curve and sweep across the lawn and drop off
+      to the original stream below the tree-tobacco clump there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you say so, it does,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Including the bridge?&rdquo; inquired Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Including the bridge,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;I'll have to burn some midnight oil,
+      but I can visualize the bridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is this house where you 'set up your rest,' as you so beautifully
+      said the other night at dinner, going to lay its corner stone and grow to
+      its roof a selfish house, or is it going to be generous enough for a
+      gracious lady and a flight of little footsteps?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Morrison took off his hat. He turned his face toward the length of
+      Lilac Valley and stood, very tall and straight, looking far away before
+      him. Presently he looked down at Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even so,&rdquo; he said softly. &ldquo;My shoulders are broad enough; I have a brain;
+      and I am not afraid to work. If my heart is not quite big enough yet, I
+      see very clearly how it can be made to expand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been told,&rdquo; said Linda in a low voice, &ldquo;that Mary Louise Whiting
+      is a perfect darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked at her from the top of her black head to the tips of her
+      brown shoes. He could have counted the freckles bridging her nose. The
+      sunburn on her cheeks was very visible; there was something arresting in
+      the depth of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the lithe slenderness of her
+      young body; she gave the effect of something smoldering inside that would
+      leap at a breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not thinking of Miss Whiting,&rdquo; he said soberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry Anderson was watching. Now he turned his back and commenced talking
+      about plans, but in his heart he said: &ldquo;So that's the lay of the land.
+      You've got to hustle yourself, Henry, or you won't have the ghost of a
+      show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later, when they motored down the valley and stopped at the Strong
+      residence, Peter refused to be monopolized by Eileen. He climbed the two
+      flights of stairs with Henry Anderson and Linda and exhausted his fund of
+      suggestions as to what could be done to that empty billiard room to make
+      an attractive study of it. Linda listened quietly to all their
+      suggestions, and then she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be fine to have another window, and a small skylight would be a
+      dream, and as for the fireplace you mention, I can't even conceive how
+      great it would be to have that; but my purse is much more limited than
+      Peter's, and while I have my school work to do every day, my earning
+      capacity is nearly negligible. I can only pick up a bit here and there
+      with my brush and pencil&mdash;place cards and Easter cards and
+      valentines, and once or twice magazine covers, and little things like
+      that. I don't see my way clear to lumber and glass and bricks and chimney
+      pieces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked at Henry, and Henry looked at Peter, and a male high sign,
+      ancient as day, passed between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easiest thing in the world,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;It's as sure as shooting that
+      when my three or four fireplaces, which Henry's present plans call for,
+      are built, there is going to be all the material left that can be used in
+      a light tiny fireplace such as could be built on a third floor, and when
+      the figuring for the house is done it could very easily include the
+      cutting of a skylight and an extra window or two here, and getting the
+      material in with my stuff, it would cost you almost nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's eyes opened wide and dewy with surprise and pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you two perfectly nice men!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I haven't felt as I do this
+      minute since I lost Daddy. It's wonderful to be taken care of. It's better
+      than cream puffs with almond flavoring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry Anderson looked at Linda keenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're the darndest kid!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;One minute you're smacking your lips
+      over cream puffs, and the next you're going to the bottom of the yellow
+      peril. I never before saw your combination in one girl. What's the
+      explanation?&rdquo; For the second time that evening Linda's specialty in
+      rapture floated free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bunch all the component parts into the one paramount fact that I am
+      Saturday's child,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so I am constantly on the job of working for
+      a living, and then add to that the fact that I was reared by a nerve
+      specialist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they went downstairs, and the men refused both Eileen's and Linda's
+      invitation to remain for dinner. When they had gone Eileen turned to Linda
+      with a discontented and aggrieved face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the name of all that's holy, what are you doing or planning to do?&rdquo;
+       she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not anything that will cost you a penny beyond my natural rights,&rdquo; said
+      Linda quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not answering my question,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;You're not of age and
+      you're still under the authority of a guardian. If you can't answer me,
+      possibly you can him. Shall I send John Gilman to ask what I want to know
+      of you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did I ever ask you any questions about what you chose to do?&rdquo; asked
+      Linda. &ldquo;I am merely following the example that you have previously set me.
+      John Gilman and I used to be great friends. It might help both of us to
+      have a family reunion. Send him by all means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You used to take pride,&rdquo; suggested Eileen, &ldquo;in leading your class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And has anyone told you that I am not leading my class at the present
+      minute?&rdquo; asked Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Eileen, &ldquo;but what I want to point out to you is that the minute
+      you start running with the boys you will quit leading your class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you believe it,&rdquo; said Linda quietly. &ldquo;I'm not built that way. I
+      shan't concentrate on any boy to the exclusion of chemistry and geometry,
+      never fear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she thoughtfully ascended the stairs and went to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen went to her room and sat down to think; and the more she thought,
+      the deeper grew her anger and chagrin; and to the indifference that always
+      had existed in her heart concerning Linda was added in that moment a new
+      element. She was jealous of her. How did it come that a lanky, gangling
+      kid in her tees had been paid a visit by the son of possibly the most
+      cultured and influential family of the city, people of prestige,
+      comfortable wealth, and unlimited popularity? For four years she had
+      struggled to gain an entrance in some way into Louise Whiting's intimate
+      circle of friends, and she had ended by shutting the door on the only son
+      of the family. And why had she ever allowed Linda to keep the runabout? It
+      was not proper that a young girl should own a high powered car like that.
+      It was not proper that she should drive it and go racing around the
+      country, heaven knew where, and with heaven knew whom. Eileen bit her lip
+      until it almost bled. Her eyes were hateful and her hands were nervous as
+      she reviewed the past week. She might think any mean thing that a mean
+      brain could conjure up, but when she calmed down to facts she had to admit
+      that there was not a reason in the world why Linda should not drive the
+      car she had driven for her father, or why she should not take with her
+      Donald Whiting or Peter Morrison or Henry Anderson. The thing that rankled
+      was that the car belonged to Linda. The touring car which she might have
+      owned and driven, had she so desired, lay in an extremely slender string
+      of pearls around her neck at that instant. She reflected that if she had
+      kept her car and made herself sufficiently hardy to drive it, she might
+      have been the one to have taken Peter Morrison to his home location and to
+      have had many opportunities for being with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been a fool,&rdquo; said Eileen, tugging at the pearls viciously. &ldquo;They
+      are nothing but a little bit of a string that looks as if I were trying to
+      do something and couldn't, at best. What I've got to do is to think more
+      of myself. I've got to plan some way to prevent Linda from being too
+      popular until I really get my mind made up as to what I want to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. Leavening the Bread of Life
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'A house that is divided against itself cannot stand,'&rdquo; quoted Linda. &ldquo;I
+      must keep in mind what Eileen said, not that there is the slightest
+      danger, but to fall behind in my grades is a thing that simply must not
+      happen. If it be true that Peter and Henry can so easily and so cheaply
+      add a few improvements in my workroom in connection with Peter's building,
+      I can see no reason why they shouldn't do it, so long as I pay for it. I
+      haven't a doubt but that there will be something I can do for Peter,
+      before he finishes his building, that he would greatly appreciate, while,
+      since I'm handy with my pencil, I MIGHT be able to make a few head and
+      tail pieces for some of his articles that would make them more attractive.
+      I don't want to use any friend of mine: I don't want to feel that I am not
+      giving quite as much as I get, but I think I see my way clear, between me
+      and the Bear Cat, to pay for all the favors I would receive in altering my
+      study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First thing I do I must go through Father's books and get the money for
+      them, so I'll know my limitation when I come to select furniture. And I
+      don't know that I am going to be so terribly modest when it comes to
+      naming the sum with which I'll be satisfied for my allowance. Possibly I
+      shall exercise my age-old prerogative and change my mind; I may just say
+      'half' right out loud and stick to it. And there's another thing. Since
+      the editor of Everybody's Home has started my department and promised that
+      if it goes well he will give it to me permanently, I can certainly depend
+      on something from that. He has used my Introduction and two instalments
+      now. I should think it might be fair to talk payments pretty soon. He
+      should give me fifty dollars for a recipe with its perfectly good natural
+      history and embellished with my own vegetable and floral decorations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the meantime I think I might buy my worktable and possibly an easel,
+      so I can have real room to spread out my new material and see how it would
+      feel to do one drawing completely unhampered. I'll order the table
+      tonight, and then I'll begin on the books, because I must have Saturday
+      free; and I must be thinking about the most attractive and interesting
+      place I can take Donald to. I just have to keep him interested until he
+      gets going of his own accord, because he shall beat Oka Sayye. I wouldn't
+      let Donald say it but I don't mind saying myself to myself with no one
+      present except myself that in all my life I have never seen anything so
+      masklike as the stolid little square head on that Jap. I have never seen
+      anything I dislike more than the oily, stiff, black hair standing up on it
+      like menacing bristles. I have never had but one straight look deep into
+      his eyes, but in that look I saw the only thing that ever frightened me in
+      looking into a man's eyes in my whole life. And there is one thing that I
+      have to remember to caution Donald about. He must carry on this contest in
+      a perfectly open, fair, and aboveboard way, and he simply must not
+      antagonize Oka Sayye. There are so many of the Japs. They all look so much
+      alike, and there's a blood brotherhood between them that will make them
+      protect each other to the death against any white man. It wouldn't be safe
+      for Donald to make Oka Sayye hate him. He had far better try to make him
+      his friend and put a spirit of honest rivalry into his heart; but come to
+      think of it, there wasn't anything like that in my one look into Oka
+      Sayye's eyes. I don't know what it was, but whatever it was it was
+      something repulsive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this thought in her mind Linda walked slowly as she approached the
+      high school the next time. Far down the street, over the walks and across
+      the grounds, her eyes were searching eagerly for the tall slender figure
+      of Donald Whiting. She did not see him in the morning, but at noon she
+      encountered him in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looking for you,&rdquo; he cried gaily when he saw her. &ldquo;I've got my pry in on
+      Trig. The professor's interested. Dad fished out an old Trig that he used
+      when he was a boy and I have some new angles that will keep my esteemed
+      rival stirring up his gray matter for some little time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good for you! Joyous congratulations! You've got the idea!&rdquo; cried Linda.
+      &ldquo;Go to it! Start something all along the line, but make it something
+      founded on brains and reason and common sense. But, Donald, I was watching
+      for you. I wanted to say a word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald Whiting bent toward her. The faintest suspicion of a tinge of color
+      crept into his cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's fine,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What was it you wanted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only this,&rdquo; she said in almost a breathless whisper. &ldquo;There is nothing in
+      California I am afraid of except a Jap, and I am afraid of them, not
+      potentially, not on account of what all of us know they are planning in
+      the backs of their heads for the future, but right here and now,
+      personally and physically. Don't antagonize Oka Sayye. Don't be too
+      precipitate about what you're trying to do. Try to make it appear that
+      you're developing ideas for the interest and edification of the whole
+      class. Don't incur his personal enmity. Use tact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I am afraid of that little jiu-jitsu?&rdquo; he scoffed. &ldquo;I can lick
+      him with one hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't a doubt of it,&rdquo; said Linda, measuring his height and apparent
+      strength and fitness. &ldquo;I haven't a doubt of it. But let me ask you this
+      confidentially: Have you got a friend who would slip in and stab him in
+      the back in case you were in an encounter and he was getting the better of
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald Whiting's eyes widened. He looked at Linda amazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't that be going rather far?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;I think I have some fairly
+      good friends among the fellows, but I don't know just whom I would want to
+      ask to do me that small favor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely the point,&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;You haven't a friend you
+      would ask; and you haven't a friend who would do it, if you did. But don't
+      believe for one second that Oka Sayye hasn't half a dozen who would make
+      away with you at an unexpected time and in a secluded place, and vanish,
+      if it would in any way further Oka Sayye's ambition, or help establish the
+      supremacy of the Japanese in California.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um-hm,&rdquo; said Donald Whiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking far past Linda and now his eyes were narrowed in thought.
+      &ldquo;I believe you're RIGHT about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've thought of you so often since I tried to spur you to beat Oka
+      Sayye,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I feel a sort of responsibility for you. It's to the
+      honor and glory of all California, and the United States, and the white
+      race everywhere for you to beat him, but if any harm should come to you I
+      would always feel that I shouldn't have urged it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that's foolishness,&rdquo; said Donald earnestly. &ldquo;If I am such a dub that
+      I didn't have the ambition to think up some way to beat a Jap myself, no
+      matter what happens you shouldn't regret having been the one to point out
+      to me my manifest duty. Dad is a Harvard man, you know, and that is where
+      he's going to send me, and in talking about it the other night I told him
+      about you, and what you had said to me. He's the greatest old scout, and
+      was mightily interested. He went at once and opened a box of books in the
+      garret and dug out some stuff that will be a big help to me. He's going to
+      keep posted and see what he can do; he said even worse things to me than
+      you did; so you needn't feel that you have any responsibility; besides
+      that, it's not proved yet that I can beat Oka Sayye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is!&rdquo; said Linda, sending a straight level gaze deep into his
+      eyes. &ldquo;Yes, it is! Whenever a white man makes up his mind what he's going
+      to do, and puts his brain to work, he beats any man, of any other color.
+      Sure you're going to beat him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fat chance I have not to,&rdquo; said Donald, laughing ruefully. &ldquo;If I don't
+      beat him I am disgraced at home, and with you; before I try very long in
+      this highly specialized effort I am making, every professor in the high
+      school and every member of my class is bound to become aware of what is
+      going on. You're mighty right about it. I have got to beat him or disgrace
+      myself right at the beginning of my nice young career.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you'll beat him,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At what hour did you say I should come, Saturday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come with the lark for all I care,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Early morning in the
+      desert is a mystery and a miracle, and the larks have been there just long
+      enough to get their voices properly tuned for their purest notes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she turned and hurried away. Her first leisure minute after reaching
+      home she went to the library wearing one of Katy's big aprons, and
+      carrying a brush and duster. Beginning at one end of each shelf, she took
+      down the volumes she intended to sell, carefully dusted them, wiped their
+      covers, and the place on which they had stood, and then opened and leafed
+      through them so that no scrap of paper containing any notes or memoranda
+      of possible value should be overlooked. It was while handling these
+      volumes that Linda shifted several of the books written by her father, to
+      separate them from those with which she meant to part. She had grown so
+      accustomed to opening each book she handled and looking through it, that
+      she mechanically opened the first one she picked up and from among its
+      leaves there fell a scrap of loose paper. She picked it up and found it
+      was a letter from the publishers of the book. Linda's eyes widened
+      suddenly as she read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR STRONG:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sending you a line of congratulations. You have gone to the head of the
+      list of &ldquo;best sellers&rdquo; among medical works, and the cheque I draw you for
+      the past six months' royalties will be considerably larger than that which
+      goes to your most esteemed contemporary on your chosen subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very truly yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The signature was that of Frederic Dickman, the editor of one of the
+      biggest publishing houses of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hm,&rdquo; she said to herself softly. &ldquo;Now that is a queer thing. That letter
+      was written nearly five years ago. I don't know why I never thought of
+      royalties since Daddy went. I frequently heard him mention them before. I
+      suppose they're being paid to John Gilman as administrator, or to the
+      Consolidated Bank, and cared for with Father's other business. There's no
+      reason why these books should not keep on selling. There are probably the
+      same number of young men, if not a greater number, studying medicine every
+      year. I wonder now, about these royalties. I must do some thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda began to examine books more carefully than before. The letter
+      she carried with her when she went to her room; but she made a point of
+      being on the lawn that evening when John Gilman came, and after talking to
+      him a few minutes, she said very casually: &ldquo;John, as Father's
+      administrator, does a royalty from his medical books come to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Gilman. &ldquo;It is paid to his bank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't suppose,&rdquo; said Linda casually, &ldquo;it would amount to enough to keep
+      one in shoes these inflated days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know about that,&rdquo; said John testily. &ldquo;I have seen a few of
+      those cheques in your Father's time. You should be able to keep fairly
+      well supplied with shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I should,&rdquo; said Linda drily. &ldquo;So I should.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she led him to the back of the house and talked the incident out of
+      his mind as cleverly as possible by giving him an intensive botanical
+      study of Cotyledon. But she could not interest him quite so deeply as she
+      had hoped, for presently he said: &ldquo;Eileen tells me that you're parting
+      with some of the books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only technical ones for which I could have no possible use,&rdquo; said Linda.
+      &ldquo;I need clothes, and have found that had I a proper place to work in and
+      proper tools to work with, I could earn quite a bit with my brush and
+      pencil, and so I am trying to get enough money together to fit up the
+      billiard room for a workroom, since nobody uses it for anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said John Gilman. &ldquo;I suppose running a house is extremely
+      expensive these days, but even so the income from your estate should be
+      sufficient to dress a schoolgirl and provide for anything you would want
+      in the way of furnishing a workroom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I have always thought myself,&rdquo; said Linda; &ldquo;but Eileen
+      doesn't agree with me, and she handles the money. When the first of the
+      month comes, we are planning to go over things together, and she is going
+      to make me a proper allowance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is exactly as it should be,&rdquo; said Gilman. &ldquo;I never realized till the
+      other night at dinner that you have grown such a great girl, Linda. That's
+      fine! Fix your workroom the way you would like to have it, and if there's
+      anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to command me. I
+      haven't seen you often lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but I don't feel that it is exactly my fault. Marian
+      and I were always pals. When I saw that you preferred Eileen, I kept with
+      Marian to comfort her all I could. I don't suppose she cared,
+      particularly. She couldn't have, or she would at least have made some
+      effort to prevent Eileen from monopolizing you. She probably was mighty
+      glad to be rid of you; but since you had been together so much, I thought
+      she might miss you, so I tried to cover your defection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman's face flushed. He stood very still, while he seemed deeply
+      thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you were free to follow your inclinations, or Eileen's
+      machinations, whichever you did follow,&rdquo; Linda said lightly, &ldquo;but 'them as
+      knows' could tell you, John, as Katy so well puts it, that you have made
+      the mistake of your young life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she turned and went to the garage, leaving John to his visit with
+      Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Eileen who took possession of John was an Eileen with whom he was not
+      acquainted. He had known, the night of the dinner party, that Eileen was
+      pouting, but there had been no chance to learn from her what her grievance
+      was, and by the next time they met she was a bundle of flashing
+      allurement, so he ignored the occurrence. This evening, for the first
+      time, it seemed to him that Eileen was not so beautiful a woman as he had
+      thought her. Something had roiled the blood in her delicate veins until it
+      had muddied the clear freshness of her smooth satiny skin. There was
+      discontent in her eyes, which were her most convincing attraction. They
+      were big eyes, wide open and candid. She had so trained them through a
+      lifetime of practice that she could meet other eyes directly while
+      manipulating her most dextrous evasion. Whenever Eileen was most
+      deceptively subtle, she was looking straight at her victim with the
+      innocent appeal of a baby in her gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman had had his struggle. He had succeeded. He had watched, and
+      waited, and worked incessantly, and when his opportunity came he was
+      ready. Success had come to such a degree that in a short time he had
+      assured himself of comfort for any woman he loved. He knew that his
+      appearance was quite as pleasing as that of his friend. He knew that in
+      manner and education they were equals. He was now handling large business
+      affairs. He had made friends in high places. Whenever Eileen was ready, he
+      would build and furnish a home he felt sure would be equal, if not
+      superior, to what Morrison was planning. Why had Eileen felt that she
+      would envy any woman who shared life with Peter Morrison?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that day she had annoyed him, because there must have been in the very
+      deeps of his soul &ldquo;a still, small voice&rdquo; whispering to him that he had not
+      lived up to the best traditions of a gentleman in his course with Marian.
+      While no definite plans had been made, there had been endless assumption.
+      Many times they had talked of the home they would make together. When he
+      reached the point where he decided that he never had loved Marian as a man
+      should love the woman he marries, he felt justified in turning to Eileen,
+      but in his heart he knew that if he had been the man he was pleased to
+      consider himself, he would have gone to Marian Thorne and explained,
+      thereby keeping her friendship, while he now knew that he must have earned
+      her contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day at Riverside had been an enigma he could not solve. Eileen was gay
+      to a degree that was almost boisterous. She had attracted attention and
+      comment which no well-bred woman would have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The growing discontent in John's soul had increased under Linda's direct
+      attack. He had known Linda since she was four years old and had been
+      responsible for some of her education. He had been a large influence in
+      teaching Linda from childhood to be a good sport, to be sure she was right
+      and then go ahead, and if she hurt herself in the going, to rub the
+      bruise, but to keep her path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thing patent to the eye of every man who turned an appraising look upon
+      Linda always had been one of steadfast loyalty. You could depend upon her.
+      She was the counterpart of her father; and Doctor Strong had been loved by
+      other men. Wherever he had gone he had been surrounded. His figure had
+      been one that attracted attention. When he had spoken, his voice and what
+      he had to say had commanded respect. And then there had emanated from him
+      that peculiar physical charm which gives such pleasing and distinguished
+      personality to a very few people in this world. This gift too had
+      descended to Linda. She could sit and look straight at you with her
+      narrow, interested eyes, smile faintly, and make you realize what she
+      thought and felt without opening her lips. John did not feel very well
+      acquainted with the girl who had dominated the recent dinner party, but he
+      did see that she was attractive, that both Peter Morrison and Henry
+      Anderson had been greatly amused and very much entertained by her. He had
+      found her so interesting himself that he had paid slight attention to
+      Eileen's pouting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tonight he was forced to study Eileen, for the sake of his own comfort to
+      try to conciliate her. He was uncomfortable because he was unable to
+      conduct himself as Eileen wished him to, without a small sickening disgust
+      creeping into his soul. Before the evening was over he became exasperated,
+      and ended by asking flatly: &ldquo;Eileen, what in the dickens is the matter
+      with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a new tone and a new question on nerves tensely strung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you weren't blind you'd know without asking,&rdquo; retorted Eileen hotly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am 'blind,' for I haven't the slightest notion. What have I done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it just barely possible,&rdquo; asked Eileen, &ldquo;that there might be other
+      people who would annoy and exasperate me? I have not hinted that you have
+      done anything, although I don't know that it's customary for a man calling
+      on his betrothed to stop first for a visit with her sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the love of Mike!&rdquo; said John Gilman. &ldquo;Am I to be found fault with for
+      crossing the lawn a minute to see how Linda's wild garden is coming on? I
+      have dug and helped set enough of those plants to justify some interest in
+      them as they grow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the garden was your sole subject of conversation?&rdquo; inquired Eileen,
+      implied doubt conveyed nicely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it was not,&rdquo; answered Gilman, all the bulldog in his nature coming to
+      the surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I knew perfectly,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;I admit that I'm not feeling myself.
+      Things began going wrong recently, and everything has gone wrong since. I
+      think it all began with Marian Thorne's crazy idea of selling her home and
+      going to the city to try to ape a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marian never tried to ape a man in her life,&rdquo; said John, instantly
+      yielding to a sense of justice. &ldquo;She is as strictly feminine as any woman
+      I ever knew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say that you think studying architecture is a woman's
+      work?&rdquo; sneered Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; said Gilman emphatically. &ldquo;Women live in houses. They're in
+      them nine tenths of the time to a man's one tenth. Next to rocking a
+      cradle I don't know of any occupation in this world more distinctly
+      feminine than the planning of comfortable homes for homekeeping people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen changed the subject swiftly. &ldquo;What was Linda saying to you?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was showing me a plant, a rare Echeveria of the Cotyledon family,
+      that she tobogganed down one side of Multiflores Canyon and delivered
+      safely on the roadway without its losing an appreciable amount of 'bloom'
+      from its exquisitely painted leaves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen broke in rudely. &ldquo;Linda has missed Marian. There's not a possible
+      thing to make life uncomfortable for me that she is not doing. You needn't
+      tell me you didn't see and understand her rude forwardness the other
+      night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn't see it,&rdquo; said John, &ldquo;because the fact is I thought the kid
+      was positively charming, and so did Peter and Henry because both of them
+      said so. There's one thing you must take into consideration, Eileen. The
+      time has come when she should have clothes and liberty and opportunity to
+      shape her life according to her inclinations. Let me tell you she will
+      attract attention in georgette and laces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where are the georgette and laces to come from?&rdquo; inquired Eileen
+      sarcastically. &ldquo;All outgo and no income for four years is leaving the
+      Strong finances in mighty precarious shape, I can tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Gilman, &ldquo;I'm financially comfortable now. I'm ready. Say
+      the word. We'll select our location and build our home, and let Linda have
+      what there is of the Strong income till she is settled in life. You have
+      pretty well had all of it for the past four years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Eileen furiously, &ldquo;I have 'pretty well' had it, in a few
+      little dresses that I have altered myself and very frequently made
+      entirely. I have done the best I could, shifting and skimping, and it's
+      not accomplished anything that I have really wanted. According to men, the
+      gas and the telephone and the electric light and the taxes and food and
+      cook pay for themselves. All a woman ever spends money on is clothes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eileen,&rdquo; chuckled John Gilman, &ldquo;this sounds exactly as if we were
+      married, and we're not, yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Eileen, &ldquo;thank heaven we're not. If it's come to the place
+      where you're siding with everybody else against me, and where you're more
+      interested in what my kid sister has to say to you than you are in me, I
+      don't think we ever shall be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, from stress of nerve tension and long practice, some big tears
+      gushed up and threatened to overflow Eileen's lovely eyes. That never
+      should happen, for tears are salt water and they cut little rivers through
+      even the most carefully and skillfully constructed complexion, while
+      Eileen's was looking its worst that evening. She hastily applied her
+      handkerchief, and John Gilman took her into his arms; so the remainder of
+      the evening it was as if they were not married. But when John returned to
+      the subject of a home and begged Eileen to announce their engagement and
+      let him begin work, she evaded him, and put him off, and had to have time
+      to think, and she was not ready, and there were many excuses, for none of
+      which Gilman could see any sufficient reason. When he left Eileen that
+      night, it was with a heavy heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. Saturday's Child
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the week Linda had worked as never during her life previously,
+      in order to save Saturday for Donald Whiting. She ran the Bear Cat down to
+      the garage and had it looked over once more to be sure that everything was
+      all right. Friday evening, on her way from school, she stopped at a
+      grocery where she knew Eileen kept an account, and for the first time
+      ordered a few groceries. These she carried home with her, and explained to
+      Katy what she wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy fully realized that Linda was still her child, with no thought in her
+      mind save standing at the head of her classes, carrying on the work she
+      had begun with her father, keeping up her nature study, and getting the
+      best time she could out of life in the open as she had been taught to do
+      from her cradle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy had not the slightest intention of opening her lips to say one word
+      that might put any idea into the head of her beloved child, but she saw no
+      reason why she herself should not harbor all the ideas she pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon, actuated by a combination of family pride, love, ambition in
+      her chosen profession, Katy made ready to see that on the morrow the son
+      of Frederick Whiting should be properly nourished on his outing with
+      Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six o'clock Saturday morning Linda ran the Bear Cat to the back door,
+      where she and Katy packed it. Before they had finished, Donald Whiting
+      came down the sidewalk, his cheeks flushed with the exercise of walking,
+      his eyes bright with anticipation, his cause forever won&mdash;in case he
+      had a cause&mdash;with Katy, because she liked the wholesome, hearty
+      manner in which he greeted Linda, and she was dumbfounded when he held out
+      his hand to her and said laughingly: &ldquo;Blessed among women, did you put in
+      a fine large consignment of orange punch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;I'll just tell ye flat-footed there ain't going to be
+      any punch, but, young sir, you're eshcortin' a very capable young lady,
+      and don't ye bewail the punch, because ye might be complimenting your face
+      with something ye would like a hape better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't be done, Katy,&rdquo; cried Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye must have a poor opinion of us,&rdquo; laughed Katy, &ldquo;if ye are thinking ye
+      can get to the end of our limitations in one lunch. Fourteen years me and
+      Miss Linda's been on this lunch-box stunt. Don't ye be thinkin' ye can
+      exhaust us in any wan trip, or in any wan dozen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they said good-bye to Katy and rolled past Eileen's room on the way to
+      the desert. Eileen stood at the window watching them, and never had her
+      heart been so full of discontent and her soul the abiding place of such
+      envy or her mind so busy. Just when she had thought life was going to
+      yield her what she craved, she could not understand how or why things
+      should begin to go wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Bear Cat traversed Lilac Valley, Linda was pointing out Peter
+      Morrison's location. She was telling Donald Whiting where to find Peter's
+      articles, and what a fine man he was, and that he had promised to think
+      how he could help with their plan to make of Donald a better scholar than
+      was Oka Sayye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I call that mighty decent of a stranger,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he is scarcely more of a stranger than I am,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;He is
+      a writer. He is interested in humanity. It's the business of every man in
+      this world to reach out and help every boy with whom he comes in contact
+      into the biggest, finest manhood possible. He only knows that you're a boy
+      tackling a big job that means much to every white boy to have you succeed
+      with, and for that reason he's just as interested as I am. Maybe, when we
+      come in this evening, I'll run up to his place, and you can talk it over
+      with him. If your father helped you at one angle, it's altogether probable
+      that Peter Morrison could help you at another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald Whiting rubbed his knee reflectively. He was sitting half turned in
+      the wide seat so that he might watch Linda's hands and her face while she
+      drove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's all right,&rdquo; he said heartily. &ldquo;You can write me down as
+      willing and anxious to take all the help I can get, for it's going to be
+      no microscopic job, that I can tell you. One week has waked up the Jap to
+      the fact that there's something doing, and he's digging in and has begun,
+      the last day or two, to speak up in class and suggest things himself.
+      Since I've been studying him and watching him, I have come to the
+      conclusion that he is much older than I am. Something he said in class
+      yesterday made me think he had probably had the best schooling Japan could
+      give him before he came here. The next time you meet him look for a
+      suspicion of gray hairs around his ears. He's too blamed comprehensive for
+      the average boy of my age. You said the Japs were the best imitators in
+      the world and I have an idea in the back of my head that before I get
+      through with him, Oka Sayye is going to prove your proposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda nodded as she shot the Bear Cat across the streetcar tracks and
+      headed toward the desert. The engine was purring softly as it warmed up.
+      The car was running smoothly. The sun of early morning was shining on them
+      through bracing, salt, cool air, and even in the valley the larks were
+      busy, and the mockingbirds, and from every wayside bush the rosy finches
+      were singing. All the world was coming to the exquisite bloom of a
+      half-tropical country. Up from earth swept the heavy odors of blooming
+      citrus orchards, millions of roses, and the overpowering sweetness of
+      gardens and cultivated flowers; while down from the mountains rolled the
+      delicate breath of the misty blue lilac, the pungent odor of California
+      sage, and the spicy sweet of the lemonade bush. They were two young
+      things, free for the day, flying down a perfect road, adventuring with
+      Providence. They had only gone a few miles when Donald Whiting took off
+      his hat, stuffed it down beside him, and threw back his head, shaking his
+      hair to the wind in a gesture so soon to become familiar to Linda. She
+      glanced across at him and found him looking at her. A smile broke over her
+      lips. One of her most spontaneous laughs bubbled up in her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Topping, isn't it!&rdquo; she cried gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the best thing that ever happened to me,&rdquo; answered Donald Whiting
+      instantly. &ldquo;Our car is a mighty good one and Dad isn't mean about letting
+      me drive it. I can take it frequently and can have plenty of gas and take
+      my crowd; but lordy, I don't believe there's a boy or girl living that
+      doesn't just positively groan when they see one of these little gray Bear
+      Cats go loping past. And I never even had a ride in one before. I can't
+      get over the fact that it's yours. It wouldn't seem so funny if it
+      belonged to one of the fellows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With steady hand and gradually increasing speed, Linda put the Bear Cat
+      over the roads of early morning. Sometimes she stopped in the shade of
+      pepper, eucalyptus, or palm, where the larks were specializing in their
+      age-old offertory. And then again they went racing until they reached the
+      real desert. Linda ran the car under the shade of a tall clump of
+      bloom-whitened alders. She took off her hat, loosened the hair at her
+      temples, and looked out across the long morning stretch of desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's just beginning to be good,&rdquo; she said. She began pointing with her
+      slender hand. &ldquo;That gleam you see over there is the gold of a small clump
+      of early poppies. The purple beyond it is lupin. All these exquisite
+      colors on the floor are birds'-eyes and baby blue eyes, and the misty
+      white here and there is forget-me-not. It won't be long til thousands and
+      thousands of yucca plants will light their torches all over the desert and
+      all the alders show their lacy mist. Of course you know how exquisitely
+      the Spaniards named the yucca 'Our Lord's Candles.' Isn't that the
+      prettiest name for a flower, and isn't it the prettiest thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly is,&rdquo; answered Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had any experience with the desert?&rdquo; Linda asked lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hunted sage hens some,&rdquo; answered Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, that'll be all right,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I wondered if you'd go
+      murdering yourself like a tenderfoot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use of all this artillery?&rdquo; inquired Donald as he stepped from
+      the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better put on your hat. You're taller than most of the bushes; you'll
+      find slight shade,&rdquo; cautioned Linda. &ldquo;The use is purely a matter of
+      self-protection. The desert has got such a devil of a fight for existence,
+      without shade and practically without water, that it can't afford to take
+      any other chance of extermination, and so it protects itself with needles
+      here and spears there and sabers at other places and roots that strike
+      down to China everywhere. First thing we are going to get is some soap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great hat!&rdquo; exclaimed Donald. &ldquo;If you wanted soap why didn't you bring
+      some?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For all you know,&rdquo; laughed Linda, &ldquo;I may be going to education you up a
+      little. Dare you to tell me how many kinds of soap I can find today that
+      the Indians used, and where I can find it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't tell you one to save my life,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And born and reared within a few miles of the desert!&rdquo; scoffed Linda.
+      &ldquo;Nice Indian you'd make. We take our choice today between finding
+      deer-brush and digging for amole, because the mock oranges aren't ripe
+      enough to be nice and soapy yet. I've got the deer-brush spotted, and
+      we'll pass an amole before we go very far. Look for a wavy blue-green leaf
+      like a wide blade of grass and coming up like a lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So together they went to the deer-brush and gathered a bunch of flowers
+      that Linda bound together with some wiry desert grass and fastened to her
+      belt. It was not long before Donald spied an amole, and having found one,
+      discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way past thorns
+      and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they reached a huge
+      barrel cactus that she had located with the glasses. Beside this bristling
+      monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which Donald
+      handed to her. She drew it lightly across the armor protecting the plant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Short of Victrola needles?&rdquo; she inquired. &ldquo;Because if you are, these make
+      excellent ones. A lot more singing quality to them than the steel needles,
+      not nearly so metallic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I am surely going to try that,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;Never heard of such a
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda chopped off a section of plant. Then she picked one of the knives
+      from the bucket and handed it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, you get what you want,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;while I operate on the
+      barrel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She set her feet firmly in the sand, swung the axe, and with a couple of
+      deft strokes sliced off the top of the huge plant, and from the heart of
+      it lifted up half a bucketful of the juicy interior, with her dipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we didn't have drink, here is where we would get it, and mighty good
+      it is,&rdquo; she said, pushing down with the dipper until she formed a small
+      pool in the heart of the plant which rapidly filled. &ldquo;Have a taste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jove, that is good!&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;What are you going to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show you later,&rdquo; laughed Linda. &ldquo;Think I'll take a sip myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the car. Once
+      Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an extremely curious little
+      plant spreading over the ground, a tiny reddish vine with quaint round
+      leaves that looked as if a drop of white paint rimmed with maroon had
+      fallen on each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw that before,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;What are you going to do with
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;That
+      is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites you, score each side of
+      the wound with the cleanest, sharpest knife you have and then bruise the
+      plant and bind it on with your handkerchief, and forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you do?&rdquo; inquired Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why sure,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that is what I would do if a snake were so
+      ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn't seem to be much of the
+      antagonistic element in my nature. I don't go through the desert exhaling
+      the odor of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent or slip away so silently
+      that I never see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now what on earth do you mean by that?&rdquo; inquired Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he took me to
+      the mountains and the desert. If you are afraid, your system throws off
+      formic acid, and the animals need only the suspicion of a scent of it to
+      make them ready to fight. Any animal you encounter or even a bee,
+      recognizes it. One of the first things that I remember about Daddy was
+      seeing him sit on the running board of the runabout buckling up his desert
+      boots while he sang to me,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  'Let not your heart be troubled
+  Neither let it be afraid,'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      as he got ready to take me on his back and go into the desert for our
+      first lesson; he told me that a man was perfectly safe in going to the
+      forest or the desert or anywhere he chose among any kind of animals if he
+      had sufficient self-control that no odor of fear emanated from him. He
+      said that a man was safe to make his way anywhere he wanted to go, if he
+      started his journey by recognizing a blood brotherhood with anything
+      living he would meet on the way; and I have heard Enos Mills say that when
+      he was snow inspector of Colorado he traveled the crest of the Rockies
+      from one end of the state to the other without a gun or any means of
+      self-defense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, that is something new to think about,&rdquo; said Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it's something that is very true,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I have seen it work
+      times without number. Father and I went quietly up the mountains, through
+      the canyons, across the desert, and we would never see a snake of any
+      kind, but repeatedly we would see men with guns and dogs out to kill, to
+      trespass on the rights of the wild, and they would be hunting for sticks
+      and clubs and firing their guns where we had passed never thinking of
+      lurking danger. If you start out in accord, at one with Nature, you're
+      quite as safe as you are at home, sometimes more so. But if you start out
+      to stir up a fight, the occasion is very rare on which you can't succeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that reminds me,&rdquo; said Donald, with a laugh, &ldquo;that a week ago I came
+      to start a fight with you. What has become of that fight we were going to
+      have, anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can search me,&rdquo; laughed Linda, throwing out her hands in a graceful
+      gesture. &ldquo;There's not a scrap of fight in my system concerning you, but if
+      Oka Sayye were having a fight with you and I were anywhere around, you'd
+      have one friend who would help you to handle the Jap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald looked at Linda thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the great hocus-pocus,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you know, I believe you. If two
+      fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I know would
+      quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would stand by and help a
+      fellow if he needed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I surely would,&rdquo; said Linda; &ldquo;but don't you say 'most of the girls I
+      know' and then make a statement like that concerning girls, because you
+      prove that you don't know them at all. A few years ago, I very distinctly
+      recall how angry many women were at this line in one of Kipling's poems:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    The female of the species is more deadly than the male,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      and there was nothing to it save that a great poet was trying to pay
+      womanhood everywhere the finest compliment he knew how. He always has been
+      fundamental in his process of thought. He gets right back to the heart of
+      primal things. When he wrote that line he was not really thinking that
+      there was a nasty poison in the heart of a woman or death in her hands.
+      What he was thinking was that in the jungle the female lion or tiger or
+      jaguar must go and find a particularly secluded cave and bear her young
+      and raise them to be quite active kittens before she leads them out,
+      because there is danger of the bloodthirsty father eating them when they
+      are tiny and helpless. And if perchance a male finds the cave of his mate
+      and her tiny young and enters it to do mischief, then there is no recorded
+      instance I know of in which the female, fighting in defense of her young,
+      has not been 'more deadly than the male.' And that is the origin of the
+      much-discussed line concerning the female of the species, and it holds
+      good fairly well down the line of the wild. It's even true among such tiny
+      things as guinea pigs and canary birds. There is a mother element in the
+      heart of every girl. Daddy used to say that half the women in the world
+      married the men they did because they wanted to mother them. You can't
+      tell what is in a woman's heart by looking at her. You must bring her face
+      to face with an emergency before you can say what she'll do, but I would
+      be perfectly willing to stake my life on this: There is scarcely a girl
+      you know who would see you getting the worst of a fight, say with Oka
+      Sayye, or someone who meant to kill you or injure you, who would not pick
+      up the first weapon she could lay her hands on, whether it was an axe or a
+      stick or a stone, and go to your defense, and if she had nothing else to
+      fight with, I have heard of women who put up rather a tidy battle with
+      their claws. Sounds primitive, doesn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds true,&rdquo; said Donald reflectively. &ldquo;I see, young lady, where one
+      is going to have to measure his words and think before he talks to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty thought!&rdquo; said Linda lightly. &ldquo;We'll have a great time if you must
+      stop to consider every word before you say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, anyway,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;when are we going to have that fight which
+      was the purpose of our coming together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, we're not ever going to have it,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;I have got
+      nothing in this world to fight with you about since you're doing your
+      level best to beat Oka Sayye. I have watched your head above the remainder
+      of your class for three years and wanted to fight with you on that point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that's a queer thing,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;because I have watched you for
+      three years and wanted to fight with you about your drygoods, and now
+      since I've known you only such a short while, I don't care two whoops what
+      you wear. It's a matter of perfect indifference to me. You can wear French
+      heels or baby pumps, or go barefoot. You would still be you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it a truce?&rdquo; asked Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, ma'am,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;it's not a truce. That implies war and we
+      haven't fought. It's not armed neutrality; it's not even watchful waiting.
+      It's my friend, Linda Strong. Me for her and her for me, if you say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached out his hand. Linda laid hers in it, and looking into his eyes,
+      she said: &ldquo;That is a compact. We'll test this friendship business and see
+      what there is to it. Now come on; let's run for the canyon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only a short time until the Bear Cat followed its trail of the
+      previous Saturday, and, rushing across the stream, stopped at its former
+      resting place, while Linda and Donald sat looking at the sheer-walled
+      little room before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;a stronger tinge in the green. There are more
+      flowers in the carpet. There is more melody in the birds' song. We are
+      going to have a better time than we had last Saturday. First let's fix up
+      our old furnace, because we must have a fire today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they left the car, and under Linda's direction they reconstructed the
+      old fireplace at which the girl and her father had cooked when botanizing
+      in Multiflores. In a corner secluded from wind, using the wall of the
+      canyon for a back wall, big boulders the right distance apart on each
+      side, and small stones for chinking, Linda superintended the rebuilding of
+      the fireplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She unpacked the lunch box, set the table, and when she had everything in
+      readiness she covered the table, and taking a package, she carried it on a
+      couple of aluminium pie pans to where her fire was burning crisply. With a
+      small field axe she chopped a couple of small green branches, pointed them
+      to her liking, and peeled them. Then she made a poker from one of the
+      saplings they had used to move the rocks, and beat down her fire until she
+      had a bright bed of deep coals. When these were arranged exactly to her
+      satisfaction, she pulled some sprays of deer weed bloom from her bundle
+      and, going down to the creek, made a lather and carefully washed her
+      hands, tucking the towel she used in drying them through her belt. Then
+      she came back to the fire and, sitting down beside it, opened the package
+      and began her operations. On the long, slender sticks she strung a piece
+      of tenderloin beef, about three inches in circumference and one fourth of
+      an inch in thickness, then half a slice of bacon, and then a slice of
+      onion. This she repeated until her skewer would bear no more weight. Then
+      she laid it across the rocks walling her fire, occasionally turning it
+      while she filled the second skewer. Then she brought from the car the
+      bucket of pulp she had taken from the barrel cactus, transferred it to a
+      piece of cheesecloth and deftly extracted the juice. To this she added the
+      contents of a thermos bottle containing a pint of sugar that had been
+      brought to the boiling point with a pint of water and poured over some
+      chopped spearmint to which had been added the juice of half a dozen lemons
+      and three or four oranges. From a small, metal-lined compartment, Linda
+      took a chunk of ice and dropped it into this mixture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting on the ground, one foot doubled under her, the other
+      extended. She had taken off her hat; the wind and the bushes had roughened
+      her hair. Exercise had brought deep red to her cheeks and her lips.
+      Happiness had brought a mellow glow to her dark eyes. She had turned back
+      her sleeves, and her slender hands were fascinatingly graceful in their
+      deft handling of everything she touched. They were a second edition of the
+      hands with which Alexander Strong had felt out defective nerve systems and
+      made delicate muscular adjustments. She was wholly absorbed in what she
+      was doing. Sitting on the blanket across from her Donald Whiting was
+      wholly absorbed in her and he was thinking. He was planning how he could
+      please her, how he could earn her friendship. He was admitting to himself
+      that he had very little, if anything, to show for hours of time that he
+      had spent in dancing, at card games, beach picnics, and races. All these
+      things had been amusing. But he had nothing to show for the time he had
+      spent or the money he had wasted. Nothing had happened that in any way
+      equipped him for his battle with Oka Sayye. Conversely, this girl, whom he
+      had resented, whom he had criticized, who had claimed his notice only by
+      her radical difference from the other girls, had managed, during the few
+      minutes he had first talked with her in the hall, to wound his pride, to
+      spur his ambition, to start him on a course that must end in lasting and
+      material benefit to him even if he failed in making a higher record of
+      scholarship than Oka Sayye. It was very certain that the exercise he was
+      giving his brain must be beneficial. He had learned many things that were
+      intensely interesting to him and he had not even touched the surface of
+      what he could see that she had been taught by her father or had learned
+      through experience and personal investigation. She had been coming to the
+      mountains and the canyons alone, for four years doing by herself what she
+      would have done under her father's supervision had he lived. That argued
+      for steadfastness and strength of character. She would not utter one word
+      of flattery. She would say nothing she did not mean. Watching her
+      intently, Donald Whiting thought of all these things. He thought of what
+      she had said about fighting for him, and he wondered if it really was true
+      that any girl he knew would fight for him. He hardly believed it when he
+      remembered some of his friends, so entirely devoted to personal adornment
+      and personal gratification. But Linda had said that all women were alike
+      in their hearts. She knew about other things. She must know about this.
+      Maybe all women would fight for their young or for their men, but he knew
+      of no other girl who could drive a Bear Cat with the precision and skill
+      with which Linda drove. He knew no other girl who was master of the
+      secrets of the desert and the canyons and the mountains. Certainly he knew
+      no other girl who would tug at great boulders and build a fireplace and
+      risk burning her fingers and scorching her face to prepare a meal for him.
+      So he watched Linda and so he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first he thought she was the finest pal a boy ever had, and then he
+      thought how he meant to work to earn and keep her friendship; and then, as
+      the fire reddened Linda's cheeks and she made running comments while she
+      deftly turned her skewers of brigand beefsteak, food that half the Boy
+      Scouts in the country had been eating for four years, there came an idea
+      with which he dallied until it grew into a luring vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he asked suddenly, &ldquo;do you know that one of these days you're
+      going to be a beautiful woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda turned her skewers with intense absorption. At first he almost
+      thought she had not heard him, but at last she said quietly: &ldquo;Do you
+      really think that is possible, Donald?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're lovely right now!&rdquo; answered the boy promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For goodness' sake, have an eye single to your record for truth and
+      veracity,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Doesn't this begin to smell zippy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly does,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;It's making me ravenous. But honest,
+      Linda, you are a pretty girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest, your foot!&rdquo; said Linda scornfully. &ldquo;I am not a pretty girl. I am
+      lean and bony and I've got a beak where I should have a nose. Speaking of
+      pretty girls, my sister, Eileen, is a pretty girl. She is a downright
+      beautiful girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;she is, but she can't hold a candle to you. How did
+      she look when she was your age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't remember Eileen,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;when she was not exquisitely
+      dressed and thinking more about taking care of her shoes than anything
+      else in the world. I can't remember her when she was not curled, and even
+      when she was a tiny thing Mother put a dust of powder on her nose. She
+      said her skin was so delicate that it could not bear the sun. She never
+      could run or play or motor much or do anything, because she has always had
+      to be saved for the sole purpose of being exquisitely beautiful. Talk
+      about lilies of the field, that's what Eileen is! She is an improvement on
+      the original lily of the field&mdash;she's a lily of the drawing room. Me,
+      now, I'm more of a Joshua tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald Whiting laughed, as Linda intended that he should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A minute afterward she slid the savory food from a skewer upon one of the
+      pie pans, tossed back the cover from the little table, stacked some
+      bread-and-butter sandwiches beside the meat and handed the pan to Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fall to,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and prove that you're a man with an appreciative
+      tummy. Father used to be positively ravenous for this stuff. I like it
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She slid the food from the second skewer to a pan for herself, settled the
+      fire to her satisfaction and they began their meal. Presently she filled a
+      cup from the bucket beside her and handed it to Donald. At the same time
+      she lifted another for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's to the barrel cactus,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;May the desert grow enough of
+      them so that we'll never lack one when we want to have a Saturday picnic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Laughingly they drank this toast; and the skewers were filled a second
+      time. When they could eat no more they packed away the lunch things,
+      buried the fire, took the axe and the field glasses, and started on a trip
+      of exploration down the canyon. Together they admired delicate and
+      exquisite ferns growing around great gray boulders. Donald tasted hunters'
+      rock leek, and learned that any he found while on a hunting expedition
+      would furnish a splendid substitute for water. Linda told him of rare
+      flowers she lacked and what they were like and how he would be able to
+      identify what she wanted in case he should ever find any when he was out
+      hunting or with his other friends. They peeped into the nesting places of
+      canyon wrens and doves and finches, and listened to the exquisite courting
+      songs of the birds whose hearts were almost bursting with the exuberance
+      of spring and the joy of home making. When they were tired out they went
+      back to the dining room and after resting a time, they made a supper from
+      the remnants of their dinner. When they were seated in the car and Linda's
+      hand was on the steering wheel, Donald reached across and covered it with
+      his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a bit,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Before we leave here I want to ask you a question
+      and I want you to make me a promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;What's your question?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is there,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;that I can do that would give you such
+      pleasure as you have given me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda could jest on occasions, but by nature she was a serious person. She
+      looked at Donald reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I think,&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;that having a friend, having someone
+      who understands and who cares for the things I do, and who likes to go to
+      the same places and to do the same things, is the biggest thing that has
+      happened to me since I lost my father. I don't see that you are in any way
+      in my debt, Donald.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;that brings me to the promise I want you
+      to make me. May we always have our Saturdays together like this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I would be mightily pleased. I'll have to work later
+      at night and scheme, maybe. By good rights Saturday belongs to me anyway
+      because I am born Saturday's child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, hurrah for Saturday! It always was a grand old day,&rdquo; said Donald,
+      &ldquo;and since I see what it can do in turning out a girl like you, I've got a
+      better opinion of it than ever. We'll call that settled. I'll always ask
+      you on Friday at what hour to come, and hereafter Saturday is ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ours it is,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she put the Bear Cat through the creek and on the road and, driving
+      swiftly as she dared, ran to Lilac Valley and up to Peter Morrison's
+      location.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was amazed at the amount of work that had been accomplished. The
+      garage was finished. Peter's temporary work desk and his cot were in it. A
+      number of his personal belongings were there. The site for his house had
+      been selected and the cellar was being excavated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda descended from the Bear Cat and led Donald before Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you're both my friends,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I want you to know each other.
+      This is Donald Whiting, the Senior I told you about, Mr. Morrison. You
+      know you said you would help him if you could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;I am very glad to know any friend of yours, Miss
+      Linda. Come over to my workroom and let's hear about this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go and talk it over between yourselves,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I am going up
+      here to have a private conversation with the spring. I want it to tell me
+      confidentially exactly the course it would enjoy running so that when your
+      house is finished and I come to lay out your grounds I will know exactly
+      how it feels about making a change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Take your time and become extremely confidential,
+      because the more I look at the location and the more I hear the gay
+      chuckling song that that water sings, the more I am in love with your plan
+      to run it across the lawn and bring it around the boulder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be a downright sin not to have that water in a convenient place
+      for your children to play in, Peter,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that's all settled,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Now, Whiting, come this way and
+      we'll see whether I can suggest anything that will help you with your
+      problem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whistle when you are ready, Donald,&rdquo; called Linda as she turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Morrison glanced after her a second, and then he led Donald Whiting
+      to a nail keg in the garage and impaled that youngster on the mental point
+      of a mental pin and studied him as carefully as any scientist ever studied
+      a rare specimen. When finally he let him go, his mental comment was: &ldquo;He's
+      a mighty fine kid. Linda is perfectly safe with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. Linda's Hearthstone
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Early the following week Linda came from school one evening to find a load
+      of sand and a heap of curiously marked stones beside the back door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can it possibly be, Katy,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;that those men are planning to
+      begin work on my room so soon? I am scared out of almost seven of my five
+      senses. I had no idea they would be ready to begin work until after I had
+      my settlement with Eileen or was paid for the books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't ye be worried,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;There's more in me stocking than me
+      leg, and you're as welcome to it as the desert is welcome to rain, an'
+      nadin' it 'most as bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyway,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;it will surely take them long enough so that I can
+      pay by the time they finish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Linda was not figuring that back of the projected improvements stood
+      two men, each of whom had an extremely personal reason for greatly
+      desiring to please her. Peter Morrison had secured a slab of sandstone. He
+      had located a marble cutter to whom he meant to carry it, and was spending
+      much thought that he might have been using on an article in trying to hit
+      upon exactly the right line or phrase to build in above Linda's fire&mdash;something
+      that would convey to her in a few words a sense of friendship and beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Peter gazed at the unresponsive gray sandstone and wrote line after
+      line which he immediately destroyed, Henry Anderson explored the mountain
+      and came in, red faced and perspiring, from miles of climbing with a
+      bright stone in each hand, or took the car to bring in small heaps too
+      heavy to carry that he had collected near the roads. They were two men
+      striving for the favor of the same girl. How Linda would have been amused
+      had she understood the situation, or how Eileen would have been provoked,
+      neither of the men knew nor did they care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The workmen came after Linda left and went before her return. Having been
+      cautioned to silence, Katy had not told her when work actually began; and
+      so it happened that, going to her room one evening, she unlocked the door
+      and stepped inside to face the completed fireplace. The firebox was not
+      very large but ample. The hearthstone was a big sheet of smooth gray
+      sandstone. The sides and top were Henry's collection of brilliant
+      boulders, carefully and artistically laid in blue mortar, and over the
+      firebox was set Peter's slab of gray sandstone. On it were four deeply
+      carved lines. The quaint Old English lettering was filled even to the
+      surface with a red mortar, while the capitals were done in dull blue. The
+      girl slowly read:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Voiceless stones, with Flame-tongues Preach
+Sermons struck from Nature's Lyre;
+Notes of Love and Trust and Hope
+Hourly sing in Linda's Fire.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the firebox stood a squat pair of black andirons, showing age and
+      usage. A rough eucalyptus log waited across them while the shavings from
+      the placing of the mantel and the cutting of the windows were tucked
+      beneath it. Linda stood absorbed a minute. She looked at the skylight,
+      flooding the room with the light she so needed coming from the right
+      angle. She went over to the new window that gave her a view of the length
+      of the valley she loved and a most essential draft. When she turned back
+      to the fireplace her hands were trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now isn't that too lovely of them?&rdquo; she said softly. &ldquo;Isn't that
+      altogether wonderful? How I wish Daddy were here to sit beside my fire and
+      share with me the work I hope to do here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to come as close to him as possible she did the next best thing.
+      She sat down at her table and wrote a long letter to Marian, telling her
+      everything she could think of that would interest her. Then she re-read
+      with extreme care the letter she had found at the Post Office that day in
+      reply to the one she had written Marian purporting to come from an
+      admirer. Writing slowly and thinking deeply, she answered it. She tried to
+      imagine that she was Peter Morrison and she tried to say the things in
+      that letter that she thought Peter would say in the circumstances, because
+      she felt sure that Marian would be entertained by such things as Peter
+      would say. When she finished, she read it over carefully, and then copied
+      it with equal care on the typewriter, which she had removed to her
+      workroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she heard Katy's footstep outside her door, she opened it and drew
+      her in, slipping the bolt behind her. She led her to the fireplace and
+      recited the lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now ain't they jist the finest gentlemen?&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;Cut right off of a
+      piece of the same cloth as your father. Now some way we must get together
+      enough money to get ye a good-sized rug for under your worktable, and then
+      ye've got to have two bits of small ones, one for your hearthstone and one
+      for your aisel; and then ye're ready, colleen, to show what ye can do. I'm
+      so proud of ye when I think of the grand secret it's keepin' for ye I am;
+      and less and less are gettin' me chances for the salvation of me soul, for
+      every night I'm a-sittin' starin' at the magazines ye gave me when I ought
+      to be tellin' me beads and makin' me devotions. Ain't it about time the
+      third was comin' in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any day now,&rdquo; said Linda in a whisper. &ldquo;And, Katy, you'll be careful?
+      That editor must think that 'Jane Meredith' is full of years and ripe
+      experience. I probably wouldn't get ten cents, no not even a for-nothing
+      chance, if he knew those articles were written by a Junior.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Junior nothing!&rdquo; scoffed Katy. &ldquo;There was not a day of his life that your
+      pa did not spend hours drillin' ye in things the rest of the girls in your
+      school never heard of. 'Tain't no high-school girl that's written them
+      articles. It's Alexander Strong speakin' through the medium of his own
+      flesh and blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, so it is, Katy!&rdquo; cried Linda delightedly. &ldquo;You know, I never thought
+      of that. I have been so egoistical I thought I was doing them myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paid ye anything yet?&rdquo; queried Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;they haven't. It seems that the amount of interest the
+      articles evoke is going to decide what I am to be paid for them, but they
+      certainly couldn't take the recipe and the comments and the sketch for
+      less than twenty-five or thirty dollars, unless recipes are like poetry.
+      Peter said the other day that if a poet did not have some other profession
+      to support him, he would starve to death on all he was paid for writing
+      the most beautiful things that ever are written in all this world. Peter
+      says even an effort to write a poem is a beautiful thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, maybe that used to be the truth,&rdquo; said Katy as she started toward
+      the door, &ldquo;but I have been reading some things labeled 'poetry' in the
+      magazines of late, and if the holy father knows what they mean, he's even
+      bigger than ever I took him to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;we are dreadful back numbers. We are letting this
+      world progress and roll right on past us without a struggle. We haven't
+      either one been to a psychoanalyst to find out the color of our auras.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now God forbid,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;I ain't going to have one of them things
+      around me. The colors I'm wearin' satisfy me entoirely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mine are going to satisfy me very shortly, now,&rdquo; laughed Linda,
+      &ldquo;because tomorrow is my big day with Eileen. Next time we have a minute
+      together, old dear, I'll have started my bank account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right ye are,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;jist exactly right. You're getting such a
+      great girl it's the proper thing ye should be suitably dressed, and don't
+      ye be too modest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The unfortunate thing about that, Katy, is that l intimated the other day
+      that I would be content with less than half, since she is older and she
+      should have her chance first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now ain't that jist like ye?&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;I might have known ye would be
+      doing that very thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After I have gone over the accounts,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I'll know better what
+      to demand. Now fly to your cooking, Katy, and let me sit down at this
+      table and see if I can dig out a few dollars of honest coin; but I'm going
+      to have hard work to keep my eyes on the paper with that fireplace before
+      me. Isn't that red and blue lettering the prettiest thing, Katy, and do
+      you notice that tiny 'P. M.' cut down in the lower left-hand corner nearly
+      out of sight? That, Katy, stands for 'Peter Morrison,' and one of these
+      days Peter is going to be a large figure on the landscape. The next Post
+      he has an article in I'll buy for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It never does,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;to be makin' up your mind in this world so
+      hard and fast that ye can't change it. In the days before John Gilman got
+      bewitched out of his senses I did think, barrin' your father, that he was
+      the finest man the Lord ever made; but I ain't thought so much of him of
+      late as I did before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Same holds good for me,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've studied this Peter,&rdquo; continued Katy, &ldquo;like your pa used to study
+      things under his microscope. He's the most come-at-able man. He's got such
+      a kind of a questionin' look on his face, and there's a bit of a stoop to
+      his shoulders like they had been whittled out for carryin' a load, and
+      there's a kind of a whimsy quiverin' around his lips that makes me heart
+      stand still every time he speaks to me, because I can't be certain whether
+      he is going to make me laugh or going to make me cry, and when what he's
+      sayin' does come with that little slow drawl, I can't be just sure whether
+      he's meanin' it or whether he's jist pokin' fun at me. He said the quarest
+      thing to me the other day when he was here fiddlin' over the makin' of
+      this fireplace. He was standin' out beside your desert garden and I come
+      aven with him and I says to him: 'Them's the rare plants Miss Linda and
+      her pa have been goin' to the deserts and the canyons, as long as he
+      lived, to fetch in; and then Miss Linda went alone, and now the son of
+      Judge Whiting, the biggest lawyer in Los Angeles, has begun goin' with
+      her. Ain't it the brightest, prettiest place?' I says to him. And he stood
+      there lookin', and he says to me: 'No, Katy, that is a graveyard.' Now
+      what in the name of raison was the man meanin' by that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stared at the hearth motto reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A graveyard!&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Well, if anything could come farther from a
+      graveyard than that spot, I don't know how it would do it. I haven't the
+      remotest notion what he meant. Why didn't you ask him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the truth is,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;that I proide myself on being able to
+      kape me mouth shut when I should.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll leave to think over it,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;At present I have no more idea
+      than you in what respect my desert garden could resemble a graveyard. Oh!
+      yes, there's one thing I wanted to ask you, Katy. Has Eileen been around
+      while this room was being altered?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She came in yesterday,&rdquo; answered Katy, &ldquo;when the hammerin' and sawin' was
+      goin' full blast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I wanted to find out'&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;was whether she had been here
+      and seen this room or not, because if she hasn't and she wants to see it,
+      now is her time. After I get things going here and these walls are covered
+      with drying sketches this room is going to be strictly private. You see
+      that you keep your key where nobody gets hold of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's on a string round me neck this blessed minute,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;I didn't
+      see her come up here, but ye could be safe in bettin' anything ye've got
+      that she came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I imagine she did,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;She would be sufficiently curious
+      that she would come to learn how much I have spent if she had no other
+      interest in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at the fireplace reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what Eileen thought of that and I wonder if she
+      noticed that little 'P. M.' tucked away down there in the corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure she did,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;She has got eyes like a cat. She can see more
+      things in a shorter time than anybody I ever knew.&rdquo; So that evening at
+      dinner Linda told Eileen that the improvements she had made for her
+      convenience in the billiard room were finished, and asked her if she would
+      like to see them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't imagine what you want to stick yourself off up there alone for,&rdquo;
+       said Eileen. &ldquo;I don't believe I am sufficiently interested in garret
+      skylights and windows to climb up to look at them. What everybody in the
+      neighborhood can see is that you have absolutely ruined the looks of the
+      back part of the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Have I? You know I never thought of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course! But all you've got to do is go on the cast lawn and take a
+      look at that side and the back end of the house to see what you have
+      done,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;Undoubtedly you've cut the selling price of the house
+      one thousand, at least. But it's exactly like you not to have thought of
+      what chopping up the roof and the end of the house as you have done, would
+      make it look like. You have got one of those single-track minds, Linda,
+      that can think of only one thing at a time, and you never do think, when
+      you start anything, of what the end is going to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely there's a large amount of truth in that,&rdquo; said Linda soberly.
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I do get an idea and pursue it to the exclusion of everything
+      else. It's an inheritance from Daddy, this concentrating with all my might
+      on one thing at a time. But I am very sorry if I have disfigured the
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I want to know,&rdquo; said Eileen, &ldquo;is how in this world, at present
+      wages and cost of material, you're expecting to pay men for the work you
+      have had done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can talk more understandingly about that,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;day
+      after tomorrow. I'll get home from school tomorrow as early as I can, and
+      then we'll figure out our financial situation exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen made no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. Producing the Evidence
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Linda hurried home the next evening, her first word to Katy was to
+      ask if Eileen were there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she isn't here,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;and she's not going to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not going to be!&rdquo; cried Linda, her face paling perceptibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She went downtown this morning and she telephoned me about three sayin'
+      she had an invoitation to go with a motor party to Pasadena this
+      afternoon, an' she wasn't knowin' whether she could get home the night or
+      not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like it,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I don't like it at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She liked it still less when Eileen came home for a change of clothing the
+      following day, and again went to spend the night with a friend, without
+      leaving any word whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand this,&rdquo; said Linda, white lipped and tense. &ldquo;She does
+      not want to see me. She does not intend to talk business with me if she
+      can possibly help it. She is treating me as if I were a four-year-old
+      instead of a woman with as much brain as she has. If she appears while I
+      am gone tomorrow and starts away again, you tell her Come to think of it,
+      you needn't tell her anything; I'll give you a note for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Linda sat down and wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR EILEEN:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It won't be necessary to remind you of our agreement night before last to
+      settle on an allowance from Father's estate for me. Of course I realize
+      that you are purposely avoiding seeing me, for what reason I can't
+      imagine; but I give you warning, that if you have been in this house and
+      have read this note, and are not here with your figures ready to meet me
+      when I get home tomorrow night, I'll take matters into my own hands, and
+      do exactly what I think best without the slightest reference to what you
+      think about it. If you don't want something done that you will dislike,
+      even more than you dislike seeing me, you had better heed this warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LINDA.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She read it over slowly: &ldquo;My, that sounds melodramatic!&rdquo; she commented.
+      &ldquo;It's even got a threat in it, and it's a funny thing to threaten my own
+      sister. I don't think that it's a situation that occurs very frequently,
+      but for that matter I sincerely hope that Eileen isn't the kind of sister
+      that occurs frequently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda went up to her room and tried to settle herself to work, but found
+      that it was impossible to fix her attention on what she was doing. Her
+      mind jumped from one thing to another in a way that totally prohibited
+      effective work of any kind. A sudden resolve came into her heart. She
+      would not wait any longer. She would know for herself just how she was
+      situated financially. She wrote a note to the editor of Everybody's Home,
+      asking him if it would be convenient to let her know what reception her
+      work was having with his subscribers, whether he desired her to continue
+      the department in his magazines, and if so, what was the best offer he
+      could make her for the recipes, the natural history comments accompanying
+      them, and the sketches. Then she went down to the telephone book and
+      looked up the location of the Consolidated Bank. She decided that she
+      would stop there on her way from school the next day and ask to be shown
+      the Strong accounts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she was meditating these heroic measures the bell rang and Katy
+      admitted John Gilman. Strangely enough, he was asking for Linda, not for
+      Eileen. At the first glimpse of him Linda knew that something was wrong;
+      so without any prelude she said abruptly: &ldquo;What's the matter, John? Don't
+      you know where I Eileen is either?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Approximately,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;She has 'phoned me two or three times, but
+      I haven't seen her for three days. Do you know where she is or exactly why
+      she is keeping away from home as she is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I do. I told you the other day the time had come when
+      I was going to demand a settlement of Father's estate and a fixed income.
+      That time came three days ago and I have not seen Eileen since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the living room. As Linda passed the table, propped against a
+      candlestick on it, she noticed a note addressed to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, here will be an explanation,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Here is a note for me. Sit
+      down a minute till I read it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seated herself on the arm of a chair, tore open the note, and
+      instantly began reading aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear little sister&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pathetic,&rdquo; interpolated Linda, &ldquo;in consideration of the fact that I am
+      about twice as big as she is. However, we'll let that go, and focus on the
+      enclosure.&rdquo; She waved a slender slip of paper at Gilman. &ldquo;I never was
+      possessed of an article like this before in all my tender young life, but
+      it seems to me that it's a cheque, and I can't tell you quite how deeply
+      it amuses me. But to return to business, at the present instant I am:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR LITTLE SISTER:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that all the friends I have are particularly insistent on seeing
+      me all at once and all in a rush. I don't think I ever had quite so many
+      invitations at one time in my life before, and the next two or three days
+      seem to be going to be equally as full. But I took time to run into the
+      bank and go over things carefully. I find that after the payment of taxes
+      and insurance and all the household expenses, that by wearing old clothes
+      I have and making them over I can afford to turn over at least
+      seventy-five dollars a month to you for your clothing and personal
+      expenses. As I don't know exactly when I can get home, I am enclosing a
+      cheque which is considerably larger than I had supposed I could make it,
+      and I can only do this by skimping myself; but of course you are getting
+      such a big girl and beginning to attract attention, so it is only right
+      that you should have the very best that I can afford to do for you. I am
+      not taking the bill from The Mode into consideration. I paid that with
+      last month's expenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With love,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EILEEN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda held the letter in one hand, the cheque in the other, and stared
+      questioningly at John Gilman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of that?&rdquo; she inquired tersely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; said Gilman, &ldquo;that a more pertinent question would be,
+      what do you think of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rot!&rdquo; said Linda tersely. &ldquo;If I were a stenographer in your office I
+      would think that I was making a fairly good start; but I happen to be the
+      daughter of Alexander Strong living in my own home with my only sister,
+      who can afford to flit like the flittingest of social butterflies from one
+      party to another as well dressed as, and better dressed than, the Great
+      General Average. You have known us, John, ever since Eileen sat in the sun
+      to dry her handmade curls, while I was leaving a piece of my dress on
+      every busk in Multiflores Canyon. Right here and now I am going to show
+      you something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda started upstairs, so John Gilman followed her. She went to the door
+      of Eileen's suite and opened it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;take a look at what Eileen feels she can afford for
+      herself. You will observe she has complete and exquisite furnishings and
+      all sorts of feminine accessories on her dressing table. You will observe
+      that she has fine rugs in her dressing room and bathroom. Let me call your
+      attention to the fact that all these drawers are filled with expensive
+      comforts and conveniences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Angrily Linda began to open drawers filled with fancy feminine apparel,
+      daintily and neatly folded, everything in perfect order: gloves, hose,
+      handkerchiefs, ribbons, laces, all in separate compartments She pointed to
+      the high chiffonier, the top decorated with candlesticks and silver-framed
+      pictures. Here the drawers revealed heaps of embroidered underclothing and
+      silken garments. Then she walked to the closet and threw the door wide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pushed hangers on their rods, sliding before the perplexed and
+      bewildered man dress after dress of lace and georgette, walking suits of
+      cloth, street dresses of silk, and pretty afternoon gowns, heavy coats,
+      light coats, a beautiful evening coat. Linda took this down and held it in
+      front of John Gilman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see things marked in store windows,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Eileen paid not a penny
+      less than three hundred for this one coat. Look at the rows of shoes, and
+      pumps, and slippers, and what that box is or I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda slid to the light a box screened by the hanging dresses, and with
+      the toe of her shoe lifted the lid, disclosing a complete smoking outfit&mdash;case
+      after case of cigarettes. Linda dropped the lid and shoved the box back.
+      She stood silent a second, then she looked at John Gilman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the way things go in this world,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;Whenever you
+      lose your temper, you always do something you didn't intend to do when you
+      started. I didn't know that, and I wouldn't have shown it to you purposely
+      if I had known it; but it doesn't alter the fact that you should know it.
+      If you did know it no harm's done but if you didn't know it, you shouldn't
+      be allowed to marry Eileen without knowing as much about her as you did
+      about Marian, and there was nothing about Marian that you didn't know. I
+      am sorry for that, but since I have started this I am going through with
+      it. Now give me just one minute more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went down the hall, threw open the door to her room, and walking
+      in said: &ldquo;You have seen Eileen's surroundings; now take a look at mine.
+      There's my bed; there's my dresser and toilet articles; and this is my
+      wardrobe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened the closet door and exhibited a pair of overalls in which she
+      watered her desert garden. Next ranged her khaki breeches and felt hat.
+      Then hung the old serge school dress, beside it the extra skirt and orange
+      blouse. The stack of underclothing on the shelves was pitifully small,
+      visibly dilapidated. Two or three outgrown gingham dresses hung forlornly
+      on the opposite wall. Linda stood tall and straight before John Gilman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I have on and one other waist constitute my wardrobe,&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;and I told Eileen where to get this dress and suggested it before I got
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gilman looked at her in a dazed fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;If that isn't the dress I saw
+      Eileen send up for herself, I'm badly mistaken. It was the Saturday we
+      went to Riverside. It surely is the very dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laughed bleakly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may be,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The one time she ever has any respect for me is
+      in a question of taste. She will agree that I know when colors are right
+      and a thing is artistic. Now then, John, you are the administrator of my
+      father's estate; you have seen what you have seen. What are you going to
+      do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;what my heart might prompt me to do in
+      consideration of the fact that I am engaged to marry Eileen, and what my
+      legal sense tells me I must do as executor of your father's wishes, are
+      different propositions. I am going to do exactly what you tell me to. What
+      you have shown me, and what I'd have realized, if I had stopped to think,
+      is neither right nor just.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda took her tun at deep thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John,&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;I am feeling depressed over what I have just
+      done. I am not sure that in losing my temper and bringing you up here I
+      have played the game fairly. You don't need to do anything. I'll manage my
+      affairs with Eileen myself. But I'll tell you before you go, that you
+      needn't practice any subterfuges. When she reaches the point where she is
+      ready to come home, I'll tell her that you were here, and what you have
+      seen. That is the best I can do toward squaring myself with my own
+      conscience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly they walked down the hall together. At the head of the stairs Linda
+      took the cheque that she carried and tore it into bits. Stepping across
+      the hall, she let the little heap slowly flutter to the rug in front of
+      Eileen's door. Then she went back to her room and left John Gilman to his
+      own reflections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. A Rock and a Flame
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The first time Linda entered the kitchen after her interview with Gilman,
+      Katy asked in deep concern, &ldquo;Now what ye been doing, lambie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doing the baby act, Katy,&rdquo; confessed Linda. &ldquo;Disgracing myself. Losing my
+      temper. I wish I could bring myself to the place where I would think half
+      a dozen times before I do a thing once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now look here,&rdquo; said Katy, beginning to bristle, &ldquo;ain't it the truth that
+      ye have thought for four years before ye did this thing once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;But since I am the daughter of the finest
+      gentleman I ever knew, I should not do hasty, regrettable things. On the
+      living-room table I found a note sweeter than honey, and it contained a
+      cheque for me that wouldn't pay Eileen's bills for lunches, candy, and
+      theaters for a month; so in undue heat I reduced it to bits and decorated
+      the rug before her door. But before that, Katy, I led my guardian into the
+      room, and showed him everything. I meant to tell him that, since he had
+      neglected me for four years, he could see that I had justice now, but when
+      I'd personally conducted him from Eileen's room to mine, and when I took a
+      good look at him there was something on his face, Katy, that I couldn't
+      endure. So I told him to leave it to me; that I would tell Eileen myself
+      what I had done, and so I will. But I am sorry I did it, Katy; I am
+      awfully sorry. You always told me to keep my temper and I lost it
+      completely. From now on I certainly will try to behave myself more like a
+      woman than a spoiled child. Now give me a dust cloth and brushes. I am
+      almost through with my job in the library and I want to finish, because I
+      shall be forced to use the money from the books to pay for my skylight and
+      fireplace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda went to the library and began work, efficiently, carefully, yet with
+      a precise rapidity habitual to her. Down the long line of heavy technical
+      books, she came to the end of the shelf. Three books from the end she
+      noticed a difference in the wall behind the shelf. Hastily removing the
+      other two volumes, she disclosed a small locked door having a scrap of
+      paper protruding from the edge which she pulled out and upon which she
+      read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the event of my passing, should anyone move these books and find this
+      door, these lines are to inform him that it is to remain untouched. The
+      key to it is in my safety-deposit vault at the Consolidated Bank. The Bank
+      will open the door and attend to the contents of the box at the proper
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda fixed the paper back exactly as she had found it. She stood looking
+      at the door a long time, then she carefully wiped it, the wall around it,
+      and the shelf. Going to another shelf, she picked out the books that had
+      been written by her father and, beginning at the end of the shelf, she
+      ranged them in a row until they completely covered the opening. Then she
+      finished filling the shelf with other books that she meant to keep, but
+      her brain was working, milling over and over the question of what that
+      little compartment contained and when it was to be opened and whether John
+      Gilman knew about it, and whether the Consolidated Bank would remember the
+      day specified, and whether it would mean anything important to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She carried the dusters back to Katy, and going to her room, concentrated
+      resolutely upon her work; but she Was unable to do anything constructive.
+      Her routine lessons she could prepare, but she could not even sketch a
+      wild rose accurately. Finally she laid down her pencil, washed her
+      brushes, put away her material, and locking her door, slipped the key into
+      her pocket. Going down to the garage she climbed into the Bear Cat and
+      headed straight for Peter Morrison. She drove into his location and blew
+      the horn. Peter stepped from the garage, and seeing her, started in her
+      direction. Linda sprang down and hurried toward him. He looked at her
+      intently as she approached and formed his own conclusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sort of restless,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Couldn't evolve a single new idea with
+      which to enliven the gay annals of English literature and Greek history. A
+      personal history seems infinitely more insistent and unusual. I ran away
+      from my lessons, and my work, and came to you, Peter, because I had a
+      feeling that there was something you could give me, and I thought you
+      would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter smiled a slow curious smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like your line of thought, Linda,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;It greatly appeals
+      to me. Any time an ancient and patriarchal literary man named Peter
+      Morrison can serve as a rock upon which a young thing can rest, why he'll
+      be glad to be that rock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you doing?&rdquo; asked Linda abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and see,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He led the way to the garage. His worktable and the cement floor around it
+      were littered with sheets of closely typed paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have to assemble them first,&rdquo; said Peter, getting down on his knees
+      and beginning to pick them up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sat on a packing case and watched him. Already she felt comforted.
+      Of course Peter was a rock, of course anyone could trust him, and of
+      course if the tempest of life beat upon her too strongly she could always
+      fly to Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I?&rdquo; she inquired, stretching her hand in the direction of a sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; inquired Linda lightly. &ldquo;The bridge or the road or the
+      playroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gad!&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;Don't talk about me being a rock! Rocks are
+      stolid, stodgy unresponsive things. I thought I was struggling with one of
+      the biggest political problems of the day from an economic and
+      psychological standpoint. If I'd had sense enough to realize that it was a
+      bridge I was building, I might have done the thing with some imagination
+      and subtlety. If you want a rock and you say I am a rock, a rock I'll be,
+      Linda. But I know what you are, and what you will be to me when we really
+      become the kind of friends we are destined to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder now,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if you are going to say that I could be any
+      such lovely thing on the landscape as a bridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Peter slowly, &ldquo;nothing so prosaic. Bridges are common in this
+      world. You are going to be something uncommon. History records the
+      experiences of but one man who has seen a flame in the open. I am a second
+      Moses and you are going to be my burning bush. I intended to read this
+      article to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter massed the sheets, straightened them on the desk, and deliberately
+      ripped them across several times. Linda sprang to her feet and stretched
+      out her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Peter!&rdquo; she cried in a shocked voice. &ldquo;That is perfectly
+      inexcusable. There are hours and hours of work on that, and I have not a
+      doubt but that it was good work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simple case of mechanism,&rdquo; said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller size
+      and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his wastebasket.
+      &ldquo;A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clockwork. I have got the idea now.
+      I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way I look I can see a
+      golden-flame tongue of inspiration burning. I'll rewrite that thing and
+      animate it. Take me for a ride, Linda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda rose and walked to the Bear Cat. Peter climbed in and sat beside
+      her. Linda laid her hands on the steering wheel and started the car. She
+      ran it down to the highway and chose a level road leading straight down
+      the valley through cultivated country. In all the world there was nothing
+      to equal the panorama that she spread before Peter that evening. She drove
+      the Bear Cat past orchards, hundreds of acres of orchards of waxen green
+      leaves and waxen white bloom of orange, grapefruit, and lemon. She took
+      him where seas of pink outlined peach orchards, and other seas the more
+      delicate tint of the apricots. She glided down avenues lined with palm and
+      eucalyptus, pepper and olive, and through unbroken rows, extending for
+      miles, of roses, long stretches of white, again a stretch of pink, then
+      salmon, yellow, and red. Nowhere in all the world are there to be found so
+      many acres of orchard bloom and so many miles of tree-lined,
+      rose-decorated roadway as in southern California. She sent the little car
+      through the evening until she felt that it was time to go home, and when
+      at last she stopped where they had started, she realized that neither she
+      nor Peter had spoken one word. As he stepped from the car she leaned
+      toward him and reached out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you for the fireplace, Peter,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter took the hand she extended and held it one minute in both his own.
+      Then very gently he straightened it out in the palm of one of his hands
+      and with the other hand turned back the fingers and laid his lips to the
+      heart of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Linda, for the flame,&rdquo; he said, and turning abruptly, he went
+      toward his workroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stopping for a bite to eat in the kitchen, Linda went back to her room.
+      She sat down at the table and picking up her pencil, began to work, and
+      found that she could work. Every stroke came true and strong. Every idea
+      seemed original and unusual. Quite as late as a light ever had shone in
+      her window, it shone that night, the last thing she did being to write
+      another anonymous letter to Marian, and when she reread it Linda realized
+      that it was an appealing letter. She thought it certainly would comfort
+      Marian and surely would make her feel that someone worth while was
+      interested in her and in her work. She loved some of the whimsical little
+      touches she had put into it, and she wondered if she had made it so much
+      like Peter Morrison that it would be suggestive of him to Marian. She knew
+      that she had no right to do that and had no such intention. She merely
+      wanted a model to copy from and Peter seemed the most appealing model at
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After school the next day Linda reported that she had finished going
+      through the books and was ready to have them taken. Then, after a few
+      minutes of deep thought, she made her way to the Consolidated Bank. At the
+      window of the paying teller she explained that she wished to see the
+      person connected with the bank who had charge of the safety-deposit boxes
+      and who looked after the accounts pertaining to the estate of Alexander
+      Strong. The teller recognized the name. He immediately became deferential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take you to the office of the president,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He and Doctor
+      Strong were very warm friends. You can explain to him what it is you want
+      to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she realized what was happening, Linda found herself in an office
+      that was all mahogany and marble. At a huge desk stacked with papers sat a
+      man, considerably older than her father. Linda remembered to have seen him
+      frequently in their home, in her father's car, and she recalled one
+      fishing expedition to the Tulare Lake region where he had been a member of
+      her father's party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you have forgotten me, Mr. Worthington,&rdquo; she said as she
+      approached his desk. &ldquo;I have grown such a tall person during the past four
+      years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The white-haired financier rose and stretched out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You exact replica of Alexander Strong,&rdquo; he said laughingly, &ldquo;I couldn't
+      forget you any more than I could forget your father. That fine fishing
+      trip where you proved such a grand little scout is bright in my memory as
+      one of my happiest vacations. Sit down and tell me what I can do for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sat down and told him that she was dissatisfied with the manner in
+      which her father's estate was being administered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened very carefully to all she had to say, then he pressed a button
+      and gave a few words of instruction to the clerk who answered it. When
+      several ledgers and account books were laid before him, with practiced
+      hand he turned to what he wanted. The records were not complicated. They
+      covered a period of four years. They showed exactly what monies had been
+      paid into the bank for the estate. They showed what royalties had been
+      paid on the books. Linda sat beside him and watched his pencil running up
+      and down columns, setting down a list of items, and making everything
+      plain. Paid cheques for household expenses I and drygoods bills were all
+      recorded and deducted. With narrow, alert eyes, Linda was watching, and
+      her brain was keenly alive. As she realized the discrepancy between the
+      annual revenue from the estate and the totaling of the expenses, she had
+      an inspiration. Something she never before had thought of occurred to her.
+      She looked the banker in the eye and said very quietly: &ldquo;And now, since
+      she is my sister and I am going to be of age very shortly and these things
+      must all be gone into and opened up, would it be out of place for me to
+      ask you this afternoon to let me have a glimpse at the private account of
+      Miss Eileen Strong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker drew a deep breath and looked at Linda keenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would not be customary,&rdquo; he said slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No?&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;But since Father and Mother went out at the same time
+      and there was no will and the property would be legally divided equally
+      between us upon my coming of age, would my sister be entitled to a private
+      account?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she any sources of obtaining money outside the estate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;At least none that I know of. Mother had I some
+      relatives in San Francisco who were very wealthy people, but they never
+      came to see us and we never went there. I know nothing about them. I never
+      had any money from them and I am quite sure Eileen never had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sat very quietly a minute and then she looked at the banker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Worthington,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the situation is slightly peculiar. My
+      guardian, John Gilman, is engaged to marry my sister Eileen. She is a
+      beautiful girl, as you no doubt recall, and he is very much in love with
+      her. Undoubtedly she has been able, at least recently, to manage affairs
+      very much in her own way. She is more than four years my senior, and has
+      always had charge of the household accounts and the handling of the bank
+      accounts. Since there is such a wide discrepancy between the returns from
+      the property and the expenses that these books show, I am forced to the
+      conclusion that there must be upon your books, or the books of some other
+      bank in the city, a private account in Eileen's name or in the name of the
+      Strong estate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I can very easily ascertain,&rdquo; said Mr. Worthington, reaching again
+      toward the button on his desk. A few minutes later the report came that
+      there was a private account in the name of Miss Eileen Strong. Again Linda
+      was deeply thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything I can do,&rdquo; she inquired, &ldquo;to prevent that account from
+      being changed or drawn out previous to my coming of age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mr. Worthington grew thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;If you are dissatisfied, if you feel that you
+      have reason to believe that money rightfully belonging to you is being
+      diverted to other channels, you have the right to issue an injunction
+      against the bank, ordering it not to pay out any further money on any
+      account nor to honor any cheques drawn by Miss Strong until the settlement
+      of the estate. Ask your guardian to execute and deliver such an
+      injunction, or merely ask him, as your guardian and the administrator of
+      the estate, to give the bank a written order to that effect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But because he is engaged to Eileen, I told him I would not bring him
+      into this matter,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I told him that I would do what I wanted
+      done, myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how long is it until this coming birthday of yours?&rdquo; inquired Mr.
+      Worthington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Less than two weeks,&rdquo; answered Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time the financier sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda. It
+      was a keen, searching look. It went to the depths of her eyes; it included
+      her face and hair; it included the folds of her dress, the cut of her
+      shoe, and rested attentively on the slender hands lying quietly in her
+      lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see the circumstances very clearly,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I sympathize with your
+      position. Having known your father and being well acquainted with your
+      guardian, would you be satisfied if I should take the responsibility of
+      issuing to the clerks an order not to allow anything to be drawn from the
+      private account until the settlement of the estate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly satisfied,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be,&rdquo; said Mr. Worthington, &ldquo;managing matters i that way, that no
+      one outside of ourselves need ever know of il Should your sister not draw
+      on the private account in the mean time, she would be free to draw
+      household cheques on the monthly income and if in the settlement of the
+      estate she turns in this private account or accounts, she need never know
+      of the restriction concerning this fund.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;That will fix everything finely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On her way to the street car, Linda's brain whirled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not conceivable,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that Eileen should be enriching herself
+      at my expense. I can't imagine her being dishonest in money affairs, and
+      yet I can recall scarcely a circumstance in life in which Eileen has ever
+      hesitated to be dishonest when a lie served her purpose better than the
+      truth. Anyway, matters are safe now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day the books were taken and a cheque for their value was waiting
+      for Linda when she reached home. She cashed this cheque and went straight
+      to Peter Morrison for his estimate of the expenses for the skylight and
+      fireplace. When she asked for the bill Peter hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't accept this little addition to your study as a gift from
+      Henry and me?&rdquo; he asked lightly. &ldquo;It would be a great pleasure to us if
+      you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could accept stones that Henry Anderson had gathered from the mountains
+      and canyons, and I could accept a verse carved on stone, and be delighted
+      with the gift; but I couldn't accept hours of day labor at the present
+      price of labor, so you will have to give me the bill, Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter did not have the bill, but he had memoranda, and when Linda paid him
+      she reflected that the current talk concerning the inflated price of labor
+      was greatly exaggerated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two evenings as Linda returned from school and went to her room she
+      glanced down the hall and smiled at the decoration remaining on Eileen's
+      rug. The third evening it was gone, so that she knew Eileen was either in
+      her room or had been there. She did not meet her sister until dinnertime.
+      She was prepared to watch Eileen, to study her closely. She was not
+      prepared to admire her, but in her heart she almost did that very thing.
+      Eileen had practiced subterfuges so long, she was so accomplished, that it
+      would have taken an expert to distinguish reality from subterfuge. She
+      entered the dining room humming a gay tune. She was carefully dressed and
+      appealingly beautiful. She blew a kiss to Linda and waved gaily to Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was rather afraid,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;that I might find you two in
+      mourning when I got back. I never stayed so long before, did I? Seemed as
+      if every friend I had made special demand on my time all at once. Hope you
+      haven't been dull without me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Linda quietly. &ldquo;Being away at school all day, of course I
+      wouldn't know whether you were at home or not, and I have grown so
+      accustomed to spending my evenings alone that I don't rely on you for
+      entertainment at any time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In other words,&rdquo; said Eileen, &ldquo;it doesn't make any difference to you
+      where I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so far as enjoying your company is concerned,&rdquo; said Linda.
+      &ldquo;Otherwise, of course it makes a difference. I hope you had a happy time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I always have a happy time,&rdquo; answered Eileen lightly. &ldquo;I certainly
+      have the best friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's your good fortune,&rdquo; answered Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the close of the meal Linda sat waiting. Eileen gave Katy instructions
+      to have things ready for a midnight lunch for her and John Gilman and
+      then, humming her tune again, she left the dining room and went upstairs.
+      Linda stood looking after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now or never,&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;I have no business to let her meet John
+      until I have recovered my self-respect. But the Lord help me to do the
+      thing decently!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she followed Eileen up the stairway. She tapped at the door, and
+      without waiting to hear whether she was invited or not, opened it and
+      stepped inside. Eileen was sitting before the window, a big box of candy
+      beside her, a magazine in her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently she intended to keep her temper in case the coming interview
+      threatened to become painful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was half expecting you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you silly hothead. I found the
+      cheque I wrote you when I got home this afternoon. That was a foolish
+      thing to do. Why did you tear it up? If it were too large or if it were
+      not enough why didn't you use it and ask for another? Because I had to be
+      away that was merely to leave you something to go on until I got back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda did the most disconcerting thing possible. In her effort at
+      self-control she went too far. She merely folded her hands in her lap and
+      sat looking straight at Eileen without saying one word. It did not show
+      much on the surface, but Eileen really had a conscience, she really had a
+      soul; Linda's eyes, resting rather speculatively on her, were honest eyes,
+      and Eileen knew what she knew. She flushed and fidgeted, and at last she
+      broke out impatiently: &ldquo;Oh, for goodness' sake, Linda, don't play
+      'Patience-on-a-monument.' Speak up and say what it is that you want. If
+      that cheque was not big enough, what will satisfy you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to think of it,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;I can get along with what I
+      have for the short time until the legal settlement of our interests is
+      due. You needn't bother any more about a cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen was surprised and her face showed it; and she was also relieved.
+      That too her face showed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always knew,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;that I had a little sister with a
+      remarkably level head and good common sense. I am glad that you recognize
+      the awful inflation of prices during the war period, and how I have had to
+      skimp and scheme and save in order to make ends meet and to keep us going
+      on Papa's meager income.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All Linda's good resolutions vanished. She was under strong nervous
+      tension. It irritated her to have Eileen constantly referring to their
+      monetary affairs as if they were practically paupers, as if their father's
+      life had been a financial failure, as if he had not been able to realize
+      from achievements recognized around the world a comfortable living for two
+      women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good Lord!&rdquo; she said shortly. &ldquo;Bluff the rest of the world like a
+      professional, Eileen, but why try it with me? You're right about my having
+      common sense. I'll admit that I am using it now. I will be of age in a few
+      days, and then we'll take John Gilman and go to the Consolidated Bank, and
+      if it suits your convenience to be absent for four or five days at that
+      period, I'll take John Gilman and we'll go together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen was amazed. The receding color in her cheeks left the rouge on them
+      a ghastly, garish thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I won't do anything of the sort,&rdquo; she said hotly, &ldquo;and neither will
+      John Gilman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unfortunately for you,&rdquo; answered Linda, &ldquo;John Gilman is my guardian, not
+      yours. He'll be forced to do what the law says he must, and what common
+      decency tells him he must, no matter what his personal feelings are; and I
+      might as well tell you that your absence has done you no good. You'd far
+      better have come home, as you agreed to, and gone over the books and made
+      me a decent allowance, because in your absence John came here to ask me
+      where you were, and I know that he was anxious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came here!&rdquo; cried Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Was it anything unusual? Hasn't he been coming
+      here ever since I can remember? Evidently you didn't keep him as well
+      posted this time as you usually do. He came here and asked for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I suppose,&rdquo; said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into her white
+      cheeks, &ldquo;that you took pains to make things uncomfortable for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very much afraid,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that you are right. You have made
+      things uncomfortable for me ever since I can remember, for I can't
+      remember the time when you were not finding fault with me, putting me in
+      the wrong and getting me criticized and punished if you possibly could. It
+      was a fair understanding that you should be here, and you were not, and I
+      was seeing red about it; and just as John came in I found your note in the
+      living room and read it aloud.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, there was nothing in that,&rdquo; said Eileen in a relieved tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing in the wording of it, no,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but there was everything
+      in the intention back of it. Because you did not live up to your tacit
+      agreement, and because I had been on high tension for two or three days, I
+      lost my temper completely. I brought John Gilman up here and showed him
+      the suite of rooms in which you have done for yourself, for four years. I
+      gave him rather a thorough inventory of your dressing table and drawers,
+      and then I opened the closet door and called his attention to the number
+      and the quality of the garments hanging there. The box underneath them I
+      thought was a shoe box, but it didn't prove to be exactly that; and for
+      that I want to tell you, as I have already told John, I am sorry. I
+      wouldn't have done that if I had known what I was doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; inquired Eileen, making a desperate effort at self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;When I finished with your room, I took him back
+      and showed him mine in even greater detail than I showed him yours. I
+      thought the contrast would be more enlightening than anything either one
+      of us could say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I suppose you realize,&rdquo; said Eileen bitterly, &ldquo;that you lost me John
+      Gilman when you did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I lost you John Gilman when I did it? But I didn't do
+      it. You did it. You have been busy for four years doing it. If you hadn't
+      done it, it wouldn't have been there for me to show him. I can't see that
+      this is profitable. Certainly it's the most distressing thing that ever
+      has occurred for me. But I didn't feel that I could let you meet John
+      Gilman tonight without telling you what he knows. If you have any way to
+      square your conscience and cleanse your soul before you meet him, you had
+      better do it, for he's a mighty fine man and if you lose him you will have
+      lost the best chance that is likely ever to come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sat studying Eileen. She saw the gallant effort she was making to
+      keep her self-possession, to think with her accustomed rapidity, to strike
+      upon some scheme whereby she could square herself. She rose and started
+      toward the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you'll say to John I haven't the faintest notion,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I told
+      him very little. I just showed him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went out and closed the door after her. At the foot of the stairs
+      she met Katy admitting Gilman. Without any preliminaries she said: &ldquo;I
+      repeat, John, that I'm sorry for what happened the other day. I have just
+      come from Eileen. She will be down as soon as Katy tells her you're here,
+      no doubt. I have done what I told you I would. She knows what I showed you
+      so you needn't employ any subterfuges. You can be frank and honest with
+      each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to God we could,&rdquo; said John Gilman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda went to her work. She decided that she would gauge what happened by
+      the length of time John stayed. If he remained only a few minutes it would
+      indicate that there had been a rupture. If he stayed as long as he usually
+      did, the chances were that Eileen's wit had triumphed as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twelve o'clock Linda laid her pencils in the box, washed the brushes,
+      and went down the back stairs to the ice chest for a glass of milk. The
+      living room was still lighted and Linda thought Eileen's laugh quite as
+      gay as she ever had heard it. Linda closed her lips very tight and slowly
+      climbed the stairs. When she entered her room she walked up to the mirror
+      and stared at herself in the glass for a long time, and then of herself
+      she asked this question:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how do you suppose she did it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. Spanish Iris
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Just as Linda was most deeply absorbed with her own concerns there came a
+      letter from Marian which Linda read and reread several times; for Marian
+      wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAREST PAL:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life is so busy up San Francisco way that it makes Lilac Valley look in
+      retrospection like a peaceful sunset preliminary to bed time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I want you to have the consolation and the comfort of knowing that I
+      have found at least two friends that I hope will endure. One is a woman
+      who has a room across the hall from mine in my apartment house. She is a
+      newspaper woman and life is very full for her, but it is filled with such
+      intensely interesting things that I almost regret having made my life work
+      anything so prosaic as inanimate houses; but then it's my dream to enliven
+      each house I plan with at least the spirit of home. This woman&mdash;her
+      name is Dana Meade&mdash;enlivens every hour of her working day with
+      something concerning the welfare of humanity. She is a beautiful woman in
+      her soul, so extremely beautiful that I can't at this minute write you a
+      detailed description of her hair and her eyes and her complexion, because
+      this nice, big, friendly light that radiates from her so lights her up and
+      transfigures her that everyone says how beautiful she is, and yet I have a
+      vague recollection that her nose is what you would call a &ldquo;beak,&rdquo; and I am
+      afraid her cheek bones are too high for good proportion, and I know that
+      her hair is not always so carefully dressed as it should be, but what is
+      the difference when the hair is crowned with a halo? I can't swear to any
+      of these things; they're sketchy impressions. The only thing I am
+      absolutely sure about is the inner light that shines to an unbelievable
+      degree. I wish she had more time and I wish I had more time and that she
+      and I might become such friends as you and I are. I can't tell you, dear,
+      how much I think of you. It seems to me that you're running a sort of
+      undercurrent in my thoughts all day long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will hardly credit it, Linda, but a few days ago I drove a car through
+      the thickest traffic, up a steep hill, and round a curve. I did it, but
+      practically collapsed when it was over. The why of it was this: I think I
+      told you before that in the offices of Nicholson and Snow there is a man
+      who is an understanding person. He is the junior partner and his name is
+      Eugene Snow. I happened to arrive at his desk the day I came for my
+      instructions and to make my plans for entering their contest. He was very
+      kind to me and went out of his way to smooth out the rough places. Ever
+      since, he makes a point of coming to me and talking a few minutes when I
+      am at the office or when he passes me on my way to the drafting rooms
+      where I take my lessons. The day I mention I had worked late and hard the
+      night before. I had done the last possible thing to the plans for my dream
+      house. At the last minute, getting it all on paper, working at the
+      specifications, at which you know I am wobbly, was nervous business; and
+      when I came from the desk after having turned in my plans, perhaps I
+      showed fatigue. Anyway, he said to me that his car was below. He said also
+      that he was a lonely person, having lost his wife two years ago, and not
+      being able very frequently to see his little daughter who is in the care
+      of her grandmother, there were times when he was hungry for the
+      companionship he had lost. He asked me if I would go with him for a drive
+      and I told him that I would. I am rather stunned yet over what happened.
+      The runabout he led me to was greatly like yours, and, Linda, he stopped
+      at a florist's and came out with an armload of bloom&mdash;exquisite
+      lavender and pale pink and faint yellow and waxen white&mdash;the most
+      enticing armload of spring. For one minute I truly experienced a thrill. I
+      thought he was going to give that mass of flowers to me, but he did not.
+      He merely laid it across my lap and said: &ldquo;Edith adored the flowers from
+      bulbs. I never see such bloom that my heart does not ache with a keen,
+      angry ache to think that she should be taken from the world, and the
+      beauty that she so loved, so early and so ruthlessly. We'll take her these
+      as I would take them to her were she living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, Linda dear, I sat there and looked at color and drank in fragrance,
+      and we whirled through the city and away to a cemetery on a beautiful
+      hill, and filled a vase inside the gates of a mausoleum with these
+      appealing flowers. Then we sat down, and a man with a hurt heart told me
+      about his hurt, and what an effort he was making to get through the world
+      as the woman he loved would have had him; and before I knew what I was
+      doing, Linda, I told him the tellable part of my own hurts. I even lifted
+      my turban and bowed my white head before him. This hurt&mdash;it was one
+      of the inexorable things that come to people in this world&mdash;I could
+      talk about. That deeper hurt, which has put a scar that never will be
+      effaced on my soul, of course I could not tell him about. But when we went
+      back to the car he said to me that he would help me to get back into the
+      sunlight. He said the first thing I must do to regain self-confidence was
+      to begin driving again. I told him I could not, but he said I must, and
+      made me take the driver's seat of a car I had never seen and take the
+      steering wheel of a make of machine I had never driven, and tackle two or
+      three serious problems for a driver. I did it all right, Linda, because I
+      couldn't allow myself to fail the kind of a man Mr. Snow is, when he was
+      truly trying to help me, but in the depths of my heart I am afraid I am a
+      coward forever, for there is a ghastly illness takes possession of me as I
+      write these details to you. But anyway, put a red mark on your calendar
+      beside the date on which you get this letter, and joyfully say to yourself
+      that Marian has found two real, sympathetic friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a week or ten days I shall know about the contest. If I win, as I
+      really have a sneaking hope that I shall, since I have condensed the best
+      of two dozen houses into one and exhausted my imagination on my dream
+      home, I will surely telegraph, and you can make it a day of jubilee. If I
+      fail, I will try to find out where my dream was not true and what can be
+      done to make it materialize properly; but between us, Linda girl, I am
+      going to be dreadfully disappointed. I could use the material value that
+      prize represents. I could start my life work which I hope to do in Lilac
+      Valley on the prestige and the background that it would give me. I don't
+      know, Linda, whether you ever learned to pray or not, but I have, and it's
+      a thing that helps when the black shadow comes, when you reach the land of
+      &ldquo;benefits forgot and friends remembered not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this reminds me that I should not write to my very dearest friend who
+      has her own problems and make her heart sad with mine; so to the joyful
+      news of my two friends add a third, Linda, for I am going to tell you a
+      secret because it will make you happy. Since I have been in San Francisco
+      some man, who for a reason of his own does not tell me his name, has been
+      writing me extremely attractive letters. I have had several of them and I
+      can't tell you, Linda, what they mean to me or how they help me. There is
+      a touch of whimsy about them. I can't as yet connect them with anybody I
+      ever met, but to me they are taking the place of a little lunch on the
+      bread of life. They are such real, such vivid, such alive letters from
+      such a real person that I have been doing the very foolish and romantic
+      thing of answering them as my heart dictates and signing my own name to
+      them, which on the surface looks unwise when the man in the case keeps his
+      identity in the background; but since he knows me and knows my name it
+      seems useless to do anything else: and answer these letters I shall and
+      must; because every one of them is to me a strong light thrown on John
+      Gilman. Every time one of these letters comes to me I have the feeling
+      that I would like to reach out through space and pick up the man who is
+      writing them and dangle him before Eileen and say to her: &ldquo;Take HIM. I
+      dare you to take HIM.&rdquo; And my confidence, Linda, is positively supreme
+      that she could not do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You know, between us, Linda, we regarded Eileen as a rare creature, a kind
+      of exotic thing, made to be kept in a glass house with tempered air and
+      warmed water; but as I go about the city and at times amuse myself at
+      concerts and theaters, I am rather dazed to tell you, honey, that the
+      world is chock full of Eileens. On the streets, in the stores, everywhere
+      I go, sometimes half a dozen times in a day I say to myself: &ldquo;There goes
+      Eileen.&rdquo; I haven't a doubt that Eileen has a heart, if it has not become
+      so calloused that nobody could ever reach it, and I suspect she has a
+      soul, but the more I see of her kind the more I feel that John Gilman may
+      have to breast rather black water before he finds them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With dearest love, be sure to remember me to Katherine O'Donovan. Hug her
+      tight and give her my unqualified love. Don't let her forget me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As ever,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARIAN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the letter that Linda read once, then she read it again and then
+      she read it a third time, and after that she lost count and reread it
+      whenever she was not busy doing something else, for it was a letter that
+      was the next thing to laying hands upon Marian. The part of the letter
+      concerning the unknown man who was writing Marian, Linda pondered over
+      deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the best thing I ever did in my life,&rdquo; she said in
+      self-commendation. &ldquo;It's doing more than I hoped it would. It's giving
+      Marian something to think about. It's giving her an interest in life. It's
+      distracting her attention. Without saying a word about John Gilman it is
+      making her see for herself the weak spots in him through the very subtle
+      method of calling her attention to the strength that may lie in another
+      man. For once in your life, Linda, you have done something strictly worth
+      while. The thing for you to do is to keep it up, and in order to keep it
+      up, to make each letter fresh and original, you will have to do a good
+      deal of sticking around Peter Morrison's location and absorbing rather
+      thoroughly the things he says. Peter doesn't know he is writing those
+      letters but he is in them till it's a wonder Marian does not hear him
+      drawl and see the imps twisting his lips as she reads them. Before I write
+      another single one I'll go see Peter. Maybe he will have that article
+      written. I'll take a pencil, and as he reads I'll jot down the salient
+      points and then I'll come home and work out a head and tail piece for him
+      to send in with it, and in that way I'll ease my soul about the skylight
+      and the fireplace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Linda took pad and pencils, raided Katy for everything she could find
+      that was temptingly edible, climbed into the Bear Cat, and went to see
+      Peter as frankly as she would have crossed the lawn to visit Marian. He
+      was not in the garage when she stopped her car before it, but the workmen
+      told her that he had strolled up the mountain and that probably he would
+      return soon. Learning that he had been gone but a short time Linda set the
+      Bear Cat squalling at the top of its voice. Then she took possession of
+      the garage, and clearing Peter's worktable spread upon it the food she had
+      brought, and then started out to find some flowers for decorations. When
+      Peter came upon the scene he found Linda, flushed and brilliant eyed,
+      holding before him a big bouquet of alder bloom, the last of the lilacs
+      she had found in a cool, shaded place, pink filaree, blue lupin, and white
+      mahogany panicles. &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;you can't guess what I have been
+      doing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter glanced at the flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it obvious?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it isn't,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;because I am capable of two processes at
+      once. The work of my hands is visible; with it I am going to decorate your
+      table. You won't have to go down to the restaurant for your supper tonight
+      because I have brought my supper up to share with you, and after we
+      finish, you're going to read me your article as you have rewritten it. I
+      am going to decorate it and we are going to make a hit with it that will
+      be at least a start on the road to greater fame. What you see is material.
+      You can pick it up, smell it, admire it and eat it. But what I have truly
+      been doing is setting Spanish iris for yards down one side of the bed of
+      your stream. When I left it was a foot and a half high Peter, and every
+      blue that the sky ever knew in its loveliest moments, and a yellow that is
+      the concentrated essence of the best gold from the heart of California.
+      Oh, Peter, there is enchantment in the way I set it. There are irregular
+      deep beds, and there are straggly places where there are only one or two
+      in a ragged streak, and then it runs along the edge in a fringy rim, and
+      then it stretches out in a marshy place that is going to have some other
+      wild things, arrowheads, and orchids, and maybe a bunch of paint brush on
+      a high, dry spot near by. I wish you could see it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked at Linda reflectively and then he told her that he could see
+      it. He fold her that he adored it, that he was crazy about her straggly
+      continuity and her fringy border, but there was not one word of truth in
+      what he said, because what he saw was a slender thing, willowy, graceful;
+      roughened wavy black hair hanging half her length in heavy braids, dark
+      eyes and bright cheeks, a vivid red line of mouth, and a bright brown line
+      of freckles bridging a prominent and aristocratic nose. What he was seeing
+      was a soul, a young thing, a thing he coveted with every nerve and fiber
+      of his being. And while he glibly humored her in her vision of decorating
+      his brook, in his own consciousness he was saying to himself: &ldquo;Is there
+      any reason why I should not try for her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he answered himself. &ldquo;There is no reason in your life. There is
+      nothing ugly that could offend her or hurt her. The reason, the real
+      reason, probably lies in the fact that if she were thinking of caring for
+      anyone it would be for that attractive young schoolmate she brought up
+      here for me to exercise my wits upon. It is very likely that she regards
+      me in the light of a grandfatherly person to whom she can come with her
+      joys or her problems, as frankly as she has now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Peter asked if the irises crossed the brook and ran down both sides.
+      Linda sat on a packing case and concentrated on the iris, and finally she
+      announced that they did. She informed him that his place was going to be
+      natural, that Nature evolved things in her own way. She did not grow
+      irises down one side of a brook and arrowheads down the other. They waded
+      across and flew across and visited back and forth, riding the water or the
+      wind or the down of a bee or the tail of a cow. As she served the supper
+      she had brought she very gravely informed him that there would be iris on
+      both sides of his brook, and cress and miners' lettuce under the bridge;
+      and she knew exactly where the wild clematis grew that would whiten his
+      embankment after his workmen had extracted the last root of poison oak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may not scorch you, Peter,&rdquo; she said gravely, &ldquo;but you must look out
+      for the Missus and the little things. I haven't definitely decided on her
+      yet, but she looks a good deal like Mary Louise Whiting to mc. I saw her
+      the other day. She came to school after Donald. I liked her looks so well
+      that I said to myself: 'Everybody talks about how fine she is. I shouldn't
+      wonder if I had better save her for Peter'; but if I decide to, you should
+      act that poison stuff out, because it's sure as shooting to attack any one
+      with the soft, delicate skin that goes with a golden head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, let's leave it in,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;and dispense with the golden head.
+      By the time you get that stream planted as you're planning, I'll have
+      become so accustomed to a dark head bobbing up and down beside it that I
+      won't take kindly to a sorrel top.&rdquo; &ldquo;That is positively sacrilegious,&rdquo;
+       said Linda, lifting her hands to her rough black hair. &ldquo;Never in my life
+      saw anything lovelier than the rich gold on Louise Whiting's bare head as
+      she bent to release her brakes and start her car. A black head looks like
+      a cinder bed beside it; and only think what a sunburst it will be when
+      Mary Louise kneels down beside the iris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had finished their supper Linda gathered up the remnants and put
+      them in the car, then she laid a notebook and pencil on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I want to hear that article,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I knew you would do it over
+      the minute I was gone, and I knew you would keep it to read to me before
+      you sent it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hm,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Is it second sight or psychoanalysis or telepathy, or
+      what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mostly 'what',&rdquo; laughed Linda. &ldquo;I merely knew. The workmen are gone and
+      everything is quiet now, Peter. Begin. I am crazy to get the particular
+      angle from which you 'make the world safe for democracy.' John used to
+      call our attention to your articles during the war. He said we had not
+      sent another man to France who could write as humanely and as
+      interestingly as you did. I wish I had kept those articles; because I
+      didn't get anything from them to compare with what I can get since I have
+      a slight acquaintance with the procession that marches around your mouth.
+      Peter, you will have to watch that mouth of yours. It's an awfully
+      betraying feature. So long as it's occupied with politics and the fads and
+      the foibles and the sins and the foolishness and the extravagances of
+      humanity, it's all very well. But if you ever get in trouble or if ever
+      your heart hurts, or you get mad enough to kill somebody, that mouth of
+      yours is going to be a most awfully revealing feature, Peter. You will
+      have hard work to settle it down into hard-and-fast noncommittal lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked at the girl steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you specialized on my mouth?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh-umph!&rdquo; said Linda, shaking her head vigorously. &ldquo;When I specialize I
+      use a pin and a microscope and go right to the root of matters as I was
+      taught. This is superficial. I am extemporizing now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if this is extemporizing,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;God help my soul if you
+      ever go at me with a pin and a microscope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but I won't!&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;It wouldn't be kind to pin your friends
+      on a setting board and use a microscope on them. You might see things that
+      were strictly private. You might see things they wouldn't want you to see.
+      They might not be your friends any more if you did that. When I make a
+      friend I just take him on trust like I did Donald. You're my friend,
+      aren't you, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Linda,&rdquo; said Peter soberly. &ldquo;Put me to any test you can think of if
+      you want proof.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't believe in PROVING friends, either,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I believe
+      in nurturing them. I would set a friend in my garden and water his feet
+      and turn the sunshine on him and tell him to stay there and grow. I might
+      fertilize him, I might prune him, and I might use insecticide on him. I
+      might spray him with rather stringent solutions, but I give you my word I
+      would not test him. If he flourished under my care I would know it, and if
+      he did not I would know it, and that would be all I would want to know. I
+      have watched Daddy search for the seat of nervous disorders, and sometimes
+      he had to probe very deep to find what developed nerves unduly but he
+      didn't ever do any picking and raveling and fringing at the soul of a
+      human being merely for the sake of finding out what it was made of; and
+      everyone says I am like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I might have known him,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I wish it!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Now then, Peter, go ahead. Read your
+      article.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter opened a packing case, picked out a sheaf of papers, and sitting
+      opposite Linda, began to read. He was dumbfounded to find that he, a man
+      who had read and talked extemporaneously before great bodies of learned
+      men, should have cold feet and shaking hands and a hammering heart because
+      he was trying to read an article on America for Americans before a
+      high-school Junior. But presently, as the theme engrossed him, he forgot
+      the vision of Linda interesting herself in his homemaking, and saw instead
+      a vision of his country threatened on one side by the red menace of the
+      Bolshevik, on the other by the yellow menace of the Jap, and yet on
+      another by the treachery of the Mexican and the slowly uprising might of
+      the black man, and presently he was thundering his best-considered
+      arguments at Linda until she imperceptibly drew back from him on the
+      packing case, and with parted lips and wide eyes she listened in utter
+      absorption. She gazed at a transformed Peter with aroused eyes and a white
+      light of patriotism on his forehead, and a conception even keener than
+      anything that the war had brought her young soul was burning in her heart
+      of what a man means when he tries to express his feeling concerning the
+      land of his birth. Presently, without realizing what she was doing, she
+      reached for her pad and pencils and rapidly began sketching a stretch of
+      peaceful countryside over which a coming storm of gigantic proportions was
+      gathering. Fired by Peter's article, the touch of genius in Linda's soul
+      became creative and she fashioned huge storm clouds wind driven, that
+      floated in such a manner as to bring the merest suggestion of menacing
+      faces, black faces, yellow faces, brown faces, and under the flash of
+      lightning, just at the obscuring of the sun, a huge, evil, leering red
+      face. She swept a stroke across her sheet and below this she began again,
+      sketching the same stretch of country she had pictured above, strolling in
+      cultivated fields, dotting it with white cities, connecting it with smooth
+      roadways, sweeping the sky with giant planes. At one side, winging in from
+      the glow of morning, she drew in the strong-winged flight of a flock of
+      sea swallows, peacefully homing toward the far-distant ocean. She was
+      utterly unaware when Peter stopped reading. Absorbed, she bent over her
+      work. When she had finished she looked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I'll take this home,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I can't do well on color with
+      pencils. You hold that article till I have time to put this on water-color
+      paper and touch it up a bit here and there, and I believe it will be
+      worthy of starting and closing your article.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pushed the sketches toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You little wonder!&rdquo; said Peter softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, 'little' is good,&rdquo; scoffed Linda, rising to very nearly his height
+      and reaching for the lunch basket. &ldquo;'Little' is good, Peter. If I could do
+      what I like to myself I would get in some kind of a press and squash down
+      about seven inches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord!&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Forget it. What's the difference what the inches
+      of your body are so long as your brain has a stature worthy of mention?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;On the strength of that I'll jazz that sketch all
+      up, bluey and red-purple and jade-green. I'll make it as glorious as a
+      Catalina sunset.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she swung the car around the sharp curve at the boulders she looked
+      back and laughingly waved her hand at Peter, and Peter experienced a wild
+      desire to shriek lest she lose control of the car and plunge down the
+      steep incline. A second later, when he saw her securely on the road below,
+      he smiled to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proves one thing,&rdquo; he said conclusively. &ldquo;She is over the horrors. She is
+      driving unconsciously. Thank God she knew that curve so well she could
+      look the other way and drive it mentally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. The Official Bug-Catcher
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Not a mile below the exit from Peter's grounds, Linda perceived a heavily
+      laden person toiling down the roadway before her and when she ran her car
+      abreast and stopped it, Henry Anderson looked up at her with joyful face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry I can't uncover, fair lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but you see I am very much
+      otherwise engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What Linda saw was a tired, disheveled man standing in the roadway beside
+      her car, under each arm a boulder the size of her head, one almost
+      jet-black, shot through with lines of white and flying figures of white
+      crossing between these bands that almost reminded one of winged dancers.
+      The other was a combination stone made up of matrix thickly imbedded with
+      pebbles of brown, green, pink, and dull blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For pity's sake!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Where are you going and why are you
+      personally demonstrating a new method of transporting rock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am on my way down Lilac Valley to the residence of a friend of mine,&rdquo;
+       said Henry Anderson. &ldquo;I heard her say the other day that she saved every
+      peculiarly marked boulder she could find to preserve coolness and moisture
+      in her fern bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda leaned over and opened the car door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All well and good,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but why in the cause of reason didn't you
+      leave them at Peter's and bring them down in his car?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry Anderson laid the stones in the bottom of the car, stepped in and
+      closed the door behind him. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and
+      wiped his perspiring face and soiled hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had two sufficient personal reasons,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;One was that the car at
+      our place is Peter Morrison's car, not mine; and the other was that it's
+      none of anybody's business but my own if I choose to 'say it' with
+      stones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda started the car, being liberal with gas&mdash;so liberal that it was
+      only a few minutes till Henry Anderson protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This isn't the speedway,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What's your hurry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two reasons seem to be all that are allowed for things at the present
+      minute,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;One of mine is that you can't drive this beast
+      slow, and the other is that my workroom is piled high with things I should
+      be doing. I have two sketches I must complete while I am in the mood, and
+      I have had a great big letter from my friend, Marian Thorne, today that I
+      want to answer before I go to bed tonight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In other words,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson bluntly, &ldquo;you want me to understand
+      that when I have reached your place and dumped these stones I can beat it;
+      you have no further use for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said that,&rdquo; retorted Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who ever heard of such a thing,&rdquo; said Henry, &ldquo;as a young woman
+      sending away a person of my numerous charms and attractions in order to
+      work, or to write a letter to another woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you're not taking into consideration,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that I must work,
+      and I scarcely know you, while I have known Marian ever since I was four
+      years old and she is my best friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she has no advantage over me,&rdquo; said Henry instantly, &ldquo;because I
+      have known you quite as long as Peter Morrison has at least, and I'm your
+      official bug-catcher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had almost forgotten about the bugs,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don't for a minute think I am going to give you an opportunity to
+      forget,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached across and laid his hand over Linda's on the steering gear.
+      Linda said nothing, neither did she move. She merely added more gas and
+      put the Bear Cat forward at a dizzy whirl. Henry laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right, my beauty,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Don't you think for a minute that
+      I can't ride as fast as you can drive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A dull red mottled Linda's cheeks. As quickly as it could be done she
+      brought the Bear Cat to a full stop. Then she turned and looked at Henry
+      Anderson. The expression in her eyes was disconcerting even to that cheeky
+      young individual&mdash;he had not borne her gaze a second until he removed
+      his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; said Linda in a dry drawl. &ldquo;And you will add to my obligation if
+      in the future you will remember not to deal in assumptions. I am not your
+      'beauty,' and I'm not anyone's beauty; while the only thing in this world
+      that I am interested in at present is to get the best education I can and
+      at the same time carry on work that I love to do. I have a year to finish
+      my course in the high school and when I finish I will only have a good
+      beginning for whatever I decide to study next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nothing,&rdquo; said the irrepressible Henry. &ldquo;It will take me two years
+      to catch a sufficient number of gold bugs to be really serious, but there
+      wouldn't be any harm in having a mutual understanding and something
+      definite to work for, and then we might be able, you know, to cut out some
+      of that year of high-school grinding. If the plans I have submitted in the
+      Nicholson and Snow contest should just happen to be the prize winners,
+      that would put matters in such a shape for young Henry that he could
+      devote himself to crickets and tumble-bugs at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;that you would better forget that
+      silly jesting and concentrate the best of your brains on improving your
+      plans for Peter Morrison's house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, surely I will if that's what you command me to do,&rdquo; said Henry,
+      purposely misunderstanding her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't mentioned before,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that you had submitted plans
+      in that San Francisco contest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All done and gone,&rdquo; said Henry Anderson lightly. &ldquo;I had an inspiration
+      one day and I saw a way to improve a house with comforts and conveniences
+      I never had thought of before. I was enthusiastic over the production when
+      I got it on paper and figured it. It's exactly the house that I am going
+      to build for Peter, and when I've cut my eye teeth on it I am going to
+      correct everything possible and build it in perfection for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Linda soberly, &ldquo;I'm not accustomed to this sort of talk.
+      I don't care for it. If you want to preserve even the semblance of
+      friendship with me you must stop it, and get to impersonal matters and
+      stay there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he agreed instantly, &ldquo;but if you don't like my line of talk,
+      you're the first girl I ever met that didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have my sympathy,&rdquo; said Linda gravely. &ldquo;You have been extremely
+      unfortunate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she started the Bear Cat, and again running at undue speed she
+      reached her wild-flower garden. Henry Anderson placed the stones as she
+      directed and waited for an invitation to come in, but the invitation was
+      not given. Linda thanked him for the stones. She told him that in
+      combination with a few remaining from the mantel they would make all she
+      would require, and excusing herself she drove to the garage. When she came
+      in she found the irrepressible Henry sitting on the back steps explaining
+      to Katy the strenuous time he had had finding and carrying down the stones
+      they had brought. Katy had a plate of refreshments ready to hand him when
+      Linda laughingly passed them and went to her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had finished her letter to Marian she took a sheet of drawing
+      paper, and in her most attractive lettering sketched in the heading, &ldquo;A
+      Palate Teaser,&rdquo; which was a direct quotation from Katy. Below she wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will find Tunas in the cacti thickets of any desert, but if you are so
+      fortunate as to be able to reach specimens which were brought from Mexico
+      and set as hedges around the gardens of the old missions, you will find
+      there the material for this salad in its most luscious form. Naturally it
+      can be made from either Opuntia Fiscus-Indica or Opuntia Tuna, but a
+      combination of these two gives the salad an exquisite appearance and a
+      tiny touch more delicious flavor, because Tuna, which is red, has to my
+      taste a trifle richer and fuller flavor than Indica, which is yellow. Both
+      fruits taste more like the best well-ripened watermelon than any other I
+      recall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bring down the Tunas with a fishing rod or a long pole with a nail in the
+      end. With anything save your fingers roll them in the sand or in tufts of
+      grass to remove the spines. Slice off either end, score the skin down one
+      side, press lightly, and a lush globule of pale gold or rosy red fruit
+      larger than a hen's egg lies before you. With a sharp knife, beginning
+      with a layer of red and ending with one of yellow, slice the fruits
+      thinly, stopping to shake out the seeds as you work. In case you live in
+      San Diego County or farther south, where it is possible to secure the
+      scarlet berries of the Strawberry Cactus&mdash;it is the Mammillaria
+      Goodridgei species that you should use&mdash;a beautiful decoration for
+      finishing your salad can be made from the red strawberries of these. If
+      you live too far north to find these, you may send your salad to the table
+      beautifully decorated by cutting fancy figures from the red Tuna, or by
+      slicing it lengthwise into oblong pieces and weaving them into a
+      decoration over the yellow background.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For your dressing use the juice of a lemon mixed with that of an orange,
+      sweetened to taste, into which you work, a drop at a time, four
+      tablespoons of the best Palermo olive oil. If the salad is large more oil
+      and more juice should be used.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To get the full deliciousness of this salad, the fruit must have been on
+      ice, and the dressing made in a bowl imbedded in cracked ice, so that when
+      ready to blend both are ice-cold, and must be served immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gigantic specimens of fruit-bearing Cacti can be found all over the
+      Sunland Desert near to the city, but they are not possessed of the full
+      flavor of the cultivated old mission growths, so that it is well worth
+      your while to make a trip to the nearest of these for the fruit with which
+      to prepare this salad. And if, as you gather it, you should see a vision
+      of a white head, a thin, ascetic, old face, a lean figure trailing a brown
+      robe, slender white hands clasping a heavy cross; if you should hear the
+      music of worship ascending from the throats of Benedictine fathers leading
+      a clamoring choir of the blended voices of Spaniard, Mexican, and Indian,
+      combining with the music of the bells and the songs of the mocking birds,
+      nest making among the Tunas, it will be good for your soul in the line of
+      purging it from selfishness, since in this day we are not asked to give
+      all of life to the service of others, only a reasonable part of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda read this over, working in changes here and there, then she picked
+      up her pencil and across the top of her sheet indicated an open sky with
+      scarcely a hint of cloud. Across the bottom she outlined a bit of Sunland
+      Desert she well remembered, in the foreground a bed of flat-leaved nopal,
+      flowering red and yellow, the dark red prickly pears, edible, being a near
+      relative of the fruits she had used in her salad. After giving the prickly
+      pear the place of honor to the left, in higher growth she worked in the
+      slender, cylindrical, jointed stems of the Cholla, shading the flowers a
+      paler, greenish yellow. On the right, balancing the Cholla, she drew the
+      oval, cylindrical columns of the hedgehog cactus, and the color touch of
+      the big magenta flowers blended exquisitely with the color she already had
+      used. At the left, the length of her page, she drew a gigantic specimen of
+      Opuntia Tuna, covered with flowers, and well-developed specimens of the
+      pears whose coloring ran into the shades of the hedgehog cactus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was putting away her working materials when she heard steps and voices
+      on the stairs, so she knew that Eileen and John Gilman were coming. She
+      did not in the least want them, yet she could think of no excuse for
+      refusing them admission that would not seem ungracious. She hurried to the
+      wall, snatched down the paintings for Peter Morrison, and looked around to
+      see how she could dispose of them. She ended by laying one of them in a
+      large drawer which she pushed shut and locked. The other she placed inside
+      a case in the wall which formerly had been used for billiard cues. At
+      their second tap she opened the door. Eileen was not at her best. There
+      was a worried look across her eyes, a restlessness visible in her
+      movements, but Gilman was radiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think, Linda?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Eileen has just named the day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did no such thing,&rdquo; broke in Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your pardon, fair lady, you did not,&rdquo; said Gilman. &ldquo;That was merely a
+      figure of speech. I meant named the month. She has definitely promised in
+      October, and I may begin to hunt a location and plan a home for us. I want
+      the congratulations of my dear friend and my dearer sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda held out her hand and smiled as bravely as she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very glad you are so pleased, John,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;and I hope
+      that you will be as happy as you deserve to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now exactly what do you mean by that?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Linda prides herself on being deep and subtle and conveying hidden
+      meanings,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;She means what a thousand people will tell you in
+      the coming months: merely that they hope you will be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; Linda hastened to corroborate, wishing if possible to avoid
+      any unpleasantness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly have an attractive workroom here,&rdquo; said John, &ldquo;much as I
+      hate to see it spoiled for billiards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too bad,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that I have spoiled it for you for billiards.
+      I have also spoiled the outside appearance of the house for Eileen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know,&rdquo; said John. &ldquo;I looked at it carefully the other day as
+      I came up, and I thought your changes enhanced the value of the property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am surely glad to hear that,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Take a look through my
+      skylight and my new window. Imagine you see the rugs I am going to have
+      and a few more pieces of furniture when I can afford them; and let me
+      particularly point out the fireplace that Henry Anderson and your friend
+      Peter designed and had built for me. Doesn't it add a soul and a heart to
+      my study?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman walked over and looked at the fireplace critically. He read
+      the lines aloud, then he turned to Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that is perfectly beautiful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let's duplicate it in our
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bungler!&rdquo; scoffed Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you're right,&rdquo; said Gilman reflectively, &ldquo;exactly right. Of
+      course I would have no business copying Linda's special fireplace where
+      the same people would see it frequently; and if I had stopped to think a
+      second, I might have known that you would prefer tiling to field stone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda seems very busy tonight,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;Perhaps we are bothering
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said John, &ldquo;we'll go at once. I had to run up to tell our good
+      news; and I wanted to tell you too, Linda dear, that I think both of us
+      misjudged Eileen the other day. You know, Linda, you have always dressed
+      according to your father's ideas, which were so much simpler and plainer
+      than the manner in which your mother dressed Eileen, that she merely
+      thought that you wished to continue in his way. She had no objection to
+      your having any kind of clothes you chose, if only you had confided in
+      her, and explained to her what you wanted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood beside her table, one lean hand holding down the letter she
+      had been writing. She stood very still, but she was powerless to raise her
+      eyes to the face of either John or Eileen. Above everything she did not
+      wish to go any further in revealing Eileen to John Gilman. If he knew what
+      he knew and if he felt satisfied, after what he had seen, with any
+      explanation that Eileen could trump up to offer, Linda had no desire to
+      carry the matter further. She had been ashamed of what she already had
+      done. She had felt angry and dissatisfied with herself, so she stood
+      before them downcast and silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it certainly was a great joke on both of us,&rdquo; said John jovially,
+      &ldquo;what we thought about that box of cigarettes, you know. They were a prize
+      given by a bridge club at an 'Ambassador' benefit for the Good Samaritan
+      Hospital. Eileen, the little card shark she is, won it, and she was
+      keeping it hidden away there to use as a gift for my birthday. Since we
+      disclosed her plans prematurely, she gave it to me at once, and I'm having
+      a great time treating all my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant Linda experienced a revulsion. Previously she had not been
+      able to raise her eyes. Now it would have been quite impossible to avoid
+      looking straight into Eileen's face. But Eileen had no intention of
+      meeting anyone's gaze at that minute. She was fidgeting with a sheet of
+      drawing paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Careful you don't bend that,&rdquo; cautioned Linda. Then she looked at John
+      Gilman. He BELIEVED what he was saying; he was happy again. Linda evolved
+      the best smile she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How stupid of us not to have guessed!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Closing the door behind them, Linda leaned against it and looked up
+      through the skylight at the creep blue of the night, the low-hung stars.
+      How long she stood there she did not know. Presently she went to her
+      chair, picked up her pencil, and slowly began to draw. At first she
+      scarcely realized what she was doing, then she became absorbed in her
+      work. Then she reached for her color box and brushes, and shortly
+      afterward tacked against the wall an extremely clever drawing of a greatly
+      enlarged wasp. Skillfully she had sketched a face that was recognizable
+      round the big insect eyes. She had surmounted the face by a fluff of
+      bejewelled yellow curls, encased the hind legs upon which the creature
+      stood upright in pink velvet Turkish trousers and put tiny gold shoes on
+      the feet. She greatly exaggerated the wings into long trails and made them
+      of green gauze with ruffled edges. All the remainder of the legs she had
+      transformed into so many braceleted arms, each holding a tiny fan, or a
+      necklace, a jewel box, or a handkerchief of lace. She stood before this
+      sketch, studying it for a few minutes, then she walked over to the table
+      and came back with a big black pencil. Steadying her hand with a mahl
+      stick rested against the wall, with one short sharp stroke she drew a
+      needle-pointed stinger, so screened by the delicate wings that it could
+      not be seen unless you scrutinized the picture minutely. After that, with
+      careful, interested hands she brought out Peter Morrison's drawings and
+      replaced them on the wall to dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. The Cap Sheaf
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Toward the last of the week Linda began to clear the mental decks of her
+      ship of life in order that she might have Saturday free for her promised
+      day with Donald. She had decided that they would devote that day to
+      wave-beaten Laguna. It was a long drive but delightful. It ran over the
+      old King's Highway between miles of orange and lemon orchards in full
+      flower, bordered by other miles of roses in their prime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every minute when her mind was not actively occupied with her lessons or
+      her recipes Linda was dreaming of the King's Highway. Almost unconsciously
+      she began to chant:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in the golden weather, forth let us ride today, You and I together on
+      the King's Highway, The blue skies above us, and below the shining sea;
+      There's many a road to travel, but it's this road for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You must have ridden this road with an understanding heart and the arm of
+      God around you to know the exact degree of disappointment that swelled in
+      Linda's heart when she answered the telephone early Saturday morning and
+      heard Donald Whiting's strained voice speaking into it. He was talking
+      breathlessly in eager, boyish fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda, I am in a garage halfway downtown,&rdquo; he was saying, &ldquo;and it looks
+      to me as if to save my soul I couldn't reach you before noon. I have had
+      the darnedest luck. Our Jap got sick last week and he sent a new man to
+      take his place. There wasn't a thing the matter with our car when I drove
+      it in Friday night. This morning Father wanted to use it on important
+      business, and it wouldn't run. He ordered me to tinker it up enough to get
+      it to the shop. I went at it and when it would go, I started You can
+      imagine the clip I was going, and the thing went to pieces. I don't know
+      yet how it comes that I saved my skin. I'm pretty badly knocked out, but
+      I'll get there by noon if it's a possible thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all right,&rdquo; said Linda, fervently hoping that the ache in her
+      throat would not tincture her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was half-past eleven when Donald came. Linda could not bring herself to
+      give up the sea that day. She found it impossible to drive the King's
+      Highway. It seemed equally impossible not to look on the face of the
+      ocean, so she compromised by skirting Santa Monica Bay, and taking the
+      foothill road she ran it to the north end of the beach drive. When they
+      had spread their blankets on the sand, finished their lunch and were
+      resting, Linda began to question Donald about what had happened. She
+      wanted to know how long Whitings' gardener had been in their employ; if
+      they knew where he lived and about his family; if they knew who his
+      friends were, or anything concerning him. She inquired about the man who
+      had taken his place, and wanted most particularly to know what the garage
+      men had found the trouble with a car that ran perfectly on Friday night
+      and broke down in half a dozen different places on Saturday morning.
+      Finally Donald looked at her, laughingly quizzical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're no nerve specialist and no naturalist. You're
+      the cross examiner for the plaintiff. What are you trying to get at? Make
+      out a case against Yogo Sani?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it's all right,&rdquo; said Linda, watching a distant pelican turn
+      head down and catapult into the sea. &ldquo;It has to be all right, but you must
+      admit that it looks peculiar. How have you been getting along this week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald waved his hand in the direction of a formation of stone the size of
+      a small house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been rolling that to the top of the mountain,&rdquo; he said lightly. Linda's
+      eyes narrowed, her face grew speculative. She looked at Donald intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it as difficult as that?&rdquo; she asked in a lowered voice as if the surf
+      and the sea chickens might hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is just as difficult as that,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;While you're talking
+      about peculiar things, I'll tell you one. In class I came right up against
+      Oka Sayye on the solution of a theorem in trigonometry. We both had the
+      answer, the correct answer, but we had arrived at it by widely different
+      routes, and it was up to me to prove that my line of reasoning was more
+      lucid, more natural, the inevitable one by which the solution should be
+      reached. We got so in earnest that I am afraid both of us were rather
+      tense. I stepped over to his demonstration to point out where I thought
+      his reasoning was wrong. I got closer to the Jap than I had ever been
+      before; and by gracious, Linda! scattered, but nevertheless still there,
+      and visible, I saw a sprinkling of gray hairs just in front of and over
+      his ears. It caught me unawares, and before I knew what I was doing,
+      before the professor and the assembled classroom I blurted it out: 'Say,
+      Oka Sayye, how old are you?' If the Jap had had any way of killing me, I
+      believe he would have done it. There was a look in his eyes that was what
+      I would call deadly. It was only a flash and then, very courteously,
+      putting me in the wrong, of course, he remarked that he was 'almost
+      ninekleen'; and it struck me from his look and the way he said it that it
+      was a lie. If he truly was the average age of the rest of the class there
+      was nothing for him to be angry about. Then I did take a deliberate
+      survey. From the settled solidity of his frame and the shape of his hands
+      and the skin of his face and the set of his eyes in his head, I couldn't
+      see that much youth. I'll bet he's thirty if he's a day, and I shouldn't
+      be a bit surprised if he has graduated at the most worthwhile university
+      in Japan, before he ever came to this country to get his English for
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda was watching a sea swallow now, and slowly her lean fingers were
+      gathering handfuls of sand and sifting them into a little pyramid she was
+      heaping beside her. Again almost under her breath she spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donald, do you really believe that?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Is it possible that
+      mature Jap men are coming here and entering our schools and availing
+      themselves of the benefits that the taxpayers of California provide for
+      their children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you know it?&rdquo; asked Donald. &ldquo;I hadn't thought of it in connection
+      with Oka Sayye, but I do know cases where mature Japs have been in grade
+      schools with children under ten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Donald!&rdquo; exclaimed Linda. &ldquo;If California is permitting that or ever
+      has permitted it, we're too easy. We deserve to become their prey if we
+      are so careless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I know it's true,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;I have been in the same classes
+      with men more than old enough to be my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never was,&rdquo; said Linda, industriously sifting sand. &ldquo;I have been in
+      classes with Japs ever since I have been at school, but it was with girls
+      and boys of our gardeners and fruit dealers and curio-shop people, and
+      they were always of my age and entitled to be in school, since our system
+      includes the education of anybody who happens to be in California and
+      wants to go to school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did my being late spoil any particular plan you had made, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;it did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am so sorry!&rdquo; cried Donald. &ldquo;I certainly shall try to see that it
+      doesn't occur again. Could we do it next Saturday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am hoping so,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told Dad,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do,
+      and he was awfully sorry but he said it was business and it would take
+      only a few minutes and he thought I could do it and be on time. If he had
+      known I would be detained I don't believe he would have asked it of me.
+      He's a grand old peter, Linda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;There's not much you can tell me about peters
+      of the grand sort, the real, true flesh-and-blood, bighearted, human-being
+      fathers, who will take you to the fields and the woods and take the time
+      to teach you what God made and how He made it and why He made it and what
+      we can do with it, and of the fellowship and brotherhood we can get from
+      Nature by being real kin. The one thing that I have had that was the
+      biggest thing in all this world was one of these real fathers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald watched as she raised the pyramid higher and higher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell your father whom you were to go with?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure I did,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;Told the whole family at dinner last night.
+      Told 'em about all the things I was learning, from where to get soap off
+      the bushes to the best spot for material for wooden legs or instantaneous
+      relief for snake bite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did they say?&rdquo; Linda inquired laughingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unanimously in favour of continuing the course,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had already
+      told Father about you when I asked him for books and any help that he
+      could give me with Oka Sayye. Since I had mentioned you last night he told
+      Mother and Louise about that, and they told me to bring you to the house
+      some time. All of them are crazy to know you. Mother says she is just wild
+      to know whether a girl who wears boots and breeches and who knows canyons
+      and the desert and the mountains as you do can be a feminine and lovable
+      person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I told her how many friends I have, she could have speedily decided
+      whether I am lovable or not,&rdquo; said Linda; &ldquo;but I would make an effort to
+      convince her that I am strictly feminine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would convince her of that without making the slightest effort.
+      You're infinitely more feminine than any other girl I have ever known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you figure that?&rdquo; asked Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;it's a queer thing about you, Linda. I take any
+      liberty I pretty nearly please with most of the girls I have been
+      associated with. I tie their shoes and pull their hair&mdash;down if I
+      want to&mdash;and hand them round 'most any way the notion takes me, and
+      they just laugh and take the same liberties with me, which proves that I
+      am pretty much a girl with them or they are pretty much boys with me. But
+      it wouldn't occur to me to touch your hair or your shoe lace or the tips
+      of your fingers; which proves that you're more feminine than any other
+      girl I know, because if you were not I would be treating you more like
+      another boy. I thought, the first day we were together, that you were like
+      a boy, and I said so, and I thought it because you did not tease me and
+      flirt with me, but since I have come to know you better, you're less like
+      a boy than any other girl I ever have known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get psychological, Donald,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Go on with the Jap. I
+      haven't got an answer yet to what I really want to know. Have you made the
+      least progress this week? Can you beat him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald hesitated, studying over the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beat him at that trig proposition the other day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Got an open
+      commendation before the class. There's not a professor in any of my
+      classes who isn't 'hep' to what I'm after by this time, and if I would
+      cajole them a little they would naturally be on my side, especially if
+      their attention were called to that incident of yesterday; but you said I
+      have to beat him with my brains, by doing better work than he does; so
+      about the biggest thing I can honestly tell you is that I have held my
+      own. I have only been ahead of him once this week, but I haven't failed in
+      anything that he has accomplished. I have been able to put some additional
+      touches to some work that he has done for which he used to be marked A
+      which means your One Hundred. Double A which means your plus I made in one
+      instance. And you needn't think that Oka Sayye does not realize what I am
+      up to as well as any of the rest of the class, and you needn't think that
+      he is not going to give me a run for my brain. All I've got will be needed
+      before we finish this term.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Linda, slowly nodding her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;that we had started this thing two years ago, or
+      better still, four. But of course you were not in the high school four
+      years ago and there wasn't a girl in my class or among my friends who
+      cared whether I beat the Jap or not. They greatly preferred that I take
+      them motoring or to a dance or a picture show or a beach party. You're the
+      only one except Mother and Louise who ever inspired me to get down to
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laid her palm on the top of the sand heap and pressed it flat. She
+      looked at Donald with laughing eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Symbolical,&rdquo; she announced. &ldquo;That sand was the Jap.&rdquo; She stretched her
+      hand toward him. &ldquo;That was you. Did you see yourself squash him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald's laugh was grim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish it were as easy as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was not easy,&rdquo; said Linda; &ldquo;make a mental computation of all the
+      seconds that it took me to erect that pyramid and all the millions of
+      grains of sand I had to gather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald was deeply thoughtful, yet a half smile was playing round his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the queer girls I ever knew, you're the cap sheaf, Linda,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda rose slowly, shook the sand from her breeches and stretched out her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's hotfoot it down to the African village and see what the movies are
+      doing that is interesting today,&rdquo; she proposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. Shifting the Responsibility
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On her pillow that night before dropping to almost instantaneous sleep
+      Linda reflected that if you could not ride the King's Highway, racing the
+      sands of Santa Monica was a very excellent substitute. It had been a
+      wonderful day after all. When she had left Donald at the Lilac Valley end
+      of the car line he had held her hand tight an instant and looked into her
+      face with the most engaging of clear, boyish smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda, isn't our friendship the nicest thing that ever happened to us?&rdquo;
+       he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Linda promptly, &ldquo;quite the nicest. Make your plans for all
+      day long next Saturday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be here before the birds are awake,&rdquo; promised Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the close of Monday's sessions, going down the broad walk from the high
+      school, Donald overtook Linda and in a breathless whisper he said: &ldquo;What
+      do you think? I came near Oka Sayye again this morning in trig, and his
+      hair was as black as jet, dyed to a midnight, charcoal finish, and I am
+      not right sure that he had not borrowed some girl's lipstick and rouge pot
+      for the benefit of his lips and cheeks. Positively he's hectically
+      youthful today. What do you know about that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he hurried on to overtake the crowd of boys he had left, Linda's
+      heart was racing in her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, she re-entered the school building, and taking a telephone
+      directory she hunted an address, and then, instead of going to the car
+      line that took her to Lilac Valley she went to the address she had looked
+      up. With a pencil she wrote a few lines on a bit of scratch paper in one
+      of her books. That note opened a door and admitted her to the presence of
+      a tall, lean, gray-haired man with quick, blue-gray eyes and lips that
+      seemed capable of being either grave or gay on short notice. With that
+      perfect ease which Linda had acquired through the young days of her life
+      in meeting friends of her father, she went to the table beside which this
+      man was standing and stretched out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge Whiting?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Linda Strong, the younger daughter of Alexander Strong. I think you
+      knew my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Judge, &ldquo;I knew him very well indeed, and I have some small
+      acquaintance with his daughter through very interesting reports that my
+      son brings home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is about Donald that I came to see you,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she had been watching as her father would have watched, Linda would
+      have seen the slight uplift of the Judge's figure, the tensing of his
+      muscles, the narrowing of his eyes in the swift, speculative look he
+      passed over her from the crown of her bare, roughened black head down the
+      gold-brown of her dress to her slender, well-shod feet. The last part of
+      that glance Linda caught. She slightly lifted one of the feet under
+      inspection, thrust it forward and looked at the Judge with a gay challenge
+      in her dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you interested in them too?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge was embarrassed. A flush crept into his cheeks. He was supposed
+      to be master of any emergency that might arise, but one had arisen in
+      connection with a slip of a schoolgirl that left him wordless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very probable,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that if my shoes had been like most
+      other girls' shoes I wouldn't be here today. I was in the same schoolroom
+      with your son for three years, and he never saw me or spoke to me until
+      one day he stopped me to inquire why I wore the kind of shoes I did. He
+      said he had a battle to wage with me because I tried to be a law to
+      myself, and he wanted to know why I wasn't like other girls. And I told
+      him I had a crow to pick with HIM because he had the kind of brain that
+      would be content to let a Jap beat him in his own school, in his own
+      language and in his own country; so we made an engagement to fight to a
+      finish, and it ended by his becoming the only boy friend I have and the
+      nicest boy friend a girl ever had, I am very sure. That's why I'm here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda lifted her eyes and Judge Whiting looked into them till he saw the
+      same gold lights in their depths that Peter Morrison had seen. He came
+      around the table and placed a big leather chair for Linda. Then he went
+      back and resumed his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said the Judge in his most engaging manner. &ldquo;I gather from
+      what Donald has told me that you have a reason for being here, and I want
+      you to understand that I am intensely interested in anything you have to
+      say to me. Now tell me why you came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;because I started something and am afraid of the
+      possible result. I think very likely if, in retaliation for what Donald
+      said to me about my hair and my shoes, I had not twitted him about the use
+      he was making of his brain and done everything in my power to drive him
+      into competition with Oka Sayye in the hope that a white man would
+      graduate with the highest honors, he would not have gone into this
+      competition, which I am now certain has antagonized Oka Sayye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda folded her slim hands on the table and leaned forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge Whiting,&rdquo; she said earnestly, &ldquo;I know very little about men. The
+      most I know was what I learned about my father and the men with whom he
+      occasionally hunted and fished. They were all such fine men that I must
+      have grown up thinking that every man was very like them, but one day I
+      came in direct contact with the Jap that Donald is trying to beat, and the
+      thing I saw in his face put fear into my heart and it has been there ever
+      since. I have almost an unreasoning fear of that Jap, not because he has
+      said anything or done anything. It's just instinctive. I may be wholly
+      wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time, but there are two
+      things I wanted to tell you. I could have told Donald, but if I did and
+      his mind went off at a tangent thinking of these things he wouldn't be
+      nearly so likely to be in condition to give his best thought to his
+      studies. If I really made him see what I think I have seen, and fear what
+      I know I fear, he might fail where I would give almost anything to see him
+      succeed; so I thought I would come to you and tell you about it and ask
+      you please to think it over, and to take extra care of him, because I
+      really believe that he may be in danger; and if he is I never shall be
+      able to rid myself of a sense of responsibility.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Judge Whiting. &ldquo;Now tell me, just as explicitly as you have
+      told me this, exactly what it is that you fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last Saturday,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;Donald told me that while standing at the
+      board beside Oka Sayye, demonstrating a theorem, he noticed that there
+      were gray hairs above the Jap's ears, and he bluntly asked him, before the
+      professor and the class, how old he was. In telling me, he said he had the
+      feeling that if the Jap could have done so in that instant, he would have
+      killed him. He said he was nineteen, but Donald says from the matured
+      lines of his body, from his hands and his face and his hair, he is certain
+      that he is thirty or more, and he thinks it very probable that he may have
+      graduated at home before he came here to get his English for nothing from
+      our public schools. I never before had the fact called to my attention
+      that this was being done, but Donald told me that he had been in classes
+      with matured men when he was less than ten years of age. That is not fair,
+      Judge Whiting; it is not right. There should be an age specified above
+      which people may not be allowed to attend public school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite agree with you,&rdquo; said the Judge. &ldquo;That has been done in the
+      grades, but there is nothing fair in bringing a boy under twenty in
+      competition with a man graduated from the institutions of another country,
+      even in the high schools. If this be the case&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can be certain that it is,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;because Donald whispered to
+      me as he passed me half an hour ago, coming from the school building, that
+      TODAY Oka Sayye's hair is a uniform, shining black, and he also thought
+      that he had used a lipstick and rouge in an effort at rejuvenation. Do you
+      think, from your knowledge of Donald, that he would imagine that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Judge Whiting, &ldquo;I don't think such a thing would occur to him
+      unless he saw it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither do I,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;From the short acquaintance I have with him I
+      should not call him at all imaginative, but he is extremely quick and
+      wonderfully retentive. You have to show him but once from which cactus he
+      can get Victrola needles and fishing hooks, or where to find material for
+      wooden legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge laughed. &ldquo;Doesn't prove much,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You wouldn't have to
+      show me that more than once either. If anyone were giving me an intensive
+      course on such interesting subjects, I would guarantee to remember, even
+      at my age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda nodded in acquiescence. &ldquo;Then you can regard it as quite certain,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;that Oka Sayye is making up in an effort to appear younger than
+      he is which means that he doesn't want his right questioned to be in our
+      schools, to absorb the things that we are taught, to learn our language,
+      our government, our institutions, our ideals, our approximate strength and
+      our only-too-apparent weakness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge leaned forward and waited attentively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other matter,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;was relative to Saturday. There may not
+      be a thing in it, but sometimes a woman's intuition proves truer than what
+      a man thinks he sees and knows. I haven't SEEN a thing, and I don't KNOW a
+      thing, but I don't believe your gardener was sick last week. I believe he
+      had a dirty job he wanted done and preferred to save his position and
+      avoid risks by getting some other Jap who had no family and no interests
+      here, to do it for him. I don't BELIEVE that your car, having run all
+      right Friday night, was shot to pieces Saturday morning so that Donald
+      went smash with it in a manner that might very easily have killed him, or
+      sent him to the hospital for months, while Oka Sayye carried off the
+      honors without competition I want to ask you to find out whether your
+      regular gardener truly was ill, whether he has a family and interests to
+      protect here, or whether he is a man who could disappear in a night as
+      Japs who have leased land and have families cannot. I want to know about
+      the man who took your gardener's place, and I want the man who is
+      repairing your car interviewed very carefully as to what he found the
+      trouble with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda paused. Judge Whiting sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;Thank you very much for coming to me. All these
+      things and anything that develops from them shall be handled carefully. Of
+      course you know that Donald is my only son and you can realize what he is
+      to me and to his mother and sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is because I do realize that,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that I am here. I
+      appreciate his friendship, but it is not for my own interests that I am
+      asking to have him taken care of while he wages his mental war with this
+      Jap. I want Donald to have the victory, but I want it to be a victory that
+      will be an inspiration to any boy of white blood among any of our allies
+      or among peoples who should be our allies. There's a showdown coming
+      between the white race and a mighty aggregation of colored peoples one of
+      these days, and if the white man doesn't realize pretty soon that his
+      supremacy is not only going to be contested but may be lost, it just
+      simply will be lost; that is all there is to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge was studying deeply now. Finally he said: &ldquo;Young lady, I greatly
+      appreciate your coming to me. There may be NOTHING in what you fear. It
+      MIGHT be a matter of national importance. In any event, it shows that your
+      heart is in the right place. May Mrs. Whiting and I pay you a visit some
+      day soon in your home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Linda simply. &ldquo;I told Donald to bring his mother the
+      first time he came, but he said he did not need to be chaperoned when he
+      came to see me, because my father's name was a guarantee to his mother
+      that my home would be a proper place for him to visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how many of his other girl friends invited him to bring his
+      mother to see them,&rdquo; said the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he probably grew up with the other girls and was acquainted with them
+      from tiny things,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; conceded the Judge. &ldquo;I think, after all, I would rather
+      have an invitation to make one of those trips with you to the desert or
+      the mountains. Is there anything else as interesting as fish hooks and
+      Victrola needles and wooden legs to be learned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said Linda, leaning farther forward, a lovely color sweeping up
+      into her cheeks, her eyes a-shine. She had missed the fact that the Judge
+      was jesting. She had thought him in sober, scientific earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's an awfully nice thing if you dig a plant or soil your hands in
+      hunting, or anything like that, to know that there are four or five
+      different kinds of vegetable soap where you can easily reach them, if you
+      know them. If you lose your way or have a long tramp, it's good to know
+      which plants will give you drink and where they are. And if you're short
+      of implements, you might at any time need a mescal stick, or an arrow
+      shaft or an arrow, even. If Donald were lost now, he could keep alive for
+      days, because he would know what wood would make him a bow and how he
+      could take amole fiber and braid a bow string and where he could make
+      arrows and arrow points so that he could shoot game for food. I've taught
+      him to make a number of snares, and he knows where to find and how to cook
+      his greens and potatoes and onions and where to find his pickles and how
+      to make lemonade and tea, and what to use for snake bite. It's been such
+      fun, Judge Whiting, and he has been so interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I should think he would be,&rdquo; said the Judge. &ldquo;I am interested
+      myself. If you would take an old boy like me on a few of those trips, I
+      would be immensely pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd like brigand beefsteak,&rdquo; suggested Linda, &ldquo;and you'd like cress
+      salad, and I am sure you'd like creamed yucca.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hm,&rdquo; said the Judge. &ldquo;Sounds to me like Jane Meredith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda suddenly sat straight. A dazed expression crossed her face.
+      Presently she recovered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what a great criminal judge knows
+      about Jane Meredith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I hear my wife and daughter talking about her,&rdquo; said the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if a judge hears so many secrets that he forgets
+      what a secret is and couldn't possibly keep one to save his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the other hand,&rdquo; said Judge Whiting, &ldquo;a judge hears so many secrets
+      that he learns to be a very secretive person himself, and if a young lady
+      just your size and so like you in every way as to be you, told me anything
+      and told me that it was a secret, I would guarantee to carry it with me to
+      my grave, if I said I would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of Linda's special laughs floated out of the windows. Her right hand
+      slipped across the table toward the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cross your heart and body?&rdquo; she challenged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge took the hand she offered in both of his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my soul,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I swear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; bubbled Linda. &ldquo;Judge Whiting, allow me to present to you
+      Jane Meredith, the author and originator of the Aboriginal Cookery
+      articles now running in Everybody's Home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood up as she made the presentation and the Judge arose with her.
+      When she bowed her dark head before him the Judge bowed equally as low,
+      then he took the hand he held and pressed it against his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not surprised,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am honored, deeply honored, and I am
+      delighted. For a high school girl that is a splendid achievement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you realize, of course,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that it is vicarious. I really
+      haven't done anything. I am just passing on to the world what Alexander
+      Strong found it interesting to teach his daughter, because he hadn't a
+      son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly am fortunate that my son is getting the benefit of this,&rdquo;
+       said Judge Whiting earnestly. &ldquo;There are girls who make my old-fashioned
+      soul shudder, but I shall rest in great comfort whenever I know that my
+      boy is with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; laughed Linda. &ldquo;I'm not vamping him. I don't know the first
+      principles. We're not doing a thing worse than sucking 'hunters' rock
+      leek' or roasting Indian potatoes or fishing for trout with cactus spines.
+      I have had such a lovely time I don't believe that I'll apologize for
+      coming. But you won't waste a minute in making sure about Oka Sayye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't waste a minute,&rdquo; said the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. The End of Marian's Contest
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Coming from school a few days later on an evening when she had been
+      detained, Linda found a radiant Katy awaiting her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up, old dear?&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;You seem positively illumined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;It's a good time I'm havin'. In the first place the
+      previous boss of this place ain't nowise so bossy as sue used to be, an'
+      livin' with her is a dale aisier. An' then, when Miss Eileen is around
+      these days, she is beginning to see things, and she is just black with
+      jealousy of ye. Something funny happened here the afternoon, an' she was
+      home for once an' got the full benefit of it. I was swapin' the aist walk,
+      but I know she was inside the window an' I know she heard. First, comes a
+      great big loaded automobile drivin' up, and stopped in front with a
+      flourish an' out hops as nice an' nate a lookin' lad as ever you clapped
+      your eyes on, an' up he comes to me an' off goes his hat with a swape, an'
+      he hands me that bundle an' he says: 'Here's something Miss Linda is
+      wantin' bad for her wild garden.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy handed Linda a bundle of newspaper, inside which, wrapped in a man's
+      handkerchief, she found several plants, carefully lifted, the roots
+      properly balled, the heads erect, crisp, although in full flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Katy!&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;Look, it's Gallito, 'little rooster'!&rdquo; &ldquo;Now
+      ain't them jist yellow violets?&rdquo; asked Katy dubiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;they are not. They are quite a bit rarer. They are
+      really a wild pansy. Bring water, Katy, and help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I've something else for ye,&rdquo; said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care what you have,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;I am just compelled to park
+      these little roosters at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes ye call them that ungodly name?&rdquo; asked Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing ungodly about it,&rdquo; answered Linda. &ldquo;It's funny. Gallito is the
+      Spanish name for these violets, and it means 'little rooster.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda set the violets as carefully as they had been lifted and rinsed her
+      hands at the hydrant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now bring on the remainder of the exhibit,&rdquo; she ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's there on the top of the rock pile, which you notice has incrased
+      since ye last saw it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it has!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;So it has! And beautifully colored specimens
+      those are too. My fern bed will lift up its voice and rejoice in them. And
+      rocks mean Henry Anderson. The box I do not understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda picked it up, untied the string, and slipped off the wrapping. Katy
+      stared in wide-mouthed amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just tickled over that because Miss Eileen saw a good-looking and
+      capable young man leave a second package, right on the heels of young
+      Whiting,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Whatever have ye got, lambie? What does that mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda held up a beautiful box of glass, inside of which could be seen
+      swarming specimens of every bug, beetle, insect, and worm that Henry
+      Anderson had been able to collect in Heaven only knew what hours of
+      search. Linda opened the box. The winged creatures flew, the bettles
+      tumbled, the worms went over the top. She set it on the ground and laughed
+      to exhaustion. Her eyes were wet as she looked up at Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That first night Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison were here to dinner,
+      Katy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Anderson made a joke about being my bug-catcher when I
+      built my home nest, and several times since he has tried to be silly about
+      it, but the last time I told him it was foolishness to which I would
+      listen no more, so instead of talking, he has taken this way of telling me
+      that he is fairly expert as a bug-catcher. Really, it is awfully funny,
+      Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy was sober. She showed no appreciation of the fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye know, lambie,&rdquo; she said, her hands on her hips, her elbows
+      wide-spread, her jaws argumentative, &ldquo;I've done some blarneying with that
+      lad, an' I've fed him some, because he was doin' things that would help
+      an' please ye, but now I'm tellin' ye, just like I'll be tellin' ye till I
+      die, I ain't STRONG for him. If ever the day comes when ye ask me to take
+      on that Whiting kid for me boss, I'll bow my head an' I'll fly at his
+      bidding, because he is real, he's goin' to come out a man lots like your
+      pa, or hisn. An' if ever the day comes when ye will be telling me ye want
+      me to serve Pater Morrison, I'll well nigh get on my knees to him. I think
+      he'd be the closest we'd ever come to gettin' the master back. But I
+      couldn't say I'd ever take to Anderson. They's something about him, I
+      can't just say what, but he puts me back up amazin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't worry, ancient custodian of the family,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;That same
+      something in Henry Anderson that antagonizes you, affects me in even
+      stronger degree. You must not get the foolish notion that any man has a
+      speculative eye on me, because it is not true. Donald Whiting is only a
+      boy friend, treating me as a brother would, and Peter Morrison is much too
+      sophisticated and mature to pay any serious attention to a girl with a
+      year more high school before her. I want to be decent to Henry Anderson,
+      because he is Peter's architect, and I'm deeply interested in Peter's
+      house and the lady who will live in it. Sometimes I hope it will be
+      Donald's sister, Mary Louise. Anyway, I am going to get acquainted with
+      her and make it my business to see that she and Peter get their chance to
+      know each other well. My job for Peter is to help run his brook at the
+      proper angle, build his bridge, engineer his road, and plant his grounds;
+      so don't be dreaming any foolish dreams, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy folded her arms, tilted her chin at an unusually aspiring angle, and
+      deliberately sniffed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't ye be lettin' yourself belave your own foolishness,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+      ain't done with me exhibit yet. On the hall table ye will find a package
+      from the Pater Morrison man that Miss Eileen had the joy of takin' in and
+      layin' aside for ye, an atop of it rists a big letter that I'm thinkin'
+      might mean Miss Marian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;Why are you wasting all this time? If there is a
+      letter from Marian it may mean that the competition is decided; but if it
+      is, she loses, because she was to telegraph if she won.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda rushed into the house and carried her belongings to her workroom.
+      She dropped them on the table and looked at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get you off my mind first,&rdquo; she said to the Morrison package, which
+      enclosed a new article entitled &ldquo;How to Grow Good Citizens.&rdquo; With it was a
+      scrawled line, &ldquo;I'm leaving the head and heels of the future to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How fine!&rdquo; exulted Linda. &ldquo;He must have liked the head and tail pieces I
+      drew for his other article, so he wants the same for this, and if he is
+      well paid for his article, maybe in time, after I've settled for my hearth
+      motto, he will pay me something for my work. Gal-lum-shus!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she opened the letter from Marian she slowly shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drat the luck,&rdquo; she muttered, &ldquo;no good news here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly and absorbedly she read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAREST LINDA:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No telegram to send. I grazed the first prize and missed the second
+      because Henry Anderson wins with plans so like mine that they are
+      practically duplicates. I have not seen the winning plans. Mr. Snow told
+      me as gently as he could that the judges had ruled me out entirely. The
+      winning plans are practically a reversal of mine, more professionally
+      drawn, and no doubt the specifications are far ahead of mine, as these are
+      my weak spot, although I have worked all day and far into the night on the
+      mathematics of house building. Mr. Snow was very kind, and terribly cut up
+      about it. I made what I hope was a brave fight, I did so believe in those
+      plans that I am afraid to say just how greatly disappointed I am. All I
+      can do is to go to work again and try to find out how to better my best,
+      which I surely put into the plans I submitted. I can't see how Henry
+      Anderson came to hit upon some of my personal designs for comforts and
+      conveniences. I had hoped that no man would think of my especial kitchen
+      plans. I rather fancied myself as a benefactor to my sex, an emancipator
+      from drudgery, as it were. I had a concealed feeling that it required a
+      woman who had expended her strength combating the construction of a
+      devilish kitchen, to devise some of my built-in conveniences, and I worked
+      as carefully on my kitchen table, as on any part of the house. If I find
+      later that the winning plans include these things I shall believe that
+      Henry Anderson is a mind reader, or that lost plans naturally gravitate to
+      him. But there is no use to grouch further. I seem to be born a loser.
+      Anyway, I haven't lost you and I still have Dana Meade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have nothing else to tell you except that Mr. Snow has waited for me two
+      evenings out of the week ever since I wrote you, and he has taken me in
+      his car and simply forced me to drive him for an hour over what appeals to
+      me to be the most difficult roads he could select. So far I have not
+      balked at anything but he has had the consideration not to direct me to
+      the mountains. He is extremely attractive, Linda, and I do enjoy being
+      with him, but I dread it too, because his grief is so deep and so apparent
+      that it constantly keeps before me the loss of my own dear ones, and those
+      things to which the hymn books refer as &ldquo;aching voids&rdquo; in my own life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is something you will be glad to hear. That unknown
+      correspondent of mine is still sending letters, and I am crazy about them.
+      I don't answer one now until I have mulled over it two or three days and I
+      try to give him as good as he sends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I judge from your letters that you are keeping at least even with Eileen,
+      and that life is much happier for you. You seem to be broadening. I am so
+      glad for the friendship you have formed with Donald Whiting. My mother and
+      Mrs. Whiting were friends. She is a charming woman and it has seemed to me
+      that in her daughter Louise she has managed a happy compound of
+      old-fashioned straightforwardness and unswerving principle, festooned with
+      happy trimmings of all that is best in the present days. I hope that you
+      do become acquainted with her. She is older than you, but she is the kind
+      of girl I know you would like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't worry because I have lost again, Linda dear. Today is my blue day.
+      Tomorrow I shall roll up my sleeves and go at it again with all my might,
+      and by and by it is written in the books that things will come right for
+      me. They cannot go wrong for ever. With dearest love,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARIAN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked grim as she finished the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound such luck,&rdquo; she said emphatically. &ldquo;I do not understand it. How
+      can a man like Henry Anderson know more about comforts and conveniences in
+      a home than a woman with Marian's experience and comprehension? And she
+      has been gaining experience for the past ten years. That partner of his
+      must be a six-cylinder miracle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda went to the kitchen, because she was in pressing need of someone to
+      whom to tell her troubles, and there was no one except Katy. What Katy
+      said was energetic and emphatic, but it comforted Linda, because she
+      agreed with it and what she was seeking at the minute was someone who
+      agreed with her. As she went back upstairs, she met Eileen on her way to
+      the front door. Eileen paused and deliberately studied Linda's face, and
+      Linda stopped and waited quietly until she chose to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; said Eileen at last, &ldquo;that you and Katy would call the
+      process through which you are going right now, 'taking the bit in your
+      teeth,' or some poetic thing like that, but I can't see that you are
+      getting much out of it. I don't hear the old laugh or the clatter of gay
+      feet as I did before all this war of dissatisfaction broke out. This
+      minute if you haven't either cried, or wanted to, I miss my guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You win,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I have not cried, because I make it a rule never
+      to resort to tears when I can help it; so what you see now is unshed tears
+      in my heart. They in no way relate to what you so aptly term my 'war of
+      dissatisfaction'; they are for Marian. She has lost again, this time the
+      Nicholson and Snow prize in architecture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serves her right,&rdquo; said Eileen, laughing contemptuously. &ldquo;The ridiculous
+      idea of her trying to compete in a man's age-old occupation! As if she
+      ever could learn enough about joists and beams and girders and installing
+      water and gas and electricity to build a house. She should have had the
+      sense to know she couldn't do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;Marian wasn't proposing to be a contractor,
+      she only wants to be an architect. And the man who beat her is Peter
+      Morrison's architect, Henry Anderson, and he won by such a narrow margin
+      that her plans were thrown out of second and third place, because they
+      were so very similar to his. Doesn't that strike you as curious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is more than curious,&rdquo; said Eileen slowly. &ldquo;That is a very strange
+      coincidence. They couldn't have had anything from each other, because they
+      only met at dinner, before all of us, and Marian went away the next
+      morning; it does seem queer.&rdquo; Then she added with a flash of generosity
+      and justice, &ldquo;It looks pretty good for Marian, at that. If she came so
+      near winning that she lost second and third because she was too near first
+      to make any practical difference, I must be wrong and she must be right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wrong,&rdquo; said Linda tersely, &ldquo;if you think Marian cannot make
+      wonderful plans for houses. But going back to what my 'war of
+      dissatisfaction' is doing to me, it's a pale affair compared with what it
+      is doing to you, Eileen. You look a debilitated silhouette of the near
+      recent past. Do you feel that badly about giving up a little money and
+      authority?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never professed to have the slightest authority over you,&rdquo; said Eileen
+      very primly, as she drew back in the shadows. &ldquo;You have come and gone
+      exactly as you pleased. All I ever tried to do was to keep up a decent
+      appearance before the neighbors and make financial ends meet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That never seemed to wear on you as something seems to do now,&rdquo; said
+      Linda. &ldquo;I am thankful that this week ends it. I was looking for you
+      because I wanted to tell you to be sure not to make any date that will
+      keep you from meeting me at the office of the president of the
+      Consolidated Bank Thursday afternoon. I am going to arrange with John to
+      be there and it shouldn't take fifteen minutes to run through matters and
+      divide the income in a fair way between us. I am willing for you to go on
+      paying the bills and ordering for the house as you have been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly you are,&rdquo; sneered Eileen. &ldquo;You are quite willing for all the
+      work and use the greater part of my time to make you comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda suddenly drew back. Her body seemed to recoil, but her head thrust
+      forward as if to bring her eyes in better range to read Eileen's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is utterly unjust, Eileen,&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then two at a time she rushed the stairs in a race for her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. The Day of Jubilee
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Linda started to school half an hour earlier Wednesday morning because
+      that was the day for her weekly trip to the Post Office for any mail which
+      might have come to her under the name of Jane Meredith. She had hard work
+      to keep down her color when she recognized the heavy gray envelope used by
+      the editor of Everybody's Home. As she turned from the window with it in
+      her fingers she was trembling slightly and wondering whether she could
+      have a minute's seclusion to face the answer which her last letter might
+      have brought. There was a small alcove beside a public desk at one side of
+      the room. Linda stepped into this, tore open the envelope and slipped out
+      the sheet it contained. Dazedly she stared at the slip that fell from it.
+      Slowly the color left her cheeks and then came rushing back from her
+      surcharged heart until her very ears were red, because that slip was very
+      manifestly a cheque for five hundred dollars. Mentally and physically
+      Linda shook herself, then she straightened to full height, tensing her
+      muscles and holding the sheet before her with a hand on each side to keep
+      it from shaking, while she read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR MADAM:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sincerely apologize for having waited so long before writing you of the
+      very exceptional reception which your articles have had. I think one half
+      their attraction has been the exquisite and appealing pictures you have
+      sent for their illustration. At the present minute they are forming what I
+      consider the most unique feature in the magazine. I am enclosing you a
+      cheque for five hundred dollars as an initial payment on the series. Just
+      what the completed series should be worth I am unable to say until you
+      inform me how many months you can keep it up at the same grade of culinary
+      and literary interest and attractive illustration; but I should say at a
+      rough estimate that you would be safe in counting upon a repetition of
+      this cheque for every three articles you send in. This of course includes
+      payment for the pictures also, which are to me if anything more attractive
+      than the recipes, since the local color and environment they add to the
+      recipe and the word sketch are valuable in the extreme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you feel that you can continue this to the extent of even a small
+      volume, I shall be delighted to send you a book contract. In considering
+      this proposition, let me say that if you could not produce enough recipes
+      to fill a book, you could piece it out to the necessary length most
+      charmingly and attractively by lengthening the descriptions of the
+      environment in which the particular fruits and vegetables you deal with
+      are to be found; and in book form you might allow yourself much greater
+      latitude in the instructions concerning the handling of the fruits and the
+      preparation of the recipes. I think myself that a wonderfully attractive
+      book could be made from this material, and hope that you will agree with
+      me. Trusting that this will be satisfactory to you and that you will
+      seriously consider the book proposition before you decline it, I remain,
+      my dear madam, Very truly yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HUGH THOMPSON,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Editor, Everybody's Home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gripping the cheque and the letter, Linda lurched forward against the
+      window casement and shut her eyes tight, because she could feel big,
+      nervous gulps of exultation and rejoicing swelling up in her throat. She
+      shifted the papers to one hand and surreptitiously slipped the other to
+      her pocket. She tried to keep the papers before her and looked straight
+      from the window to avoid attracting attention. The tumult of exultation in
+      her heart was so wild that she did not surely know whether she wanted to
+      sink to the floor, lay her face against the glass, and indulge in what for
+      generations women have referred to as &ldquo;a good cry,&rdquo; or whether she wanted
+      to leap from the window and sport on the wind like a driven leaf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she returned the letter and cheque to the envelope, and slipped it
+      inside her blouse, and started on her way to school. She might as well
+      have gone to Multiflores Canyon and pitted her strength against climbing
+      its walls for the day, for all the good she did in her school work. She
+      heard no word of any recitation by her schoolmates. She had no word ready
+      when called on for a recitation herself. She heard nothing that was said
+      by any of the professors. On winged feet she was flying back and forth
+      from the desert to the mountains, from the canyons to the sea. She was
+      raiding beds of amass and devising ways to roast the bulbs and make a new
+      dish. She was compounding drinks from mescal and bisnaga. She was hunting
+      desert pickles and trying to remember whether Indian rhubarb ever grew so
+      far south. She was glad when the dismissal hour came that afternoon. With
+      eager feet she went straight to the Consolidated Bank and there she asked
+      again to be admitted to the office of the president. Mr. Worthington rose
+      as she came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I wrong in my dates?&rdquo; he inquired. &ldquo;I was not expecting you until
+      tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you're quite right,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;At this hour tomorrow. But, Mr.
+      Worthington, I am in trouble again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked so distressed that the banker pushed a chair to the table's
+      side for her, and when she had seated herself, he said quietly: &ldquo;Tell me
+      all about it, Linda. We must get life straightened out as best we can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I must tell you all about it,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;because I know just
+      enough about banking to know that I have a proposition that I don't know
+      how to handle. Are bankers like father confessors and doctors and
+      lawyers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they are even more so,&rdquo; laughed Mr. Worthington. &ldquo;Perhaps the
+      father confessor takes precedence, otherwise I believe people are quite as
+      much interested in their financial secrets as in anything else in all this
+      world. Have you a financial secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I have what is to me a big secret, and I don't in the
+      least know how to handle it, so right away I thought about you and that
+      you would be the one to tell me what I could do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go ahead,&rdquo; said Mr. Worthington kindly. &ldquo;I'll give you my word of honor
+      to keep any secret you confide to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda produced her letter. She opened it and without any preliminaries
+      handed it and the cheque to the banker. He looked at the cheque
+      speculatively, and then laid it aside and read the letter. He gave every
+      evidence of having read parts of it two or three times, then he examined
+      the cheque again, and glanced at Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And just how did you come into possession of this, young lady?&rdquo; he
+      inquired. &ldquo;And what is it that you want of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, don't you see?&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It's my letter and my cheque; I'm 'Jane
+      Meredith.' Now how am I going to get my money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For one dazed moment Mr. Worthington studied Linda; then he threw back his
+      head and laughed unrestrainedly. He came around the table and took both
+      Linda's hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bully for you!&rdquo; he cried exultantly. &ldquo;How I wish your father could see
+      the seed he has sown bearing its fruit. Isn't that fine? And do you want
+      to go on with this anonymously?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I must,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I have said in my heart that no Jap, male
+      or female, young or old, shall take first honors in a class from which I
+      graduate; and you can see that if people generally knew this, it would
+      make it awfully hard for me to go on with my studies, and I don't know
+      that the editor who is accepting this work would take it if he knew it
+      were sent him by a high-school Junior. You see the dignified way in which
+      he addresses me as 'madam'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Mr. Worthington reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure,&rdquo; said Linda with demure lips, though the eyes above them were
+      blazing and dancing at high tension, &ldquo;I'm sure that the editor is
+      attaching a husband, and a house having a well-ordered kitchen, and rather
+      wide culinary experience to that 'dear madam.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what about this book proposition?&rdquo; asked the banker gravely. &ldquo;That
+      would be a big thing for a girl of your age. Can you do it, and continue
+      your school work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the background I have, with the unused material I have, and with
+      vacation coming before long, I can do it easily,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;My school
+      work is not difficult for me. It only requires concentration for about two
+      hours in the preparation that each day brings. The remainder of the time I
+      could give to amplifying and producing new recipes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the banker. &ldquo;So you have resolved, Linda, that you don't
+      want your editor to know your real name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could scarcely be done,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But have you stopped to think,&rdquo; said the banker, &ldquo;that you will be asked
+      for personal history and about your residence, and no doubt a photograph
+      of yourself. If you continue this work anonymously you're going to have
+      trouble with more matters than cashing a cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am not going to have any trouble cashing a cheque,&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;because I have come straight to the man whose business is cheques.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True enough,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I SHALL have to arrange the cheque; there's not a
+      doubt about that; and as for your other bugbears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I refuse to be frightened by them,&rdquo; interposed Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever done any business at the bank?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None of the clerks know you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I remember,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I might possibly be acquainted with
+      some of them. I have merely passed through the bank on my way to your room
+      twice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said the banker, &ldquo;we'll have to risk it. After this estate
+      business is settled you will want to open an account in your name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite true,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I would advise you,&rdquo; said Mr. Worthington, &ldquo;to open this account in
+      your own name. Endorse this cheque 'Jane Meredith' and make it payable to
+      me personally. Whenever one of these comes, bring it to me and I'll take
+      care of it for you. One minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left Linda sitting quietly reading and rereading her letter, and
+      presently returned and laid a sheaf of paper money before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it to the paying teller. Tell him that you wish to deposit it, and
+      ask him to give you a bank book and a cheque book,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Thank you
+      very much for coming to me and for confiding in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda gathered up the money, and said good-bye to the banker. Just as she
+      started forward she recognized Eileen at the window of the paying teller.
+      It was an Eileen she never before had seen. Her face was strained to a
+      ghastly gray. Her hat was not straight and her hands were shaking. Without
+      realizing that she was doing it, Linda stepped behind one of the huge
+      marble pillars supporting the ceiling and stood there breathlessly,
+      watching Eileen. She could gather that she was discussing the bank ledger
+      which lay before the teller and that he was refusing something that Eileen
+      was imploring him to do. Linda thought she understood what it was. Then
+      very clearly Eileen's voice, sharp and strained, reached her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that you are refusing to pay me my deposits on my private
+      account?&rdquo; she cried; and Linda could also hear the response.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry if it annoys or inconveniences you, Miss Strong, but
+      since the settlement of the estate takes place tomorrow, our orders are to
+      pay out no funds in any way connected with the estate until after that
+      settlement has been arranged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is my money, my own private affair,&rdquo; begged Eileen. &ldquo;The estate
+      has nothing to do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; repeated the teller. &ldquo;If that is the case, you will have no
+      difficulty in establishing the fact in a few minutes' time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen turned and left the bank, and it seemed that she was almost
+      swaying. Linda stood a second with narrowed eyes, in deep thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; she said at last, deep down in her heart, &ldquo;that it looks
+      precious much as if there had been a bit of transgression in this affair.
+      It looks, too, as if 'the way of the transgressor' were a darned hard way.
+      Straight ahead open and aboveboard for you, my girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went quietly to the desk and transacted her own business; but her
+      beautiful day was clouded. Her heart was no longer leaping exultantly. She
+      was sickened and sorrowful over the evident nerve strain and discomfort
+      which Eileen seemed to have brought upon herself. She dreaded meeting her
+      at dinner that night, and she wondered all the way home where Eileen had
+      gone from the bank and what she had been doing. What she felt was a pale
+      affair compared with what she would have felt if she could have seen
+      Eileen leave the bank and enter a near-by store, go to a telephone booth
+      and put in a long-distance call for San Francisco. Her eyes were
+      brilliant, her cheeks by nature redder than the rouge she had used upon
+      them. She squared her shoulders, lifted her head, as if she irrevocably
+      had made a decision and would not be thwarted in acting upon it. While she
+      waited she straightened her hat, and tucked up her pretty hair, once more
+      evincing concern about her appearance. After a nervous wait she secured
+      her party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I speaking with Mr. James Heitman?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; came the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Uncle Jim, this is Eileen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, hello, girlie,&rdquo; was the quick response. &ldquo;Delighted that you're
+      calling your ancient uncle. Haven't changed the decision in the last
+      letter I had from you, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Eileen, &ldquo;I have changed it. Do you and Aunt Caroline still
+      want me, Uncle Jim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU BET WE WANT YOU!&rdquo; roared the voice over the 'phone. &ldquo;Here we are,
+      with plenty of money and not a relation on earth but you to leave it to.
+      You belong to us by rights. We'd be tickled to death to have you, and for
+      you to have what's left of the money when we get through with it. May I
+      come after you? Say the word, and I'll start this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Uncle Jim, could you? Would you?&rdquo; cried Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'd say I could. We'd be tickled to death, I tell you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long would it take you to get here?&rdquo; said Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I could reach you by noon tomorrow. Eleven something is the
+      shortest time it's been made in; that would give me thirteen&mdash;more
+      than enough. Are you in that much of a hurry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; gasped Eileen, &ldquo;yes, I am in the biggest kind of a hurry there is,
+      Uncle Jim. This troublesome little estate has to be settled tomorrow
+      afternoon. There's going to be complaint about everything that I have seen
+      fit to do. I've been hounded and harassed till I am disgusted with it.
+      Then I've promised to marry John Gilman as I wrote you, and I don't
+      believe you would think that was my best chance with the opportunities you
+      could give me. It seems foolish to stay here, abused as I have been
+      lately, and as I will be tomorrow. You have the house number. If you come
+      and get me out of it by noon tomorrow, I'll go with you. You may take out
+      those adoption papers you have always entreated me to agree to and I'll be
+      a daughter that you can be proud of. It will be a relief to have some real
+      money and some real position, and to breathe freely and be myself once
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right for you, girlie!&rdquo; bellowed the great voice over the line. &ldquo;Pick
+      up any little personal bits you can put in a suitcase, and by twelve
+      o'clock tomorrow I'll whisk you right out of that damn mess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen walked from the telephone booth with her head high, triumph written
+      all over her face and figure. They were going to humiliate her. She would
+      show them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went home immediately. Entering her room, she closed the door and
+      stood looking at her possessions. How could she get her trunk from the
+      garret? How could she get it to the station? Would it be possible for
+      Uncle James to take it in his car? As she pondered these things Eileen had
+      a dim memory of a day in her childhood when her mother had gone on
+      business to San Francisco and had taken her along. She remembered a huge
+      house, all turrets and towers and gables, all turns and twists and angles,
+      closed to the light of day and glowing inside with shining artificial
+      lights. She remembered stumbling over deep rugs. One vivid impression was
+      of walls covered with huge canvases, some of them having frames more than
+      a foot wide. She remembered knights in armor, and big fireplaces, and huge
+      urns and vases. It seemed to her like the most wonderful bazaar she ever
+      had been in. She remembered, too, that she had been glad when her mother
+      had taken her out into the sunshine again and from the presence of two
+      ponderous people who had objected strongly to everything her mother had
+      discussed with them. She paused one instant, contemplating this picture.
+      The look of triumph on her face toned down considerably. Then she
+      comforted herself aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard Mother say,&rdquo; she said softly, &ldquo;that everybody overdid things
+      and did not know how to be graceful with immense fortunes got from silver
+      and gold mines, and lumber. It will be different now. Probably they don't
+      live in the same house, even. There is a small army of servants, and there
+      is nothing I can think of that Uncle Jim won't gladly get me. I've been
+      too big a fool for words to live this way as long as I have. Crush me,
+      will they? I'll show them! I won't even touch these things I have strained
+      so to get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen jerked from her throat the strand of pearls that she had worn
+      continuously for four years and threw it contemptuously on her dressing
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll make Uncle Jim get me a rope with two or three strands in it that
+      will reach to my waist. 'A suitcase!' I don't know what I would fill a
+      suitcase with from here. The trunk may stay in the garret, and while I am
+      leaving all this rubbish, I'll just leave John Gilman with it. Uncle Jim
+      will give me an income that will buy all the cigarettes I want without
+      having to deceive anyone; and I can have money if I want to stake
+      something at bridge without being scared into paralysis for fear somebody
+      may find it out or the accounts won't balance. I'll put on the most
+      suitable thing I have to travel in, and just walk out and leave everything
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was what Eileen did. At noon the next day her eyes were bright with
+      nervousness. Her cheeks alternately paled with fear and flooded red with
+      anxiety. She had dressed herself carefully, laid out her hat and gloves
+      and a heavy coat in case the night should be chilly. Once she stood
+      looking at the dainty, brightly colored dresses hanging in her wardrobe A
+      flash of regret passed over her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tawdry little cheap things and makeshifts,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If Linda feels
+      that she has been so terribly defrauded, she can help herself now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By twelve o'clock she found herself standing at the window, straining her
+      eyes down Lilac Valley. She was not looking at its helpful hills, at its
+      appealing curves, at its brilliant colors. She was watching the roadway.
+      When Katy rang to call her to lunch, she told her to put the things away;
+      she was expecting people who would take her out to lunch presently. In the
+      past years she had occasionally written to her uncle. Several times when
+      he had had business in Los Angeles she had met him at his hotel and dined
+      with him. She reasoned that he would come straight to the house and get
+      her, and then they would go to one of the big hotels for lunch before they
+      started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shan't feel like myself,&rdquo; said Eileen, &ldquo;until we are well on the way to
+      San Francisco.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At one o'clock she was walking the floor. At two she was almost frantic.
+      At half past she almost wished that she had had the good sense to have
+      some lunch, since she was very hungry and under tense nerve strain. Once
+      she paused before the glass, but what she saw frightened her. Just when
+      she felt that she could not endure the strain another minute, grinding
+      brakes, the blast of a huge Klaxon, and the sound of a great voice arose
+      from the street. Eileen rushed to the window. She took one look, caught up
+      the suitcase and raced down the stairs. At the door she met a bluff, big
+      man, gross from head to foot. It seemed to Eileen strange that she could
+      see in him even a trace of her mother, and yet she could. Red veins
+      crossed his cheeks and glowed on his nose. His tired eyes were watery; his
+      thick lips had an inclination to sag; but there was heartiness in his
+      voice and earnestness in the manner in which he picked her up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have they been doing to you down here?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Never should
+      have left you this long. Ought to have come down and taken you and showed
+      you what you wanted, and then you would have known whether you wanted it
+      or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this juncture a huge woman, gross in a feminine way as her husband was
+      in his, paddled up the walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm comin' in and rest a few minutes,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I'm tired to death and
+      I'm pounded to pieces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband turned toward her. He opened his lips to introduce Eileen. His
+      wife forestalled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So this is the Eileen you have been ravin' about for years,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+      thought you said she was a pretty girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen's soul knew one sick instant of recoil. She looked from James
+      Heitman to Caroline, his wife, and remembered that he had a habit of
+      calling her &ldquo;Callie.&rdquo; All that paint and powder and lipstick and
+      brilliantine could do to make the ponderous, big woman more ghastly had
+      been done, but in the rush of the long ride through which her husband had
+      forced her, the colors had mixed and slipped, the false waves were
+      displaced. She was not in any condition to criticize the appearance of
+      another woman. For one second Eileen hesitated, then she lifted her
+      shaking hands to her hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been hounded out of my senses,&rdquo; she said apologetically, &ldquo;and have
+      been so terribly anxious for fear you wouldn't get here on time. Please,
+      Aunt Caroline, let us go to a hotel, some place where we can straighten up
+      comfortably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what's your hurry?&rdquo; said Aunt Caroline coolly. &ldquo;You're not a
+      fugitive from justice, are you? Can't a body rest a few minutes and have a
+      drink, even? Besides, I am going to see what kind of a place you've been
+      living in, and then I'll know how thankful you'll be for what we got to
+      offer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen turned and threw open the door. The big woman walked in. She looked
+      down the hall, up the stairway, and went on to the living room. She gave
+      it one contemptuous glance, and turning, came back to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Jim,&rdquo; she said brusquely. &ldquo;I have seen enough. If you know the
+      best hotel in the town, take me there. And then, if Eileen's in such a
+      hurry, after we have had a bite we'll start for home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Aunt Caroline, oh, thank you!&rdquo; cried Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't take the trouble to 'aunt' me every time you speak to me,&rdquo;
+       said the lady. &ldquo;I know you're my niece, but I ain't goin' to remind you of
+      it every time I speak to you. It's agein', this 'auntie' business. I don't
+      stand for it, and as for a name, I am free to confess I always like the
+      way Jim calls me 'Callie.' That sounds younger and more companionable than
+      'Caroline.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      James Heitman looked at Eileen and winked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just bet, old girl!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They ain't any of them can beat you,
+      not even Eileen at her best. Let's get her out of here. Does this
+      represent your luggage, girlie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said not to bother with anything else,&rdquo; said Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I did,&rdquo; said Uncle Jim, &ldquo;and I meant just what I said if it's all
+      right with you. I suppose I did have, in the back of my head, an idea that
+      there might be a trunk or a box&mdash;some things that belonged to your
+      mother, mebby, and your 'keepsakes.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, never mind,&rdquo; interrupted Eileen. &ldquo;Do let's go. It's nearly four
+      o'clock. Any minute they may send for me from the bank, and I'd be more
+      than glad to be out of the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm not accustomed to being the porter, but if time's that
+      precious, here we go,&rdquo; said Uncle Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked up the suitcase with one hand and took his wife's arm with the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scoot down there and climb into that boat,&rdquo; he said proudly to Eileen.
+      &ldquo;We'll have a good dinner in a private room when we get to the hotel. I
+      won't even register. And then we'll get out of here when we have rested a
+      little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't we stay all night and go in the morning?&rdquo; panted his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, ma'am, we can't,&rdquo; said James Heitman authoritatively. &ldquo;We'll eat a
+      bite because we need to be fed up, and I sincerely hope they's some decent
+      grub to be had in this burg. The first place we come to outside of here,
+      that looks like they had a decent bed, we'll stop and make up for last
+      night. But we ain't a-goin' to stay here if Eileen wants us to start right
+      away, eh, Eileen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, please!&rdquo; panted Eileen. &ldquo;I just don't want to meet any of them. It's
+      time enough for them to know what has happened after I am gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; said Uncle James. &ldquo;Pile in and we'll go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Eileen started on the road to the unlimited wealth her soul had always
+      craved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. Linda's First Party
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the bank Linda and John Gilman waited an hour past the time set for
+      Eileen's appearance. Then Linda asserted herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a feeling for some time,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;that Eileen would
+      not appear today, and if she doesn't see fit to come, there is no
+      particular reason why she should. There is nothing to do but go over the
+      revenue from the estate. The books will show what Eileen has drawn monthly
+      for her expense budget. That can be set aside and the remainder divided
+      equally between us. It's very simple. Here is a letter I wrote to the
+      publishers of Father's books asking about royalties. I haven't even opened
+      it. I will turn it in with the remainder of the business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were in the office with the president of the bank. He rang for the
+      clerk he wanted and the books he required, and an hour's rapid figuring
+      settled the entire matter, with the exception of the private account,
+      amounting to several thousands, standing in Eileen's name. None of them
+      knew any source of separate income she might have. At a suggestion from
+      Linda, the paying teller was called in and asked if he could account for
+      any of the funds that had gone into the private account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not definitely,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but the amounts always corresponded exactly
+      with the royalties from the books. I strongly suspect that they constitute
+      this private account of Miss Eileen's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not say that she had tried to draw it the day previous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman made the suggestion that they should let the matter rest until
+      Eileen explained about it. Then Linda spoke very quietly, but with
+      considerable finality in her tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I know that Eileen HAD no source of private income.
+      Mother used to mention that she had some wealthy relatives in San
+      Francisco, but they didn't approve of her marriage to what they called a
+      'poor doctor,' and she would never accept, or allow us to accept, anything
+      from them. They never came to see us and we never went to see them. Eileen
+      knows no more about them than I do. We will work upon the supposition that
+      everything that is here belonged to Father. Set aside to Eileen's credit
+      the usual amount for housekeeping expenses. Turn the private account in
+      with the remainder. Start two new bank books, one for Eileen and one for
+      me. Divide the surplus each month exactly in halves. And I believe this is
+      the proper time for the bank to turn over to me a certain key, specified
+      by my father as having been left in your possession to be delivered to me
+      on my coming of age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the key in her possession, Linda and John Gilman left the bank. As
+      they stood for a moment in front of the building, Gilman removed his hat
+      and ran his hands through his hair as if it were irritating his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he said in a deeply wistful tone, &ldquo;I don't understand this. Why
+      shouldn't Eileen have come today as she agreed? What is there about this
+      that is not according to law and honor and the plain, simple rights of the
+      case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said Linda; &ldquo;but there is something we don't understand
+      about it. And I am going to ask you, John, as my guardian, closing up my
+      affairs today, to go home with me to be present when I open the little
+      hidden door I found at the back of a library shelf when I was disposing of
+      Daddy's technical books. There was a slip of paper at the edge of it
+      specifying that the key was in possession of the Consolidated Bank and was
+      to be delivered to me, in the event of Daddy's passing, on my coming of
+      age. I have the key, but I would like to have you with me, and Eileen if
+      she is in the house, when I open that door. I don't know what is behind
+      it, but there's a certain feeling that always has been strong in my heart
+      and it never was so strong as it is at this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they boarded the street car and ran out to Lilac Valley. When Katy
+      admitted them Linda put her arm around her and kissed her. She could see
+      that the house was freshly swept and beautifully decorated with flowers,
+      and her trained nostrils could scent whiffs of delicious odors from food
+      of which she was specially fond. In all her world Katy was the one person
+      who was celebrating her birthday. She seemed rather surprised when Linda
+      and Gilman came in together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Eileen?&rdquo; inquired Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must have made some new friends,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;About four o'clock, the
+      biggest car that ever roared down this street rolled up, and the biggest
+      man and woman that I ever see came puffin' and pantin' in. Miss Eileen did
+      not tell me where she was goin' or when she would be back, but I know it
+      won't be the night, because she took her little dressin' case with her.
+      Belike it's another of them trips to Riverside or Pasadena.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Linda quietly. &ldquo;Katy, can you spare a few minutes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, lambie, I jist can't,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;because a young person that's the
+      apple of me eye is havin' a birthday the day and I have got me custard
+      cake in the oven and the custard is in the makin', and after Miss Eileen
+      went and I didn't see no chance for nothin' special, I jist happened to
+      look out, one of the ways ye do things unbeknownst to yourself, and there
+      stood Mr. Pater Morrison moonin' over the 'graveyard,' like he called it,
+      and it was lookin' like seein' graves he was, and I jist took the bull by
+      the horns, and I sings out to him and I says: 'Mr. Pater Morrison, it's a
+      good friend ye were to the young missus when ye engineered her skylight
+      and her beautiful fireplace, and this bein' her birthday, I'm takin' the
+      liberty to ask ye to come to dinner and help me celebrate.' And he said he
+      would run up to the garage and get into his raygimentals, whatever them
+      might be, and he would be here at six o'clock. So ye got a guest for
+      dinner, and if the custard's scorched and the cake's flat, it's up to ye
+      for kapin' me here to tell ye all this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Katy hurried to the kitchen. Linda looked at John Gilman and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't that like her?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she led the way to the library, pulled aside the books, fitted the
+      key to the little door, and opened it. Inside lay a single envelope,
+      sealed and bearing her name. She took the envelope, and walking to her
+      father's chair beside his library table, sat down in it, and laying the
+      envelope on the table, crossed her hands on top of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;ever since I have been big enough to think and reason
+      and study things out for myself, there is a feeling I have had&mdash;I
+      used to think it was unreasonable, then I thought it remote possibility.
+      This minute I think it's extremely probable. Before I open this envelope I
+      am going to tell you what I believe it contains. I have not the slightest
+      evidence except personal conviction, but I believe that the paper inside
+      this envelope is written by my father's hand and I believe it tells me
+      that he was not Eileen's father and that I am not her sister. If it does
+      not say this, then there is nothing in race and blood and inherited
+      tendencies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda picked up the paper cutter, ran it across the envelope, slipped out
+      the sheet, and bracing herself she read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DARLING LINDA:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These lines are to tell you that your mother went to her eternal sleep
+      when you were born. Four years later I met and fell in love with the only
+      mother you ever have known. At the time of our marriage we entered into a
+      solemn compact that her little daughter by a former marriage and mine
+      should be reared as sisters. I was to give half my earnings and to do for
+      Eileen exactly as I did for you. She was to give half her love and her
+      best attention to your interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sincerely hope that what I have done will not result in any discomfort
+      or inconvenience to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With dearest love, as ever your father,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALEXANDER STRONG.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laid the sheet on the table and dropped her hands on top of it. Then
+      she looked at John Gilman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I believe you had better face the fact that the big car
+      and the big people that carried Eileen away today were her mother's
+      wealthy relatives from San Francisco. She must have been in touch with
+      them. I think very likely she sent for them after I saw her in the bank
+      yesterday afternoon, trying with all her might to make the paying teller
+      turn over to her the funds of the private account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Gilman sat very still for a long time, then he raised tired,
+      disappointed eyes to Linda's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;do you mean you think Eileen was not straight about
+      money matters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;I think it is time for the truth about Eileen
+      between you and me. If you want me to answer that question candidly, I'll
+      answer it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want the truth,&rdquo; said John Gilman gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I never knew Eileen to be honest about anything in
+      all her life unless the truth served her better than an evasion. Her hair
+      was not honest color and it was not honest curl. Her eyebrows were not so
+      dark as she made them. Her cheeks and lips were not so red, her forehead
+      and throat were not so white, her form was not so perfect. Her friends
+      were selected because they could serve her. As long as you were poor and
+      struggling, Marian was welcome to you. When you won a great case and
+      became prosperous and fame came rapidly, Eileen took you. I believe what I
+      told you a minute ago: I think she has gone for good. I think she went
+      because she had not been fair and she would not be forced to face the fact
+      before you and me and the president of the Consolidated today. I think you
+      will have to take your heart home tonight and I think that before the
+      night is over you will realize what Marian felt when she knew that in
+      addition to having been able to take you from her, Eileen was not a woman
+      who would make you happy. I am glad, deeply glad, that there is not a drop
+      of her blood in my veins, sorry as I am for you and much as I regret what
+      has happened. I won't ask you to stay tonight, because you must go through
+      the same black waters Marian breasted, and you will want to be alone.
+      Later, if you think of any way I can serve you, I will be glad for old
+      sake's sake; but you must not expect me ever to love you or respect your
+      judgment as I did before the shadow fell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda rose, replaced the letter, turned the key in the lock, and
+      quietly slipped out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she opened her door and stepped into her room she paused in
+      astonishment. Spread out upon the bed lay a dress of georgette with little
+      touches of fur and broad ribbons of satin. In color it was like the flame
+      of seasoned beechwood. Across the foot of the bed hung petticoat,
+      camisole, and hose, and beside the dress a pair of satin slippers exactly
+      matching the hose, and they seemed the right size. Linda tiptoed to the
+      side of the bed and delicately touched the dress, and then she saw a paper
+      lying on the waist front, and picking it up read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lambie, here's your birthday, from loving old Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lines were terse and to the point. Linda laid them down, and picking
+      up the dress she walked to the mirror, and holding it under her chin
+      glanced down the length of its reflection. What she saw almost stunned
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good Lord!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I can't wear that. That isn't me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she tossed the dress on the bed and started in a headlong rush to the
+      kitchen. As she came through the door, &ldquo;You blessed old darling!&rdquo; she
+      cried. &ldquo;What am I going to say to make you know how I appreciate your
+      lovely, lovely gift?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy raised her head. There was something that is supposed to be the
+      prerogative of royalty in the lift of it. Her smile was complacent in the
+      extreme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't ye be standin' there wastin' no time talkie',&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have oodles of time,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but I warn you, you won't know me if
+      I put on that frock, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will, too,&rdquo; said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; said Linda, sobering suddenly, &ldquo;would it make any great difference
+      to you if I were the only one here for always, after this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy laughed contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'd warrant to survive it,&rdquo; she said coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that is exactly what I must tell you, Katy,&rdquo; said Linda soberly. &ldquo;You
+      know I have told you a number of times through these years that I did not
+      believe Eileen and I were sisters, and I am telling you now that I know
+      it. She did not come to the bank today, and the settlement of Father's
+      affairs developed the fact that I was my father's child and Eileen was her
+      mother's; and I'm thinking, Katy, that the big car you saw and the opulent
+      people in it were Eileen's mother's wealthy relatives from San Francisco.
+      My guess is, Katy, that Eileen has gone with them for good. Lock her door
+      and don't touch her things until we know certainly what she wants done
+      with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy stood thinking intently, then she lifted her eyes to Linda's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lambie,&rdquo; she whispered softly, &ldquo;are we ixpicted to go into mourning over
+      this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A mischievous light leaped into Linda's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if there are any such expectations abroad, Katherine O'Donovan,&rdquo;
+       she said soberly, &ldquo;the saints preserve 'em, for we can't fulfill 'em, can
+      we, Katy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to be savin' our souls,&rdquo; answered Katy heartily. &ldquo;I'm jist so glad
+      and thankful that I don't know what to do, and it's such good news that I
+      don't belave one word of it. And while you're talkie', what about John
+      Gilman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Linda quietly, &ldquo;that tonight is going to teach him how
+      Marian felt in her blackest hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he needn't be coming to me for sympathy,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;But if Miss
+      Eileen has gone to live with the folks that come after her the day, ye
+      might be savin' a wee crap o' sympathy for her, lambie. They was jist the
+      kind of people that you'd risk your neck slidin' down a mountain to get
+      out of their way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is too bad,&rdquo; said Linda reflectively; &ldquo;because Eileen is sensitive
+      and constant contact with crass vulgarity certainly would wear on her
+      nerves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you be goin' and gettin' into that dress, lambie,&rdquo; said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katherine O'Donovan,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;you're used to it; come again to
+      confession. Tell me truly where and how did you get that dress?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Tain't no rule of polite society to be lookin' gift horses in the
+      mouth,&rdquo; said Katy proudly. &ldquo;HOW I got it is me own affair, jist like ye
+      got any gifts ye was ever makin' me, is yours. WHERE I got it? I went into
+      the city on the strafe car and I went to the biggest store in the city and
+      I got in the elevator and I says to the naygur: 'Let me off where real
+      ladies buy ready-to-wear dresses.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And up comes a little woman, and her hair was jist as soft and curling
+      round her ears, and brown and pretty was her eyes, and the pink that God
+      made was in her cheeks, and in a voice like runnin' water she says: 'Could
+      I do anything for you?' I told her what I wanted. And she says: 'How old
+      is the young lady, and what's her size, and what's her color?' Darlin',
+      ain't that dress the answer to what I told her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;If an artist had been selecting a dress for me he
+      would probably have chosen that one. But, old dear, it's not suitable for
+      me. It's not the kind of dress that I intended to wear for years and years
+      yet. Do you think, if I put it on tonight, I'll ever be able to go back to
+      boots and breeches again, and hunt the canyons for plants to cook for&mdash;you
+      know what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy stood in what is commonly designated as a &ldquo;brown study.&rdquo; Then she
+      looked Linda over piercingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, ma'am,&rdquo; she said conclusively. &ldquo;It's my judgment that ye will. I
+      think ye'll maybe wrap the braids of ye around your head tonight, and I
+      think ye'll put on that frock, and I think ye'll show Pater Morrison how
+      your pa's daughter can sit at the head of his table and entertain her
+      friends. Then I think ye'll hang it in your closet and put on your boots
+      and breeches and go back to your old Multiflores and attind to your
+      business, the same as before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Katy,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if you have that much faith in me I have
+      that much faith in myself; but, old dear, I can't tell you how I LOVE
+      having a pretty dress for tonight. Katy dear, the 'Day of Jubilee' has
+      come. Before you go to sleep I'm coming to your room to tell you fine
+      large secrets, that you won't believe for a minute, but I haven't the time
+      to do it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda raced to her room and began dressing. She let down the mop of
+      her hair waving below her waist and looked at it despairingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That dress never was made for braids down your back,&rdquo; she said, glancing
+      toward the bed where it lay shimmering in a mass of lovely color. &ldquo;I am of
+      age today; for state occasions I should be a woman. What shall I do with
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she recalled Katy's voice saying: &ldquo;Braids round your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that would be the thing to do. I certainly don't
+      need anything to add to my height; I am far too tall now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she parted her hair in the middle, brushed it back, divided it in even
+      halves, and instead of braiding it, she coiled it around her head, first
+      one side and then the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She slipped into the dress and struggled with its many and intricate
+      fastenings. Then she went to the guest room to stand before the
+      full-length mirror there. Slowly she turned. Critically she examined
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a bit shorter than I would have ordered it,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but it
+      reduces my height, it certainly gives wonderful freedom in walking, and
+      it's not nearly so short as I see other girls wearing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she studied herself critically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Need some kind of ornament for my hair,&rdquo; she muttered, &ldquo;but I haven't got
+      it, and neither do I own beads, bracelet, or a ring; and my ears are
+      sticking right out in the air. I am almost offensively uncovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went down to show herself to a delighted Katy. When the doorbell
+      rang Linda turned toward the hall. Katy reached a detaining hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll do nothing of the sort,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I answered the bell for Miss
+      Eileen. Answer the bell I shall for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the hall went Katy with the light of battle in her eyes and the air
+      of a conqueror in the carriage of her head. She was well trained. Neither
+      eyelid quivered as she flung the door wide to Peter Morrison. He stood
+      there in dinner dress, more imposing than Katy had thought he could be.
+      With quick, inner exultation she reached for two parcels he carried; over
+      them her delight was so overpowering that Peter Morrison must have seen a
+      hint of it. With a flourish Katy seated him, and carried the packages to
+      Linda. She returned a second later for a big vase, and in this Linda
+      arranged a great sheaf of radiant roses. As Katy started to carry them
+      back to the room, Linda said &ldquo;Wait a second,&rdquo; and selecting one half
+      opened, she slipped it out, shortened the stem and tucked it among the
+      coils of hair where she would have set an ornament. The other package was
+      a big box that when opened showed its interior to be divided into
+      compartments in each of which nestled an exquisite flower made of spun
+      sugar. The petals, buds, and leaves were perfect. There were wonderful
+      roses with pale pink outer petals and deeper-colored hearts. There were
+      pink mallows that seemed as if they must have been cut from the bushes
+      bordering Santa Monica road. There were hollyhocks of white and gold, and
+      simply perfect tulips. Linda never before had seen such a treasure candy
+      box. She cried out in delight, and hurried to show Katy. In her pleasure
+      over the real flowers and the candy flowers Linda forgot her dress, but
+      when she saw Peter Morrison standing tall and straight, in dinner dress,
+      she stopped and looked the surprise and pleasure she felt. She had grown
+      accustomed to Peter in khaki pottering around his building. This Peter she
+      never before had seen. He represented something of culture, something of
+      pride, a conformity to a nice custom and something more. Linda was not a
+      psychoanalyst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not see a wonderful aura of exquisite color enveloping Peter.
+      But when Peter saw the girl approaching him, transformed into a woman
+      whose shining coronet was jewelled with his living red rose, when he saw
+      the beauty of her lithe slenderness clothed in a soft, flaming color,
+      something emanated from his inner consciousness that Linda did see, and
+      for an instant it disturbed her as she went forward holding out her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said gaily, &ldquo;do you know that this is my Day of Jubilee? I am
+      a woman today by law, Peter. Hereafter I am to experience at least a
+      moderate degree of financial freedom, and that I shall enjoy. But the
+      greatest thing in life is friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter took both the hands extended to him and looked smilingly into her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take my breath,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I knew, the first glimpse I ever had of
+      you scrambling from the canyon floor, that this transformation COULD take
+      place. My good fortune is beyond words that I have been first to see it.
+      Permit me, fair lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter bent and kissed both her hands. He hesitated a second, then he
+      turned the right hand and left one more kiss in its palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To have and to hold!&rdquo; he said whimsically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Linda, closing her fist over it and holding it up for
+      inspection. &ldquo;I'll see that it doesn't escape. And this minute I thank you
+      for the candy, which I know is delicious, and for my very first sheaf of
+      roses from any man. See what I have done with one of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned fully around that he might catch the effect of the rose, and in
+      getting that he also got the full effect of the costume, and the
+      possibilities of the girl before him. And then she gave him a shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it a lovely frock?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Another birthday gift from the
+      Strong rock of ages. I have been making a collection of rocks for my fern
+      bed, and I have got another collection that is not visible to anyone save
+      myself. Katy's a rock, and you're a rock, and Donald is a rock, and
+      Marian's a rock, and I am resting securely on all of you. I wish my father
+      knew that in addition to Marian and Katy I have found two more such
+      wonderful friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what about Henry Anderson?&rdquo; inquired Peter. &ldquo;Aren't you going to
+      include him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda walked over to the chair in which she intended to seat herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I wish you hadn't asked me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter's figure tensed suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Linda,&rdquo; he said sternly, &ldquo;has that rather bold youngster made
+      himself in any way offensive to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in any way that I am not perfectly capable of handling myself,&rdquo; said
+      Linda. She looked at Peter confidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that I can sit down in this thing without
+      ruining it? Shouldn't I really stand up while I am wearing it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter laughed unrestrainedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda, you're simply delicious,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It seems to me that I have
+      seen young ladies in like case reach round and gather the sash to one side
+      and smooth out the skirt as they sit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Peter, of course that would be the way,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;This
+      being my first, I'm lacking in experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And thereupon she sat according to direction; while Peter sat opposite
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now finish. Just one word more about Henry Anderson,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Are you
+      perfectly sure there is nothing I need do for you in that connection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, perfectly,&rdquo; said Linda lightly. &ldquo;I didn't mean to alarm you. He
+      merely carried that bug-catcher nonsense a trifle too far. I wouldn't have
+      minded humoring him and fooling about it a little. But, Peter, do you know
+      him quite well? Are you very sure of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;I don't know him well at all. The only thing I am sure
+      about him is that he is doing well in his profession. I chose him because
+      he was an ambitious youngster and I thought I could get more careful
+      attention from him than I could from some of the older fellows who had
+      made their reputation. You see, there are such a lot of things I want to
+      know about in this building proposition, and the last four years haven't
+      been a time for any man to be careful about saving his money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;he is all right, of course. He must be. But I think
+      I'm like a cat. I'm very complacent with certain people, but when I begin
+      to get goose flesh and hair prickles my head a bit, I realize that there
+      is something antagonistic around, something for me to beware of. I guess
+      it's because I am such a wild creature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;that these are the sensations that
+      Henry gives you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now forget Henry,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have had such a big day I must tell you
+      about it, and then we'll come to that last article you left me. I haven't
+      had time to put anything on paper concerning it yet, but I believe I have
+      an awfully good idea in the paint pot, and I'll find time in a day or two
+      to work it out. Peter, I have just come from the bank, where I was
+      recognized as of legal age, and my guardian discharged. And perhaps I
+      ought to explain to you, Peter, that your friend, John Gilman, is not here
+      because this night is going to be a bad one for him. When you knew him
+      best he was engaged, or should have been, to Marian Thorne. When you met
+      him this time he really was engaged to Eileen. I don't know what you think
+      about Eileen. I don't feel like influencing anyone's thought concerning
+      her, so I'll merely say that today has confirmed a conviction that always
+      has been in my heart. Katy could tell you that long ago I said to her that
+      I did not believe Eileen was my sister. Today has brought me the knowledge
+      and proof positive that she is not, and today she has gone to some wealthy
+      relatives of her mother in San Francisco. She expressed her contempt for
+      what she was giving up by leaving everything, including the exquisite
+      little necklace of pearls which has been a daily part of her since she
+      owned them. I may be mistaken, but intuition tells me that with the pearls
+      and the wardrobe she has also discarded John Gilman. I think your friend
+      will be suffering tonight quite as deeply as my friend suffered when John
+      abandoned her at a time when she had lost everything else in life but her
+      money. I feel very sure that we won't see Eileen any more. I hope she will
+      have every lovely thing in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; said Peter Morrison earnestly. &ldquo;I loved John Gilman when we were
+      in school together, but I have not been able to feel, since I located
+      here, that he is exactly the same John; and what you have told me very
+      probably explains the difference in him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Katy announced dinner Linda arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Morrison stepped beside her and offered his arm. Linda rested her
+      finger tips upon it and he led her to the head of the table and seated
+      her. Then Katy served a meal that, if it had been prepared for Eileen, she
+      would have described as a banquet. She gave them delicious, finely
+      flavored food, stimulating, exquisitely compounded drinks that she had
+      concocted from the rich fruits of California and mints and essences at her
+      command. When, at the close of the meal, she brought Morrison some of the
+      cigars Eileen kept for John Gilman, she set a second tray before Linda,
+      and this tray contained two packages. Linda looked at Katy inquiringly,
+      and Katy, her face beaming, nodded her sandy red head emphatically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More birthday gifts you've havin', me lady,&rdquo; she said in her mellowest
+      Irish voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More?&rdquo; marveled Linda. She picked up the larger package, and opening it,
+      found a beautiful book inscribed from her friend Donald, over which she
+      passed caressing fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how lovely of him!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How in this world did he know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katherine O'Donovan could have answered that question, but she did not.
+      The other package was from Marian. When she opened it Linda laughed
+      unrestrainedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a joke!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I had promised myself that I would not touch a
+      thing in Eileen's room, and before I could do justice to Katy's lovely
+      dress I had to go there for pins for my hair and powder for my nose. This
+      is Marian's way of telling me that I am almost a woman. Will you look at
+      this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just what is it?&rdquo; inquired Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hairpins,&rdquo; laughed Linda, &ldquo;and hair ornaments, and a box of face powder,
+      and the little, feminine touches that my dressing table needs badly. How
+      would you like, Peter, to finish your cigar in my workroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like it immensely,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So together they climbed to the top of the house. Linda knelt and made a
+      little ceremony of lighting the first fire in her fireplace. She pushed
+      one of her chairs to one side for Peter, and taking the other for herself,
+      she sat down and began the process of really becoming acquainted with him.
+      Two hours later, as he was leaving her, Peter made a circuit of the room,
+      scrutinizing the sketches and paintings that were rapidly covering the
+      walls, and presently he came to the wasp. He looked at it so closely that
+      he did not miss even the stinger. Linda stood beside him when he made his
+      first dazed comment: &ldquo;If that isn't Eileen, and true to the life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must take that down,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I did it one night when my heart was
+      full of bitterness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better leave it,&rdquo; said Peter drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I need it as a warning?&rdquo; asked Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter turned and surveyed her slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;what I think of you has not yet been written in
+      any of the books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. Buena Moza
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As soon as Peter had left her Linda took her box of candy flowers and
+      several of her finest roses and went to Katy's room. She found Katy in a
+      big rocking chair, her feet on a hassock, reading a story in Everybody's
+      home. When her door opened and she saw her young mistress framed in it she
+      tossed the magazine aside and sprang to her feet, but Linda made her
+      resume her seat. The girl shortened the stems of the roses and put them in
+      a vase on Katy's dresser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They may clash with your coloring a mite, Mother Machree,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but
+      by themselves they are very wonderful things, aren't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda went over, and drawing her dress aside, sat down on the hassock and
+      leaning against Katy's knee she held up the box of candy flowers for
+      amazed and delighted inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the foine gintleman!&rdquo; cried Katy. &ldquo;Sure 'twas only a pape I had when
+      ye opened the box, an' I didn't know how rare them beauties railly was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Choose the one you like best,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Katy would not touch the delicate things, so Linda selected a brushy
+      hollyhock for her and then sat at her knee again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katherine O'Donovan,&rdquo; she said solemnly, &ldquo;it's up to a couple of young
+      things such as we are, stranded on the shoals of the Pacific as we have
+      been, to put our heads together and take counsel. You're a host, Katy, and
+      while I am taking care of you, I'll be just delighted to have you go on
+      looking after your black sheep; but it's going to be lonely, for all that.
+      After Eileen has taken her personal possessions, what do you say to fixing
+      up that room with the belongings that Marian kept, and inviting her to
+      make that suite her home until such time as she may have a home of her own
+      again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Foine!&rdquo; cried Katy. &ldquo;I'd love to be havin' her. I'd agree to take orders
+      from Miss Marian and to be takin' care of her jist almost the same as I do
+      of ye, Miss Linda. The one thing I don't like about it is that it ain't
+      fair nor right to give even Marian the best. Ye be takin' that suite
+      yourself, lambie, and give Miss Marian your room all fixed up with her
+      things, or, if ye want her nearer, give her the guest room and make a
+      guest room of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am willing to follow either of the latter suggestions for myself,&rdquo; said
+      Linda; &ldquo;it might be pleasant to be across the hall from Marian where we
+      could call back and forth to each other. I wouldn't mind a change as soon
+      as I have time to get what I'd need to make the change. I'll take the
+      guest room for mine, and you may call in a decorator and have my room
+      freshly done and the guest things moved into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy looked belligerent. Linda reached up and touched the frowning lines
+      on her forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brighten your lovely features with a smile, Katherine me dear,&rdquo; she said
+      gaily. &ldquo;Don't be forgetting that this is our Day of Jubilee. We are free&mdash;I
+      hope we are free forever&mdash;from petty annoyances and dissatisfactions
+      and little, galling things that sear the soul and bring out all the worst
+      in human nature. I couldn't do anything to Eileen's suite, not even if I
+      resorted to tearing out partitions and making it new from start to finish,
+      that would eliminate Eileen from it for me. If Marian will give me
+      permission to move and install her things in it, I think she can use it
+      without any such feeling, but I couldn't. It's agreed then, Katy, I am to
+      write to Marian and extend to her a welcome on your part as well as on
+      mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ye may, lambie,&rdquo; said Katy heartily. &ldquo;And, as the boss used to be
+      sabin', just to make assurance doubly sure, if YoU would address it for me
+      I would be writing' a bit of a line myself, conveying' to her me
+      sentiments on the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, fine, Katy; Marian would be delighted!&rdquo; cried Linda, springing up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, Katy dear, it won't make us feel any more like mourning for Eileen
+      when I tell you that it developed at the bank yesterday and today, that
+      since she has been managing household affairs she has deposited in a
+      separate account all the royalties from Father's books. I had thought the
+      matter closed at the bank when this fund was added to the remainder of the
+      estate, the household expenses set aside to Eileen, and the remainder
+      divided equally between us. I didn't get the proof that she was not my
+      sister until after I came home. I think it means that I shall have to go
+      back to the bank, have the matter reopened, and unless she can produce a
+      will or something proving that she is entitled to it, it seems to me that
+      what remains of my father's estate is legally mine. Of course, if it
+      develops that he has made any special provision for her, she shall have
+      it; otherwise, Katy, we'll be in a position to install you as housekeeper
+      and put some light-footed, capable young person under you for a step-saver
+      in any direction you want to use her. It means, too, that I shall be able
+      to repay your loan immediately and to do the things that I wanted to do
+      about the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I ain't in any hurry about that money, lambie,&rdquo; said Katy; &ldquo;and you
+      understand of course that the dress you're wearing' I am given' ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, old dear, and you should have seen Peter Morrison light up and
+      admire it. He thinks you have wonderful taste, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy threw up both her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my Lord, lambie!&rdquo; she cried, aghast. &ldquo;Was you telling' him that the
+      dress ye were wearing' was a present from your old cook?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, certainly I was,&rdquo; said Linda, wide eyed with astonish meet. &ldquo;Why
+      shouldn't I? I was proud to. And now, old dear, before I go, the biggest
+      secret of all. I had a letter, Katy, from the editor of Everybody's Home,
+      and people like our articles, Katy; they are something now and folk are
+      letting the editor know about it, and he wants all I can send him. He
+      likes the pictures I make; and, Katy, you won't believe it till I show you
+      my little bank book, but for the three already published with their
+      illustrations he pays me five hundred nice, long, smooth, beautifully
+      decorated, paper dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judas praste!&rdquo; cried Katy, her hands once more aloft. &ldquo;Ye ain't manin'
+      it, lambie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I are,&rdquo; laughed Linda. &ldquo;I've got the money; and for each succeeding
+      three with their pictures I am to have that much more, and when I finish&mdash;now
+      steady yourself, Katy, because this is going to be a shock&mdash;when I
+      finish, blessed old dear heart, he is going to make them into a book! That
+      will be my job for this summer, and you shall help me, and it will be a
+      part of our great secret. Won't it be the most fun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My soul!&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;You're jist crazy. I don't belave a word you're
+      telling' me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can prove it, because I have the letter and the bank book,&rdquo; said
+      Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy threw her arms around the girl and kissed the top of her head and
+      cried over her and laughed at the same time and patted her and petted her
+      and ended by saying: &ldquo;Oh, lambie, if only the master could be knowin' it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he does know, Katy,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to her room, removed the beautiful dress and, arranging it on a
+      hanger, left it in her closet. Slipping into an old dressing gown, she ran
+      to her workroom and wrote a letter to Marian from herself. She tried not
+      to tell Marian the big, vital thing that was throbbing in her heart all
+      day concerning her work, the great secret that meant such a wonderful
+      thing to her, the thing that was beating in her heart and fluttering
+      behind her lips like a bird trying to escape its cage; but she could tell
+      her in detail of Eileen's undoubted removal to San Francisco; she could
+      tell her enough of the financial transactions of the day to make her
+      understand what had been happening in the past; and she could tell of her
+      latest interview with John Gilman. Once, as she sat with her pen poised,
+      thinking how to phrase a sentence, Linda said to herself: &ldquo;I wonder in my
+      heart if he won't try to come crawfishing back to Marian now, and if he
+      does, I wonder, oh, how I wonder, what she will do.&rdquo; Linda shut her lips
+      very tight and stared up through her skylight to the stars, as she was
+      fast falling into a habit of doing when she wanted inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know one thing,&rdquo; she said to the shining things above her,
+      &ldquo;Marian will do as she sees fit, of course, but if it were I, and any man
+      had discarded me as John Gilman discarded Marian, in case he ever wanted
+      to pick me up again he would find I was not there. Much as I plan in my
+      heart for the home and the man and the little people that I hope to have
+      some day, I would give up all of them before I would be discarded and
+      re-sought like that; and knowing Marian as I do, I have a conviction that
+      she will feel the same way. From the things she is writing about this Snow
+      man I think it is highly probable that he may awake some day to learn that
+      he is not so deeply grieved but that he would like to have Marian to
+      comfort him in his loneliness; and as for his little girl I don't see
+      where he could find a woman who would rear her more judiciously and
+      beautifully than Marian would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She finished her letter, sealed and stamped it, and then, taking out a
+      fresh sheet, she lettered in at the top of it, &ldquo;INDIAN POTATOES&rdquo; and
+      continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And very good potatoes they are. You will find these growing everywhere
+      throughout California, blooming from May to July, their six long, slender,
+      white petals shading to gold at the base, grayish on the outside, a
+      pollen-laden pistil upstanding, eight or ten gold-clubbed stamens
+      surrounding it, the slender brown stem bearing a dozen or more of these
+      delicate blooms, springing high from a base of leaves sometimes nearly two
+      feet long and an inch broad, wave margined, spreading in a circle around
+      it. In the soil of the plains and the dry hillsides you will find an
+      amazingly large solid bulb, thickly enwrapped in a coat of brown fiber,
+      the long threads of which can be braided, their amazing strength making
+      them suitable for bow strings, lariats, or rope of any kind that must
+      needs be improvised for use at the moment. The bulbs themselves have many
+      uses. Crushed and rubbed up in water they make a delightful cleansing
+      lather. The extracted juice, when cooked down, may be used as glue. Of the
+      roasted bulbs effective poultices for bruises and boils may be made. It
+      was an Indian custom to dam a small stream and throw in mashed Amole
+      bulbs, the effect of which was to stupefy the fish so that they could be
+      picked out by hand; all of which does not make it appear that the same
+      bulb would serve as an excellent substitute for a baked potato; but we
+      must remember how our grandmothers made starch from our potatoes, used
+      them to break in the new ironware, and to purify the lard; which goes to
+      prove that one vegetable may be valuable for many purposes. Amole, whose
+      ponderous scientific name is Chlorogalum pomeridiarum, is at its best for
+      my purposes when all the chlorophyll from flower and stem has been driven
+      back to the bulb, and it lies ripe and fully matured from late August
+      until December.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Remove the fibrous cover down to the second or third layer enclosing the
+      bulb. These jackets are necessary as they keep the bulbs from drying out
+      and having a hard crust. Roast them exactly as you would potatoes. When
+      they can easily be pierced with a silver fork remove from the oven, and
+      serve immediately with any course with which you would use baked potatoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And gee, but they're good!&rdquo; commented Linda as she reread what she had
+      written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that she turned her attention to drawing a hillside whitened here
+      and there with amole bloom showing in its purity against the warm
+      grayish-tan background. The waving green leaves ran among big rocks and
+      overlapped surrounding growth. At the right of her drawing Linda sketched
+      in a fine specimen of monkey flower, deepening the yellow from the hearts
+      of the amole lilies for the almost human little monkey faces. On the left
+      one giant specimen of amole, reared from a base of exquisitely waving
+      leaves, ran up the side of the drawing and broke into an airy and graceful
+      head of gold-hearted white lilies. For a long time Linda sat with poised
+      pencil, studying her foreground. What should she introduce that would be
+      most typical of the location and gave her the desired splash of
+      contrasting color that she used as a distinctive touch in the foreground
+      of all her drawings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her pencil flew busily a few minutes while she sketched in a flatly
+      growing bush of prickly phlox, setting the flower faces as closely as the
+      overlapped scales of a fish, setting them even as they grow in nature; and
+      when she resorted to the color box she painted these faces a wonderful
+      pink that was not wild rose, not cerise, not lilac, but it made one think
+      of all of them. When she could make no further improvement on this sketch,
+      she carefully stretched it against the wall and tacked it up to dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterward she cleared her mental decks of all the work she could think of
+      in order to have Saturday free, because Saturday was the day upon which
+      she found herself planning in the back of her mind throughout the
+      strenuous week, to save for riding the King's Highway with Donald Whiting.
+      Several times she had met him on the walks or in the hallways, and always
+      he had stopped to speak with her and several times he had referred to the
+      high hope in which he waited for Saturday. Linda already had held a
+      consultation with Katy on the subject of the lunch basket. That matter
+      being satisfactorily arranged, there was nothing for her to do but to
+      double on her work so that Saturday would be free. Friday evening Linda
+      was called from the dinner table to the telephone. She immediately
+      recognized the voice inquiring for her as that of Judge Whiting, and then
+      she listened breathlessly while he said to her: &ldquo;You will recognize that
+      there is very little I may say over a telephone concerning a matter to
+      which you brought my attention. I have a very competent man looking into
+      the matter thoroughly, and I find that your fear is amply justified.
+      Wherever you go or whatever you do, use particular care. Don't have
+      anything to do with any stranger. Just use what your judgment and common
+      sense tell you is a reasonable degree of caution in every direction no
+      matter how trivial. You understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Linda promptly. &ldquo;Would you prefer that we do not go on any
+      more Saturday trips at present?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The length of time that the Judge waited to answer proved that he had
+      taken time to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see,&rdquo; he said finally, &ldquo;that you would not be safer on such a
+      trip where you are moving about, where no one knows who you are, than you
+      would where you are commonly found.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Ask the party we are considering and he
+      will tell you where he will be tomorrow. Thank you very much for letting
+      me know. If anything should occur, you will understand that it was
+      something quite out of my range of fore-sight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all care and many loving admonitions Katy assisted in the start made
+      early Saturday morning. The previous Saturday Linda had felt that all
+      nature along the road she planned to drive would be at its best, but they
+      had not gone far until she modified her decision. They were slipping
+      through mists of early morning, over level, carefully made roads like
+      pavilion floors. If any one objection could have been made, it would have
+      been that the mists of night were weighting too heavily to earth the
+      perfume from the blooming orchards and millions of flowers in gardens and
+      along the roadside. At that hour there were few cars abroad. Linda was
+      dressed in her outing suit of dark green. She had removed her hat and
+      slipped it on the seat beside her. She looked at Donald, a whimsical
+      expression on her most expressive young face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please to 'scuse me,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;if I step on the gas a mite
+      while we have the road so much to ourselves and are so familiar with it.
+      Later, when we reach stranger country and have to share with others, we'll
+      be forced to go slower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't stint your speed on account of me,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;I am just itching
+      to know what Kitty can do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, here's your chance,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Hear her purr?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She settled her body a trifle tensely, squared her shoulders, and gripped
+      the steering wheel. Then she increased the gas and let the Bear Cat roll
+      over the smooth road from Lilac Valley running south into Los Angeles. At
+      a speed that was near to flying as a non-professional attains, the
+      youngsters traveled that road. Their eyes were shining; their blood was
+      racing. Until the point where rougher roads and approaching traffic forced
+      them to go slower, they raced, and when they slowed down they looked at
+      each other and laughed in morning delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may not be very wise,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but didn't I do the smartest thing
+      when I let Eileen have the touring car and saved the Bear Cat for us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing short of inspiration,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;The height of my ambition is
+      to own a Bear Cat. If Father makes any mention of anything I would like
+      particularly to have for a graduation present, I am cocked and primed as
+      to what I shall tell him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better save yourself a disappointment,&rdquo; said Linda soberly. &ldquo;You
+      will be starting to college this fall, and when you do you will be gone
+      nine months out of the year, and I am fairly sure your father wouldn't
+      think shipping a Bear Cat back and forth a good investment, or furnishing
+      you one to take to school with you. He would fear you would never make a
+      grade that would be a credit to him if he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My!&rdquo; laughed Donald, &ldquo;you've got a long head on your shoulders!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you're thrown on your own for four of the longest, lonesomest years
+      of your life, you learn to think,&rdquo; said Linda soberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was touching the beginning of Los Angeles traffic. Later she was on
+      the open road again. The mists were thinning and lifting. The perfume was
+      not so heavy. The sheeted whiteness of the orange groves was broken with
+      the paler white of plum merging imperceptibly into the delicate pink of
+      apricot and the stronger pink of peach, and there were deep green orchards
+      of smooth waxen olive foliage and the lacy-leaved walnuts. Then came the
+      citrus orchards again, and all the way on either hand running with them
+      were almost uninterrupted miles of roses of every color and kind, and
+      everywhere homes ranging from friendly mansions, all written over in
+      adorable flower color with the happy invitation, &ldquo;Come in and make
+      yourself at home,&rdquo; to tiny bungalows along the wayside crying welcome to
+      this gay pair of youngsters in greetings fashioned from white and purple
+      wisteria, gold bignonia, every rose the world knows, and myriad brilliant
+      annual and perennial flower faces gathered from the circumference of the
+      tropical globe and homing enthusiastically on the King's Highway.
+      Sometimes Linda lifted her hand from the wheel to wave a passing salute to
+      a particularly appealing flower picture. Sometimes she whistled a note or
+      cried a greeting to a mockingbird, a rosy finch, or a song sparrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at the pie timber!&rdquo; she cried to Donald, calling his attention to a
+      lawn almost covered with red-winged blackbirds. &ldquo;Four hundred and twenty
+      might be baked in that pie,&rdquo; she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a subtle change began to creep over the world. The sun peered over
+      the mountains inquiringly, a timid young thing, as if she were asking what
+      degree of light and warmth they would like for the day. A new brilliancy
+      tinged every flower face in this light, a throbbing ecstasy mellowed every
+      bird note; the orchards dropped farther apart, meadows filled with grazing
+      cattle flashed past them, the earthy scent of freshly turned fields
+      mingled with flower perfume, and on their right came drifting in a cool
+      salt breath from the sea. At mid-forenoon, as they neared Laguna, they ran
+      past great hills, untouched since the days when David cried: &ldquo;I will lift
+      up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.&rdquo; At one
+      particularly beautiful range, draped with the flowing emerald of spring,
+      decorated with beds of gold poppy, set with flowering madrona and
+      manzanita, with the gold of yellow monkey flower or the rich red of the
+      related species, with specimens of lupin growing in small trees, here and
+      there adventurous streams singing and flashing their unexpected way to the
+      mother breast of the waiting ocean very near to the road which at one
+      surprising turn carried them to the never-ending wonder of the troubled
+      sea, they drove as slowly as the Bear Cat would consent to travel, so that
+      they might study great boulders, huge as many of the buildings they had
+      passed, their faces scarred by the wrack of ages. Studying their ancient
+      records one could see that they had been familiar with the star that
+      rested over Bethlehem. On their faces had shone the same moon that opened
+      the highways Journeying into Damascus. They had stood the storms that had
+      beaten upon the world since the days when the floods subsided, the land
+      lifted above the face of the waters in gigantic upheavals that had ripped
+      the surface of the globe from north to south and forced up the hills, the
+      foothills, and the mountains of the Coast Range. They had been born then,
+      they had first seen the light of day, in glowing, molten, red-hot,
+      high-piled streams of lava that had gushed forth in that awful evolution
+      of birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes Linda stopped the car, they left it, and climbed over the faces
+      of these mighty upheavals. Once Linda reached her hand to Donald and
+      cried, half laughingly, half in tense earnest: &ldquo;Oh, kid, we have got to
+      hurry. Compared with the age of these, we've only a few minutes. It's all
+      right to talk jestingly about 'the crack of doom' but you know there
+      really was a crack of doom, and right here is where it cracked and spewed
+      out the material that hardened into these very rocks. Beside them I feel
+      as a shrimp must feel beside a whale, and I feel that we must hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so we must,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;I'm hungry as Likeliest when he waited for
+      them to find enough peacock tongues to satisfy his appetite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what brand of home-brew made him think of that,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you know,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;the world was only a smallish place then.
+      They didn't have to go far to find everything to which they had access,
+      and it must have been rather a decent time in which to live. Awful lot of
+      light and color and music and unique entertainment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're talking,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;from the standpoint of the king or the
+      master. Suppose you had lived then and had been the slave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you go again,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;throwing a brick into the most
+      delicate mechanism of my profound thought. You ought to be ashamed to
+      round me up with something scientific and materialistic every time I go
+      a-glimmering. Don't you think this would be a fine place to have lunch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait and see where we lunch today, and you will have the answer to
+      that,&rdquo; said Linda, starting back to the Bear Cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few miles farther on they followed the road around the frowning menace
+      of an overhanging rock and sped out directly to the panorama of the sea.
+      The sun was shining on it, but, as always round the Laguna shore, the rip
+      tide was working itself into undue fury. It came dashing up on the ancient
+      rocks until one could easily understand why a poet of long ago wrote of
+      sea horses. Some of the waves did suggest monstrous white chargers racing
+      madly to place their feet upon the solid rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the village, up the steep inclines, past placid lakes, past waving
+      yellow mustard beds, beside highways where the breastplate of Mother Earth
+      gleamed emerald and ruby against the background of billions of tiny,
+      shining diamonds of the iceplant, past the old ostrich tree reproduced by
+      etchers of note the world over, with grinding brakes, sliding down the
+      breathless declivity leading to the shore, Linda stopped at last where the
+      rock walls lifted sheer almost to the sky. She led Donald to a huge circle
+      carpeted with cerise sand verbena, with pink and yellow iceplant bloom,
+      with jewelled iceplant foliage, with the running blue of the lovely sea
+      daisy, with the white and pink of the sea fig, where the walls were
+      festooned with ferns, lichens, studded all over with flaming Our Lord's
+      Candles, and strange, uncanny, grotesque flower forms, almost human in
+      their writhing turns as they twisted around the rocks and slipped along
+      clinging to the sheer walls. Just where the vegetation met the white,
+      sea-washed sand, Linda spread the Indian blanket, and Donald brought the
+      lunch box. At their feet adventurous waves tore themselves to foam on the
+      sharp rocks. On their left they broke in booming spray, tearing and
+      fretting the base of cliffs that had stood impregnable through aeons of
+      such ceaseless attack and repulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;how it comes that I have lived all my life in
+      California, and today it seems to me that most of the worthwhile things I
+      know about her I owe to you. When I go to college this winter the things I
+      shall be telling the boys will be how I could gain a living, if I had to,
+      on the desert, in Death Valley, from the walls of Multiflores Canyon; and
+      how the waves go to smash on the rocks of Laguna, not to mention cactus
+      fish hooks, mescal sticks, and brigand beefsteak. It's no wonder the
+      artists of all the world come here copying these pictures. It's no wonder
+      they build these bungalows and live here for years, unsatisfied with their
+      efforts to reproduce the pictures of the Master Painter of them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if anybody is very easily satisfied. I wonder
+      today if Eileen is satisfied with being merely rich. I wonder if we are
+      satisfied to have this golden day together. I wonder if the white swallows
+      are satisfied with the sea. I wonder if those rocks are satisfied and
+      proud to stand impregnable against the constant torment of the tide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder, oh, Lord, how I wonder,&rdquo; broke in Donald, &ldquo;about Katherine
+      O'Donovan's lunch box. If you want a picture of per feet satisfaction,
+      Belinda beloved, lead me to it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank heaven you're mistaken,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;they spared me the 'Be'&mdash;.
+      It's truly just 'Linda.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm not sparing you the 'Be&mdash;',&rdquo; said Donald, busy with the
+      fastenings of the lunch basket. &ldquo;Did you hear where I used it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, child, and I like it heaps,&rdquo; said Linda casually. &ldquo;It's fine to have
+      you like me. Awfully proud of myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have two members of our family at your feet,&rdquo; said Donald soberly as
+      he handed her packages from the box. &ldquo;My dad is beginning to discourse on
+      you with such signs of intelligence that I am almost led to believe, from
+      some of his wildest outbursts, that he has had some personal experience in
+      some way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why not?&rdquo; asked Linda lightly. &ldquo;Haven't I often told you that my
+      father constantly went on fishing and hunting trips, that he was a great
+      collector of botanical specimens, that he frequently took his friends with
+      him? You might ask your father if he does not recall me as having fried
+      fish and made coffee and rendered him camp service when I was a slip of a
+      thing in the dawn of my teens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he didn't just mention it,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;but I can easily see how
+      it might have been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After they had finished one of Katy's inspired lunches, in which a large
+      part of the inspiration had been mental on Linda's part and executive on
+      Katy's, they climbed rock faces, skirted wave-beaten promontories, and
+      stood peering from overhanging cliffs dipping down into the fathomless
+      green sea, where the water boiled up in turbulent fury. Linda pointed out
+      the rocks upon which she would sit, if she were a mermaid, to comb the
+      seaweed from her hair. She could hear the sea bells ringing in those
+      menacing depths, but Donald's ears were not so finely tuned. At the top of
+      one of the highest cliffs they climbed, there grew a clump of slender pale
+      green bushes, towering high above their heads with exquisitely cut
+      blue-green leaves, lance shaped and slender. Donald looked at the
+      fascinating growth appraisingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;do you know that the slimness and the sheerness and the
+      audacious foothold and the beauty of that thing remind me of you? It is
+      covered all over with the delicate frostbloom you taught me to see upon
+      fruit. I find it everywhere but you have never told me what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laughingly reached up and broke a spray of greenish-yellow tubular
+      flowers, curving out like clustered trumpets spilling melody from their
+      fluted throats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see it everywhere. You will find these flowers every month of
+      the year,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I am particularly gladsome that this plant
+      reminds you of me. I love the bluish-green 'bloom' of its sheer foliage. I
+      love the music these flower trumpets make to me. I love the way it has
+      traveled, God knows how, all the way from the Argentine and spread itself
+      over our country wherever it is allowed footing. I am glad that there is
+      soothing in these dried leaves for those who require it. I shall be
+      delighted to set my seal on you with it. There are two little Spanish
+      words that it suggests to the Mexican&mdash;Buena moza&mdash;but you shall
+      find out for yourself what they mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Encountering his father that night at his library door, Donald Whiting
+      said to him: &ldquo;May I come in, Dad? I have something I must look up before I
+      sleep. Have you a Spanish lexicon, or no doubt you have this in your
+      head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've a halting vocabulary,&rdquo; said the Judge. &ldquo;What's your phrase?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda put this flower on me today,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;and she said she was
+      pleased because I said the tall, slender bush it grew on reminded me of
+      her. She gave me the Spanish name, but I don't know the exact significance
+      of the decoration I am wearing until I learn the meaning of the phrase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try me on it,&rdquo; said the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Buena moza,'&rdquo; quoted Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge threw back his head and laughed heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Son,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you should know that from the Latin you're learning. You
+      should translate it instinctively. I couldn't tell you exactly whether a
+      Spaniard would translate 'Buena' 'fine' or 'good.' Knowing their
+      high-falutin' rendition of almost everything else I would take my chance
+      on 'fine.' Son, your phrase means 'a fine girl.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald looked down at the flower in his buttonhole, and then he looked
+      straight at his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And only the Lord knows, Dad,&rdquo; he said soberly, &ldquo;exactly how fine
+      Linda-girl is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. A Mouse Nest
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LINDA DEAREST:
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I am delighted that you had such a wonderful birthday. I would take a shot
+      in air that anything you don't understand about it you might with
+      reasonable safety charge to Katherine O'Donovan. I think it was great of
+      her to have a suitable and a becoming dress waiting for you and a
+      congenial man like Peter Morrison to dine with you. He appealed to me as
+      being a rare character, highly original, and, I should think, to those who
+      know him well he must be entertaining and lovable in the extreme. I never
+      shall be worried about you so long as I know that he is taking care of
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I should not be surprised if some day I meet Eileen somewhere, because
+      Dana and I are going about more than you would believe possible. I
+      heartily join with you in wishing her every good that life can bring her.
+      I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can't help feeling, Linda, that she
+      is taking a poor way to win the best, and I gravely doubt whether she
+      finds it in the spending of unlimited quantities of the money of a coarse
+      man who stumbled upon his riches accidentally, as has many a man of
+      California and Colorado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I intended, when I sat down to write, the very first thing I said, to
+      thank you for your wonderful invitation, seconded so loyally and cordially
+      by Katy, to make my home with you until the time comes&mdash;if it ever
+      does come&mdash;when I shall have a home of my own again. And just as
+      simply and wholeheartedly as you made the offer, I accept it. I am
+      enclosing the address and the receipt for my furniture in storage, and a
+      few lines ordering it delivered at your house and the bill sent to me. I
+      only kept a few heirlooms and things of Mother's and Father's that are
+      very precious to me. Whenever Eileen takes her things you can order mine
+      in and let me know, and I'll take a day or two off and run down for a
+      short visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mentioning Eileen makes me think of John. I think of him more frequently
+      than I intend or wish that I did, but I feel my ninth life is now
+      permanently extinguished concerning him. I thought I detected in your
+      letter, Linda dear, a hint of fear that he might come back to me and that
+      I might welcome him. If you have any such feeling in your heart, abandon
+      it, child, because, while I try not to talk about myself, I do want to say
+      that I rejoice in a family inheritance of legitimate pride. I couldn't
+      give the finest loyalty and comradeship I had to give to a man, have it
+      returned disdainfully, and then furbish up the pieces and present it over
+      again. If I can patch those same pieces and so polish and refine them that
+      I can make them, in the old phrase, &ldquo;as good as new,&rdquo; possibly in time&mdash;but,
+      Linda, one thing is certain as the hills of morning. Never in my life will
+      any man make any headway with me again with vague suggestions and
+      innuendoes and hints. If ever any man wants to be anything in my life, he
+      will speak plainly and say what he wants and thinks and hopes and intends
+      and feels in not more than two-syllable English. I learned my lesson about
+      the futility of building your house of dreams on a foundation of sand.
+      Next time I erect a dream house, it is going to have a proper foundation
+      of solid granite. And that may seem a queer thing for me to say when you
+      know that I am getting the joy in my life, that I do not hesitate to admit
+      I am, from letters written by a man whose name I don't know. It may be
+      that I don't know the man, but I certainly am very well acquainted with
+      him, and in some way he seems to me to be taking on more definite form. I
+      should not be surprised if I were to recognize him the first time I met
+      him face to face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked through the skylight and cried out to the stars: &ldquo;Good
+      heavens! Have I copied Peter too closely?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat thinking a minute and then she decided she had not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in this connection you will want to know how I am progressing in my
+      friendship with the junior partner, and what kind of motorist I am making.
+      I am still driving twice a week, and lately on Sundays in a larger car,
+      taking Dana and a newspaper friend of hers along. I think I have driven
+      every hazard that this part of California affords except the mountains;
+      Mr. Snow is still merciful about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda dear, I know what you're dying to know. You want to know whether Mr.
+      Snow is in the same depths of mourning as when our acquaintance first
+      began. This, my dear child, is very reprehensible of you. Young girls with
+      braids down their backs&mdash;and by the way, Linda, you did not tell me
+      what happened &ldquo;after the ball was over.&rdquo; Did you go to school the next
+      morning with braids down your back, or wearing your coronet? Because on
+      that depends what I have to say to you now; if you went with braids,
+      you're still my little girl chum, the cleanest, finest kid I have ever
+      known; but if you wore your coronet, then you're a woman and my equal and
+      my dearest friend, far dearer than Dana even; and I tell you this, Linda,
+      because I want you always to understand that you come first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have tried and tried to visualize you, and can't satisfy my mind as to
+      whether the braids are up or down. Going on the assumption that they are
+      up, and that life may in the near future begin to hold some interesting
+      experiences for you, I will tell you this, beloved child: I don't think
+      Mr. Snow is mourning quite so deeply as he was. I have not been asked, the
+      last four or five trips we have been on, to carry an armload of exquisite
+      flowers to the shrine of a departed love. I have been privileged to take
+      them home and arrange them in my room and Dana's. And I haven't heard so
+      much talk about loneliness, and I haven't seen such tired, sad eyes. It
+      seems to me that a familiar pair of shoulders are squaring up to the world
+      again, and a very kind pair of eyes are brighter with interest. I don't
+      know how you feel about this; I don't know how I feel about it myself. I
+      am sure that Eugene Snow is a man who, in the years to come, would line up
+      beside your father and mine, and I like him immensely. It is merely a case
+      of not liking him less, but of liking my unknown man more. I couldn't
+      quite commit the sacrilege, Linda dear, of sending you a sample of the
+      letters I am receiving, but they are too fanciful and charming for any
+      words of mine to describe adequately. I don't know who this man is, or
+      what he has to offer, or whether he intends to offer anything, but it is a
+      ridiculous fact, Linda, that I would rather sit with him in a chimney
+      corner of field boulders, on a pine floor, with a palm roof and an
+      Ocotillo candle, than to glow in the parchment-shielded electric light of
+      the halls of a rich man. In a recent letter, Linda, there was a reference
+      to a woman who wore &ldquo;a diadem of crystallized light.&rdquo; It was a beautiful
+      thing and I could not help taking it personally. It was his way of telling
+      me that he knew me, and knew my tragedy; and, as I said before, I am
+      beginning to feel that I have him rather definitely located; and I can
+      understand the fine strain in him that prompted his anonymity, and his
+      reasons for it. Of course I am not sufficiently confident yet to say
+      anything definite, but my heart is beginning to say things that I
+      sincerely hope my lips never will be forced to deny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laid down the letter, folded her hands across it, and once more
+      looked at the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am tincturing those letters with too much
+      Peter. I'll have to tone down a bit. Next thing I know she will be losing
+      her chance with that wonderful Snow man for a dream. In my efforts to
+      comfort her I must have gone too far. It is all right to write a gushy
+      love letter and stuff it full of Peter's whimsical nonsense, but, in the
+      language of the poet, how am I going to 'deliver the goods'? Of course
+      that talk about Louise Whiting was all well enough. Equally, of course, I
+      outlined and planted the brook and designed the bridge for Marian, whether
+      she knows it or Peter knows it, or not. If they don't know it, it's about
+      time they were finding it out. I think it's my job to visit Peter more
+      frequently and see if I can't invent some way to make him see the light. I
+      will give Katy a hint in the morning. Tomorrow evening I'll go up and have
+      supper with him and see if he has another article in the stewpan. I like
+      this work with Peter. I like having him make me dream dreams and see
+      pictures. I like the punch and the virility he puts into my drawings. It's
+      all right reproducing monkey flowers and lilies for pastime, but for
+      serious business, for real life work, I would rather do Peter's
+      brainstorming, heart-thrilling pictures than my merely pretty ones. On the
+      subject of Peter, I must remember in the morning to take those old books
+      he gave me to Donald. I believe that from one of them he is going to get
+      the very material he needs to down the Jap in philosophy. And they are not
+      text books which proves that Peter must have been digging into the subject
+      and hunted them up in some second-hand store, or even sent away an order
+      for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hall the next morning Linda stopped Donald and gave him the books.
+      In the early stages of their friendship she had looked at him under
+      half-closed lids and waited to see whether he intended stopping to say a
+      word with her when they passed each other or came down the halls together.
+      She knew that their acquaintance would be noted and commented upon, and
+      she knew how ready the other girls would be to say that she was bold and
+      forward, so she was careful to let Donald make the advances, until he had
+      called to her so often, and had dug flowers and left his friends waiting
+      at her door while he delivered them, that she felt free to address him as
+      she chose. He had shown any interested person in the high school that he
+      was her friend, that he was speaking to her exactly as he did to girls he
+      had known from childhood. He was very popular among the boys and girls of
+      his class and the whole school. His friendship, coming at the time of
+      Linda's rebellion on the subject of clothes, had developed a tendency to
+      bring her other friendships. Boys who never had known she was in existence
+      followed Donald's example in stopping her to say a word now and then.
+      Girls who had politely ignored her now found things to say; and several
+      invitations she had not had leisure to accept had been sent to her for
+      afternoon and evening entertainments among the young people. Linda had
+      laid out for herself something of a task in deciding to be the mental
+      leader of her class. There were good brains in plenty among the other
+      pupils. It was only by work, concentration, and purpose, only by having a
+      mind keenly alert, by independent investigation and introducing new points
+      of view that she could hold her prestige. Up to the receipt of her letter
+      containing the offer to publish her book she had been able rigorously to
+      exclude from her mind the personality and the undertakings of Jane
+      Meredith. She was Linda Strong in the high school and for an hour or two
+      at her studies. She was Jane Meredith over the desert, through the
+      canyons, beside the sea, in her Multiflores kitchen or in Katherine
+      O'Donovan's. But this book offer opened a new train of thought, a new
+      series of plans. She could see her way&mdash;thanks to her father she had
+      the material in her mind and the art in her finger tips&mdash;to
+      materialize what she felt would be even more attractive in book form than
+      anything her editor had been able to visualize from her material. She knew
+      herself, she knew her territory so minutely. Frequently she smiled when
+      she read statements in her botanies as to where plants and vegetables
+      could be found. She knew the high home of the rare and precious snow
+      plant. She knew the northern limit of the strawberry cactus. She knew
+      where the white sea swallow nested. She knew where the Monarch butterfly
+      went on his winter migration. She knew where the trap-door spider, with
+      cunning past the cunning of any other architect of Nature, built his
+      small, round, silken-lined tower and hinged his trap door so cleverly that
+      only he could open it from the outside. She had even sat immovable and
+      watched him erect his house, and she would have given much to see him
+      weave its silver lining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda was fast coming to the place where she felt herself to be one in an
+      interested group of fellow workers. She no longer gave a thought to what
+      kind of shoes she wore. Other girls were beginning to wear the same kind.
+      The legislatures of half a dozen states were passing laws regulating the
+      height of heel which might be worn within their boundaries. Manufacturers
+      were promising for the coming season that suitable shoes would be built
+      for street wear and mountain climbing, for the sands of the sea and the
+      sands of the desert, and the sheer face of canyons. The extremely long,
+      dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the extremely short, immodest skirts
+      were coming down. A sane and sensible wave seemed to be sweeping the whole
+      country. Under the impetus of Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his
+      classes and those of other pupils to lead theirs a higher grade of
+      scholarship was beginning to be developed throughout the high school.
+      Pupils were thinking less of what they wore and how much amusement they
+      could crowd in, and more about making grades that would pass them with
+      credit from year to year. The horrors of the war and the disorders
+      following it had begun to impress upon the young brains growing into
+      maturity the idea that soon it would be their task to take over the
+      problems that were now vexing the world's greatest statesmen and its
+      wisest and most courageous women. A tendency was manifesting itself among
+      young people to equip themselves to take a worthy part in the struggles
+      yet to come. Classmates who had looked with toleration upon Linda's
+      common-sense shoes and plain dresses because she was her father's
+      daughter, now looked upon her with respect and appreciation because she
+      started so many interesting subjects for discussion, because she was so
+      rapidly developing into a creature well worth looking at. Always she would
+      be unusual because of her extreme height, her narrow eyes, her vivid
+      coloring. But a greater maturity, a fuller figure, had come to be a part
+      of the vision with which one looked at Linda. In these days no one saw her
+      as she was. Even her schoolmates had fallen into the habit of seeing her
+      as she would be in the years to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus far she had been able to keep her identities apart without any
+      difficulty; but the book proposition was so unexpected, it was such a big
+      thing to result from her modest beginning, that Linda realized that she
+      must proceed very carefully, she must concentrate with all her might, else
+      her school work would begin to suffer in favor of the book. Recently so
+      many things had arisen to distract her attention. Many days she had not
+      been able to keep Eileen's face off her geometry papers; and again she saw
+      Gilman's, anxious and pain-filled. Sometimes she found herself lifting her
+      eyes from tasks upon which she was concentrating with all her might, and
+      with no previous thought whatever she was searching for Donald Whiting,
+      and when she saw him, coming into muscular and healthful manhood, she
+      returned to her work with more strength, deeper vision, a quiet, assured
+      feeling around her heart. Sometimes, over the edge of Literature and
+      Ancient History, Peter Morrison looked down at her with gravely
+      questioning eyes and dancing imps twisting his mouth muscles, and Linda
+      paused a second to figure upon what had become an old problem with her.
+      Why did her wild-flower garden make Peter Morrison think of a graveyard?
+      What was buried there besides the feet of her rare flowers? She had not as
+      yet found the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This day her thoughts were on Peter frequently because she intended to see
+      him that night. She was going to share with him a supper of baked ham and
+      beans and bread and butter and pickled onions and little nut cakes, still
+      warm from Katy's oven. She was going to take Katy with her in order that
+      she might see Peter Morrison's location and the house for his dream lady,
+      growing at the foot of the mountain like a gay orchid homing on a forest
+      tree. To Linda it was almost a miracle, the rapidity with which a house
+      could be erected in California. In a few weeks' time she had seen a big
+      cellar scooped out of the plateau, had seen it lined and rising to
+      foundation height above the surface in solid concrete, faced outside with
+      cracked boulders. She had seen a framework erected, a rooftree set, and
+      joists and rafters and beams swinging into place. Fretworks of lead and
+      iron pipe were running everywhere, and wires for electricity. Soon
+      shingles and flooring would be going into place, and Peter said that when
+      he had finished acrobatic performances on beams and girders and really
+      stepped out on solid floors where he might tread without fear of breaking
+      any of his legs, he would perform a Peacock Dance all by himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, you sound like a centipede,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear child,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;when I enter my front door and get to the back
+      on two-inch footing, I positively feel that I have numerous legs, and I
+      ache almost as badly in the fear that I shall break the two I have, as I
+      should if they were really broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he added a few words on a subject of which he had not before
+      spoken to Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was like that in France. When we really got into the heat of things
+      and the work was actually being done, we were not afraid: we were too
+      busy; we were 'supermen.' The time when we were all legs and arms and
+      head, and all of them were being blown away wholesale was when the shells
+      whined over while we had a rest hour and were trying to sleep, or in the
+      cold, dim dawn when we stumbled out stiff, hungry, and sleepy. It's not
+      the REAL THING when it's really occurring that gets one. It's the devils
+      of imagination tormenting the soul. There is only one thing in this world
+      can happen to me that is really going to be as bad as the things I dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked down Lilac Valley, her eyes absently focusing on Katy busily
+      setting supper on a store box in front of the garage. Then she looked at
+      Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mind telling?&rdquo; she inquired lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked at her speculatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And would a man be telling his heart's best secret to a kid like you?&rdquo; he
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I call that downright mean,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Haven't you noticed that
+      my braids are up? Don't you see a maturity and a dignity and a general
+      matronliness apparent all over me today?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Matronliness&rdquo; was too much for Peter. You could have heard his laugh far
+      down the blue valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's good!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; agreed Linda. &ldquo;It means that my braids are up to stay, so
+      hereafter I'm a real woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lingered over the word an instant, glancing whimsically at Peter, a
+      trace of a smile on her lips, then she made her way down a slant declivity
+      and presently returned with an entire flower plant, new to Peter and of
+      unusual beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And because I am a woman I shall set my seal upon you,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the buttonhole of his light linen coat she placed a flower of satin
+      face of purest gold, the five petals rounded, but sharply tipped, a heavy
+      mass of silk stamens, pollen dusted in the heart. She pushed back the left
+      side of his coat and taking one of the rough, hairy leaves of the plant
+      she located it over Peter's heart, her slim, deft fingers patting down the
+      leaf and flattening it out until it lay pasted smooth and tight. As she
+      worked, she smiled at him challengingly. Peter knew he was experiencing a
+      ceremony of some kind, the significance of which he must learn. It was the
+      first time Linda had voluntarily touched him. He breathed lightly and held
+      steady, lest he startle her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lovely enough,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to have come from the hills of the stars. Don't
+      make me wait, Linda; help me to the interpretation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buena Mujer,&rdquo; suggested Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good woman,&rdquo; translated Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda nodded, running a finger down the leaf over his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she sticks close to you,&rdquo; she explained. Then startled by the
+      look in Peter's eyes, she cried in swift change: &ldquo;Now we are all going to
+      work for a minute. Katy's spreading the lunch. You take this pail and go
+      to the spring for water and I shall tidy your quarters for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the eye of experience Linda glanced over the garage deciding that she
+      must ask for clean sheets for the cot and that the Salvation Army would
+      like the heap of papers. Studying the writing table she heard a faint
+      sound that untrained ears would have missed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, ha, Ma wood mouse,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;nibbling Peter's dr. goods are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her cry a minute later answered the question. She came from the garage
+      upon Katherine O'Donovan rushing to meet her, holding a man's coat at the
+      length of her far-reaching arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd look at that pocket. I don't know how long this coat has
+      been hanging there, but there is a nest of field mice in it,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy promptly retreated to the improvised dining table, seated herself
+      upon an end of it, and raised both feet straight into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small help I'll be getting from you,&rdquo; said Linda laughingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the edge of the declivity that cut back to the garage and with
+      a quick movement reversed the coat catching it by the skirts and shaking
+      it vigorously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. The Straight and Narrow
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This served exactly the purpose Linda had intended. It dislodged the mouse
+      nest and dropped it three feet below her level, but it did something else
+      upon which Linda had no time to count. It emptied every pocket in the coat
+      and sent the contents scattering down the rough declivity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh my gracious!&rdquo; gasped Linda. &ldquo;Look what I have done! Katy, come help me
+      quickly; I have to gather up this stuff; but it's no use; I'll have to
+      take it to Peter and tell him. I couldn't put these things back in the
+      pockets where his hand will reach for them, because I don't know which
+      came from inside and which came from out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sprang down and began hastily gathering up everything she could see
+      that had fallen from the coat pockets. She had almost finished when her
+      fingers chanced upon a very soiled, befigured piece of paper whose
+      impressed folds showed that it had been carried for some time in an inner
+      pocket. As her fingers touched this paper her eyes narrowed, her breath
+      came in a gasp. She looked at it a second, irresolute, then she glanced
+      over the top of the declivity in the direction Peter had taken. He was
+      standing in front of the building, discussing some matter with the
+      contractor. He had not yet gone to the spring. Shielded by the embankment
+      with shaking fingers Linda opened the paper barely enough to see that it
+      was Marian's lost sheet of plans; but it was not as Marian had lost it. It
+      was scored deeply here and there with heavy lines suggestive of
+      alterations, and the margin was fairly covered with fine figuring. Linda
+      did not know Peter Morrison's writing or figures. His articles had been
+      typewritten and she had never seen his handwriting. She sat down suddenly
+      on account of weakened knees, and gazed unseeingly down the length of
+      Lilac Valley, her heart sick, her brain tormented. Suddenly she turned and
+      studied the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before the Lord!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;I THOUGHT there was something mighty
+      familiar even about the skeleton of you! Oh, Peter, Peter, where did you
+      get this, and how could you do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a while a mist blurred her eyes. She reached for the coat and started
+      to replace the things she had gathered up, then she shut her lips tight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Best time to pull a tooth,&rdquo; she said tersely to a terra cotta red
+      manzanita bush, &ldquo;is when it aches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Peter returned from the spring he was faced by a trembling girl,
+      colorless and trying hard to keep her voice steady. She held out the coat
+      to him with one hand, the package of papers with the other, the folded
+      drawing conspicuous on the top. With these she gestured toward the
+      declivity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mouse nest in your pocket, Peter,&rdquo; she said thickly. &ldquo;Reversed the coat
+      to shake it out, and spilled your stuff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she waited for Peter to be confounded. But Peter was not in the
+      faintest degree troubled about either the coat or the papers. What did
+      trouble him was the face and the blazing eyes of the girl concerning whom
+      he would not admit, even to himself, his exact state of feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mouse did not get on you, Linda?&rdquo; he asked anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda shook her head. Suddenly she lost her self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter,&rdquo; she wailed, &ldquo;how could you do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter's lean frame tensed suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand, Linda,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;Exactly what have I done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda thrust the coat and the papers toward him accusingly and stood there
+      wordless but with visible pain in her dark eyes. peter smiled at her
+      reassuringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not my coat, you know. If there is anything distressing about it,
+      don't lay it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter!&rdquo; cried Linda, &ldquo;tell the truth about it. Don't try any
+      evasions. I am so sick of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A rather queer light sprang into Peter's eyes. He leaned forward suddenly
+      and caught the coat from Linda's fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you need an alibi concerning this coat,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I think I can
+      furnish it speedily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he talked he whirled the garment around and shot his long arms into the
+      sleeves. Shaking it into place on his shoulders, he slowly turned in front
+      of Linda and the surprised Katy. The sleeves came halfway to his wrists
+      and the shoulders slid down over his upper arms. He made such a quaint and
+      ridiculous figure that Katy burst out laughing. She was very well trained,
+      but she knew Linda was deeply distressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wake up, lambie!&rdquo; she cried sharply. &ldquo;That coat ain't belonging to Mr.
+      Pater Morrison. That gairment is the property of that bug-catchin'
+      architect of his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter shook off the coat and handed it back to Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I acquitted?&rdquo; he asked lightly; but his surprised eyes were searching
+      her from braid to toe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda turned from him swiftly. She thrust the packet into a side pocket
+      and started to the garage with the coat. As she passed inside she slipped
+      down her hand, slid the sheet of plans from the other papers, and slipped
+      it into the front of her blouse. She hung the coat back where she had
+      found it, then suddenly sat down on the side of Peter Morrison's couch,
+      white and shaken. Peter thought he heard a peculiar gasp and when he
+      strayed past the door, casually glancing inward, he saw what he saw, and
+      it brought him to his knees beside Linda with all speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda-girl,&rdquo; he implored, &ldquo;what in this world has happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda struggled to control her voice; but at last she buried her face in
+      her hands and frankly emitted a sound that she herself would have
+      described as &ldquo;howling.&rdquo; Peter knelt back in wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the things I ever thought about you, Linda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the one
+      thing I never did think was that you were hysterical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If there was one word in Linda's vocabulary more opprobrious than
+      &ldquo;nerves,&rdquo; which could be applied to a woman, it was &ldquo;hysterics.&rdquo; The great
+      specialist had admitted nerves; hysterics had no standing with him. Linda
+      herself had no more use for a hysterical woman than she had for a Gila
+      monster. She straightened suddenly, and in removing her hands from her
+      face she laid one on each of Peter's shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter,&rdquo; she wailed, &ldquo;I am not a hysterical idiot, but I couldn't have
+      stood it if that coat had been yours. Peter, I just couldn't have borne
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter held himself rigidly in the fear that he might disturb the hands
+      that were gripping him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see I have the job of educating these damned field mice as to where
+      they may build with impunity,&rdquo; he said soberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Linda was not to be diverted. She looked straight and deep into his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said affirmatively, &ldquo;you don't know a thing about that coat,
+      do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not,&rdquo; said Peter promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never saw what was in its pockets, did you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to my knowledge,&rdquo; answered Peter. &ldquo;What was in the pockets, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda thought swiftly. Peter adored his dream house. If she told him that
+      the plans for it had been stolen by his architect, the house would be
+      ruined for Peter. Anyone could see from the candor of his gaze and the
+      lines that God and experience had graven on his face that Peter was
+      without guile. Suddenly Linda shot her hands past Peter's shoulders and
+      brought them together on the back of his neck. She drew his face against
+      hers and cried: &ldquo;Oh Peter, I would have been killed if that coat had been
+      yours. I tell you I couldn't have endured it, Peter. I am just tickled to
+      death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One instant she hugged him tight. If her lips did not brush his cheek,
+      Peter deluded himself. Then she sprang up and ran from the garage. Later
+      he took the coat from its nail, the papers from its pockets, and carefully
+      looked them over. There was nothing among them that would give him the
+      slightest clue to Linda's conduct. He looked again, penetratingly,
+      searchingly, for he must learn from them a reason; and no reason was
+      apparent. With the coat in one hand and the papers in the other he stepped
+      outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;won't you show me? Won't you tell me? What is there
+      about this to upset you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda closed her lips and shook her head. Once more Peter sought in her
+      face, in her attitude the information he craved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Needn't tell me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that a girl who will face the desert and the
+      mountains and the canyons and the sea is upset by a mouse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you should have seen Katy sitting in the midst of our supper with
+      her feet rigidly extended before her!&rdquo; cried the girl, struggling to
+      regain her composure. &ldquo;Put back that coat and come to your supper. It's
+      time for you to be fed now. The last workman has gone and we'll barely
+      have time to finish nicely and show Katy your dream house before it's time
+      to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter came and sat in the place Linda indicated. His mind was whirling.
+      There was something he did not understand, but in her own time, in her own
+      way, a girl of Linda's poise and self-possession would tell him what had
+      occurred that could be responsible for the very peculiar things she had
+      done. In some way she had experienced a shock too great for her usual
+      self-possession. The hands with which she fished pickled onions from the
+      bottle were still unsteady, and the corroboration Peter needed for his
+      thoughts could be found in the dazed way in which Katy watched Linda as
+      she hovered over her in serving her. But that was not the time. By and by
+      the time would come. The thing to do was to trust Linda and await its
+      coming. So Peter called on all the reserve wit and wisdom he had at
+      command. He jested, told stories, and to Linda's satisfaction and Katy's
+      delight, he ate his supper like a hungry man, frankly enjoying it, and
+      when the meal was finished Peter took Katy over the house, explaining to
+      her as much detail as was possible at that stage of its construction,
+      while Linda followed with mute lips and rebellion surging in her heart.
+      When leaving time came, while Katy packed the Bear Cat, Linda wandered
+      across toward the spring, and Peter, feeling that possibly she might wish
+      to speak with him, followed her. When he overtook her she looked at him
+      straightly, her eyes showing the hurt her heart felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that first night you had dinner with us, was Henry
+      Anderson out of your presence one minute from the time you came into the
+      house until you left it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter stopped and studied the ground at his feet intently. Finally he said
+      conclusively: &ldquo;I would go on oath, Linda, that he was not. We were all
+      together in the living room, all together in the dining room. We left
+      together at night and John was with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Well, then, when you came back the next morning
+      after Eileen, before you started on your trip, to hunt a location, was he
+      with you all the time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Peter took his time to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We came to your house with Gilman,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;John started to the front
+      door to tell Miss Eileen that we were ready. I followed him. Anderson said
+      he would look at the scenery. He must have made a circuit of the house,
+      because when we came out ready to start, a very few minutes later, he was
+      coming down the other side of the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Linda comprehendingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; said Peter quietly, &ldquo;it is very obvious that something has
+      worried you extremely. Am I in any way connected with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything I can do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The negative was repeated. Then she looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Peter,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;I confess I have had a shock, but it is in
+      no way connected with you and there is nothing you can do about it but
+      forget my foolishness. But I am glad&mdash;Peter, you will never know how
+      glad I am&mdash;that you haven't anything to do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then in the friendliest fashion imaginable she reached him her hand and
+      led the way back to the Bear Cat, their tightly gripped hands swinging
+      between them. As Peter closed the door he looked down on Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young woman,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;since this country has as yet no nerve specialist
+      to take the place of your distinguished father, if you have any waves to
+      wave to me tonight, kindly do it before you start or after you reach the
+      highway. If you take your hands off that steering wheel as you round the
+      boulders and strike that declivity as I have seen you do heretofore, I
+      won't guarantee that I shall not require a specialist myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda started to laugh, then she saw Peter's eyes and something in them
+      stopped her suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not realize that I was taking any risk,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I won't do it
+      again. I will say good-bye to you right here and now so I needn't look
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she shook hands with Peter and drove away. Peter slowly followed down
+      the rough driveway, worn hard by the wheels of delivery trucks, and stood
+      upon the highest point of the rocky turn, looking after the small gray car
+      as it slid down the steep declivity. And he wondered if there could have
+      been telepathy in the longing with which he watched it go, for at the
+      level roadway that followed between the cultivated land out to the highway
+      Linda stopped the car, stood up in it, and turning, looked back straight
+      to the spot upon which Peter stood. She waved both hands to him, and then
+      gracefully and beautifully, with outstretched, fluttering fingers she made
+      him the sign of birds flying home. And with the whimsy in his soul
+      uppermost, Peter reflected, as he turned back for a microscopic
+      examination of Henry Anderson's coat and the contents of its pockets, that
+      there was one bird above all others which made him think of Linda; but he
+      could not at the moment feather Katherine O'Donovan. And then he further
+      reflected as he climbed the hill that if it had to be done the best he
+      could do would be a bantam hen contemplating domesticity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked the garage over very carefully when she put away the Bear
+      Cat. When she closed the garage doors she was particular about the locks.
+      As she came through the kitchen she said to Katy, busy with the lunch box:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Belovedest, have there been any strange Japs poking around here lately?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nearly collapsed when Katy answered promptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dale too many of the square-headed haythens. I am pestered to death
+      with them. They used to come jist to water the lawn but now they want to
+      crane the rugs; they want to do the wash. They are willing to crane house.
+      They want to get into the garage; they insist on washing the car. If they
+      can't wash it they jist want to see if it nades washin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood amazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how long has this been going on, Katy?&rdquo; she finally asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I have had two good months of it,&rdquo; said Katy; &ldquo;that is, it started
+      two months ago. The past month has been workin' up and the last ten days
+      it seemed to me they was a Jap on the back steps oftener than they was a
+      stray cat, and I ain't no truck with ayther of them. They give me jist
+      about the same falin'. Between the two I would trust the cat a dale
+      further with my bird than I would the Jap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever unlocked the garage for them, Katy?&rdquo; asked Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;I only go there when I nade something about me work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Katy,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;let me tell you this: the next time you go
+      there for anything take a good look for Japs before you open the door. Get
+      what you want and get out as quickly as possible and be sure, Katy,
+      desperately sure, that you lock the door securely when you leave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy set her hands on her hips, flared her elbows, and lifted her chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's any of them little haythen been coin' to scare ye, missy?&rdquo; she
+      demanded belligerently. &ldquo;Don't you think I'm afraid of them! Comes any of
+      them around me and I'll take my mopstick over the heads of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you'll break a perfectly good mopstick and not hurt the Jap when you
+      do it,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;There's an undercurrent of something deep and subtle
+      going on in this country right now, Katy. When Japan sends college
+      professors to work in our kitchens and relatives of her greatest statesmen
+      to serve our tables, you can depend on it she is not doing it for the
+      money that is paid them. If California does not wake up very shortly and
+      very thoroughly she is going to pay an awful price for the luxury she is
+      experiencing while she pampers herself with the service of the Japanese,
+      just as the South has pampered herself for generations with the service of
+      the Negroes. When the Negroes learn what there is to know, then the day of
+      retribution will be at hand. And this is not croaking, Katy. It is the
+      truest gospel that was ever preached. Keep your eyes wide open for Japs.
+      Keep your doors locked, and if you see one prowling around the garage and
+      don't know what he is after, go to the telephone and call the police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda climbed the stairs to her workroom, plumped down at the table, set
+      her chin in her palms, and lost herself in thought. For half an hour she
+      sat immovable, staring at her caricature of Eileen through narrowed lids.
+      Then she opened the typewriter, inserted a sheet and wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR Mr. SNOW:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am writing as the most intimate woman friend of Marian Thorne. As such,
+      I have spent much thought trying to figure out exactly the reason for the
+      decision in your recent architectural competition; why a man should think
+      of such a number of very personal, intimate touches that, from familiarity
+      with them, I know that Miss Thorne had incorporated in her plans, and why
+      his winning house should be her winning house, merely reversed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Today I have found the answer, which I am forwarding to you, knowing that
+      you will understand exactly what should be done. Enclosed you will find
+      one of the first rough sketches Marian made of her plans. In some
+      mysterious manner it was lost on a night when your prize-winning architect
+      had dinner at our house where Miss Thorne was also a guest. Before
+      retiring she showed to me and explained the plans with which she hoped to
+      win your competition. In the morning I packed her suitcase and handed it
+      to the porter of her train. When she arrived at San Francisco she found
+      that the enclosed sheet was missing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This afternoon tidying a garage in which Mr. Peter Morrison, the author,
+      is living while Henry Anderson completes a residence he is building for
+      him near my home, I reversed a coat belonging to Henry Anderson to
+      dislodge from its pocket the nest of a field mouse. In so doing I emptied
+      all the pockets, and in gathering up their contents I found this lost
+      sheet from Marian's plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think nothing more need be said on my part save that I understood the
+      winning plan was to become the property of Nicholson and Snow. Without
+      waiting to see whether these plans would win or not, Henry Anderson has
+      them three fourths of the way materialized in Mr. Morrison's residence in
+      Lilac Valley which is a northwestern suburb of Los Angeles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You probably have heard Marian speak of me, and from her you may obtain
+      any information you might care to have concerning my responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am mailing the sketch to you rather than to Marian because I feel that
+      you are the party most deeply interested in a business way, and I hope,
+      too, that you will be interested in protecting my very dear friend from
+      the disagreeable parts of this very disagreeable situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very truly yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LINDA STRONG. <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. Putting It Up to Peter
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Peter Morrison finally gave up looking in the pockets of Henry
+      Anderson's coat for enlightenment concerning Linda's conduct, it was with
+      his mind settled on one point. There was nothing in the coat now that
+      could possibly have startled the girl or annoyed her. Whatever had been
+      there that caused her extremely peculiar conduct she had carried away with
+      her. Peter had settled convictions concerning Linda. From the first
+      instant he had looked into her clear young eyes as she stood in
+      Multiflores Canyon triumphantly holding aloft the Cotyledon in one hand
+      and with the other struggling to induce the skirt of her blouse to resume
+      its proper location beneath the band of her trousers, he had felt that her
+      heart and her mind were as clear and cool and businesslike as the
+      energetic mountain stream hurrying past her. Above all others, &ldquo;straight&rdquo;
+       was the one adjective he probably would have applied to her. Whatever she
+      had taken from Henry's pockets was something that concerned her. If she
+      took anything, she had a right to take it; of that Peter was unalterably
+      certain. He remembered that a few days before she practically had admitted
+      to him that Anderson had annoyed her, and a slow anger began to surge up
+      in Peter's carefully regulated heart. His thoughts were extremely busy,
+      but the thing he thought most frequently and most forcefully was that he
+      would thoroughly enjoy taking Henry Anderson by the scruff of the neck,
+      leading him to the sheerest part of his own particular share of the
+      mountain, and exhaustively booting him down it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It takes these youngsters to rush in and raise the devil where there's no
+      necessity for anything to happen if just a modicum of common sense had
+      been used,&rdquo; growled Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He mulled over the problem for several days, and then he decided he should
+      see Linda, and with his first look into her straight-forward eyes, from
+      the tones of her voice and the carriage of her head he would know whether
+      the annoyance persisted. About the customary time for her to return from
+      school Peter started on foot down the short cut between his home and the
+      Strong residence. He was following a footpath rounding the base of the
+      mountain, crossing and recrossing the enthusiastic mountain stream as it
+      speeded toward the valley, when a flash of color on the farther side of
+      the brook attracted him. He stopped, then hastily sprang across the water,
+      climbed a few yards, and, after skirting a heavy clump of bushes, looked
+      at Linda sitting beside them&mdash;a most astonishing Linda, appearing
+      small and humble, very much tucked away, unrestrained tears rolling down
+      her cheeks, a wet handkerchief wadded in one hand, a packet of letters in
+      her lap. A long instant they studied each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I intruding?&rdquo; inquired Peter at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda shook her head vigorously and gulped down a sob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Peter,&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;I had come this far on my way to you when my
+      courage gave out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter rearranged the immediate landscape and seated himself beside Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now stop distressing yourself,&rdquo; he said authoritatively. &ldquo;You youngsters
+      do take life so seriously. The only thing that could have happened to you
+      worth your shedding a tear over can't possibly have happened; so stop this
+      waste of good material. Tears are very precious things, Linda. They ought
+      to be the most unusual things in life. Now tell me something. Were you
+      coming to me about that matter that worried you the other evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have turned that matter over where it belongs. I have
+      nothing further to do with it. I'll confess to you I took a paper from
+      among those that fell from Henry Anderson's pocket. It was not his. He had
+      no right to have it. He couldn't possibly have come by it honorably or
+      without knowing what it was. I took the liberty to put it where it
+      belongs, or at least where it seemed to me that it belongs. That is all
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then something else has happened?&rdquo; asked Peter. &ldquo;Something connected with
+      the package of letters in your lap?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda nodded vigorously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, I have done something perfectly awful,&rdquo; she confessed. &ldquo;I never in
+      this world meant to do it. I wouldn't have done it for anything. I have
+      got myself into the dreadfullest mess, and I don't know how to get out.
+      When I couldn't stand it another minute I started right to you, Peter,
+      just like I'd have started to my father if I'd had him to go to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Peter, deeply interested in the toe of his shoe. &ldquo;You
+      depended on my age and worldly experience and my unconcealed devotion to
+      your interests, which is exactly what you should do, my dear. Now tell me.
+      Dry your eyes and tell me, and whatever it is I'll fix it all right and
+      happily for you. I'll swear to do it if you want me to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda raised her eyes to his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter, you dear!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Peter, I'll just kneel and kiss your
+      hands if you can fix this for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter set his jaws and continued his meditations on shoe leather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it snappy!&rdquo; he said tersely. &ldquo;The sooner your troubles are out of
+      your system the better you'll feel. Whose letters are those, and why are
+      you crying over them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter,&rdquo; quavered Linda, &ldquo;you know how I love Marian. You have seen
+      her and I have told you over and over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Peter soothingly, &ldquo;I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told you how, after years of devotion to Marian, John Gilman let
+      Eileen make a perfect rag of him and tie him into any kind of knot she
+      chose. Peter, when Marian left here she had lost everything on earth but a
+      little dab of money. She had lost a father who was fine enough to be my
+      father's best friend. She had lost a mother who was fine enough to rear
+      Marian to what she is. She had lost them in a horrible way that left her
+      room for a million fancies and regrets: 'if I had done this,' or 'if I had
+      done that,' or 'if I had taken another road.' And when she went away she
+      knew definitely she had lost the first and only love of her heart; and I
+      knew, because she was so sensitive and so fine, I knew, better than
+      anybody living, how she COULD be hurt; and I thought if I could fix some
+      scheme that would entertain her and take her mind off herself and make her
+      feel appreciated only for a little while&mdash;I knew in all reason,
+      Peter, when she got out in the world where men would see her and see how
+      beautiful and fine she is, there would be somebody who would want her
+      quickly. All the time I have thought that when she came back, YOU would
+      want her. Peter, I fibbed when I said I was setting your brook for Louise
+      Whiting. I was not. I don't know Louise Whiting. She is nothing to me. I
+      was setting it for you and Marian. It was a WHITE head I saw among the
+      iris marching down your creek bank, not a gold one, Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter licked his dry lips and found it impossible to look at Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Straight ahead with it,&rdquo; he said gravely. &ldquo;What did you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have done the awfullest thing,&rdquo; wailed Linda, &ldquo;the most
+      unforgivable thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reached across and laid hold of the hand next her, and realizing that
+      she needed it for strength and support, Peter gave it into her keeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; he questioned. &ldquo;Get on with it, Linda. What was it you did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a typewriter: I could. I began writing her letters, the kind of
+      letters that I thought would interest her and make her feel loved and
+      appreciated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't sign my name to them, did you, Linda?&rdquo; asked Peter in a dry,
+      breathless voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Peter,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I did not do that, I did worse. Oh, I did a
+      whole lot worse!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand,&rdquo; said Peter hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to make them fine. I wanted to make them brilliant. I wanted to
+      make them interesting. And of course I could not do it by myself. I am
+      nothing but a copycat. I just quoted a lot of things I had heard you say;
+      and I did worse than that, Peter. I watched the little whimsy lines around
+      your mouth and I tried to interpret the perfectly lovely things they would
+      make you say to a woman if you loved her and were building a dream house
+      for her. And oh, Peter, it's too ghastly; I don't believe I can tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is pretty serious business, Linda,&rdquo; said Peter gravely. &ldquo;Having gone
+      this far you are in honor bound to finish. It would not be fair to leave
+      me with half a truth. What is the result of this impersonation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter,&rdquo; sobbed Linda, breaking down again, &ldquo;you're going to hate me;
+      I know you're going to hate me and Marian's going to hate me; and I didn't
+      mean a thing but the kindest thing in all the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk like that, Linda,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;If your friend is all you say
+      she is, she is bound to understand. And as for me, I am not very likely to
+      misjudge you. But be quick about it. What did you do, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I just wrote these letters that I am telling you about,&rdquo; said Linda,
+      &ldquo;and I said the things that I thought would comfort her and entertain her
+      and help with her work; and these are the answers that she wrote me, and I
+      don't think I realized till last night that she was truly attributing them
+      to any one man, truly believing in them. Oh, Peter, I wasn't asleep a
+      minute all last night, and for the first time I failed in my lessons
+      today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is the culmination, Linda?&rdquo; urged Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She liked the letters, Peter. They meant all I intended them to and they
+      must have meant something I never could have imagined. And in San
+      Francisco one of the firm where she studies&mdash;a very fine man she says
+      he is, Peter; I can see that in every way he would be quite right for her;
+      and I had a letter from her last night, and, Peter, he had asked her to
+      marry him, to have a lifelong chance at work she's crazy about. He had
+      offered her a beautiful home with everything that great wealth and culture
+      and good taste could afford. He had offered her the mothering of his
+      little daughter; and she refused him, Peter, refused him because she is in
+      love, with all the love there is left in her disappointed, hurt heart,
+      with the personality that these letters represent to her; and that
+      personality is yours, Peter. I stole it from you. I copied it into those
+      letters. I'm not straight. I'm not fair. I wasn't honest with her. I
+      wasn't honest with you. I'll just have to take off front the top of the
+      highest mountain or sink in the deepest place in the sea, Peter. I thought
+      I was straight. I thought I was honorable I have made Donald believe that
+      I was. If I have to tell him the truth about this he won't want to wear my
+      flower any more. I shall know all the things that Marian has suffered, and
+      a thousand times worse, because she was not to blame; she had nothing with
+      which to reproach herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter put an arm across Linda's shoulders and drew her up to him. For a
+      long, bitter moment he thought deeply, and then he said hoarsely: &ldquo;Now
+      calm down, Linda. You're making an extremely high mountain out of an
+      extremely shallow gopher hole. You haven't done anything irreparable. I
+      see the whole situation. You are sure your friend has finally refused this
+      offer she has had on account of these letters you have written?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Linda relaxed. She leaned her warm young body against Peter. She
+      laid her tired head on his shoulder. She slipped the top letter of the
+      packet in her lap from under its band, opened it, and held it before him.
+      Peter read it very deliberately, then he nodded in acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all too evident,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;that you have taught her that
+      there is a man in this world more to her liking than John Gilman ever has
+      been. When it came to materializing the man, Linda, what was your idea?
+      Were you proposing to deliver me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it would be suitable and you would be perfectly happy,&rdquo; sobbed
+      Linda, &ldquo;and that way I could have both of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Donald also?&rdquo; asked Peter lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donald of course,&rdquo; assented Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she lifted her tear-spilling, wonderful eyes, wide open, to
+      Peter's, and demanded: &ldquo;But, oh Peter, I am so miserable I am almost dead.
+      I have said you were a rock, and you are a rock. peter, can you get me out
+      of this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; said Peter grimly. &ldquo;Merely a case of living up to your blue china,
+      even if it happens to be in the form of hieroglyphics instead of baked
+      pottery. Give me the letters, Linda. Give me a few days to study them.
+      Exchange typewriters with me so I can have the same machine. Give me some
+      of the paper on which you have been writing and the address you have been
+      using, and I'll guarantee to get you out of this in some way that will
+      leave you Donald, and your friendship with Marian quite as good as new.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that juncture Peter might have been kissed, but his neck was very stiff
+      and his head was very high and his eyes were on a far-distant hilltop from
+      which at that minute he could not seem to gather any particular help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it be your idea,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that by reading these letters I could
+      gain sufficient knowledge of what has passed to go on with this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you could,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter reached in his side pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief. He
+      shook it from its folds and dried her eyes. Then he took her by her
+      shoulders and set her up straight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now stop this nerve strain and this foolishness,&rdquo; he said tersely. &ldquo;You
+      have done a very wonderful thing for me. It is barely possible that Marian
+      Thorne is not my dream woman, but we can't always have our dreams in this
+      world, and if I could not have mine, truly and candidly, Linda, so far as
+      I have lived my life, I would rather have Marian Thorne than any other
+      woman I have ever met.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda clapped her hands in delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, goody goody, Peter!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;How joyous! Can it be possible that
+      my bungling is coming out right for Marian and right for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And right for you, Linda?&rdquo; inquired Peter lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure, right for me,&rdquo; said Linda eagerly. &ldquo;Of course it's right for me
+      when it's right for you and Marian. And since it's not my secret alone I
+      don't think it would be quite honorable to tell Donald about it. What
+      hurts Marian's heart or heals it is none of his business. He doesn't even
+      know her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then, Linda,&rdquo; said Peter, rising, &ldquo;give me the letters and
+      bring me the machine and the paper. Give me the joyous details and tell me
+      when I am expected to send in my first letter in propria persona?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter,&rdquo; cried Linda, beaming on him, &ldquo;oh, Peter, you are a rock! I do
+      put my trust in you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then God help me,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;for whatever happens, your trust in me
+      shall not be betrayed, Linda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. Katy Unburdens Her Mind
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Possibly because she wished to eliminate herself from the offices of
+      Nicholson and Snow for a few days, possibly because her finely attuned
+      nature felt the call, Marian Thorne boarded a train that carried her to
+      Los Angeles. She stepped from it at ten o'clock in the morning, and by the
+      streetcar route made her way to Lilac Valley. When she arrived she
+      realized that she could not see Linda before, possibly, three in the
+      afternoon. She entered a restaurant, had a small lunch box packed, and
+      leaving her dressing case, she set off down the valley toward the
+      mountains. She had need of their strength, their quiet and their healing.
+      To the one particular spot where she had found comfort in Lilac Valley her
+      feet led her. By paths of her own, much overgrown for want of recent
+      usage, she passed through the cultivated fields, left the roadway, and
+      began to climb. When she reached the stream flowing down the rugged
+      hillside, she stopped to rest for a while, and her mind was in a tumult.
+      In one minute she was seeing the bitterly disappointed face of a lonely,
+      sensitive man whose first wound had been reopened by the making of another
+      possibly quite as deep; and at the next her heart was throbbing because
+      Linda had succeeded in transferring the living Peter to paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time had come when Marian felt that she would know the personality
+      embodied in the letters she had been receiving; and in the past few days
+      her mind had been fixing tenaciously upon Peter Morrison. And the feeling
+      concerning which she had written Linda had taken possession of her. Wealth
+      did not matter; position did not matter. Losing the love of a good man did
+      not matter But the mind and the heart and the personality behind the
+      letters she had been receiving did matter. She thought long and seriously
+      When at last she arose she had arrived at the conclusion that she had done
+      the right thing, no matter whether the wonderful letters she had received
+      went on and offered her love or not, no matter about anything. She must
+      merely live and do the best she could, until the writer of those letters
+      chose to disclose himself and say what purpose he had in mind when he
+      wrote them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Marian followed her own path beside the creek until she neared its
+      head, which was a big, gushing icy spring at the foot of the mountain
+      keeping watch over the small plateau that in her heart she had thought of
+      as hers for years. As she neared the location strange sounds began to
+      reach her, voices of men, clanging of hammers, the rip of saws. A look of
+      deep consternation overspread her face. She listened an instant and then
+      began to run. When she broke through the rank foliage flourishing from the
+      waters of the spring and looked out on the plateau what she saw was Peter
+      Morrison's house in the process of being floored and shingled. For a
+      minute Marian was physically ill. Her heart hurt until her hand crept to
+      her side in an effort to soothe it. Before she asked the question of a man
+      coming to the spring with a pail in his hand, she knew the answer. It was
+      Peter Morrison's house. Marian sprang across the brook, climbed to the
+      temporary roadway, and walked down in front of the building. She stood
+      looking at it intently. It was in a rough stage, but much disguise is
+      needed to prevent a mother from knowing her own child. Marian's dark eyes
+      began to widen and to blaze. She walked up to the front of the house and
+      found that rough flooring had been laid so that she could go over the
+      first floor. When she had done this she left the back door a deeply
+      indignant woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is some connection,&rdquo; she told herself tersely, &ldquo;between my lost
+      sketch and this house, which is merely a left-to-right rehearsal of my
+      plans; and it's the same plan with which Henry Anderson won the Nicholson
+      and Snow prize money and the still more valuable honor of being the prize
+      winner. What I want to know is how such a wrong may be righted, and what
+      Peter Morrison has to do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stepping from the back door, Marian followed the well-worn pathway that
+      led to the garage, looking right and left for Peter, and she was wondering
+      what she would say to him if she met him. She was thinking that perhaps
+      she had better return to San Francisco and talk the matter over with Mr.
+      Snow before she said anything to anyone else; by this time she had reached
+      the garage and stood in its wide-open door. She looked in at the cot, left
+      just as someone had arisen from it, at the row of clothing hanging on a
+      rough wooden rack at the back, at the piled boxes, at the big table,
+      knocked together from rough lumber, in the center, scattered and piled
+      with books and magazines; and then her eyes fixed intently on a packet
+      lying on the table beside a typewriter and a stack of paper and envelopes.
+      She walked over and picked up the packet. As she had known the instant she
+      saw them, they were her letters. She stood an instant holding them in her
+      hand, a dazed expression on her face. Mechanically she reached out and
+      laid her hands on the closed typewriter to steady herself. Something about
+      it appealed to her as familiar. She looked at it closely, then she lifted
+      the cover and examined the machine. It was the same machine that had stood
+      for years in Doctor Strong's library, a machine upon which she had typed
+      business letters for her own father, and sometimes she had copied lectures
+      and book manuscript on it for Doctor Strong. Until his house was completed
+      and his belongings arrived, Peter undoubtedly had borrowed it. Suddenly a
+      wild desire to escape swept over Marian. Her first thought was of her
+      feelings. She was angry, and justly so. In her heart she had begun to feel
+      that the letters she was receiving were from Peter Morrison. Here was the
+      proof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could it be possible that in their one meeting Peter had decided that she
+      was his dream woman, that in some way he had secured that rough sketch of
+      her plans, and from them was preparing her dream house for her? The
+      thought sped through her brain that he was something more than human to
+      have secured those plans, to have found that secluded and choice location.
+      For an instant she forgot the loss of the competition in trying to
+      comprehend the wonder of finding her own particular house fitting her own
+      particular location as naturally as one of its big boulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to replace the package of letters exactly as she had found them.
+      On tiptoe she slipped back to the door and looked searchingly down the
+      road, around, and as far as possible through the house. Then she gathered
+      her skirts, stepped from the garage, and began the process of effacing
+      herself on the mountain side From clump to clump of the thickest bushes,
+      crouching below the sage and greasewood, pausing to rest behind lilac and
+      elder, without regard for her traveling suit or her beautifully shod feet,
+      Marian fled from her location. When at last she felt that she was
+      completely hidden and at least a mile from the spot, she dropped panting
+      on a boulder, brushing the debris from her skirts, lifting trembling hands
+      to straighten her hat, and ruefully contemplating her shoes. Then she
+      tried to think in a calm, dispassionate, and reasonable manner, but she
+      found it a most difficult process. Her mind was not well ordered, neither
+      was it at her command. It whirled and shot off at unexpected tangents and
+      danced as irresponsibly as a grasshopper from one place to another. The
+      flying leaps it took ranged from San Francisco to Lilac Valley, from her
+      location upon which Peter Morrison was building her house, to Linda. Even
+      John Gilman obtruded himself once more. At one minute she was experiencing
+      a raging indignation against Henry Anderson. How had he secured her plan?
+      At another she was trying to figure dispassionately what connection Peter
+      Morrison could have had with the building of his house upon her plan.
+      Every time Peter came into the equation her heart arose in his defense. In
+      some way his share in the proceeding was all right. He had cared for her
+      and he had done what he thought would please her. Therefore she must be
+      pleased, although forced to admit to herself that she would have been
+      infinitely more pleased to have built her own house in her own way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was hungry to see Linda. She wanted Katherine O'Donovan to feed her
+      and fuss over her and entertain her with her mellow Irish brogue; but if
+      she went to them and disclosed her presence in the valley, Peter would
+      know about it, and if he intended the building he was erecting as a
+      wonderful surprise for her, then she must not spoil his joy. Plan in any
+      way she could, Marian could see no course left to her other than to slip
+      back to the station and return to San Francisco without meeting any of her
+      friends. She hurriedly ate her lunch, again straightened her clothing,
+      went to the restaurant for her traveling bag, and took the car for the
+      station where she waited for a return train to San Francisco She bought a
+      paper and tried to concentrate upon it in an effort to take her mind from
+      her own problems so that, when she returned to them, she would be better
+      able to think clearly, to reason justly, to act wisely. She was very glad
+      when her train came and she was started on her way northward. At the first
+      siding upon which it stopped to allow the passing of a south-bound
+      limited, she was certain that as the cars flashed by, in one of them she
+      saw Eugene Snow. She was so certain that when she reached the city she
+      immediately called the office and asked for Mr. Snow only to be told that
+      he had gone away for a day or two on business. After that Marian's thought
+      was confused to the point of exasperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be difficult to explain precisely the state of mind in which
+      Linda, upon arriving at her home that afternoon, received from Katy the
+      information that a man named Snow had been waiting an hour for her in the
+      living room. Linda's appearance was that of a person so astonished that
+      Katy sidled up to her giving strong evidence of being ready to bristle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye know, lambie,&rdquo; she said with elaborate indifference, &ldquo;ye aren't havin'
+      to see anybody ye don't want to. If it's somebody intrudin' himself on ye,
+      just say the word and I'll fire him; higher than Guilderoy's kite I'll be
+      firin' him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I must see him, Katy,&rdquo; said Linda quietly. &ldquo;And have something
+      specially nice for dinner. Very likely I'll take him to see Peter
+      Morrison's house and possibly I'll ask him and Peter to dinner. He is a
+      San Francisco architect from the firm where Marian takes her lessons, and
+      it's business about Peter's house. I was surprised, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda turned and laid a hand on each of Katy's hairy red arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katherine O'Donovan, old dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if we do come back for dinner,
+      concentrate on Mr. Snow and study him. Scrutinize, Katy! It's a bully
+      word. Scrutinize closely. To add one more to our long lists of secrets,
+      here's another. He's the man I told you about who has asked Marian to
+      marry him, and Marian has refused him probably because she prefers
+      somebody nearer home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Linda felt the tensing of every muscle in Katy's body. She saw the
+      lift of her head, the incredulous, resentful look in her eyes. There was
+      frank hostility in her tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, who is there nearer home that Marian knows?&rdquo; she demanded
+      belligerently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now, who would there be?&rdquo; retorted Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye ain't manin' John Gilman?&rdquo; asked Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I am not meaning John Gilman. You should know Marian
+      well enough to know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, ye ought to know yourself well enough to know that they ain't
+      anybody else around these diggin's that Marian Thorne's going to get,&rdquo;
+       said Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imagine Marian will get pretty much whom she wants,&rdquo; said Linda
+      laughingly. &ldquo;In your heart, Katy, you know that Marian need not have lost
+      John Gilman if she had not deliberately let him go. If she had been
+      willing to meet Eileen on her own ground and to play the game with her, it
+      wouldn't have happened. Marian has more brains in a minute than Eileen has
+      in a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Linda drew back the portiere and stepped into the living room Eugene
+      Snow rose to meet her. What either of them expected it might be difficult
+      to explain. Knowing so little of each other, it is very possible that they
+      had no visualizations. What Snow saw was what everyone saw who looked at
+      Linda&mdash;a girl arrestingly unusual. With Linda lay the advantage by
+      far, since she had Marian's letters for a background. What she saw was a
+      tall man, slender, and about him there was to Linda a strong appeal. As
+      she looked into his eyes, she could feel the double hurt that Fate had
+      dealt him. She thought she could fathom the fineness in his nature that
+      had led him to made home-building his chosen occupation. Instantly she
+      liked him. With only one look deep into his eyes she was on his side. She
+      stretched out both her hands and advanced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now isn't this the finest thing of you?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am so glad that you
+      came. I'll tell you word for word what happened here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will be fine,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Which is your favorite chair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that is a joke. I am so unfamiliar with this room
+      that I haven't any favorite chair. I'll have to take the nearest, like
+      Thoreau selected his piece of chicken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then for a few minutes Linda talked frankly. She answered Eugene Snow's
+      every question unhesitatingly and comprehensively. Together they ascended
+      the stairs, and in the guest room she showed him the table at which she
+      and Marian had studied the sketches of plans, and exactly where they had
+      left them lying overnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one thing I can't be explicit about,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;is how many sheets
+      were there in the morning. We had stayed awake so late talking, that we
+      overslept. I packed Marian's bag while she dressed. I snatched up what
+      there were without realizing whether there were two sheets or three, laid
+      them in the flat bottom of the case, and folded her clothing on top of
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow comprehendingly. &ldquo;Now let's experiment a little. Of
+      course the window before that table was raised?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but every window in the house is screened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what about the door opening into the hall? Can you tell me whether it
+      was closed or open?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was open,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;We left it slightly ajar to create a draft;
+      the night was warm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anyone about the house,&rdquo; inquired Mr. Snow, &ldquo;who could tell us
+      certainly whether that window was screened that night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Our housekeeper, Katherine O'Donovan, would
+      know. When we go down we'll ask her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On their return to the living room, for the first time in her life Linda
+      rang for Katy. She hesitated an instant before she did it. It would be
+      establishing a relationship that never before had existed between them.
+      She always had gone to Katy as she would have, gone to her mother. She
+      would have gone to her now, but she wanted Katy to make her appearance and
+      give her information without the possibility of previous discussion. Katy
+      answered the bell almost at once. Linda went to her side and reached her
+      arm across her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;this is Mr. Eugene Snow of San Francisco He is
+      interested in finding out exactly what became of that lost plan of
+      Marian's that we have looked for so carefully. Put on your thinking cap,
+      old dear, and try to answer accurately any question that Mr. Snow may wish
+      to ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy looked expectantly at Eugene Snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the meantime,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I'll be excused and go bring round the
+      Bear Cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have only one question to ask you,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow. &ldquo;Can you recall
+      whether, for any reason, there was a screen out of the guest-room window
+      directly in front of which the reading table was standing the night Miss
+      Marian occupied the room before leaving for San Francisco?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure there was,&rdquo; answered Katy instantly in her richest, mellowest
+      brogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was taking the inventory she had been told to take. She was deciding,
+      as instantly as Linda had done, that she liked this man. Years,
+      appearance, everything about him appealed to Katy as being exactly right
+      for Marian; and her cunning Irish mind was leaping and flying and tugging
+      at the leash that thirty years of conventions had bound upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; she repeated, &ldquo;the wildest santana that ever roared over us just
+      caught that screen and landed it slam against the side of the garage, and
+      it set inside for three days till I could get a workman to go up the
+      outside and put it back. It had been out two days before the night Marian
+      was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Miss Linda know about it?&rdquo; asked Snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I know of,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;She is a schoolgirl, you know, off early
+      in the morning, back and up to her room, the busiest youngster the valley
+      knows; and coin' a dale of good she is, too. It was Miss Eileen that heard
+      the screen ripped out and told me it was gone. She's the one who looked
+      after the housekapin' and paid the bills. She knew all about it. If
+      'twould be helpin' Miss Marian any about findin' them plans we've
+      ransacked the premises for, I couldn't see any reason why Miss Eileen
+      wouldn't tell ye the same as I'm tellin' ye, and her housekapin' accounts
+      and her cheque book would show she paid the carpenter, if it's legal
+      business you're wantin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Katy,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow. &ldquo;I hope nothing of that kind will occur.
+      A great wrong has been perpetrated, but we must find some way to right it
+      without involving such extremely nice young women in the annoyance of
+      legal proceedings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy folded her arms and raised her head. All her share of the blarney of
+      Ireland began to roll from the mellow tip of her tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, the nice man ye are, to be seein' the beauty of them girls so
+      quick,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The good Lord airly in the mornin' of creation thought
+      them out when He was jist fresh from rist, and the material was none
+      shopworn. They ain't ladies like 'em anywhere else in the whole of
+      California, and belave me, a many rale ladies have I seen in my time. Ye
+      can jist make up your mind that Miss Linda is the broth of the earth. She
+      is her father's own child and she is like him as two pase in the pod. And
+      Marian growed beside her, and much of a hand I've had in her raisin'
+      meself, and well I'm knowin' how fine she is and what a juel she'd be, set
+      on any man's hearthstone. I'm wonderin',&rdquo; said Katy challengingly, &ldquo;if
+      you're the Mr. Snow at whose place she is takin' her lessons, and if ye
+      are, I'm wonderin' if ye ain't goin' to use the good judgment to set her,
+      like the juel she would be, in the stone of your own hearth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eugene Snow looked at Katy intently. He was not accustomed to discussing
+      his affairs with household helpers, but he could not look at Katy without
+      there remaining in his vision the forte of Linda standing beside her, a
+      reassuring arm stretched across her shoulders, the manner in which she had
+      presented her and then left her that she might be free to answer as she
+      chose with out her young mistress even knowing exactly what was asked of
+      her. Such faith and trust and love were unusual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might try to do that very thing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but, you know, a wonderful
+      woman is an animated jewel. You can't manufacture a setting and put her in
+      and tighten the clasps without her consent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why don't you get it?&rdquo; said Katy casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eugene Snow laughed ruefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But suppose,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that the particular jewel you're discussing
+      prefers to select her own setting, and mine does not please her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they's jist one thing,&rdquo; said Katy. Her heels left the floor
+      involuntarily; she arose on her tiptoes; her shoulders came up, and her
+      head lifted to a height it never had known before. &ldquo;They's jist one
+      thing,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Aside from Miss Linda, who is my very own child that I
+      have washed and I have combed and I have done for since she was a toddlin'
+      four-year-old, they ain't no woman in this world I would go as far for as
+      I would for Miss Marian; but I'm tellin' ye now, ye Mr. Eujane Snow, that
+      they's one thing I don't lend no countenance to. I am sorry she has had
+      the cold, cruel luck that she has, but I ain't sorry enough that I'm goin'
+      to stand for her droppin' herself into the place where she doesn't belong.
+      If the good Lord ain't give her the sense to see that you're jist the
+      image of the man that would be jist exactly right for her, somebody had
+      better be tellin' her so. Anyway, if Miss Linda is takin' ye up to the
+      house that Mr. Pater Morrison is buildin' and the Pater man is there, I
+      would advise ye to cast your most discernin' eye on that gintleman. Ye
+      watch him jist one minute when he looks at the young missus and he thinks
+      nobody ain't observing him, and ye'll see what ye'll see. If ye want
+      Marian, ye jist go on and take her. I'm not carin' whether ye use a club
+      or white vi'lets, but don't ye be lettin' Marian Thorne get no idea into
+      her head that she is goin' to take Mr. Pater Morrison, because concernin'
+      Pater I know what I know, and I ain't goin' to stand by and see things
+      goin' wrong for want of spakin' up. Now if you're a wise man, ye don't
+      nade nothing further said on the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eugene Snow thought intently for a few moments. His vision centered on
+      Katherine O'Donovan's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're absolutely sure of this?&rdquo; he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jist as sure as the sun's sure, and the mountains, and the seasons come
+      and go,&rdquo; said Katy with finality. &ldquo;Watch him and you'll see it stickin'
+      out all over him. I have picked him for me boss, and it's jist adorin'
+      that man crature I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about Miss Linda?&rdquo; inquired Snow. &ldquo;Is she adoring him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't nothing but a ganglin' school kid, adorin' the spade with which
+      she can shoot around that Bear Cat of hers, and race the canyons, and the
+      rely lovely things she can strike on paper with her pencil and light up
+      with her joyous colors. Her day and her hour ain't come, and the Pater
+      man's that fine he won't lay a finger on her to wake her up when she has a
+      year yet of her schoolin' before her. But in the manetime it's my job to
+      stand guard as I'm standin' right now. I'm tellin' ye frank and fair. Ye
+      go on and take Marian Thorne because ye ought to have her. If she's got
+      any idea in her head that she's goin' to have Pater Morrison, she'll have
+      to get it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eugene Snow held out his hand and started to the front door in answer to
+      the growl of the Bear Cat. As he came down the steps and advanced to the
+      car, Linda, with the quick eye that had been one of her special gifts as a
+      birthright, noted a change in him. He seemed to have been keyed up and
+      toned up. There was a different expression on his face. There was buoyancy
+      in his step. There was a visible determination in his eye. He took the
+      seat beside her and Linda started the car. She looked at him
+      interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you connect a heavy wind with the date of the lost plan?&rdquo; he
+      inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a crack-a-jack a few days before,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It blew over
+      some trees in the lot next to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said Snow; &ldquo;and it plucked a screen from your guest-room
+      window. Katy thinks that the cheque to the carpenter and the cost of the
+      repairs will be in your sister's account books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um hm,&rdquo; nodded Linda. &ldquo;Well, that simplifies matters, because Peter
+      Morrison is going to tell you about a trip Henry Anderson made around our
+      house the morning Marian left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that is about all we need to know,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow conclusively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;but I want you to see Peter's house for
+      yourself, since I understand that according to your contract the rights to
+      reproduce these particular plans remained with you after you had paid
+      prize money for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most certainly,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow. &ldquo;We should have that much to show for our
+      share of the transaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a queer thing,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;You would have to know me a long time,
+      and perhaps know under what conditions I have been reared in order to
+      understand a feeling that I frequently have concerning people. I
+      tobogganed down a sheer side of Multiflores Canyon one day without my path
+      having been previously prepared, and I very nearly landed in the
+      automobile that carried Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison on their first
+      trip to Lilac Valley. I was much interested in preserving the integrity of
+      my neck. I fervently hoped not to break more than a dozen of my legs and
+      arms, and was forced to bring down intact the finest Cotyledon
+      pulverulenta that Daddy or I had found in fourteen years of collecting in
+      California. I am telling you all this that you may see why I might have
+      been excused for not having been minutely observant of my surroundings
+      when I landed. But what I did observe was a chilly, caterpillary sensation
+      chasing up my spine the instant I met the eyes of Henry Anderson. In that
+      instant I said to myself that I would not trust him, that I did not like
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what about his companion?&rdquo; asked Eugene Snow lightly. &ldquo;Oh, Peter?&rdquo;
+       said Linda. There was a caress in her pronunciation of the name. &ldquo;Why,
+      Peter is a rock. The instant I deposited my Cotyledon in a safe place I
+      would have put my hand in Peter Morrison's and started around the world if
+      he had asked me to go. There is only one Peter. You will recognize that
+      the instant you meet him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am altogether willing to take your word for it,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is one thing about this disagreeable business,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It
+      was not Peter's coat that had the plan in it. He knew nothing about it. He
+      has had his full service of stiff war work, and he has been knocking
+      around big cities in newspaper work, and now he has come home to Lilac
+      Valley to 'set up his rest,' as in the hymn book, you know. He built his
+      garage first and he is living in it because he so loves this house of his
+      that he has to be present to watch it grow in minute detail. Once on a
+      time I saw a great wizard walking along the sidewalk, and he looked
+      exactly like any man. He might have been you so far as anything different
+      from other men in his appearance w as concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda cut down the Bear Cat to its slowest speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is on my mind is this,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I don't think Peter could quite
+      afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building. I
+      think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him two
+      or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with him. Now
+      can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand,
+      unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart
+      is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with such
+      eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the Sea clinging to his
+      back? Do you think, Mr. Eugene Snow, that you're enough of a wizard to
+      examine this house and to satisfy yourself as to whether it's an
+      infringement of your plans or not, without letting Peter know the things
+      about it that would spoil it for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eugene Snow reached across and closed a hand over the one of Linda's
+      nearest him on the steering wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You very decent kid, you,&rdquo; he said appreciatively. &ldquo;I certainly am enough
+      of a wizard to save your Peter man any disillusionment concerning his
+      dream house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but he is not my Peter man,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;We are only the best
+      friends in the world. Really and truly, if you can keep a secret, he's
+      Marian's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he?&rdquo; asked Mr. Snow interestedly. And then he added very casually, in
+      the most offhand manner&mdash;he said it more to an orange orchard through
+      which they were passing than he said it to Linda&mdash;&ldquo;I have very grave
+      doubts about that. I think there must be some slight complication that
+      will have to be cleared up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's heart gave a great jump of consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed no,&rdquo; she said emphatically. &ldquo;I don't think he has just told Marian
+      yet, but I am very sure that he cares for her more than for any other
+      woman, and I am equally sure she cares for him; and nothing could be more
+      suitable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; agreed Mr. Snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda put the Bear Cat at the mountain, crept around the road, skirted the
+      boulders, and stopped halfway to the garage. And there, in a low tone, she
+      indicated to Mr. Snow where they had lunched, when she found the plans,
+      how she had brought out the coat, where she had emptied the mouse nest.
+      Then she stepped from the car and hallooed for Peter. Peter came hurrying
+      from the garage, and Eugene Snow was swift in his mental inventory. It
+      coincided exactly with Linda's. He would have been willing to join hands
+      with Peter and start around the world, quite convinced of the fairness of
+      the outcome, with no greater acquaintance than one intent look at Peter,
+      one grip of his sure hand. After that he began to act on Katy's hint, and
+      in a very short time he had convinced himself that she was right. Maybe
+      Peter tried to absorb himself in the plans he was going over, in the house
+      he was proud to show the great architect; but it seemed to the man he was
+      entertaining that his glance scarcely left Linda, that he was so
+      preoccupied with where she went and what she did that he was like a
+      juggler keeping two mental balls in the air at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to Peter a natural thing that, the architect being in the city
+      on business, he should run out to call on Miss Thorne's dearest friend It
+      seemed to him equally natural that Linda should bring him to see a house
+      in which she was so kindly interesting herself. And just when Peter was
+      most dexterous in his juggling, just when he was trying to explain the
+      very wonderful step-saving' time-saving, rational kitchen arrangements and
+      at the same time watch Linda on her course down to the spring, the
+      architect halted him with a jerk. Eugene Snow stood very straight, his
+      hands in his coat pockets, looking, Peter supposed, with interest at the
+      arrangements of kitchen conveniences. His next terse sentence fairly
+      staggered Peter. He looked him straight in the eye and inquired casually:
+      &ldquo;Chosen your dream woman to fit your house, Morrison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter was too surprised to conceal his feelings. His jaws snapped
+      together; a belligerent look sprang into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a good deal to do with houses,&rdquo; continued Mr. Snow. &ldquo;They are
+      my life work. I find that invariably they are built for a woman. Almost
+      always they are built from her plans, and for her pleasure. It's a new
+      house, a unique house, a wonderful house you're evolving here. It must be
+      truly a wonderful woman you're dreaming about while you build it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was a nasty little trap. With his years and worldly experience Peter
+      should not have fallen into it; but all men are children when they are
+      sick, heart sick or body sick, and Peter was a very sick man at that
+      minute. He had been addressed in such a frank and casual manner. His own
+      brain shot off at queer tangents and led him constantly into unexpected
+      places. The narrow side lane that opened up came into view so suddenly
+      that Peter, with the innocence of a four-year-old, turned with military
+      precision at the suggestion and looked over the premises for the exact
+      location of Linda. Eugene Snow had seen for himself the thing that Katy
+      had told him he would see if he looked for it. Suddenly he held out his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As man to man, Morrison, in this instance,&rdquo; he said in rather a hoarse,
+      breathless voice, &ldquo;don't you think it would be a good idea for you and me
+      to assert our manhood, to manage our own affairs, to select our own wives
+      if need be? If we really set ourselves to the job don't you believe we can
+      work out our lives more to our liking than anyone else can plan for us?
+      You get the idea, don't you, Morrison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter was facing the kitchen sink but he did not see it. His brain was
+      whirling. He did see Snow's point of view. He did realize his position.
+      But what Mr. Snow knew of his affairs he could only guess. The one thing
+      Mr. Snow could not know was that Linda frankly admitted her prepossession
+      for her school chum, Donald Whiting, but in any event if Peter could not
+      have Linda he would much prefer occupying his dream house alone. So he
+      caught at the straw held out to him with both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I get you,&rdquo; he said tersely. &ldquo;It is not quite up to the mark of the
+      manhood we like to think we possess to let our lives be engineered by a
+      high school kid. Suppose we do just quietly and masterfully assert
+      ourselves concerning our own affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose we do,&rdquo; said Snow with finality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon they shook hands with a grip that whitened their knuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they went back to Lilac Valley and had their dinner together, and
+      Linda and Peter escorted Eugene Snow to his train and started him on his
+      return trip to San Francisco feeling very much better. Peter would not
+      allow Linda to drive him home at night, so he left her after the Bear Cat
+      had been safely placed in the garage. As she stood on the walk beside him,
+      strongly outlined in the moonlight, Peter studied Linda whimsically. He
+      said it half laughingly, but there was something to think about in what he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm just picturing, Linda, what a nice old lady you will be by the time
+      that high school kid of yours spends four years in college, one on the
+      continent, and the Lord knows how many at mastering a profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked at him with widened eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KATY UNBURDENS HER MIND
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what are you talking about, Peter? Are you moonstruck?&rdquo; she inquired
+      solicitously. &ldquo;Donald's only a friend, you know. I love him because he is
+      the nicest companion; but there is nothing for you to be silly about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Peter began to realize the truth. There wasn't anything for him to be
+      concerned about. She had not the slightest notion what love meant, even as
+      she announced that she loved Donald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX. Peter's Release
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Eugene Snow returned to San Francisco enthusiastic about Linda, while he
+      would scarcely have known how to express his appreciation of Katherine
+      O'Donovan. He had been served a delicious dinner, deftly and quietly, such
+      food as men particularly like; but there had been no subservience. If
+      Katherine O'Donovan had been waiting on her own table, serving her own
+      friends she could not have managed with more pride. It was very evident
+      that she loved service, that she loved the girl to whom she gave constant
+      attention. He understood exactly what there was in her heart and why she
+      felt as she did when he saw Linda and Peter together and heard their
+      manner of speaking to each other, and made mental note of the many points
+      of interest which seemed to exist between them. He returned to San
+      Francisco with a good deal of a &ldquo;See-the-conquering-hero-comes&rdquo; mental
+      attitude. He went directly to his office, pausing on the way for a box of
+      candy and a bunch of Parma violets. His first act on reaching the office
+      was to send for Miss Thorne. Marian came almost immediately, a worried
+      look in her eyes. She sat in the big, cushioned chair that was offered
+      her, and smiled faintly when the box was laid on her lap, topped with the
+      violets. She looked at Eugene Snow with an &ldquo;I-wish-you-wouldn't&rdquo;
+       expression on her face; but he smiled at her reassuringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Picked them up on the way from the station. I made a
+      hasty trip to that precious Lilac Valley of yours, and I must say it pales
+      your representation. It is a wonderfully lovely spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian settled back in the chair. She picked up the violets and ran an
+      experienced finger around the stems until she found the pin with which she
+      fastened them at her waist. Then as they occupied themselves making
+      selections from the candy box he looked smilingly at Marian. Her eyes
+      noted the change in him. He was neither disappointed nor sad. Something
+      had happened in Lilac Valley that had changed his perspective. Womanlike,
+      she began probing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad you liked my valley,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We are told that blue is a
+      wonderful aura to surround a person, and it's equally wonderful when it
+      surrounds a whole valley. With the blue sky and the blue walls and a few
+      true-blue friends I have there, it's naturally a very dear spot to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow, &ldquo;I can see that it is. I ran down on a business
+      matter. I have been deeply puzzled and much perturbed over this prize
+      contest. We have run these affairs once a year, sometimes oftener, for a
+      long time, so I couldn't understand the peculiar thing about the
+      similarity of the winning plans and your work this year. I have been
+      holding up the prize money, because I did not feel that you were saying
+      exactly what was in your heart, and I couldn't be altogether satisfied
+      that everything was right. I went to Lilac Valley because I had a letter
+      from your friend, Miss Linda Strong. There was an enclosure in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew from his pocket the folded sheet and handed it to Marian. Her eyes
+      were surprised, incredulous, as she opened the missing sheet from her
+      plans, saw the extraneous lines drawn upon it and the minute figuring with
+      which the margin was covered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda found it at last!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Where in this world did she get it,
+      and whose work is this on it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She got it,&rdquo; said Eugene Snow, &ldquo;when she undertook to clean Peter
+      Morrison's workroom on an evening when she and her cook were having supper
+      with him. She turned a coat belonging to his architect that hung with some
+      of his clothing in Peter Morrison's garage. She was shaking the nest of a
+      field mouse from one of the side pockets. Naturally this emptied all the
+      pockets, and in gathering up their contents she came across that plan,
+      which she recognized. She thought it was right to take it and very wisely
+      felt that it was man's business, so she sent it to me with her
+      explanations. I went to Lilac Valley because I wanted to judge for myself
+      exactly what kind of young person she was. I wanted to see her
+      environment. I wanted to see the house that she felt sure was being built
+      from these plans. I wanted to satisfy myself of the stability of what I
+      had to work on before I mentioned the matter to you or Henry Anderson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian sat holding the plan, listening absorbedly to what he was saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's an ugly business,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;so ugly that there is no question
+      whatever but that it can be settled very quietly and without any annoyance
+      to you. I shall have to take the matter up with the board, but I have the
+      details so worked out that I shall have no difficulty in arranging matters
+      as I think best. There is no question whatever, Marian, but Anderson found
+      that sketch on the west side of the Strong residence. When you left your
+      plans lying on a table before a window in the Strong guestroom the night
+      before you came to San Francisco you did not know that the santana which
+      raged through the valley a day or two previously had stripped a screen
+      from the window before which you left them. In opening your door to
+      establish a draft before you went to bed you started one that carried your
+      top drawing through the window. Waiting for Miss Strong the next morning,
+      in making a circuit of the grounds Anderson found it and appropriated it
+      to most excellent advantage. Miss Linda tells me that your study of
+      architecture was discussed at the dinner table that night. He could not
+      have helped realizing that any sheet of plans he found there must have
+      been yours. If he could acquit his conscience of taking them and using
+      them, he would still have to explain why he was ready to accept the first
+      prize and the conditions imposed when he already had a house fairly well
+      under construction from the plans he submitted in the contest. The rule is
+      unbreakable that the plans must be original, must be unused, must be our
+      sole property, if they take the prize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian was leaning forward, her eyes wide with interest, her breast
+      agitated. She nodded in acquiescence. Eugene Snow reached across and
+      helped himself to another piece of candy from the box on her knee. He
+      looked at her speculatively and spoke quietly as if the matter were of no
+      great importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it be agreeable, Marian, if the prize committee should announce
+      that there were reasons as to why they were not satisfied, that they have
+      decided to return all plans and call off the present contest, opening
+      another in a few months in which interested parties may again submit their
+      drawings? I will undertake swiftly and comprehensively to eliminate Henry
+      Anderson from California. I would be willing to venture quite a sum that
+      when I finish with the youngster he will see the beauty of going straight
+      hereafter and the desirability of a change of atmosphere. He's a
+      youngster. I hate to make the matter public, not only on account of
+      involving you and your friends in such disagreeable business, but I am
+      sorry for him. I would like to deal with him like the proverbial 'Dutch
+      uncle,' then I would like to send him away to make a new start with the
+      assurance that I am keeping close watch on him. Would you be satisfied if
+      I handled the matter quietly and in my own way? Could you wait a few weeks
+      for justice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian drew a deep breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it would be wonderful if you could do that. But
+      what about Peter Morrison? How much did he know concerning the plans, and
+      what does he know about this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said Mr. Snow. &ldquo;That most unusual young friend of yours made me
+      see the light very clearly concerning Peter Morrison. There is no
+      necessity for him ever to know that the 'dream house,' as Miss Linda calls
+      it, that he is building for his dream woman has any disagreeable history
+      attached to it. He so loves the spot that he is living on it to watch that
+      house in minutest detail. Miss Linda was fairly eloquent in the plea she
+      made on his behalf. He strikes me as a very unusual person, and she
+      appealed to me in the same way. There must be some scientific explanation
+      concerning her that I don't just get, but I can see that she is most
+      unusual when I watched them together and heard them talk of their plans
+      for the house and the grounds and discussing illustrations that she is
+      making for articles that he is writing, I saw how deep and wholesome was
+      the friendship existing between them. I even heard that wonderful serving
+      woman, whom they so familiarly speak of as 'Katy,' chiding Peter Morrison
+      for allowing Linda to take her typewriter to him and do her own work with
+      a pen. And because Miss Linda seems so greathearted and loving with her
+      friends, I was rather glad to hear his explanation that they were merely
+      changing machines for the time being for a very particular reason of their
+      own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean,&rdquo; asked Marian, &ldquo;that you think there is anything more than
+      casual friendship between Linda and Peter Morrison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not on her part,&rdquo; answered Eugene Snow. &ldquo;Anybody can see that she is a
+      child deeply engrossed in all sorts of affairs uncommon for a girl of her
+      age and position. Her nice perceptions, her wonderful loyalty to her
+      friends, her loving thought for them, are manifest in everything she says
+      or does. If she ever makes any mistakes they will be from the head, not
+      from the heart. But for the other end of the equation I could speak
+      authoritatively. Katy pointed out to me the fact that if I would watch
+      Peter Morrison in Miss Linda's presence, I should see that he adored her.
+      I did watch, and I did see that very thing. When I taxed him about
+      building a dream house for a dream woman, his eyes crossed a plateau,
+      leaped a brook, and started up the side of a mountain. They did not rest
+      until they had found Linda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marian sat so still that it seemed as if she were not even breathing. In
+      view of what Katy had said, and his few words with Peter Morrison, Eugene
+      Snow had felt justified in giving Marian a hint as to what was going on in
+      Lilac Valley. Exactly what he had done he had no means of knowing. If he
+      had known and had talked intentionally he could not have made clearer to
+      Marian the thing which for months had puzzled her. She was aware that
+      Eugene Snow was talking, that he was describing the dinner he had been
+      served, the wonderful wild-flower garden that he had seen, how skillfully
+      Linda drove the Bear Cat. She heard these things and dimly comprehended
+      them but underneath, her brain was seizing upon one fact after another.
+      They had exchanged typewriters. The poor, foolish little kid had known how
+      her health was wracked, how she was suffering, how her pride would not let
+      her stoop to Eileen's subterfuges and wage war with her implements for a
+      man she did not want if her manner of living her everyday life did not
+      appeal to him. Linda had known how lonely and heart hungry and
+      disappointed she had gone away, and loyally she had tried to create an
+      interest in life for her; and she had succeeded entirely too well. And
+      then in a panic she must have gone to Peter Morrison and explained the
+      situation; and Peter must have agreed to take over the correspondence. One
+      by one things that had puzzled her about the letters and about the whole
+      affair began to grow clear. She even saw how Linda, having friendly
+      association with no man save Peter, would naturally use him for a model.
+      The trouble was that, with her gift of penetration and insight and her
+      facility with her pen, she had overdone the matter. She had not imitated
+      Peter; she had BEEN Peter. Marian arose suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went home, locked the door, and one after another she read the letters
+      that had piqued, amused, comforted, and finally intrigued her. They were
+      brilliant letters, charming, appealing letters, and yet, with knowledge
+      concerning them, Marian wondered how she could have failed to appreciate
+      in the beginning that they were from Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It goes to prove,&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;how hungry the human heart is for
+      love and sympathy. And that poor kid, what she must have suffered when she
+      went to Peter for help! And if, as Mr. Snow thinks, he cares for her, how
+      he must have suffered before he agreed to help her, as no doubt he did.
+      What I have to do is to find some way out of the situation that will
+      relieve Linda's anxiety and at least partially save my face. I shall have
+      to take a few days to work it out. Luckily I haven't answered my last
+      letter. When I find out what I really want to say then I will be very
+      careful how I say it. I don't just exactly relish having my letters turned
+      over to Peter Morrison, but possibly I can think of some way&mdash;I must
+      think of some way&mdash;to make them feel that I have not been any more
+      credulous than they.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While she thought, both Linda and Peter were doing much thinking on the
+      same subject. Linda's heart was full of gratitude to Peter for helping her
+      out of her very disagreeable situation. Peter had not yet opened the
+      packet of letters lying on his table He had a sickening distaste for the
+      whole transaction. He had thought that he would wait until he received the
+      first letter he was to answer. If it gave him sufficient foundation in
+      itself for the answer, he would not be forced to search further. He had
+      smoked many pipes on this decision. After the visit of Mr. Snow, Peter had
+      seen a great light and had decided, from the mood and the attitude of that
+      gentleman after his interview with Katy, that he very likely would be
+      equal to any complication that might arise when he reached San Francisco.
+      Mulling over the situation one day Peter said reflectively to the spring
+      which was very busy talking to him: &ldquo;I am morally certain that this matter
+      has resolved itself into a situation that closely resembles the
+      bootblack's apple: 'they ain't goin' to be any core.' I am reasonably
+      certain that I never shall have a letter to answer. In a few days probably
+      I shall be able to turn back that packet to Linda without having opened
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To make up for the perturbation which had resulted in failure in class and
+      two weeks of work that represented her worst appearances in high-school
+      history, Linda, her mind freed from the worry over Marian's plans, and her
+      heart calmer over the fiasco in trying to comfort her, devoted herself
+      absorbingly to her lessons and to the next magazine article that she must
+      finish. She had decided that it was time to write on the subject of Indian
+      confections. Her first spare minute she and Katy must busy themselves
+      working out the most delicious cactus candy possible. Then they could try
+      the mesquite candy. No doubt she could evolve a delicious gum from the
+      mesquite and the incense plant. She knew she could from the willow
+      milkweed; and under the head of &ldquo;sweets&rdquo; an appetizing jelly from
+      manzanita. There were delightful drinks too, from the manzanita and the
+      chia. And better than either, the lemonade berry would serve this purpose.
+      She had not experimented to an authoritative extent with the desert
+      pickles. And among drinks she might use the tea made from blue-eyed grass,
+      brewed by the Indians for feverish conditions; and there was a whole world
+      of interest to open up in differing seeds and berries, parched or boiled
+      for food. And there were the seeds that were ground for mush, like the
+      thistle sage, and the mock orange which was food and soap also, and the
+      wild sunflowers that were parched for meal, and above all, the acorns. She
+      could see that her problem was not going to be one of difficulty in
+      securing sufficient material for her book; it would be how to find time to
+      gather all these things, and put them through the various processes and
+      combinations necessary to make edible dishes from I them. It would mean a
+      long summer of interesting and absorbing I work for her and for Katy. Much
+      of it could not be done until the I summer was far advanced and the seeds
+      and the berries were I ripe. She could rely on Donald to help her search
+      for the material. With only herself and Katy in the family they could give
+      much of their time to the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where Katy will rebel,&rdquo; said Linda to herself, &ldquo;is when it comes to
+      gathering sufficient seeds and parching them to make these meal and mush
+      dishes. She will call it 'fiddlin' business.' She shall be propitiated
+      with a new dress and a beautiful bonnet, and she shall go with me
+      frequently to the fields. The old dear loves to ride. First thing I do
+      I'll call at the bank again and have our affairs properly straightened and
+      settled there in the light of the letter Daddy left me. Then I shall have
+      money to get all the furniture and the rugs and things we truly need. I'll
+      repaint the kitchen and get Katy some new cooking utensils to gladden her
+      soul. And Saturday I must make my trip with Donald account for something
+      worth while on the book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All these plans were feasible. What Linda had to do was to accomplish
+      them, and this she proceeded to do in a swift and businesslike manner. She
+      soon reached the place where the whole house with the exception of
+      Eileen's suite had been gone over, freshened and refurnished to her
+      liking. The guest-room furniture had been moved to her rejuvenated room.
+      On the strength of her I returns from the book she had disposed of her
+      furniture and was finding much girlish delight in occupying a beautiful
+      room, daintily decorated, comfortably furnished with pieces of her own
+      selection. As she and Katy stood looking over their work when everything
+      was ready for her first night of occupancy Katy had said to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's jist right and proper, lambie; it's jist the way it ought to be; and
+      now say the word and let me clean out Eileen's suate and get it ready for
+      Miss Marian, so if she would drop down unexpected she would find we was
+      good as our word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what am I to do with the stuff?&rdquo; inquired Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy, my dear,&rdquo; said Linda with a dry laugh, &ldquo;you'll think I am foolish,
+      but I have the queerest feeling concerning those things. I can't feel that
+      Eileen has done with them; I can't feel that she will never want them
+      again; I can't feel that they should go to some second-hand basement. Pack
+      all of her clothing that you can manage in her trunk and put it in the
+      garret, and what the trunk won't hold pack in a tight box and put that in
+      the garret also. She hasn't written me a line; she has sent me no address;
+      I don't know what to do; but, as I have said before, I am going to save
+      the things at least a year and see whether some day Eileen won't think of
+      something she wants to do with them. Clean the rooms and I will order
+      Marian's things sent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      According to these arrangements it was only a few days until Linda wrote
+      Marian that her room was ready for her and that any time she desired to
+      come and take possession she could test the lovingness of the welcome that
+      awaited her by becoming intimately acquainted with it. Marian answered the
+      letter immediately. She said that she was planning to come very soon to
+      test that welcome. She longed for the quiet of the valley, for its cool,
+      clean, wild air. She was very tired; she needed rest. She thought she
+      would love the new home they were offering her. Then came two amazing
+      paragraphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day Dana and I went into one of the big cafes in the city to
+      treat ourselves to a taste of the entertainment with which the people of
+      wealth regale themselves. We had wandered in laughingly jesting about what
+      we should order, and ran into Eileen in the company of her aunt and uncle
+      and a very flashy and loudly dressed young man, evidently a new suitor of
+      Eileen's. I don't think Eileen wanted to introduce us, and yet she acted
+      like a person ravenous for news of her home and friends. She did introduce
+      us, and immediately her ponderous uncle took possession of us. It seems
+      that the man is a brother of Eileen's mother. Linda, he is big and gross,
+      he is everything that a man of nice perceptions would not be, but he does
+      love Eileen. He is trying conscientiously to please her. His wife is the
+      kind of person who would marry that kind of man and think everything he
+      said and did was right. And the suitor, my dear, was the kind of man who
+      could endure that kind of people. Eileen was almost, if not quite, the
+      loveliest thing I ever have seen. She was plain; she was simple; but it
+      was the costly simplicity of extravagance. Ye gods! but she had pearls of
+      the size she had always wanted. She tried with all her might to be
+      herself, but she knows me well enough to know what I would think and what
+      I would write to you concerning the conditions under which I met her. We
+      were simply forced to lunch with them. We could only nibble at the too
+      rich, too highly seasoned food set before us. And I noticed that Eileen
+      nibbled also. She is not going to grow fat and waddle and redden her nose,
+      but, my dear, back deep in her eyes and in the curve of her lips and in
+      the tone of her voice there were such disappointment and discontent as I
+      never have seen in any woman. She could not suppress them; she could not
+      conceal them. There was nothing on earth she could do but sit quietly and
+      endure. They delivered us at our respective offices, leaving both of us
+      dates on which to visit them, but neither of us intends to call on them.
+      Eileen's face was a tragedy when her uncle insisted on making the
+      arrangements. I can at least spare her that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, my dear, life is growing so full and my time is so taken with my
+      work at the office and with my widening friendships with Dana and her
+      friends and with Mr. Snow, that I really feel I have not time to go
+      farther with our anonymous correspondence. It is all I can do to find time
+      to write you letters such as the one I am writing I have done my best to
+      play up to what you expected of me and I think I have succeeded in fooling
+      you quite as much as you have felt that you were fooling me. But, Linda
+      dear, I want you always to know that I appreciate the spirit in which you
+      began this thing. I know why you did it and I shall always love you a
+      trifle more for your thought of me and your effort to tide over the very
+      dark days you knew I would be facing in San Francisco. I think, dear
+      friend of mine, that I have had my share of dark days. I think there is
+      very beautiful sunlight ahead for me. And by and by I hope to come into
+      happiness that maybe is even more than my share. I am coming to see you
+      soon and then I will tell you all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was more of the letter, but at that point Linda made one headlong
+      rush for the Bear Cat. She took the curve on two wheels and almost ran
+      into the mountain face behind the garage before she could slow down. Then
+      she set the Cat screaming wildly for Peter. As he came up to the car she
+      leaned toward him, shaking with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;have you opened that packet of letters yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;I have not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then give them to me quickly, Peter,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter rushed into the garage and brought out the packet. Linda caught it
+      in both hands and dropped it in her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, thank God,&rdquo; she said devoutly. &ldquo;And, Peter, the joke's on me.
+      Marian knew I was writing those letters all the time and she just
+      pretended that she cared for them to make the game interesting for me. And
+      when she had so many friends and so much to do, she hadn't time for them
+      any longer; then she pretended that she was getting awfully in earnest in
+      order to stop me, and she did stop me all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda's face was a small panorama of conflicting emotions as she appealed
+      to Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said in a quivering voice, &ldquo;you can testify that she stopped
+      me properly, can't you, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter tried to smile. He was older than Linda, and he was thinking
+      swiftly, intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, kid,&rdquo; he said with utmost corroboration, &ldquo;yes, kid, she stopped you,
+      but I can't see that it was necessary literally to scare the life out of
+      you till she had you at the point where you were thinking of taking off
+      from a mountain or into the sea. Did you really mean that, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda relaxed suddenly. She sank back into the deeply padded seat of the
+      Bear Cat. A look of fright and entreaty swept into her dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Peter, I did mean it,&rdquo; she said with finality. &ldquo;I couldn't have
+      lived if I had hurt Marian irreparably. She has been hurt so much already.
+      And, Peter, it was awfully nice of you to wait about reading these
+      letters. Even if she only did it for a joke, I think Marian would rather
+      that you had not read them. Now I'll go back home and begin to work in
+      earnest on the head piece of 'How to Grow Good Citizens.' And I quite
+      agree with you, Peter, that the oath of allegiance, citizenship, and the
+      title to a piece of real estate are the prime requisites. People have no
+      business comma to our country to earn money that they intend to carry away
+      to invest in the development and the strengthening of some other country
+      that may some day be our worst enemy. I have not found out yet how to say
+      it in a four-by-twelve-inch strip, but by the time I have read the article
+      aloud to my skylight along about ten tonight I'll get an inspiration; I am
+      sure I shall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you will,&rdquo; said Peter; &ldquo;but don't worry about it, dear; don't
+      lose sleep. Take things slower. Give time for a little more flesh to grow
+      on your bones. And don't forget that while you're helping Donald to keep
+      at the head of his classes it's your first job to keep at the head of your
+      own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;How is the dream coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beautifully,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;One of these days you're going to come rushing
+      around the boulders and down the side of the building to find all this
+      debris cleared away and the place for a lawn leveled. I am fighting down
+      every possible avenue of expertise on the building in the effort to save
+      money to make the brook run and the road wind where you have indicated
+      that you want them to follow you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked at Peter while a queer, reflective light gathered in her
+      eyes. At last she said soberly: &ldquo;Well, I don't know, Peter, that you
+      should make them so very personal to me as all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked Peter casually. &ldquo;Since there is no one else, why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda released the clutch and started the car. She backed in front of the
+      garage and turned. She was still thinking deeply as she stopped. Once
+      again she extended a hand to Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you a thousand times for not reading these letters, Peter,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;I can't express how awfully fine I think it is of you. And if it's
+      all right with you, perhaps there's not any real reason why you should not
+      run that brook and drive that road the way I think they should go.
+      Somebody is going to design them. Why shouldn't I, if it pleases you to
+      have me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It pleases me very greatly,&rdquo; said Peter&mdash;&ldquo;more than anything else I
+      can think of in all the world at this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he did a thing that he had done once or twice before. He bent
+      back Linda's fingers and left another kiss in the palm of her hand, and
+      then he closed her fingers very tightly over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI. The End of Donald's Contest
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The middle of the week Linda had told Katy that she intended stocking up
+      the Bear Cat for three and that she would take her along on the next
+      Saturday's trip to her canyon kitchen. It was a day upon which she had
+      planned to gather greens, vegetables, and roots, and prepare a dinner
+      wholly from the wild. She was fairly sure exactly where in nature she
+      would find the materials she wanted, but she knew that the search would be
+      long and tiring. It would be jolly to have Katy to help her prepare the
+      lunch. It would please Katy immensely to be taken; and the original things
+      she said in her quaint Irish brogue greatly amused Donald. The arrangement
+      had been understood among them for some time, so they all started on their
+      journey filled with happy expectations. They closed the house and the
+      garage carefully. Linda looked over the equipment of the Bear Cat minutely
+      making sure that her field axe, saw, knives, and her field glasses were in
+      place. Because more food than usual was to be prepared in the kitchen they
+      took along a nest of cooking vessels and a broiler. They found Donald
+      waiting before either of them were ready, and in great glee, with much
+      laughing and many jests they rolled down the valley in the early morning.
+      They drove to the kitchen, spread their blankets, set up their table, and
+      arranged the small circular opening for their day's occupancy. While Katy
+      and Linda were busy with these affairs Donald took the axe and collected a
+      big heap of wood. Then they left Katy to burn the wood and have a deep bed
+      of coals ready while they started out to collect from the canyon walls,
+      the foot of the mountains, and the near-by desert the materials they would
+      use for their dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just where the desert began to climb the mountain Linda had for a long
+      time watched a big bed of amole. Donald used the shovel, she the hatchet,
+      and soon they had brought to the surface such a quantity that Donald
+      protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have two uses for them today,&rdquo; explained Linda. &ldquo;They must serve
+      for potatoes and they have to furnish our meat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I get you,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;I have always been crazy to try that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he began to dig again enthusiastically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I'll tell you what I think we had better do,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;We will
+      skirmish around this side of the mountain and find a very nice tender
+      yucca shoot; and then we'll take these back to Katy and let her bury them
+      in the ashes and keep up the fire while we forage for the remainder of our
+      wild Indian feast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently they found a yucca head that Linda said was exactly right, a
+      delicate pink, thicker than her wrist and two feet in length. With this
+      and the amole they ran back to Katy. She knew how to prepare the amole for
+      roasting. Linda gave her a few words of instruction concerning the yucca.
+      Then from the interior of the Bear Cat she drew a tightly rolled section
+      of wire window screening. Just where a deep, wide pool narrowed at a rocky
+      defile they sank the screening, jammed it well to the bottom, fastened it
+      tight at the sides, and against the current side of it they threw leaves,
+      grass, chunks of moss, any debris they could gather that would make a
+      temporary dam. Then, standing on one side with her field knife, Linda
+      began to slice the remainder of the amole very thin and to throw it over
+      the surface of the pool. On the other, Donald pounded the big, juicy bulbs
+      to pulp and scattered it broadcast over the water. Linda instructed Katy
+      to sit on the bank with a long-handled landing net and whenever a trout
+      arose, to snatch it out as speedily as possible, being careful not to take
+      more than they would require.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the two youngsters, exhilarated with youth, with living, with the joy
+      of friendship, with the lure of the valley, with the heady intoxication of
+      the salt breeze and the gold of the sunshine, climbed into the Bear Cat
+      and went rolling through the canyon and out to the valley on the far side.
+      Here they gathered the tenderest heart shoots of the lupin until Linda
+      said they had enough. Then to a particular spot that she knew on the
+      desert they hurried for the enlarged stems of the desert trumpet which was
+      to serve that day for an appetizer in the stead of pickles. Here, too,
+      they filled a bucket from the heart of a big Bisnaga cactus as a basis for
+      their drink. Among Katherine O'Donovan's cooking utensils there was a box
+      of delicious cactus candy made from the preserved and sun-dried heart meat
+      of this same fruit which was to serve as their confection. On the way back
+      they stopped at the bridge and gathered cress for their salad. When they
+      returned to Katy she had five fine trout lying in the shade, and with more
+      experienced eyes and a more skillful hand Linda in a few minutes doubled
+      this number. Then they tore out the dam, rinsed the screen and spread it
+      over a rock to dry. While Donald scaled the fish Linda put the greens to
+      cook, prepared the salad and set the table. Once, as he worked under her
+      supervision, Linda said to Donald: &ldquo;Now about bread, kid&mdash;there's not
+      going to be any bread, because the Indians did not have it when they lived
+      the way we are living today. When you reach the place where your left hand
+      feels empty without a piece of bread in it, just butter up another amole
+      and try it. It will serve the same purpose as bread, and be much better
+      for the inner man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would let me skin these fish,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;I could do it much
+      faster and make a better job of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you shouldn't skin them; you want the skin to hold the meat together
+      when it begins to cook tender; and you should be able to peel it off and
+      discard it if it burns or gets smoky in the cooking. It's a great
+      concession to clean them as we do. The Indians cooked them in the
+      altogether and ate the meat from the bones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh my tummy!&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;I always thought there was some dark secret
+      about the Indians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sat on a rock opposite him and clasped her hands around her knees.
+      She looked at him meditatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Suppose you revise that opinion. Our North American
+      Indians in their original state were as fine as any peoples that ever have
+      been discovered the round of the globe. My grandfather came into intimate
+      contact with them in the early days, and he said that their religion,
+      embracing the idea of a great spirit to whom they were responsible for
+      their deeds here, and a happy hunting ground to which they went as a
+      reward for decent living, was as fine as any religion that ever has been
+      practiced by people of any nation. Immorality was unknown among them.
+      Family ties were formed and they were binding They loved their children
+      and reared them carefully. They were hardy and healthful. Until the
+      introduction of whiskey and what we are pleased to term civilized methods
+      of living, very few of them died save from war or old age. They were free;
+      they were happy. The moping, lazy, diseased creature that you find
+      sleeping in the sun around the reservations is a product of our
+      civilization. Nice commentary on civilization, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For heaven's sake, Linda,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;don't start any big
+      brainstorming trains of thought today! Grant me repose. I have overworked
+      my brain for a few months past until I know only one thing for certain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then, me lad, this is the time for the big secret,&rdquo; said Linda.
+      &ldquo;I just happened to be in the assembly room on some business of my own
+      last Thursday afternoon when my sessions were over, and I overheard your
+      professor in trigonometry tell a marl I did not know, who seemed to be a
+      friend visiting him, that the son of Judge Whiting was doing the finest
+      work that ever had been done in any of the Los Angeles high schools, and
+      that undoubtedly you were going to graduate with higher honors than any
+      other boy ever had from that school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald sat thinking this over. He absently lifted an elbow and wiped the
+      tiny scales from his face with his shirt sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young woman,&rdquo; he said solemnly, &ldquo;them things what you're saying, are they
+      'cross your heart, honest to goodness, so help you,' truth, or are they
+      the fruit of a perfervid imagination?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda shook her head vigorously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;De but', kid,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;de gospel but'. You have the Jap going
+      properly. He can't stop you now. You have fought your good fight, and you
+      have practically won it. All you have to do is to carry on till the middle
+      of June, and you're It.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish Dad knew,&rdquo; said Donald in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Judge does know,&rdquo; said Linda heartily. &ldquo;It wasn't fifteen minutes
+      after I heard that till I had him on the telephone repeating it as fast as
+      I could repeat. Come to think of it, haven't you noticed a particularly
+      cocky set of his head and the corksome lightness about his heels during
+      the past few days?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, he has been happy about something!&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;And I noticed
+      that Louise and the Mater were sort of cheery and making a specialty of
+      the only son and brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure, brother, sure,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Hurry up and scrape those fish and
+      let's scamper down the canyon merely for the joy of flying with wings on
+      our feet. You're It, young man, just It!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald was sitting on a boulder. On another in front of him he was
+      operating on the trout. His hands were soiled; his hair was tousled; he
+      was fairly well decorated with fine scales. He looked at Linda
+      appealingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I 'It' with you, Linda?&rdquo; he asked soberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure you are,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;You're the best friend I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you write to me when I go to college this fall?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you couldn't keep me from it,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I'll have so many things
+      to tell you. And when your first vacation comes we'll make it a hummer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Dad won't let me come home for my holidays except for the
+      midsummer ones,&rdquo; said Donald soberly. &ldquo;It would take most of the time
+      there would be of the short holidays to travel back and forth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will have to go very carefully about getting a start,&rdquo; said Linda,
+      &ldquo;and you should be careful to find the right kind of friends at the very
+      start. Christmas and Thanksgiving boxes can always be sent on time to
+      reach you. It won't be so long for you as for us; and by the time you have
+      Oka Sayye beaten to ravelings you will have such a 'perfect habit' that
+      you will start right in with the beating idea. That should keep you fairly
+      busy, because most of the men you come up against will be beaters
+      themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Donald. &ldquo;Are you going to start me to college with the
+      idea that I have to keep up this beating habit? If I were to be one of
+      fifty or a hundred, wouldn't that be good enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;if you will be satisfied with having me like
+      fifty or a hundred as well as I do you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, damn!&rdquo; said Donald angrily. &ldquo;Do I have to keep up this top-crust
+      business all my days?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked at him with a queer smile on her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not unless you want to, Donald,&rdquo; she said quietly; &ldquo;not unless you think
+      you would rather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald scraped a fish vigorously. Linda sat watching him. Presently the
+      tense lines around his eyes vanished. A faint red crept up his neck and
+      settled on his left cheek bone. A confused grin slowly widened his
+      naturally wide mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it's me for the top crust,&rdquo; he said conclusively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it's me for you,&rdquo; answered Linda in equally as matter-of-fact tones;
+      and rising, she gathered up the fish and carried them to Katy while Donald
+      knelt beside the chilly stream and scoured his face and hands, after which
+      Linda whipped away the scales with an improvised brush of willow twigs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such a wonderful day; it was such an unusual and delicious feast.
+      Plump brook trout, fresh from icy water, delicately broiled over searing
+      wood coals, are the finest of food. Through the meal to the point where
+      Donald lay on his back at the far curve of the canyon wall, nibbling a
+      piece of cactus candy, everything had been perfect. Nine months would be a
+      long time to be gone, but Linda would wait for him, and she would write to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his head on his elbow and called across to her: &ldquo;Say, Linda, how
+      often will you write to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda answered promptly: &ldquo;Every Saturday night. Saturday is our day. I'll
+      tell you what has happened all the week. I'll tell you specially what a
+      darned unprofitable day Saturday is when you're three thousand miles
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bending over the canyon fireplace, her face red with heat and exertion,
+      Katherine O'Donovan caught up her poker and beat up the fire until the
+      ashes flew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy, Katy, easy,&rdquo; cautioned Linda. &ldquo;We may want to bury those coals and
+      resurrect them to warm up what is left for supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll do no such thing,&rdquo; said Katy promptly. &ldquo;What remains goes to feed
+      the fish. Next time it's hungry ye are, we're goin' to hit it straight to
+      Lilac Valley and fill ourselves with God's own bread and beefsteak and
+      paraties. Don't ye think we're goin' to be atin' these haythen messes
+      twice in one day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To herself she was saying: &ldquo;The sooner I get you home to Pater Morrison,
+      missy, the better I'll be satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once she stood erect, her hands at her belt, her elbows widespread, and
+      with narrowed eyes watched the youngsters. Her lips were closed so tightly
+      they wrinkled curiously as she turned back to the fireplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nayther one of them fool kids has come to yet,&rdquo; she said to herself, &ldquo;and
+      a mighty good thing it is that they haven't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda was looking speculatively at Donald as he lay stretched on the
+      Indian blanket at the base of the cliff. And then, because she was for
+      ever busy with Nature, her eyes strayed above him up the side of the
+      cliff, noting the vegetation, the scarred rocks, the sheer beauty of the
+      canyon wall until they reached the top. Then, for no reason at all, she
+      sat looking steadily at a huge boulder overhanging the edge of the cliff,
+      and she was wondering how many ages it had hung there and how many more it
+      would hang, poised almost in air, when a tiny pebble at its base loosened
+      and came rattling and bounding down the canyon face. Every nerve in Linda
+      tensed. She opened her mouth, but not a sound came. For a breathless
+      second she was paralyzed. Then she shrieked wildly: &ldquo;Donald, Donald, roll
+      under the ledge! Quick, quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back, Katy, back!&rdquo; she screamed. &ldquo;That boulder is loose; it's coming
+      down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For months Donald Whiting had obeyed Linda implicitly and instantly. He
+      had moved with almost invisible speed at her warning many times before.
+      Sometimes it had been a venomous snake, sometimes a yucca bayonet,
+      sometimes poison vines, again unsafe footing&mdash;in each case instant
+      obedience had been the rule. He did hot &ldquo;question why&rdquo; at her warning; he
+      instantly did as he was told. He, too, had noticed the falling pebble.
+      With all the agility of which he was capable he rolled under the narrow
+      projecting ledge above him. Katherine O'Donovan was a good soldier also.
+      She whirled and ran to the roadway. She had barely reached it when, with a
+      grinding crash, down came the huge boulder, carrying bushes, smaller
+      rocks, sand, and debris with it. On account of its weight it fell
+      straight, struck heavily, and buried itself in the earth exactly on the
+      spot upon which Donald had been lying. Linda raised terrified eyes to the
+      top of the wall. For one instant a dark object peered over it and then
+      drew back. Without thought for herself Linda rushed to the boulder, and
+      kneeling, tried to see back of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donald!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;Donald, are you all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess I am, unless it hit one foot pretty hard. Feels fast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you get out?&rdquo; she cried, beginning to tear with her hands at the
+      stone and the bushes where she thought his head would be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm fast; but I'm all right,&rdquo; he panted. &ldquo;Why the devil did that thing
+      hang there for ages, and then come down on me today?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, why did it?&rdquo; gasped Linda. &ldquo;Donald, I must leave you a minute. I've
+      got to know if I saw a head peer over just as that stone came down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be careful what you do!&rdquo; he cried after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda sprang to her feet and rushed to the car. She caught out the field
+      classes and threw the strap over her head as she raced to the far side of
+      the fireplace where the walls were not so sheer. Katherine O'Donovan
+      promptly seized the axe, caught its carrying strap lying beside it, thrust
+      the handle through, swung it over her own head, dropped it between her
+      shoulders, and ripping off her dress skirt she started up the cliff after
+      Linda. Linda was climbing so swiftly and so absorbedly that she reached
+      the top before she heard a sound behind her. Then she turned with a white
+      face, and her mouth dropped open as she saw Katy three fourths of the way
+      up the cliff. For one second she was again stiff with terror, then,
+      feeling she could do nothing, she stepped back out of sight and waited a
+      second until Katy's red head and redder face appeared over the edge.
+      Realizing that her authority was of no avail, that Katy would follow her
+      no matter where she went or what she did, and with no time to argue, Linda
+      simply called to her encouragingly: &ldquo;Follow where I go; take your time;
+      hang tight, old dear, it's dangerous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She started around the side of the mountain, heading almost straight
+      upward, traveling as swiftly and as noiselessly as possible. Over big
+      boulders, on precarious footing, clinging to bushes, they made their way
+      until they reached a place that seemed to be sheer above them; certainly
+      it was for hundreds of feet below On a point of rock screened by
+      overhanging bushes Linda paused until Katy overtook her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are about stalled,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;Find a good footing and stay where
+      you are. I'm going to climb out on these bushes and see if I can get a
+      view of the mountain side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Advancing a few yards, Linda braced herself, drew around her glasses, and
+      began searching the side of the mountain opposite her and below as far as
+      she could range with the glasses. At last she gave up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must have gone the other way,&rdquo; she said to Katy. &ldquo;I'll crawl back to you.
+      We'll go after help and get Donald out. There will be time enough to
+      examine the cliff afterward; but I am just as sure now as I will be when
+      it is examined that that stone was purposely loosened to a degree where a
+      slight push would drop it. As Donald says, there's no reason why it should
+      hang there for centuries and fall on him today. Shut your eyes, old dear,
+      and back up. We must go to Donald. I rather think it's on one of his feet
+      from what he said. Let me take one more good look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that minute from high on the mountain above them a shower of sand and
+      pebbles came rattling down. Linda gave Katy one terrified look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;He's coming down right above us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just how Linda recrossed the bushes and reached Katy she did not know. She
+      motioned for her to make her way back as they had come. Katy planted her
+      feet squarely upon the rock. Her lower jaw shot out; her eyes were aflame.
+      She stood perfectly still with the exception of motioning Linda to crowd
+      back under the bushes, and again Linda realized that she had no authority;
+      as she had done from childhood when Katy was in earnest, Linda obeyed her.
+      She had barely reached the overhanging bushes, crouched under them, and
+      straightened herself, when a small avalanche came showering down, and a
+      minute later a pair of feet were level with her head. Then screened by the
+      bushes, she could have reached out and touched Oka Sayye. As his feet
+      found a solid resting place on the ledge on which Linda and Katy stood,
+      and while he was still clinging to the bushes, Katherine O'Donovan
+      advanced upon him. He had felt that his feet were firm, let go his hold,
+      and turned, when he faced the infuriated Irishwoman. She had pulled the
+      strap from around her neck, slipped the axe from it, and with a strong
+      thrust she planted the head of it against Oka Sayye's chest so hard that
+      she almost fell forward. The Jap plunged backward among the bushes, the
+      roots of which had supported Linda while she used the glasses. Then he
+      fell, sliding among them, snatching wildly. Linda gripped the overhanging
+      growth behind which she had been screened, and leaned forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a hold; he is coming back up, Katy!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy took another step forward. She looked over the cliff down an
+      appalling depth of hundreds of feet. Deliberately she raised the axe,
+      circled it round her head and brought it down upon that particular branch
+      to which Oka Sayye was clinging. She cut it through, and the axe rang upon
+      the stone wall behind it. As she swayed forward Linda reached out, gripped
+      Katy and pulled her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get him?&rdquo; she asked tersely, as if she were speaking of a rat or a
+      rattlesnake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy sank back limply against the wall. Linda slowly turned her around,
+      and as she faced the rock, &ldquo;Squeeze tight against it shut your eyes, and
+      keep a stiff upper lip,&rdquo; she cautioned. &ldquo;I'm going to work around you; I
+      want to be ahead of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She squeezed past Katy, secured the axe and hung it round her own neck.
+      She cautioned Katy to keep her eyes shut and follow where she led her,
+      then they started on their way back. Linda did not attempt to descend the
+      sheer wall by which they had climbed, but making a detour she went lower,
+      and in a very short time they were back in the kitchen. Linda rushed to
+      the boulder and knelt again, but she could get no response to her
+      questions. Evidently Donald's foot was caught and he was unconscious from
+      the pain. Squeezing as close as she could, she thrust her arm under the
+      ledge until she could feel his head. Then she went to the other side, and
+      there she could see that his right foot was pinned under the rock. She
+      looked at Katy reassuringly, then she took off the axe and handed it to
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's alive,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Can't kill a healthy youngster to have a crushed
+      foot. You stand guard until I take the Bear Cat and bring help. It's not
+      far to where I can find people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At full speed Linda put the Cat through the stream and out of the canyon
+      until she reached cultivated land, where she found a man who would gather
+      other men and start to the rescue. She ran on until she found a house with
+      a telephone. There she called Judge Whiting, telling him to bring an
+      ambulance and a surgeon, giving him explicit directions as to where to
+      come, and assuring him that Donald could not possibly be seriously hurt.
+      She found time to urge, also, that before starting he set in motion any
+      precautions he had taken for Donald's protection. She told him where she
+      thought what remained of Oka Sayye could be found. And then, as naturally
+      and as methodically as she had done all the rest, she called Peter
+      Morrison and told him that she was in trouble and where he could find her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And because Peter had many miles less distance to travel than the others
+      she had summoned, he arrived first. He found Linda and Katy had burrowed
+      under the stone until they had made an opening into which the broken foot
+      might sink so that the pain of the pressure would be relieved. Before the
+      rock, with picks and shovels, half a dozen sympathetic farmers from
+      ranches and cultivated land at the mouth of the canyon were digging
+      furiously to make an opening undermining the boulder so that it could be
+      easily tipped forward. Donald was conscious and they had been passing
+      water to him and encouraging him with the report that his father and a
+      good surgeon would be there very soon. Katherine O'Donovan had crouched at
+      one side of the boulder, supporting the hurt foot. She was breathing
+      heavily and her usually red face was a ghastly green. Linda had helped her
+      to resume the skirt of her dress. At the other side of the rock the girl
+      was reaching to where she could touch Donald's head or reassuringly grip
+      the hand that he could extend to her. Peter seized Linda's axe and began
+      hewing at the earth and rock in order to help in the speedy removal of the
+      huge boulder. Soon Judge Whiting, accompanied by Doctor Fleming, the
+      city's greatest surgeon, came caring into the canyon and stopped on the
+      roadway when he saw the party. The Judge sprang from the car, leaped the
+      stream, and started toward them. In an effort to free his son before his
+      arrival, all the men braced themselves against the face of the cliff and
+      pushed with their combined strength. The boulder dropped forward into the
+      trench they had dug for it enough to allow Peter to crowd his body between
+      it and the cliff and lift Donald's head and shoulders. Linda instantly ran
+      around the boulder, pushed her way in, and carefully lifting Donald's
+      feet, she managed to work the lithe slenderness of her body through the
+      opening, so that they carried Donald out and laid him down in the open. He
+      was considerably dazed and shaken, cruelly hurt, but proved himself a game
+      youngster of the right mettle. He raised himself to a sitting posture,
+      managing a rather stiff-lipped smile for his father and Linda. The surgeon
+      instantly began cutting to reach the hurt foot, while Peter Morrison
+      supported the boy's head and shoulders on one side, his father on the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An exclamation of dismay broke from the surgeon's lips. He looked at Judge
+      Whiting and nodded slightly. The men immediately picked up Donald and
+      carried him to the ambulance. Katherine O'Donovan sat down suddenly and
+      buried her face in the skirt of her dress. Linda laid a reassuring hand on
+      her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't, Katy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Keep up your nerve; you're all right, old dear.
+      Donald's fine. That doesn't mean anything except that his foot is broken,
+      so he won't be able, and it won't be necessary for him, to endure the pain
+      of setting it in a cast without an anesthetic; and Doctor Fleming can work
+      much better where he has every convenience. It's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The surgeon climbed into the ambulance and they started on an emergency
+      run to the hospital. As the car turned and swept down the canyon, for no
+      reason that she could have explained, Linda began to shake until her teeth
+      clicked. Peter Morrison sprang back across the brook, and running to her
+      side, he put his arm around her and with one hand he pressed her head
+      against his shoulder, covering her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, Linda,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;steady. You know that he is all right.
+      It will only be a question of a short confinement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda made a brave effort to control herself. She leaned against Peter and
+      held out both her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm all right,&rdquo; she chattered. &ldquo;Give me a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge Whiting came to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am getting away immediately,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I must reach Louise and Mother
+      before they get word of this. Doctor Fleming will take care of Donald all
+      right. What happened, Linda? Can you tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda opened her lips and tried to speak, but she was too breathless, too
+      full of excitement, to be coherent. To her amazement Katherine O'Donovan
+      scrambled to her feet, lifted her head and faced the Judge. She pointed to
+      the fireplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was right there, busy with me cookie' utensils,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Miss Linda
+      was a-sittin, on that exact spot, they jist havin finished atin' some of
+      her haythen messes; and the lad was lyin, square where the boulder struck,
+      on the Indian blanket, atin' a pace of cactus candy. And jist one pebble
+      came rattlin' down, but Miss Linda happened to be lookin', and she scramed
+      to the b'y to be rollin' under where ye found him; so he gave a flop or
+      two, and it's well that he took his orders without waitin' to ask the
+      raison for them, for if he had, at the prisint minute he would be about as
+      thick as a shate of writing paper. The thing dropped clear and straight
+      and drove itself into the earth and stone below it, as ye see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katherine O'Donovan paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Judge. &ldquo;Anything else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Linda got to him and she made sure he had brathin' space and he
+      wasn't hurt bad, and then she told him he had got to stand it, because,
+      sittin' where she did, she faced the cliff and she thought she had seen
+      someone. She took the telescope and started climbin', and I took the axe
+      and I started climbin' after her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy broke down and emitted a weird Irish howl. Linda instantly braced
+      herself, threw her arms around Katy, and drew her head to her shoulder.
+      She looked at Judge Whiting and began to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can show you where she followed me, straight up the face of the canyon,
+      almost,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And she never had tried to climb a canyon side for a
+      yard, either, but she came up and over after me, like a cat. And up there
+      on a small ledge Oka Sayye came down directly above us. I couldn't be
+      mistaken. I saw him plainly. I know him by sight as well as I do any of
+      you. We heard the stones coming down before him, and we knew someone was
+      going to be on us who was desperate enough to kill. When he touched our
+      level and turned to follow the ledge we were on, I pushed him over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy shook off Linda's protecting arm and straightened suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, ye domned little fool, ye!&rdquo; she screamed. &ldquo;Ye never told a lie
+      before in all your days! Judge Whiting, I had the axe round me neck by the
+      climbin' strap, and I got it in me fingers when we heard the crature
+      comin', and against his chist I set it, and I gave him a shove that sint
+      him over. Like a cat he was a-clingin' and climbin', and when I saw him
+      comin' up on us with that awful face of his, I jist swung the axe like I
+      do when I'm rejoocin' a pace of eucalyptus to fireplace size, and whack! I
+      took the branch supportin' him, and a dome' good axe I spoiled din' it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy folded her arms, lifted her chin higher than it ever had been before,
+      and glared defiance at the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now go on,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and decide what ye'll do to me for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge reached over and took both Katherine O'Donovan's hands in a firm
+      grip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You brave woman!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If it lay in my power, I would give you the
+      Carnegie Medal. In any event I will see that you have a good bungalow with
+      plenty of shamrock on each side of your front path, and a fair income to
+      keep you comfortable when the rheumatic days are upon you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no over-feeder,&rdquo; said Katy proudly. &ldquo;I'm daily exercisin' me muscles
+      enough to kape them young. The rheumatism I'll not have. And nayther will
+      I have the house nor the income. I've saved me money; I've an income of me
+      own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as for the bungalow,&rdquo; interrupted Linda, &ldquo;Katherine, as I have
+      mentioned frequently before is my father, and my mother, and my whole
+      family, and her front door is mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; said Katy proudly. &ldquo;When these two fine people before you set up
+      their hearthstone, a-swapin' it I'll be, and carin' for their youngsters;
+      but, Judge, I would like a bit of the shamrock. Ye might be sendin' me a
+      start of that, if it would plase Your Honor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge Whiting looked intently at Katherine O'Donovan. And then, as if they
+      had been on the witness stand, he looked searchingly at Linda. But Linda
+      was too perturbed, too accustomed to Katy's extravagant nonsense even to
+      notice the purport of what she had said. Then the Judge turned his
+      attention to Peter Morrison and realized that at least one of the parties
+      to Katherine's proposed hearthstone had understood and heartily endorsed
+      her proposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will have to be going. The boy and his mother will need me,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I will see all of you later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he sprang across the brook and sent his car roaring down the canyon
+      after the ambulance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Katy sank to the ground. Linda looked at her as she buried her
+      face and began to wail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;hunt our belongings and pack them in the Bear
+      Cat the best you can. Excuse us for a few minutes. We must act this out of
+      our systems.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gravely she sat down beside Katy, laid her head on her shoulder, and began
+      to cry very nearly as energetically as Katy herself. And that was the one
+      thing which was most effective in restoring Katy's nerves. Tears were such
+      an unaccustomed thing with Linda that Katy controlled herself speedily so
+      that she might be better able to serve the girl. In a few minutes Katy had
+      reduced her emotions to a dry sniffle. She lifted her head, groped for her
+      pocket, and being unable to find it for the very good reason that she was
+      sitting upon it, she used her gingham hem as a handkerchief. Once she had
+      risen to the physical effort of wiping her eyes, she regained calmness
+      rapidly. The last time she applied the hem she looked at Peter, but
+      addressed the Almighty in resigned tones: &ldquo;There, Lord, I guess that will
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes she was searching the kitchen, making sure that no
+      knives, spoons, or cooking utensils were lost. Missing her support, Linda
+      sat erect and endeavored to follow Katy's example. Her eyes met Peter's
+      and when she saw that his shoulders were shaking, a dry, hysterical laugh
+      possessed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Katy,&rdquo; she panted, &ldquo;that WILL do, and remember the tears we are
+      shedding are over Donald's broken foot, and because this may interfere
+      with his work, though I don't think it will for long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I cry,&rdquo; said Katy tersely, &ldquo;I cry because I feel like it. I wasn't
+      wapin' over the snake that'd plan a death like that for anyone&rdquo;&mdash;Katy
+      waved toward the boulder&mdash;&ldquo;and nayther was I wastin' me tears over
+      the fut of a kid bein' jommed up a trifle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, Katy,&rdquo; asked Linda tremulously, &ldquo;why were you crying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there's times,&rdquo; said Katy judicially, &ldquo;when me spirits tell me I
+      would be the better for lettin' off a wee bit of stame, and one of them
+      times havin' arrived, I jist bowed me head to it, as is in accordance with
+      the makings of me. Far be it from me to be flyin' in the face of
+      Providence and sayin' I won't, when all me interior disposhion says to me:
+      'Ye will!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Linda,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;can you tell us why you were crying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I think,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;that Katy has explained sufficiently for both
+      of us. It was merely time for us to howl after such fearful nerve strain,
+      so we howled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's all right,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Now I'll tell you something. If you
+      had gone away in that ambulance to an anesthetic and an operation, no
+      wildcat that ever indulged in a hunger hunt through this canyon could have
+      put up a howl equal to the one that I would have sent up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;there is nothing funny about this; it's no tame for
+      jest. But do men have nerves? Would you really?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I would,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you wouldn't,&rdquo; contradicted Linda. &ldquo;You just say that because you
+      want to comfort us for having broken down, instead of trying to tease us
+      as most men would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would, too!&rdquo; said Katy, starting to the Bear Cat with a load of
+      utensils. &ldquo;Now come on; let's go home and be gettin' craned up and ready
+      for what's goin' to happen to us. Will they be jailin' us, belike, Miss
+      Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda looked at Peter questioningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;It is very probable that the matter never will be
+      mentioned to you again, unless Judge Whiting gets hold of some clue that
+      he wishes to use as an argument against matured Japs being admitted in the
+      same high-school classes with our clean, decent, young Americans. They
+      stopped that in the grades several years ago, I am told.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before they could start back to Lilac Valley a car stopped in the canyon
+      and a couple of men introducing themselves as having come from Judge
+      Whiting interviewed Katy and Linda exhaustively. Then Linda pointed out to
+      them an easier but much longer route by which they might reach the top of
+      the canyon to examine the spot from which the boulder had fallen. She
+      showed them where she and Katy had ascended, and told them where they
+      would be likely to find Oka Sayye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it came to a question of really starting, Linda looked with appealing
+      eyes at Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;could we fix it any way so you could drive Katy and me
+      home? For the first time since I have begun driving this spring I don't
+      feel equal to keeping the road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;I'll take your car to the nearest farmhouse and
+      leave it, then I'll take you and Katy in my car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Late that evening Judge Whiting came to Lilac Valley with his wife and
+      daughter to tell Linda that the top of the cliff gave every evidence of
+      the stone having been loosened previously, so that a slight impetus would
+      send it crashing down at the time when Donald lay in his accustomed place
+      directly in the line of its fall. His detectives had found the location of
+      the encounter and they had gone to the bottom of the cliff, a thousand
+      feet below, but they had not been able to find any trace of Oka Sayye.
+      Somewhere in waiting there had been confederates who had removed what
+      remained of him. On the way home Mrs. Whiting said to her husband: &ldquo;Judge,
+      are you very sure that what the cook said to you this afternoon about Miss
+      Strong and Mr. Morrison is true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am only sure of its truth so far as he is concerned,&rdquo; replied the
+      Judge. &ldquo;What he thought about Linda was evident. I am very sorry. She is a
+      mighty fine girl and I think Donald is very much interested in her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think so, too,&rdquo; said Donald's mother. &ldquo;Interested; but he has not
+      even a case of first love. He is interested for the same reason you would
+      be or I would be, because she is intellectually so stimulating. And you
+      have to take into consideration the fact that in two or three years more
+      she will be ready for marriage and a home of her own, and Donald will
+      still be in school with his worldly experience and his business education
+      not yet begun. The best thing that can happen to Donald is just to let his
+      infatuation for her die a natural death, with the quiet assistance of his
+      family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge's face reddened slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I would like mighty well to have her in the family,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;She's a corking fine girl. She would make a fine mother of fine men. I
+      haven't a doubt but that with the power of his personality and the power
+      of his pen and the lure of propinquity, Peter Morrison will win her, but I
+      hate it. It's the best chance the boy ever will have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Louise spoke up softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donald hasn't any chance, Dad,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;and he never did have.
+      I have met Peter Morrison myself and I would be only too glad if I thought
+      he was devoted to me. I'll grant that Linda Strong is a fine girl, but
+      when she wakes up to the worth of Peter Morrison and to a realization of
+      what other women would be glad to be to him, she will merely reach out and
+      lay possessive hands upon what already belongs to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious thing that such occurrences as the death of Oka Sayye and
+      the injury to Donald could take place and no one know about them. Yet the
+      papers were silent on the subject and so were the courts. Linda and Katy
+      were fully protected. The confederates of Oka Sayye for reasons of their
+      own preferred to keep very quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By Monday Donald, with his foot in a plaster cast, was on a side veranda
+      of his home with a table beside him strewn with books and papers. An
+      agreement had been made that his professors should call and hear his
+      recitations for a few days until by the aid of a crutch and a cane he
+      could resume his place in school. Linda went to visit him exactly as she
+      would have gone to see Marian in like circumstances. She succeeded in
+      making all of the Whiting family her very devoted friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, after he had been hobbling about for over a week, Linda and
+      Peter called to spend the evening, and a very gay and enjoyable evening it
+      was. And yet when it was over and they had gone away together Donald
+      appeared worried and deeply thoughtful. When his mother came to his room
+      to see if the foot was unduly painful or there was anything she could do
+      to make him more comfortable, he looked at her belligerently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don't like Peter Morrison being so much with my
+      girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Whiting stood very still. She thought very fast. Should she postpone
+      it or should she let the boy take all of his hurts together? Her heart
+      ached for him and yet she felt that she knew what life had in store for
+      him concerning Linda. So she sat on the edge of the bed and began to talk
+      quietly, plainly, reasonably. She tried to explain nature and human nature
+      and what she thought the laws of probability were in the case. Donald lay
+      silent. He said nothing until she had finished all she had to say, and
+      then he announced triumphantly: &ldquo;You're all wrong. That is what would
+      happen if Linda were a girl like any of the other girls in her class, or
+      like Louise. But she has promised that she would write to me every
+      Saturday night and she has said that she thinks more of me than of any of
+      the other boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donald dear,&rdquo; said Mrs. Whiting, &ldquo;you're not 'in love' with Linda
+      yourself, and neither is she with you. By the time you are ready to marry
+      and settle down in life, Linda in all probability will be married and be
+      the mother of two or three babies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, like fun she will,&rdquo; said Donald roughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you asked her whether she loves you?&rdquo; inquired Mrs. Whiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that 'love' business,&rdquo; said Donald, &ldquo;it makes me tired! Linda and I
+      never did any mushing around. We had things of some importance to talk
+      about and to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A bit of pain in Mrs. Whiting's heart eased. It was difficult to keep her
+      lips quiet and even.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't asked her to marry you, then?&rdquo; she said soberly. &ldquo;Oh good
+      Lord,&rdquo; cried Donald, &ldquo;'marry!' How could I marry anyone when I haven't
+      even graduated from high school and with college and all that to come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I have been trying to tell you,&rdquo; said his mother evenly. &ldquo;I
+      don't believe you have been thinking about marriage and I am absolutely
+      certain that Linda has not, but she is going to be made to think about it
+      long before you will be in such financial position that you dare. That is
+      the reason I am suggesting that you think about these things seriously and
+      question yourself as to whether you would be doing the fair thing by Linda
+      if you tried to tie her up in an arrangement that would ask her to wait
+      six or eight years yet before you would be ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can get around faster than that,&rdquo; said Donald belligerently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you can,&rdquo; agreed his mother. &ldquo;I made that estimate fully a year
+      too long. But even in seven years Linda could do an awful lot of waiting;
+      and there are some very wonderful girls that will be coming up six or
+      seven years from now here at home. You know that hereafter all the girls
+      in the world are going to be very much more Linda's kind of girls than
+      they have been heretofore. The girls who have lived through the war and
+      who have been intimate with its sorrow and its suffering and its terrible
+      results to humanity, are not going to be such heedless, thoughtless, not
+      nearly such selfish, girls as the world has known in the decade just past.
+      And there is going to be more outdoor life, more nature study. There are
+      going to be stronger bodies, better food, better-cared-for young people;
+      and every year educational advantages are going to be greater. If you can
+      bring yourself to think about giving up the idea of there ever existing
+      any extremely personal thing between you and Linda, I am very sure I could
+      guarantee to introduce you to a girl who would be quite her counterpart,
+      and undoubtedly we could meet one who would be handsomer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald punched his pillow viciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nice talk,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and it may be true talk. But in the first
+      place I wish that Peter Morrison would let my girl alone, and in the
+      second place I don't care if there are a thousand just as nice girls or
+      even better-looking girls than Linda, though any girl would be going some
+      if she were nicer and better looking than Linda. But I am telling you that
+      when my foot gets better I am going to Lilac Valley and tell him where to
+      head in, and I'll punch his head if he doesn't do it promptly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you will,&rdquo; said his mother reassuringly; &ldquo;and I'll go with you
+      and we'll see to it that he attends strictly to his own affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Donald burst out laughing, exactly as his mother in her heart had hoped
+      that he would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I've got a hand-painted picture of myself starting to Lilac Valley
+      to fight a man who is butting in with my girl, and taking my mother along
+      to help me beat him up,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Whiting put her arms around her boy, kissed him tenderly, and
+      smoothed his hair, and then turned out the lights and slipped from the
+      room. But in the clear moonlight as she closed the door she could see that
+      a boyish grin was twisting his lips, and she went down to tell the Judge
+      that he need not worry. If his boy were irreparably hurt anywhere, it was
+      in his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The following weeks were very happy for Linda. When the cast was removed
+      from Donald's foot and it was found that a year or two of care would put
+      him even on the athletic fields and the dancing floor again, she was
+      greatly relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lacked words in which to express her joy that Marian was rapidly
+      coming into happiness. She was so very busy with her school work, with
+      doing all she could to help Donald with his, with her &ldquo;Jane Meredith&rdquo;
+       articles, with hunting and working out material for her book, that she
+      never had many minutes at a time for introspection. When she did have a
+      few she sometimes pondered deeply as to whether Marian had been altogether
+      sincere in the last letter she had written her in their correspondence,
+      but she was so delighted in the outcome that if she did at times have the
+      same doubt in a fleeting form that had not been in the least fleeting with
+      Peter Morrison, she dismissed it as rapidly as possible. When things were
+      so very good as they were at that time, why try to improve them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening as she came from school, thinking that she would take Katy for
+      a short run in the Bear Cat before dinner, she noticed a red head
+      prominent in the front yard as she neared home. When she turned in at the
+      front walk and crossed the lawn she would have been willing to wager quite
+      a sum that Katy had been crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, old dear,&rdquo; said Linda, putting her arms around her, &ldquo;if anything has
+      gone wrong with you I will certainly take to the warpath, instanter. I
+      can't even imagine what could be troubling you.&rdquo; Linda lowered her voice.
+      &ldquo;Nothing has come up about Oka Sayye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought not,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Judge Whiting promised me that what use he
+      made of that should be man's business and exploited wholly for the sake of
+      California and her people. He said we shouldn't be involved. I haven't
+      been worried about it even, although I am willing to go upon the stand and
+      tell the whole story if it will be any help toward putting right what is
+      at present a great wrong to California.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, so would I,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;I'm not worryin' meself about the little
+      baste any more than I would if it had been a mad dog foaming up that cliff
+      at ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what is it?&rdquo; asked Linda. &ldquo;Tell me this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dunno what in the world you're going to think,&rdquo; said Katy &ldquo;I dunno what
+      in the world you're going to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was so distressed that Linda's nimble brain flew to a conclusion.
+      She tightened her arm across Katy's shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, Katy!&rdquo; she said breathlessly. &ldquo;Is Eileen in the house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has she been to see John and made things right with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy nodded again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in there with her waitin' for ye,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a stunned Linda who slowly dropped her arm, stood erect, and lifted
+      her head very high. She thought intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean to tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that you have been CRYING over
+      her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katy held out both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;she always was such a pretty thing, and her ma didn't
+      raise her to have the sense of a peewee. If your pa had been let take her
+      outdoors and grow her in the sun and the air, she would have been bigger
+      and broader, an' there would have been the truth of God's sunshine an' the
+      glory of His rain about her. Ye know, Linda, that she didn't ever have a
+      common decent chance. It was curls that couldn't be shook out and a nose
+      that dassen't be sunburned and shoes that mustn't be scuffed and a dress
+      that shouldn't be mussed, from the day she was born. Ye couldn't jist
+      honest say she had ever had a FAIR chance, now could ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda conclusively, &ldquo;no, Katherine O'Donovan, you could not.
+      But what are we up against? Does she want to come back? Does she want to
+      stay here again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she would like to,&rdquo; said Katy. &ldquo;You go in and see her for
+      yourself, lambie, before ye come to any decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean,&rdquo; said Linda in a marveling tone, &ldquo;that she has been
+      homesick, that she has come back to us because she would like to be with
+      us again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go and see her for yourself; and if you don't say she is the worst
+      beat out and the tiredest mortal that ye have ever seen you'll be
+      surprisin' me. My God, Linda, they ain't nothin' in bein' rich if it can
+      do to a girl what has been done to Eileen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; said Linda impatiently, &ldquo;don't condemn all money because
+      Eileen has not found happiness with it. The trouble has been that Eileen's
+      only chance to be rich came to her through the wrong kind of people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, will ye jist tell me, then,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;how it happened that
+      Eileen's ma was a sister to that great beef of a man, which same is hard
+      on self-rayspectin' beef; pork would come nearer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;I'll tell you. Eileen's mother had a big streak of the
+      same coarseness and the same vulgarity in HER nature, or she could not
+      have reared Eileen as she did. She probably had been sent to school and
+      had better advantages than the boy through a designing mother of her own.
+      Her first husband must have been a man who greatly refined and educated
+      her. We can't ever get away from the fact that Daddy believed in her and
+      loved her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;but he was a fooled man. She wasn't what we thought she
+      was. Many's the time I've stood injustice about the accounts and household
+      management because I wouldn't be wakin' him up to what he was bound to for
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That doesn't help us,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I must go in and face them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She handed her books to Katy, and went into the living room She
+      concentrated on John Gilman first, and a wee qualm of disgust crept
+      through her soul when she saw that after weeks of suffering he was once
+      more ready to devote himself to Eileen. Linda marveled at the power a
+      woman could hold over a man that would force him to compromise with his
+      intellect, his education and environment. Then she turned her attention to
+      Eileen, and the shock she received was informing. She studied her an
+      instant incredulously, then she went to her and held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; she said as cordially as was possible to her. &ldquo;This is
+      unexpected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mind was working rapidly, yet she could not recall ever having seen a
+      woman quite so beautiful as Eileen. She was very certain that the color on
+      her cheeks was ebbing and rising with excitement; it was no longer so deep
+      as to be stationary. She was very certain that her eyes had not been
+      darkened as to lids or waxed as to lashes. Her hair was beautifully
+      dressed in sweeping waves with scarcely any artificial work upon it. Her
+      dress was extremely tasteful and very expensive. There was no simper on
+      her lips, nothing superficial. She was only a tired, homesick girl. As
+      Linda looked at her she understood why Katy had cried over her. She felt
+      tears beginning to rise in her own heart. She put both arms protectingly
+      around Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you poor little thing,&rdquo; she said wonderingly, &ldquo;was it so damn' bad
+      as all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen stood straight. She held herself rigidly. She merely nodded. Then
+      after a second she said: &ldquo;Worse than anything you could imagine, Linda.
+      Being rich with people who have grown rich by accident is a dreadful
+      experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I have always imagined,&rdquo; said Linda. And then in her usual downright
+      way she asked: &ldquo;Why did you come, Eileen? Is there anything you wanted of
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen hesitated. It was not in Linda's heart to be mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Homesick, little sister?&rdquo; she asked lightly &ldquo;Do you want to come here
+      while you're getting ready to make a home for John? Is that it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Eileen swayed forward suddenly, buried her face in Linda's breast,
+      and for the first time in her life Linda saw and heard her cry, not from
+      selfishness, not from anger, not from greed, but as an ordinary human
+      being cries when the heart is so full that nature relieves itself with
+      tears. Linda closed her arms around her and smiled over her head at John
+      Gilman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finish all of it before you stop,&rdquo; she advised. &ldquo;It's all right. You come
+      straight home. You didn't leave me any word, and I didn't know what to do
+      with your things, but I couldn't feel that you would want to give up such
+      beautiful things that you had so enjoyed. We had planned for Marian to
+      spend her summer vacation here so I put her things in your suite and I had
+      moved mine into the guest room, but I have had my room done over and the
+      guest room things are in there, and every scrap of yours is carefully put
+      away. If that will do, you are perfectly welcome to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen wiped her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything,&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;I'd rather have Katy's room than be shamed and
+      humiliated and hurt any further. Linda, I would almost like you to know my
+      Aunt Callie, because you will never understand about her if you don't. Her
+      favorite pastime was to tell everyone we met how much the things I wore
+      cost her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda released Eileen with a slight shake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheer up!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We'll all have a gorgeous time together. I haven't
+      the slightest ambition to know more than that about your Aunt Callie. If
+      my brain really had been acting properly I would never have dismantled
+      your room. I would have known that you could not endure her, and that you
+      would come home just as you should. It's all right, John, make yourself
+      comfortable. I don't know what Katy has for dinner but she can always find
+      enough for an extra couple. Come Eileen, I'll help you to settle. Where is
+      your luggage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I brought back, Linda, just what I have on,&rdquo; said Eileen. &ldquo;I will begin
+      again where I left off. I realize that I am not entitled to anything
+      further from the Strong estate, but Uncle was so unhappy and John says
+      it's all right&mdash;really I am the only blood heir to all they have; I
+      might as well take a comfortable allowance from it. I am to go to see them
+      a few days of every month. I can endure that when I know I have John and
+      you to come back to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Eileen had been installed in Linda's old room Linda went down to the
+      kitchen, shut the door behind her, and leaning against it, laid her hand
+      over her mouth to suppress a low laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I've been and gone and done it; I have put the perfect
+      lady in my old room. That will be a test of her sincerity&mdash;even
+      dainty and pretty as it is since it's been done over. If she is sincere
+      enough to spend the summer getting ready to marry John Gilman&mdash;why
+      that is all right, old girl. We can stand it, can't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Katy, &ldquo;it's one of them infernal nuisances but we can stand
+      it. I'm thinkin', from the looks of John Gilman and his manner of spakin',
+      that it ain't goin' to be but a very short time that he'll be waitin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katy,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;isn't this the most entertaining world? Doesn't it
+      produce the most lightning-like changes, and don't the most unexpected
+      things happen? Sort of dazes me. I had planned to take a little run with
+      you and the Cat. Since we are having&mdash;no, I mustn't say guests&mdash;since
+      John and Eileen have come home, I'll have to give up that plan until after
+      dinner, and then we'll go and take counsel with our souls and see if we
+      can figure out how we are going to solve this equation; and if you don t
+      know what an equation is, old dear heart, it's me with a war-club and you
+      with a shillalah and Eileen between us, and be 'damned' to us if we can't
+      make an average, ordinary, decent human being out of her. Pin an apron on
+      her in the morning, Katy, and hand her a dust cloth and tell her to
+      industrialize. We will help her with her trousseau, but she SHALL help us
+      with the work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye know, lambie,&rdquo; whispered Katy suddenly, &ldquo;this is a burnin' shame. The
+      one thing I DIDN'T think about is that book of yours. What about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I scarcely know,&rdquo; said Linda; &ldquo;it's difficult to say. Of course we can't
+      carry out the plans we had made to work here, exactly as we had intended,
+      with Eileen in the house preparing to be married. But she tells me that
+      her uncle has made her a generous allowance, so probably it's environment
+      and love she is needing much more than help. It is barely possible, Katy,
+      that after I have watched her a few days, if I decide she is in genuine,
+      sincere, heart-whole earnest, I might introduce her and John to my friend,
+      'Jane.' It is probable that if I did, Eileen would not expect me to help
+      her, and at the same time she wouldn't feel that I was acting
+      indifferently because I did not. We'll wait awhile, Katy, and see whether
+      we skid before we put on the chains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about Marian?&rdquo; inquired Katy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said Linda thoughtfully. &ldquo;If Marian is big enough to come
+      here and spend the summer under the same roof with Eileen and John Gilman,
+      and have a really restful, enjoyable time out of it, she is bigger than I
+      am. Come up to the garret; I think Eileen has brought no more with her
+      than she took away. We'll bring her trunk down, put it in her room and lay
+      the keys on top. Don't begin by treating her as a visitor; treat her as if
+      she were truly my sister. Tell her what you want and how you want it,
+      exactly as you tell me and as I tell you. If you see even a suspicion of
+      any of the former objectionable tendencies popping up, let's check them
+      quick and hard, Katy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week Linda watched Eileen closely. At the end of that time she was
+      sincere in her conviction that Eileen had been severely chastened. When
+      she came in contact with Peter Morrison or any other man they met she was
+      not immediately artificial. She had learned to be as natural with men as
+      with other women. There were no pretty postures, no softened vocal
+      modulations, no childish nonsense on subjects upon which the average child
+      of these days displays the knowledge of the past-generation grandmother.
+      When they visited Peter Morrison's house it was easy to see that Eileen
+      was interested, more interested than any of them ever before had seen her
+      in any subject outside of clothing and jewels. Her conduct in the Strong
+      home had been irreproachable. She had cared for her own room, quietly
+      undertaken the duties of dusting and arranging the rooms and cutting and
+      bringing in flowers. She had gone to the kitchen and wiped dishes and
+      asked to be taught how to cook things of which John was particularly fond.
+      She had been reasonable in the amount of time she had spent on her
+      shopping, and had repeatedly gone to Linda and shown interest in her
+      concerns. The result was that Linda at once displayed the same interest in
+      anything pertaining to Eileen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon Linda came home unusually early. She called for Eileen, told
+      her to tie on her sunshade and be ready for a short ride. Almost
+      immediately she brought around the Bear Cat and when they were seated side
+      by side headed it toward the canyon. She stopped at the usual resting
+      place, and together she and Eileen walked down the light-dappled road bed.
+      She pointed out things to Eileen, telling her what they were, to what uses
+      they could be put, while at the same time narrowly watching her. To her
+      amazement she found that Eileen was interested, that she was noticing
+      things for herself, asking what they were. She wanted to know the names of
+      the singing birds. When a big bird trailed a waving shadow in front of her
+      Linda explained how she might distinguish an eagle from a hawk, a hawk
+      from a vulture, a sea bird from those of the land. When they reached the
+      bridge Linda climbed down the embankment to gather cress. She was moved to
+      protest when Eileen followed and without saying a word began to assist
+      her, but she restrained herself, for it suddenly occurred to her that it
+      would be an excellent thing for Eileen to think more of what she was doing
+      and why she was doing it than about whether she would wet her feet or
+      muddy her fingers. So the protest became an explanation that it was rather
+      late for cress: the leaves toughened when it bloomed and were too peppery.
+      The only way it could be used agreeably was to work along the edges and
+      select the small tender shoots that had not yet matured to the flowering
+      point. When they had an armload they went back to the car, and without any
+      explanation Linda drove into Los Angeles and stopped at the residence of
+      Judge Whiting, not telling Eileen where she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends of mine,&rdquo; said Linda lightly as she stepped from the car. &ldquo;Fond
+      of cress salad with their dinner. They prepare it after the Jane Meredith
+      recipe to which you called my attention, in Everybody's Home last winter.
+      Come along with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen stepped from the car and followed. Linda led the way round the
+      sidewalk to where her quick ear had located voices on the side lawn. She
+      stopped at the kitchen door, handed in the cress, exchanged a few laughing
+      words with the cook, and then presented herself at the door of the
+      summerhouse. Inside, his books and papers spread over a worktable, sat
+      Donald Whiting. One side of him his mother was busy darning his socks; on
+      the other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk and small
+      squares of gaily colored linen. Linda entered with exactly the same
+      self-possession that characterized her at home. She shook hands with Mrs.
+      Whiting, Mary Louise, and Donald, and then she said quietly: &ldquo;Eileen and I
+      were gathering cress and we stopped to leave you some for your dinner.&rdquo;
+       With this explanation she introduced Eileen to Mrs. Whiting. Mary Louise
+      immediately sprang up and recalled their meeting at Riverside. Donald
+      remembered a meeting he did not mention. It was only a few minutes until
+      Linda was seated beside Donald, interesting herself in his lessons. Eileen
+      begged to be shown the pretty handkerchiefs that Mary Louise was making.
+      An hour later Linda refused an invitation to dinner because Katy would be
+      expecting them. When she arose to go, Eileen was carrying a small square
+      of blue-green linen. Carefully pinned to it was a patch of white with a
+      spray of delicate flowers outlined upon it, and a skein of pink silk
+      thread. She had been initiated into the thrillingly absorbing feminine
+      accomplishment of making sport handkerchiefs. When they left Eileen was
+      included naturally, casually, spontaneously, in their invitation to Linda
+      to run in any time she would. Mary Louise had said she would ride out with
+      Donald in few days and see how the handkerchiefs were coming on, and more
+      instruction and different stitches and patterns were necessary, she would
+      love to teach them. So Linda realized that Mary Louise had been told about
+      the trousseau. She knew, even lacking as she was in feminine
+      sophistication, that there were two open roads to the heart of a woman.
+      One is a wedding and the other is a baby. The lure of either is
+      irresistible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Bear Cat glided back to Lilac Valley, Eileen sat silent. For ten
+      years she had coveted the entree to the Whiting home perhaps more than any
+      other in the city. Merely by being simple and natural, by living her life
+      as life presented itself each day, Linda with no effort whatever had made
+      possible to Eileen the thing she so deeply craved. Eileen was learning a
+      new lesson each day&mdash;some days many of them&mdash;but none was more
+      amazing more simple, or struck deeper into her awakened consciousness. As
+      she gazed with far-seeing eye on the blue walls of the valley Eileen was
+      taking a mental inventory of her former self. One by one she was
+      arraigning all the old tricks she had used in her trade of getting on in
+      the world. One by one she was discarding them in favor of honesty,
+      unaffectedness, and wholesome enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because of these things Linda came home the next afternoon and left a
+      bundle on Eileen's bed before she made her way to her own room to busy
+      herself with a head piece for Peter's latest article. She had taken down
+      the wasp picture and while she had not destroyed it she had turned the key
+      of a very substantial lock upon it. She was hard at work when she heard
+      steps on the stairs. When Eileen entered, Linda smiled quizzically and
+      then broke into an unaffected ejaculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ripping!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Why, Eileen, you're perfectly topping.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eileen's face flamed with delight. She was a challenging little figure.
+      None of them was accustomed to her when she represented anything more
+      substantial than curls and ruffles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda reached for the telephone, called Gilman, and asked him if he could
+      go to the beach for supper that evening. He immediately replied that he
+      would. Then she called Peter Morrison and asked him the same question and
+      when Peter answered affirmatively she told him to bring his car. Then she
+      hastily put on her own field clothes and ran to the kitchen to fill the
+      lunch box. To Katy's delight Linda told her there would be room for her
+      and that she needed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evening and the sun was moving slowly toward the horizon when they
+      stopped the cars and went down on the white sands of Santa Monica Bay.
+      Eileen had been complimented until she was in a glow of delight. She did
+      not notice that in piling things out of the car for their beach supper
+      Linda had handed her a shovel and the blackened iron legs of a broiler.
+      Everyone was loaded promiscuously as they took up their march down to as
+      near the water's edge as the sands were dry. Peter and John gathered
+      driftwood. Linda improvised two cooking places, one behind a rock for
+      herself, the other under the little outdoor stove for Katy. Eileen was
+      instructed as to how to set up the beach table, spread the blankets beside
+      it, and place the food upon it. While Katy made coffee and toasted biscuit
+      Linda was busy introducing her party to brigand beefsteak upon four long
+      steel skewers. The day had been warm. The light salt breeze from the sea
+      was like a benediction. Friendly gulls gathered on the white sands around
+      them. Cunning little sea chickens worked in accord with the tide: when the
+      waves advanced they rose above them on wing; when they retreated they
+      scampered over the wet sand, hunting any small particles of food that
+      might have been carried in. Out over the water big brown pelicans went
+      slowly fanning homeward; and white sea swallows drew wonderful pictures on
+      the blue night sky with the tips of their wings. For a few minutes at the
+      reddest point of its setting the sun painted a marvelous picture in a bank
+      of white clouds. These piled up like a great rosy castle, and down the sky
+      roadway before it came a long procession of armored knights, red in the
+      sun glow and riding huge red horses. Then the colors mixed and faded and a
+      long red bridge for a short time spanned the water, ending at their feet.
+      The gulls hunted the last scrap thrown them and went home. The swallows
+      sought their high cliffs. The insidiously alluring perfume of sand verbena
+      rose like altar incense around them. Gilman spread a blanket, piled the
+      beach fire higher, and sitting beside Eileen, he drew her head to his
+      shoulder and put his arm around her. Possibly he could have been happier
+      in a careless way if he had never suffered. It is very probable that the
+      poignant depth of exquisite happiness he felt in that hour never would
+      have come to him had he not lost Eileen and found her again so much more
+      worth loving. Linda wandered down the beach until she reached the
+      lighthouse rocks. She climbed on a high one and sat watching the sea as it
+      sprayed just below. Peter Morrison followed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I come up?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;this belongs to the Lord; it isn't mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Peter climbed up and sat beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did the landscape appeal to you when you left the campfire?&rdquo; inquired
+      Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think the night cry might very well be Eight o'clock and all's
+      well,&rdquo; answered Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world?'&rdquo; Linda put it in the
+      form of a question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to be for John and Eileen,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for a number of people,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I had a letter from Marian
+      today. I had written her to ask if she would come to us for the summer, in
+      spite of the change in our plans; but Mr. Snow has made some plans of his
+      own. He is a very astute individual. He wanted Marian to marry him at once
+      and she would not, so he took her for a short visit to see his daughter at
+      her grandmother's home in the northern part of the state. Marian fell
+      deeply in love with his little girl, and of course those people found
+      Marian charming, just as right-minded people would find her. When she saw
+      how the little girl missed her father and how difficult it was for him to
+      leave her, and when she saw how she would be loved and appreciated in that
+      fine family, she changed her mind. Peter, we are going to be invited to
+      San Francisco to see them married very shortly. Are you glad or sorry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very glad,&rdquo; said Peter heartily. &ldquo;I make no concealment of my
+      admiration for Miss Thorne but I am very glad indeed that it is not her
+      head that is to complete the decoration when you start the iris marching
+      down my creek banks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's all right,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Of course you should have something
+      to say about whose head finished that picture. I can't contract to do more
+      than set the iris. The thing about this I dread is that Marian and Eugene
+      are going to live in San Francisco, and I did so want her to make her home
+      in Lilac Valley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's too bad,&rdquo; said Peter sympathetically. &ldquo;I know how you appreciate
+      her, how deeply you love her. Do you think the valley will ever be right
+      for you without her, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will have to be,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I've had to go on without Father, you
+      know. If greater happiness seems to be in store for Marian in San
+      Francisco, all I can do is to efface myself and say 'Amen.' When the world
+      is all right for Marian, it is about as near all right as it can be for
+      me. And did you ever see much more sincerely and clearly contented people
+      than John and Eileen are at the present minute?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked at Linda whimsically. He lowered his voice as if a sea urchin
+      might hear and tattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you do about the wasp, Linda?&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I delicately erased the stinger, fluffed up a ruffle, and put the sketch
+      under lock and key. I should have started a fire with it, but couldn't
+      quite bring myself to let it go, yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she going to hold out?&rdquo; asked Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll hold out or get her neck wrung,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I truly think she
+      has been redeemed. She has been born again. She has a new heart and a new
+      soul and a new impulse and a right conception of life. Why, Peter, she has
+      even got a new body. Her face is not the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is much handsomer,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't she?&rdquo; cried Linda enthusiastically. &ldquo;And doesn't having a soul and
+      doesn't thinking about essential things make the most remarkable
+      difference in her? It is worth going through a fiery furnace to come out
+      new like that. I called her Abednego the other day, but she didn't know
+      what I meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they sat silent and watched the sea for a long time. By and by the
+      night air grew chill. Peter slipped from the rock and went up the beach
+      and came back with an Indian blanket. He put it very carefully around
+      Linda's shoulders, and when he went to resume his seat beside her he found
+      one of her arms stretching it with a blanket corner for him. So he sat
+      down beside her and drew the corner over his shoulder; and because his
+      right arm was very much in his way, and it would have been very
+      disagreeable if Linda had slipped from the rock and fallen into the cold,
+      salt, unsympathetic Pacific at nine o'clock at night&mdash;merely to
+      dispose of the arm comfortably and to ensure her security, Peter put it
+      around Linda and drew her up beside him very close. Linda did not seem to
+      notice. She sat quietly looking at the Pacific and thinking her own
+      thoughts. When the fog became damp and chill, she said they must be going,
+      and so they went back to their cars and drove home through the sheer
+      wonder of the moonlight, through the perfume of the orange orchards,
+      hearing the night song of the mockingbirds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A few days later Linda and Peter went to San Francisco and helped
+      celebrate the marriage of Marian and Eugene Snow. They left Marian in a
+      home carefully designed to insure every comfort and convenience she ever
+      had planned, furnished in accordance with her desires. Both Linda and
+      Peter were charmed with little Deborah Snow; she was a beautiful and an
+      appealing child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; said Linda, on the train going home, &ldquo;that Marian will
+      get more out of life, she will love deeper, she will work harder, she will
+      climb higher in her profession than she would have done if she had married
+      John. It is difficult sometimes, when things are happening, to realize
+      that they are for the best, but I really believe this thing has been for
+      the level best. I think Marian is going to be a bigger woman in San
+      Francisco than she ever would have been in Lilac Valley. With that thought
+      I must reconcile myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what about John?&rdquo; asked Peter. &ldquo;Is he going to be a bigger man with
+      Eileen than he would have been with Marian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;he is not. He didn't do right and he'll have penalty to
+      pay. Eileen is developing into a lovable and truly beautiful woman, but
+      she has not the intellect, nor the education, nor the impulse to stimulate
+      a man's mental processes and make him outdo himself the way Marian will.
+      John will probably never know it, but he will have to do his own
+      stimulating; he will have to vision life for himself. He will have to find
+      his high hill and climb it with Eileen riding securely on his shoulders.
+      It isn't really the pleasantest thing in the world, it isn't truly the
+      thing I wanted to do this summer&mdash;helping them out&mdash;but it has
+      seemed to be the work at hand, the thing Daddy probably would have wanted
+      me to do, so it's up to me to do all I can for them, just as I did all I
+      could for Donald. One thing I shall always be delighted about. With my own
+      ears I heard the pronouncement: Donald had the Jap beaten; he was at the
+      head of his class before Oka Sayye was eliminated. The Jap knew it. His
+      only chance lay in getting rid of his rival. Donald can take the excellent
+      record he has made in this race to start on this fall when he commences
+      another battle against some other man's brain for top honors in his
+      college.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he start with the idea that he wants to be an honor man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laughed outright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;his idea was that if he were one of fifty or one
+      hundred leading men it would be sufficient, but I insisted that if he
+      wanted to be first with me, he would have to be first in his school work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Linda, have you definitely decided that when you
+      come to your home-making hour, Donald is the man with whom you want to
+      spend the remainder of your life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good gracious!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Who's talking about 'homes' and
+      'spending the remainder of lives'? Donald and I are school friends, and we
+      are good companions. You're as bad as Eileen. She's always trying to
+      suggest things that nobody else ever thought of, and now Katy's beginning
+      it too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sapheads, all!&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Well, allow me to congratulate you on having
+      given Donald his spurs. I think it's a very fine thing for him to start to
+      college with the honor idea in his head. What about your Saturday
+      excursions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have died an unnatural death,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Don and I fought for
+      them, but the Judge and Mrs. Whiting and Mary Louise were terrified for
+      fear a bone might slip in Don's foot, or some revengeful friend or
+      relative of Oka Sayye lie in wait for us. They won't hear of our going any
+      more. I go every Saturday and take Donald for a very careful drive over a
+      smooth road with the Bear Cat cursing our rate of speed all the way. All
+      the fun's spoiled for all three of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think I would be any good as a substitute when it comes to field work?&rdquo;
+       inquired Peter casually. &ldquo;I have looked at your desert garden so much I
+      would know a Cotyledon if I saw it. I believe I could learn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't have time to bother,&rdquo; objected Linda. &ldquo;You're a man, with a
+      man's business to transact in the world. You have to hustle and earn money
+      to pay for the bridge and changing the brook.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I had money to pay for the brook and the bridge before I agreed to
+      them,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;you should begin to hunt old mahogany and
+      rugs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't intended to,&rdquo; said Peter; &ldquo;if they are to be old, I won't have
+      to do more than to ship them. In storage in Virginia there are some very
+      wonderful old mahogany and rosewood and rugs and bric-a-brac enough to
+      furnish the house I am building. The stuff belonged to a little old aunt
+      of mine who left it to me in her will, and it was with those things in
+      mind that I began my house. The plans and finishing will fit that
+      furniture beautifully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you lucky individual!&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;Nowhere in the world is there
+      more beautiful furniture than in some of those old homes in Virginia.
+      There are old Flemish and Dutch and British and Italian pieces that came
+      into this country on early sailing vessels for the aristocrats. You don't
+      mean that kind of stuff, do you, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely the kind of stuff I do mean,&rdquo; answered Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why Peter, if you have furniture like that,&rdquo; cried Linda, &ldquo;then all you
+      need is Mary Louise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda,&rdquo; said Peter soberly, &ldquo;you are trespassing on delicate ground
+      again. You selected one wife for me and your plan didn't work. When that
+      furniture arrives and is installed I'll set about inducing the lady of my
+      dreams to come and occupy my dream house, in my own way. I never did give
+      you that job. It was merely assumed on your part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it was,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;But you know I could set that iris and run that
+      brook with more enthusiasm if I knew the lady who was to walk beside it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;You know her better than anyone else, even better
+      than I. Put that in your mental pipe and smoke it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saints preserve us!&rdquo; cried Linda. &ldquo;I believe the man is planning to take
+      Katy away from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not FROM you,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;WITH you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me know about it before you do it,&rdquo; said Linda with a careless laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I'm doing right now,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm going to school,&rdquo; said Linda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;but that won't last forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda entered enthusiastically upon the triple task of getting Donald in a
+      proper frame of mind to start to college with the ambition to do good
+      work, of marrying off Eileen and John Gilman, and of giving her best brain
+      and heart to Jane Meredith. When the time came, Donald was ready to enter
+      college comfortable and happy, willing to wait and see what life had in
+      store for him as he lived it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was sure of Eileen past any reasonable doubt Linda took her and
+      John to her workroom one evening and showed them her book contract and the
+      material she had ready, and gave them the best idea she could of what yet
+      remained to be done. She was not prepared for their wholehearted praise,
+      for their delight and appreciation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alone, they took counsel as to how they could best help her, and decided
+      that to be married at once and take a long trip abroad would be the best
+      way. That would leave Linda to work in quiet and with no interruption to
+      distract her attention. They could make their home arrangements when they
+      returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had gone Linda worked persistently, but her book was not
+      completed and the publishers were hurrying her when the fall term of
+      school opened. By the time the final chapter with its exquisite
+      illustration had been sent in, the first ones were coming back in proof,
+      and with the proof came the materialized form of Linda's design for her
+      cover, and there was no Marian to consult about it. Linda worked until she
+      was confused. Then she piled the material in the Bear Cat and headed up
+      Lilac Valley. As she came around the curve and turned from the public road
+      she saw that for the first time she might cross her bridge; it was waiting
+      for her. She heard the rejoicing of the water as it fell from stone to
+      stone where it dipped under the road, and as she swung across the bridge
+      she saw that she might drive over the completed road which had been
+      finished in her weeks of absence. The windows told another story. Peter's
+      furniture had come and he had been placing it without telling her. She
+      found the front door standing wide open, so she walked in. With her bundle
+      on her arm she made her way to Peter's workroom. When he looked up and saw
+      her standing in his door he sprang to his feet and came to meet her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I've taken on more work than I can possibly finish on
+      time, and I'm the lonesomest person in California today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt that,&rdquo; said Peter gravely. &ldquo;If you are any lonesomer than I am
+      you must prove it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have proved it,&rdquo; said Linda quietly. &ldquo;If you had been as lonesome as I
+      am you would have come to me. As it is, I have come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Peter rather breathlessly. &ldquo;What have you there, Linda? Why
+      did you come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came for two reasons,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I want to ask you about this stuff.
+      Several times this summer you have heard talk about Jane Meredith and the
+      Everybody's Home articles. Ever read any of them, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;I read all of them. Interested in home stuff these
+      days myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Linda, dumping her armload before Peter, &ldquo;there's the proof
+      and there's the illustration and there's the cover design for a book to be
+      made from that stuff. Peter, make your best boy and say 'pleased to meet
+      you' to Jane Meredith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter secured both of Linda's hands and held them. First he looked at her,
+      then he looked at the material she had piled down in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never again,&rdquo; said Peter in a small voice, &ldquo;will I credit myself with any
+      deep discernment, any keen penetration. How I could have read that matter
+      and looked at those pictures and not seen you in and through and over them
+      is a thing I can't imagine. It's great, Linda, absolutely great! Of course
+      I will help you any way in the world I can. And what else was it you
+      wanted? You said two things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the other doesn't amount to much,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;I only wanted the
+      comfort of knowing whether, as soon as I graduate, I may take Katy and
+      come home, Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From previous experience with Linda, Peter had learned that a girl reared
+      by men is not as other women. He had supposed the other thing concerning
+      which she had wanted to appeal to him was on par with her desire for
+      sympathy and help concerning her book. At her question, with her eyes
+      frankly meeting his, Peter for an instant felt lightheaded. He almost
+      dodged, he was so sweepingly taken unawares. Linda was waiting and his
+      brain was not working. He tried to smile, but he knew she would not
+      recognize as natural the expression of that whirling moment. She saw his
+      hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, if you don't want us, Peter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter found his voice promptly. Only his God knew how much he wanted
+      Linda, but there were conditions that a man of Peter's soul-fiber could
+      not endure. More than life he wanted her, but he did not want her asleep.
+      He did not want to risk her awakening to a spoiled life and disappointed
+      hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you remember that I told you coming home from San Francisco that you
+      knew the Lady of my Iris better than anyone else, and that I was planning
+      to take Katy, not from you, but with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I remember,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;That is why when Marian and Eileen
+      and Donald and all my world went past and left me standing desolate, and
+      my work piled up until I couldn't see my way, I just started right out to
+      ask you if you would help me with the proof. Of course I knew you would be
+      glad to do that and I thought if you really meant in your heart that I was
+      the one to complete your iris procession, it would be a comfort to me
+      during the hard work and the lonesome days to have it put in two-syllable
+      English. Marian said that was the only real way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Marian is eminently correct. You will have to give me an ordinary
+      lifetime, Linda, in which to try to make you understand exactly what this
+      means to me. Perhaps I'll even have to invent new words in which to
+      express myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all right,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;It means a lot to me too. I can't
+      tell you how much I think of you. That first day, as soon as I put down
+      the Cotyledon safely and tucked in my blouse, I would have put my hand in
+      yours and started around the world, if you had asked me to. I have the
+      very highest esteem for you, Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Esteem, yes,&rdquo; said Peter slowly. &ldquo;But Linda-girl, isn't the sort of
+      alliance I am asking you to enter with me usually based on something a
+      good bit stronger than 'esteem'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think it is,&rdquo; said Linda. &ldquo;But you needn't worry. I only wanted
+      the comfort of knowing that I was not utterly alone again, save for Katy.
+      I'll stick to my book and to my fight for Senior honors all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter was blinking his eyes and fighting to breathe evenly. When he could
+      speak he said as smoothly as possible: &ldquo;Of course, Linda. I'll do your
+      proof for you and you may put all your time on class honors. It merely
+      occurred to me to wonder whether you realized the full and ultimate
+      significance of what we are saying; exactly what it means to me and to
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly not, Peter,&rdquo; said Linda, smiling on him with utter confidence.
+      &ldquo;Everyone says I am my father's daughter, and Father didn't live to coach
+      me on being your iris decoration, as a woman would; but, Peter, when the
+      time comes, I have every confidence in your ability to teach me what you
+      would like me to know yourself. Don't you agree with me, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Making an effort to control himself Peter gathered up the material Linda
+      had brought and taking her arm he said casually: &ldquo;I thoroughly agree with
+      you, dear. You are sanely and health fully and beautifully right. Now
+      let's go and take Katy into our confidence, and then you shall show me
+      your ideas before I begin work on your proof. And after this, instead of
+      you coming to me I shall always come to you whenever you can spare a
+      minute for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda nodded acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course! That would be best,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Peter, you are so satisfyingly
+      satisfactory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Her Father's Daughter, by Gene Stratton-Porter
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+
+
+Title: Her Father's Daughter
+
+Author: Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #904]
+Release Date: May, 1997
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianne Bean
+
+
+
+
+
+HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER
+
+By Gene Stratton-Porter
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+          I. "What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?"
+         II. Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
+        III. The House of Dreams
+         IV. Linda Starts a Revolution
+          V. The Smoke of Battle
+         VI. Jane Meredith
+        VII. Trying Yucca
+       VIII. The Bear Cat
+         IX. One Hundred Per Cent Plus
+          X. Katy to the Rescue
+         XI. Assisting Providence
+        XII. The Lay of the Land
+       XIII. Leavening the Bread of Life
+        XIV. Saturday's Child
+         XV. Linda's Hearthstone
+        XVI. Producing the Evidence
+       XVII. A Rock and a Flame
+      XVIII. Spanish Iris
+        XIX. The Official Bug-Catcher
+         XX. The Cap Sheaf
+        XXI. Shifting the Responsibility
+       XXII. The End of Marian's Contest
+      XXIII. The Day of Jubilee
+       XXIV. Linda's First Party
+        XXV. Buena Moza
+       XXVI. A Mouse Nest
+      XXVII. The Straight and Narrow
+     XXVIII. Putting It Up to Peter
+       XXIX. Katy Unburdens Her Mind
+        XXX. Peter's Release
+       XXXI. The End of Donald's Contest
+      XXXII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest
+     XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris
+
+
+
+
+List of Characters
+
+     LINDA STRONG, Her Father's Daughter
+     DR. ALEXANDER STRONG, a Great Nerve Specialist
+     MRS. STRONG, His Wife
+     EILEEN STRONG, Having
+     Social Aspirations
+     MR. AND MRS. THORNE, Neighbors of the Strongs
+     MARIAN THORNE, a Dreamer of Houses
+     JOHN GILMAN, a Man of Law
+     PETER MORRISON, an Author
+     HENRY ANDERSON, an Architect
+     DONALD WHITING, a High School Senior
+     MARY LOUISE WHITING, His Sister
+     JUDGE AND MRS. WHITING, a Man of Law and a Woman of Culture
+     KATHERINE O' DONOVAN, the Strong Cook
+     OKA SAYYE, a High School Senior
+     JAMES HEITMAN, Accidentally Rich
+     MRS. CAROLINE HEITMAN, His Wife
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. "What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?"
+
+"What makes you wear such funny shoes?"
+
+Linda Strong thrust forward a foot and critically examined the narrow
+vamp, the projecting sole, the broad, low heel of her well-worn brown
+calfskin shoe. Then her glance lifted to the face of Donald Whiting, one
+of the most brilliant and popular seniors of the high school. Her eyes
+narrowed in a manner habitual to her when thinking intently.
+
+"Never you mind my shoes," she said deliberately. "Kindly fix your
+attention on my head piece. When you see me allowing any Jap in my class
+to make higher grades than I do, then I give you leave to say anything
+you please concerning my head."
+
+An angry red rushed to the boy's face. It was an irritating fact that in
+the senior class of that particular Los Angeles high school a Japanese
+boy stood at the head. This was embarrassing to every senior.
+
+"I say," said Donald Whiting, "I call that a mean thrust."
+
+"I have a particular reason," said Linda.
+
+"And I have 'a particular reason'," said Donald, "for being interested
+in your shoes."
+
+Linda laughed suddenly. When Linda laughed, which was very seldom, those
+within hearing turned to look at her. Hers was not a laugh that can be
+achieved. There were a few high places on the peak of Linda's soul, and
+on one of them homed a small flock of notes of rapture; notes as sweet
+as the voice of the white-banded mockingbird of Argentina.
+
+"How surprising!" exclaimed Linda. "We have been attending the same
+school for three years; now, you stop me suddenly to tell me that you
+are interested in the shape of my shoes."
+
+"I have been watching them all the time," said Donald. "Can't understand
+why any girl wants to be so different. Why don't you dress your hair the
+same as the other girls and wear the same kind of clothes and shoes?"
+
+"Now look here," interposed Linda "You are flying the track.I am willing
+to justify my shoes, if I can, but here you go including my dress and a
+big psychological problem, as well; but I think perhaps the why of the
+shoes will explain the remainder. Does the name 'Alexander Strong' mean
+anything to you?"
+
+"The great nerve specialist?" asked Donald.
+
+"Yes," said Linda. "The man who was the author of half-dozen books
+that have been translated into many foreign tongue' and are used as
+authorities all over the world. He happened to be my father There are
+two children in our family. I have a sister four years older than I am
+who is exactly like Mother, and she and Mother were inseparable. I am
+exactly like Father; because we understood each other, and because both
+of us always new, although we never mentioned it; that Mother preferred
+my sister Eileen to me, Father tried to make it up to me, so from the
+time I can remember I was at his heels. It never bothered him to have me
+playing around in the library while he was writing his most complicated
+treatise. I have waited in his car half a day at a time, playing or
+reading, while he watched a patient or delivered a lecture at some
+medical college. His mental relaxation was to hike or to motor to the
+sea, to the mountains, to the canyons or the desert, and he very seldom
+went without me even on long trips when he was fishing or hunting with
+other men. There was not much to know concerning a woman's frame or he
+psychology that Father did not know, so there were two reason why he
+selected my footwear as he did. One was because he be believed high
+heels and pointed toes an outrage against the nervous province, and the
+other was that I could not possibly have kept pace with him except in
+shoes like these. No doubt, they are the same kind I shall wear all my
+life, for walking. You probably don't know it, but my home lies near the
+middle of Lilac Valley and I walk over a mile each morning and evening
+to and from the cars. Does this sufficiently explain my shoes?"
+
+"I should think you'd feel queer," said Donald.
+
+"I suspect I would if I had time to brood over it," Linda replied, "but
+I haven't. I must hustle to get to school on time in the morning. It's
+nearly or quite dark before I reach home in the evening. My father
+believed in having a good time. He had superb health, so he spent most
+of what he made as it came to him. He counted on a long life. It never
+occurred to him that a little piece of machinery going wrong would
+plunge him into Eternity in a second."
+
+"Oh, I remember!" cried the boy.
+
+Linda's face paled slightly.
+
+"Yes," she said, "it happened four years ago and I haven't gotten away
+from the horror of it yet, enough ever to step inside of a motor car;
+but I am going to get over that one of these days. Brakes are not all
+defective, and one must take one's risks."
+
+"You just bet I would," said Donald. "Motoring is one of the greatest
+pleasures of modern life. I'll wager it makes some of the gay old boys,
+like Marcus Aurelius for example, want to turn over in their graves when
+they see us flying along the roads of California the way we do."
+
+"What I was getting at," said Linda, "was a word of reply to the
+remainder of your indictment against me. Dad's income stopped with him,
+and household expenses went on, and war came, so there isn't enough
+money to dress two of us as most of the high school girls are dressed.
+Eileen is so much older that it's her turn first, and I must say she is
+not at all backward about exercising her rights. I think that will
+have to suffice for the question of dress but you may be sure that I am
+capable of wearing the loveliest dress imaginable, that would be for a
+school girl, if I had it to wear."
+
+"Ah, there's the little 'fly in your ointment'--'dress that would be
+suitable.' I bet in your heart you think the dresses that half the girls
+in high school are wearing are NOT SUITABLE!"
+
+"Commendable perspicacity, O learned senior," said Linda, "and amazingly
+true. In the few short years I had with Daddy I acquired a fixed idea as
+to what kind of dress is suitable and sufficiently durable to wear while
+walking my daily two miles. I can't seem to become reconciled to the
+custom of dressing the same for school as for a party. You get my idea?"
+
+"I get it all right enough," said Donald, "but I must think awhile
+before I decide whether I agree with you. Why should you be right, and
+hundreds of other girls be wrong?"
+
+"I'll wager your mother would agree with me," suggested Linda.
+
+"Did yours?" asked Donald.
+
+"Halfway," answered Linda. "She agreed with me for me, but not for
+Eileen."
+
+"And not for my sister," said Donald. "She wears the very foxiest
+clothes that Father can afford to pay for, and when she was going to
+school she wore them without the least regard as to whether she was
+going to school or to a tea party or a matinee. For that matter she
+frequently went to all three the same day.
+
+"And that brings us straight to the point concerning you," said Linda.
+
+"Sure enough!" said Donald. "There is me to be considered! What is it
+you have against me?"
+
+Linda looked at him meditatively.
+
+"You SEEM exceptionally strong," she said. "No doubt are good in
+athletics. Your head looks all right; it indicates brains. What I want
+to know is why in the world you don't us them."
+
+"What are you getting at, anyway?" asked Donald, with more than a hint
+of asperity in his voice.
+
+"I am getting at the fact," said Linda, "that a boy as big as you and as
+strong as you and with as good brain and your opportunity has allowed
+a little brown Jap to cross the Pacific Ocean and a totally strange
+country to learn a language foreign to him, and, and, with the same
+books and the same chances, to beat you at your own game. You and every
+other boy in your classes ought to thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.
+Before I would let a Jap, either boy or girl, lead in my class, I would
+give up going to school and go out and see if I could beat him growing
+lettuce and spinach."
+
+"It's all very well to talk," said Donald hotly.
+
+"And it's better to make good what you say," broke in Linda, with equal
+heat. "There are half a dozen Japs in my classes but no one of them is
+leading, you will notice, if I do wear peculiar shoes."
+
+"Well, you would be going some if you beat the leading Jap in the senior
+class," said Donald.
+
+"Then I would go some," said Linda. "I'd beat him, or I'd go straight up
+trying. You could do it if you'd make up your mind to. The trouble with
+you is that you're wasting your brain on speeding an automobile, on
+dances, and all sorts of foolishness that is not doing you any good in
+any particular way. Bet you are developing nerves smoking cigarettes.
+You are not concentrating. Oka Sayye is not thinking of a thing except
+the triumph of proving to California that he is head man in one of the
+Los Angeles high schools. That's what I have got against you, and every
+other white boy in your class, and in the long run it stacks up bigger
+than your arraignment of my shoes."
+
+"Oh, darn your shoes!" cried Donald hotly. "Forget 'em! I've got to move
+on or I'll be late for trigonometry, but I don't know when I've had such
+a tidy little fight with a girl, and I don't enjoy feeling that I have
+been worsted. I propose another session. May I come out to Lilac
+Valley Saturday afternoon and flay you alive to pay up for my present
+humiliation?"
+
+"Why, if your mother happened to be motoring that way and would care to
+call, I think that would be fine," said Linda.
+
+"Well, for the Lord's sake!" exclaimed the irate senior. "Can't a fellow
+come and fight with you without being refereed by his mother? Shall I
+bring Father too?"
+
+"I only thought," said Linda quietly, "that you would like your mother
+to see the home and environment of any girl whose acquaintance you made,
+but the fight we have coming will in all probability be such a pitched
+battle that when I go over the top, you won't ever care to follow me and
+start another issue on the other side. You're dying right now to ask why
+I wear my hair in braids down my back instead of in cootie coops over my
+ears."
+
+"I don't give a hang," said Donald ungallantly, "as to how you; wear
+your hair, but I am coming Saturday to fight, and I don't think Mother
+will take any greater interest in the matter than to know that I am
+going to do battle with a daughter of Doctor I Strong."
+
+"That is a very nice compliment to my daddy, thank you, said Linda,
+turning away and proceeding in the direction of her own classrooms.
+There was a brilliant sparkle in her eyes and she sang in a muffled
+voice, yet distinctly enough to be heard:
+
+"The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes, And you may wear them if you
+choose."
+
+"By gracious! She's no fool," he said to himself. In three minutes'
+unpremeditated talk the "Junior Freak," as he mentally denominated her,
+had managed to irritate him, to puncture his pride, to entertain and
+amuse him.
+
+"I wonder--" he said as he went his way; and all day he kept on
+wondering, when he was not studying harder than ever before in all his
+life.
+
+That night Linda walked slowly along the road toward home. She was
+not seeing the broad stretch of Lilac Valley, on every hand green with
+spring, odorous with citrus and wild bloom, blue walled with lacy lilacs
+veiling the mountain face on either side; and she was not thinking
+of her plain, well-worn dress or her common-sense shoes. What she was
+thinking was of every flaying, scathing, solidly based argument she
+could produce the following Saturday to spur Donald Whiting in some way
+to surpass Oka Sayye. His chance remark that morning, as they stood near
+each other waiting a few minutes in the hall, had ended in his asking to
+come to see her, and she decided as she walked homeward that his first
+visit in all probability would be his last, since she had not time to
+spare for boys, when she had so many different interests involved; but
+she did decide very finely in her own mind that the would make that
+visit a memorable one for him.
+
+In arriving at this decision her mind traveled a number of devious
+roads. The thought that she had been criticized did not annoy her as to
+the kind of criticism, but she did resent the quality of truth about it.
+She was right in following the rules her father had laid down for her
+health and physical well-being, but was it right that she should wear
+shoes scuffed, resoled, and even patched, when there was money enough
+for Eileen to have many pairs of expensive laced boots, walking shoes,
+and fancy slippers? She was sure she was right in wearing dresses
+suitable for school, but was it right that she must wear them until
+they were sunfaded, stained, and disreputable? Was it right that Eileen
+should occupy their father and mother's suite, redecorated and daintily
+furnished according to her own taste, to keep the parts of the house
+that she cared to use decorated with flowers and beautifully appointed,
+while Linda must lock herself in a small stuffy bedroom room, dingy and
+none too comfortable, when in deference to her pride she wished to work
+in secret until she learned whether she could succeed.
+
+Then she began thinking, and decided that the only available place in
+the house for her use was the billiard room. She made up her mind that
+she would demand the sole right to this big attic room. She would sell
+the table and use the money to buy herself a suitable worktable and
+a rug. She would demand that Eileen produce enough money for better
+clothing for her, and then she remembered what she had said to Donald
+Whiting about conquering her horror for a motor car. Linda turned in
+at the walk leading to her home, but she passed the front entrance and
+followed around to the side. As she went she could hear voices in the
+living room and she knew that Eileen was entertaining some of her
+many friends; for Eileen was that peculiar creature known as a social
+butterfly. Each day of her life friends came; or Eileen went--mostly
+the latter, for Eileen had a knack of management and she so managed
+her friends that, without their realizing it, they entertained her many
+times while she entertained them once. Linda went to the kitchen, Laid
+her books and package of mail on the table, and, walking over to the
+stove, she proceeded deliberately and heartily to kiss the cook.
+
+"Katy, me darlin'," she said, "look upon your only child. Do you notice
+a 'lean and hungry look' on her classic features?"
+
+Katy turned adoring eyes to the young girl.
+
+"It's growing so fast ye are, childie," she said. "It's only a little
+while to dinner, and there's company tonight, so hadn't ye better wait
+and not spoil your appetite with piecing?"
+
+"Is there going to be anything 'jarvis'?" inquired Linda.
+
+'"I'd say there is," said Katy. "John Gilman is here and two friends of
+Eileen's. It's a near banquet, lassie."
+
+"Then I'll wait," said Linda. "I want the keys to the garage."
+
+Katy handed them to her and Linda went down the back walk beneath an
+arch of tropical foliage, between blazing walls of brilliant flower
+faces, unlocked the garage, and stood looking at her father's runabout.
+
+In the revolution that had taken place in their home after the passing
+of their father and mother, Eileen had dominated the situation and done
+as she pleased, with the exception of two instances. Linda had shown
+both temper and determination at the proposal to dismantle the library
+and dispose of the cars. She had told Eileen that she might take the
+touring car and do as she pleased with it. For her share she wanted
+her father's roadster, and she meant to have it. She took the same firm
+stand concerning the Library. With the rest of the house Eileen might do
+as she would. The library was to remain absolutely untouched and what it
+contained was Linda's. To this Eileen had agreed, but so far Linda had
+been content merely to possess her property.
+
+Lately, driven by the feeling that she must find a way in which she
+could earn money, she had been secretly working on some plans that she
+hoped might soon yield her small returns. As for the roadster, she as
+well as Eileen had been horror-stricken when the car containing their
+father and mother and their adjoining neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Thorne,
+driven by Marian Thorne, the playmate and companion from childhood
+of the Strong girls, had become uncontrollable and plunged down the
+mountain in a disaster that had left only Marian, protected by the
+steering gear, alive. They had simply by mutual agreement begun using
+the street cars when they wanted to reach the city.
+
+Linda stood looking at the roadster, jacked up and tucked under a
+heavy canvas tent that she and her father had used on their hunting and
+fishing trips. After a long time she laid strong hands on the canvas and
+dragged it to one side. She looked the car over carefully and then, her
+face very white and her hands trembling, she climbed into it and slowly
+and mechanically went through the motions of starting it. For another
+intent period she sat with her hands on the steering gear, staring
+straight ahead, and then she said slowly: "Something has got to be done.
+It's not going to be very agreeable, but I am going to do it. Eileen:
+has had things all her own way long enough. I am getting such a big girl
+I ought to have a few things in my life as I want them. Something must
+be done."
+
+Then Linda proceeded to do something. What she did was to lean forward,
+rest her head upon the steering wheel and fight to keep down deep,
+pitiful sobbing until her whole slender body twisted in the effort.
+
+She was yielding to a breaking up after four years of endurance, for the
+greater part in silence. As the months of the past year had rolled their
+deliberate way, Linda had begun to realize that the course her elder
+sister had taken was wholly unfair to her, and slowly a tumult of revolt
+was growing in her soul. Without a doubt the culmination had resulted
+from her few minutes' talk with Donald Whiting in the hall that morning.
+It had started Linda to thinking deeply, and the more deeply she thought
+the clearly she saw the situation. Linda was a loyal soul and her heart
+was honest. She was quite willing that Eileen should: exercise her
+rights as head of the family, that she should take the precedence to
+which she was entitled by her four years' seniority, that she should
+spend the money which accrued monthly from their father's estate as she
+saw fit, up to a certain point. That point was where things ceased to
+be fair or to be just. If there had been money to do no more for Eileen
+than had been done for Linda, it would not have been in Linda's heart
+to utter a complaint. She could have worn scuffed shoes and old dresses,
+and gone her way with her proud young head held very high and a jest on
+her lips; but when her mind really fastened on the problem and she began
+to reason, she could not feel that Eileen was just to her or that she
+was fair in her administration of the money which should have been
+divided more nearly equally between them, after the household expenses
+had been paid. Once rebellion burned in her heart the flames leaped
+rapidly, and Linda began to remember a thousand small things that she
+had scarcely noted at the time of their occurrence.
+
+She was leaning on the steering wheel, tired with nerve strain, when she
+heard Katy calling her, and realized that she was needed in the kitchen.
+As a matter of economy Eileen, after her parents' passing, had dismissed
+the housemaid, and when there were guests before whom she wished to make
+a nice appearance Linda had been impressed either to wait on the table
+or to help in the kitchen in order that Katy might attend the dining
+room, so Linda understood what was wanted when Katy called her. She ran
+her fingers over the steering wheel, worn bright by the touch of her
+father's and her own hands, and with the buoyancy of youth, found
+comfort. Once more she mechanically went through the motions of starting
+the car, then she stepped down, closed the door, and stood an instant
+thinking.
+
+"You're four years behind the times," she said slowly. "No doubt there's
+a newer and a better model; I suspect the tires are rotten, but the
+last day I drove you for Daddy you purred like a kitten, and ran like
+a clock, and if you were cleaned and oiled and put in proper shape,
+there's no reason in the world why I should not drive you again, as I
+have driven you hundreds of miles when Daddy was tired or when he wanted
+to teach me the rules of good motoring, and the laws of the road. I can
+do it all right. I have got to do it, but it will be some time before
+I'll care to tackle the mountains."
+
+Leaving the cover on the floor, she locked the door and returned to the
+kitchen.
+
+"All right, Katy, what is the programme?" she inquired as lightly as she
+could.
+
+Katy had been cook in the Strong family ever since they had moved to
+Lilac Valley. She had obeyed Mrs. Strong and Eileen. She had worshiped
+the Doctor and Linda It always had been patent to her eyes that Mrs.
+Strong was extremely partial to Eileen, so Katy had joined forces with
+the Doctor in surreptitiously doing everything her warm Irish heart
+prompted to prevent Linda from feeling neglected. Her quick eyes saw the
+traces of tears on Linda's face, and she instantly knew that the trip
+the girl had made to the garage was in some way connected with some
+belongings of her father's, so she said: "I am serving tonight but I
+want you to keep things smoking hot and to have them dished up ready for
+me so that everything will go smoothly."
+
+"What would happen," inquired Linda, "if everything did NOT go smoothly?
+Katy, do you think the roof would blow straight up if I had MY way about
+something, just for a change?"
+
+"No, I think the roof would stay right where it belongs," said Katy with
+a chuckle, "but I do think its staying there would not be because Miss
+Eileen wanted it to."
+
+"Well," said Linda deliberately, "we won't waste any time on thinking
+We are going to have some positive knowledge on the subject pretty
+immediately. I don't feel equal to starting any domestic santana today,
+but the forces are gathering and the blow is coming soon. To that I have
+firmly made up my mind."
+
+"It's not the least mite I'm blaming you, honey," said Katy.
+
+"Ye've got to be such a big girl that it's only fair things in this
+house should go a good deal different."
+
+"Is Marian to be here?" asked Linda as she stood beside the stove
+peering into pans and kettles.
+
+"Miss Eileen didn't say," replied Katy.
+
+Linda's eyes reddened suddenly. She slammed down a lid with vicious
+emphasis.
+
+"That is another deal Eileen's engineered," she said, "that is just
+about as wrong as anything possibly can be. What makes me the maddest
+about it is that John Gilman will let Eileen take him by the nose and
+lead him around like a ringed calf. Where is his common sense? Where is
+his perception? Where is his honor?"
+
+"Now wait, dearie," said Katy soothingly, "wait. John Gilman is a mighty
+fine man. Ye know how your father loved him and trusted him and gave
+him charge of all his business affairs. Ye mustn't go so far as to be
+insinuating that he is lacking in honor."
+
+"No," said Linda, "that was not fair. I don't in the least know that he
+ever ASKED Marian to marry him; but I do know that as long as he was a
+struggling, threadbare young lawyer Marian was welcome to him, and they
+had grand times together. The minute he won the big Bailey suit and came
+into public notice and his practice increased until he was independent,
+that minute Eileen began to take notice, and it looks to me now as if
+she very nearly had him."
+
+"And so far as I can see," said Katy, "Miss Marian is taking it without
+a struggle. She is not lifting a finger or making a move to win him
+back."
+
+"Of course she isn't!" said Linda indignantly. "If she thought he
+preferred some other girl to her, she would merely say: 'If John has
+discovered that he likes Eileen the better, why, that is all right;
+but there wouldn't be anything to prevent seeing Eileen take John from
+hurting like the deuce. Did you ever lose a man you loved, Katy?"
+
+"That I did not!" said Katy emphatically. "We didn't do any four or
+five years' philanderin' to see if a man 'could make good' when I was a
+youngster. When a girl and her laddie stood up to each other and looked
+each other straight in the eye and had the great understanding, there
+weren't no question of whether he could do for her what her father and
+mither had been doing, nor of how much he had to earn before they would
+be able to begin life together. They just caught hands and hot-footed it
+to the praste and told him to read the banns the next Sunday, and when
+the law allowed they was man and wife and taking what life had for them
+the way it came, and together. All this philanderin' that young folks do
+nowadays is just pure nonsense, and waste of time."
+
+"Sure!" laughed Linda. "When my brave comes along with his blanket I'll
+just step under, and then if anybody tries to take my man I'll have the
+right to go on the warpath and have a scalping party that would be some
+satisfaction to the soul."
+
+Then they served the dinner, and when the guests had left the dining
+room, Katy closed the doors, and brought on the delicacies she had
+hidden for Linda and patted and cajoled her while she ate like any
+healthy, hungry young creature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
+
+"'Ave, atque vale!' Cotyledon!"
+
+Linda slid down the side of the canyon with the deftness of the expert.
+At the first available crevice she thrust in her Alpine stick, and
+bracing herself, gained a footing. Then she turned and by use of her
+fingers and toes worked her way back to the plan, she had passed. She
+was familiar with many members of she family, but such a fine specimen
+she seldom had found and she could not recall having seen it in all of
+her botanies. Opposite the plant she worked out a footing, drove her
+stick deep at the base of a rock to brace herself, and from the knapsack
+on her back took a sketchbook and pencil and began rapidly copying the
+thick fleshy leaves of the flattened rosette, sitting securely at the
+edge of a rock. She worked swiftly and with breathless interest. When
+she had finished the flower she began sketching in the moss-covered face
+of the boulder against which it grew, and other bits of vegetation near.
+
+"I think, Coty," she said, "it is very probable that I can come a few
+simoleons with you. You are becoming better looking ever minute."
+
+For a touch of color she margined one side of her drawing with a little
+spray of Pentstemon whose bright tubular flower the canyon knew as
+"hummingbird's dinner horn." That gave, her the idea of introducing
+a touch of living interest, so bearing down upon the flowers from
+the upper right-hand corner of her drawing she deftly sketched in a
+ruby-throated hummingbird, and across the bottom of the sheet the lace
+of a few leaves of fern. Then she returned the drawing and pencil to her
+knapsack, and making sure of her footing, worked her way forward. With
+her long slender fingers she began teasing the plant loose from the
+rock and the surrounding soil. The roots penetrated deeper than she
+had supposed and in her interest she forgot her precarious footing and
+pulled hard. The plant gave way unexpectedly, and losing her balance,
+Linda plunged down the side of the canyon catching wildly at shrubs and
+bushes and bruising herself severely on stones, finally landing in a
+sitting posture on the road that traversed the canyon.
+
+She was not seriously hurt, but she did not present a picturesque figure
+as she sprawled in the road, her booted feet thrust straight before her,
+one of her long black braids caught on a bush at her back, her blouse
+pulled above her breeches, the contents of her knapsack decorating the
+canyon side and the road around her; but high in one hand, without break
+or blemish, she triumphantly held aloft the rare Cotyledon. She shrugged
+her shoulders, wiggled her toes, and moved her arms to assure herself
+that no bones were broken; then she glanced at her drawings and the
+fruits of her day's collecting scattered on the roadside around her. She
+was in the act of rising when a motor car containing two young men shot
+around a curve of the canyon, swerved to avoid running over her, and
+stopped as abruptly as possible.
+
+"It's a girl!" cried the driver, and both men sprang to the road
+and hurried to Linda's assistance. Her dark cheeks were red with
+mortification, but she managed to recover her feet and tuck in her
+blouse before they reached her.
+
+"We heard you coming down," said the elder of the young men, "and we
+thought you might be a bear. Are you sure you're not hurt?"
+
+Linda stood before them, a lithe slender figure, vivid with youth and
+vitality.
+
+"I am able to stand," she said, "so of course I haven't broken any
+bones. I think I am fairly well battered, but you will please to observe
+that there isn't a scratch on Cotyledon, and I brought her down--at
+least I think it's she--from the edge of that boulder away up there.
+Isn't she a beauty? Only notice the delicate frosty 'bloom' on her
+leaves!"
+
+"I should prefer," said the younger of the men, "to know whether you have
+any broken bones."
+
+"I'm sure I am all right," answered Linda. "I have falling down
+mountains reduced to an exact science. I'll bet you couldn't slide that
+far and bring down Coty without a scratch."
+
+"Well, which is the more precious," said the young man. "Yourself or
+the specimen?"
+
+"Why, the specimen!" answered Linda in impatience. "California is full
+of girls; but this is the finest Cotyledon of this family I have ever
+seen. Don't mistake this for any common stonecrop. It looks to me like
+an Echeveria. I know what I mean to do with the picture I have made of
+her, and I know exactly where she is going to grow from this day on."
+
+"Is there any way we can help you?" inquired the elder of the two men.
+
+For the first time Linda glanced at him, and her impression was that he
+was decidedly attractive.
+
+"No, thank you!" she answered briskly. "I am going to climb back up to
+the boulder and collect the belongings I spilled on the way down. Then
+I am going to carry Coty to the car line in a kind of triumphal march,
+because she is the rarest find that I have ever made. I hope you have
+no dark designs on Coty, because this is 'what the owner had to do to
+redeem her.'"
+
+Linda indicated her trail down the canyon side, brushed soil and twigs
+from her trousers, turned her straight young back, carefully set down
+her specimen, and by the aid of her recovered stick began expertly
+making her way up the canyon side. "Here, let me do that," offered the
+younger man. "You rest until I collect your belongings." Linda glanced
+back over her shoulder. "Thanks," she said. "I have a mental inventory
+of all the pencils and knives and trowels I must find. You might
+overlook the most important part of my paraphernalia; and really I am
+not damaged. I'm merely hurt. Good-bye!"
+
+Linda started back up the side of the canyon, leaving the young men to
+enter their car and drive away. For a minute both of them stood watching
+her.
+
+"What will girls be wearing and doing next?" asked the elder of the two
+as he started his car.
+
+"What would you have a girl wear when she is occupied with coasting down
+canyons?" said his friend. "And as for what she is doing, it's probable
+that every high-school girl in Los Angeles has a botanical collection to
+make before she graduates."
+
+"I see!" said the man driving. "She is only a high-school kid, but
+did you notice that she is going to make an extremely attractive young
+woman?"
+
+"Yes, I noticed just that; I noticed it very particularly," answered
+the younger man. "And I noticed also that she either doesn't know it, or
+doesn't give a flip."
+
+  Linda collected her belongings, straightened her hair and
+clothing, and, with her knapsack in place, and leaning rather on heavily
+on her walking stick, made her way down the road to the abutment of a
+small rustic bridge where she stopped to rest. The stream at her feet
+was noisy and icy cold. It rushed through narrow defiles in the rock,
+beat itself to foam against the faces a of the big stones, fell over
+jutting cliffs, spread in whispering pools, wound back and forth
+across the road at its will, singing every foot of its downward way
+and watering beds of crisp, cool miners' lettuce, great ferns, and
+heliotrope, climbing clematis, soil and blue-eyed grass. All along
+its length grew willows, and in a few places white-bodied sycamores.
+Everywhere over the walls red above it that vegetation could find a
+footing grew mosses, vines, flowers, and shrubs. On the shadiest side
+homed most of the ferns and the Cotyledon. In the sun, larkspur, lupin,
+and monkey flower; everywhere wild rose, holly, mahogany, gooseberry,
+and bayoneted yucca all intermingling in a curtain of variegated greens,
+brocaded with flower arabesques of vivid red, white, yellow, and blue.
+Canyon wrens and vireos sang as they nested. The air was clear, cool,
+and salty from the near-by sea. Myriad leaf shadows danced on the black
+roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed the wavering
+image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea swallow. Linda studied the
+canyon with intent eyes, but bruised flesh pleaded, so reluctantly she
+arose, shouldered her belongings, and slowly followed the road out to
+the car line that passed through Lilac Valley, still carefully bearing
+in triumph the precious Cotyledon. An hour later she entered the
+driveway of her home. She stopped to set her plant carefully in the wild
+garden she and her father had worked all her life at collecting, then
+followed the back porch and kitchen route.
+
+"Whatever have ye been doing to yourself, honey?" cried Katy.
+
+"I came a cropper down Multiflores Canyon where it is so steep that it
+leans the other way. I pretty well pulverized myself for a pulverulent,
+Katy, which is a poor joke."
+
+"Now ain't that just my luck!" wailed Katy, snatching a cake cutter and
+beginning hurriedly to stamp out little cakes from the dough before her.
+
+"Well, I don't understand in exactly what way," said Linda, absently
+rubbing her elbows and her knees. "Seems to me it's my promontories that
+have been knocked off, not yours, Katy."
+
+"Yes, and ain't it just like ye," said Katy, "to be coming in late, and
+all banged up when Miss Eileen has got sudden notice that there is going
+to be company again and I have an especial dinner to serve, and never in
+the world can I manage if ye don't help me!"
+
+"Why, who is coming now?" asked Linda, seating herself on the nearest
+chair and beginning to unfasten her boots slowly.
+
+"Well, first of all, there is Mr. Gilman, of course."
+
+"'Of course,'" conceded Linda. "If he tried to get past our house,
+Eileen is perfectly capable of setting it on fire to stop him. She's got
+him 'vamped' properly."
+
+"Oh I don't know that ye should say just that," said Katy "Eileen is a
+mighty pretty girl, and she is SOME manager."
+
+"You can stake your hilarious life she is," said Linda, viciously
+kicking a boot to the center of the kitchen. "She can manage to go
+downtown for lunch and be invited out to dinner thirteen times a week,
+and leave us at home to eat bread and milk, bread heavily stressed.
+She can manage to get every cent of the income from the property in her
+fingers, and a great big girl like me has to go to high school looking
+so tacky that even the boys are beginning to comment on it. Manage, I'll
+say she can manage, not to mention managing to snake John Gilman right
+out of Marian's fingers. I doubt if Marian fully realizes yet that she's
+lost her man; and I happen to know that she just plain loved John!"
+
+The second boot landed beside the first, then Linda picked them both up
+and started toward the back hall.
+
+"Honey, are ye too bad hurt to help me any?" asked Katy, as she passed
+her.
+
+"Of course not," said Linda. "Give me a few minutes to take a bath and
+step into my clothes and then I'll be on the job."
+
+With a black scowl on her face, Linda climbed the dingy back stairway
+in her stocking-feet. At the head of the stairs she paused one minute,
+glanced at the gloom of her end of the house, then she turned and walked
+to the front of the hall where there were potted ferns, dainty white
+curtains, and bright rugs. The door of the guest room stood open and she
+could see that it was filled with fresh flowers and ready for occupancy.
+The door of her sister's room was slightly ajar and she pushed it open
+and stood looking inside. In her state of disarray she made a shocking
+contrast to the flowerlike figure busy before a dressing table. Linda
+was dark, narrow, rawboned, overgrown in height, and forthright of
+disposition. Eileen was a tiny woman, delicately moulded, exquisitely
+colored, and one of the most perfectly successful tendrils from the
+original clinging vine in her intercourse with men, and with such women
+as would tolerate the clinging-vine idea in the present forthright days.
+With a strand of softly curled hair in one hand and a fancy pin in the
+other, Eileen turned a disapproving look upon her sister.
+
+"What's the great idea?" demanded Linda shortly.
+
+"Oh, it's perfectly splendid," answered Eileen. "John Gilman's best
+friend is motoring around here looking for a location to build a home.
+He is an author and young and good looking and not married, and he
+thinks he would like to settle somewhere near Los Angeles. Of course
+John would love to have him in Lilac Valley because he hopes to build a
+home here some day for himself. His name is Peter Morrison and John says
+that his articles and stories have horse sense, logic, and humor, and he
+is making a lot of money."
+
+"Then God help John Gilman, if he thinks now that he is in love with
+you," said Linda dryly.
+
+Eileen arched her eyebrows, thinned to a hair line, and her lips drew
+together in disapproval.
+
+"What I can't understand," she said, "is how you can be so unspeakably
+vulgar, Linda."
+
+Linda laughed sharply.
+
+"And this Peter Morrison and John are our guests for dinner?"
+
+"Yes," said Eileen. "I am going to show them this valley inside and out.
+I'm so glad it's spring. We're at our very best. It would be perfectly
+wonderful to have an author for a neighbor, and he must be going to
+build a real house, because he has his architect with him; and John says
+that while he is young, he has done several awfully good houses. He has
+seen a couple of them in in San Francisco."
+
+Linda shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Up the flue goes Marian's chance of drawing the plans for John Gilman's
+house," she said. "I have heard him say a dozen times he would not build
+a house unless Marian made the plans."
+
+Eileen deftly placed the strand of hair and set the jewelled pin with
+precision.
+
+"Just possibly things have changed slightly," she suggested.
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I observe that they have. Marian has sold the home
+she adored. She is leaving friends she loved and trusted, and who were
+particularly bound to her by a common grief without realizing exactly
+how it is happening. She certainly must know that you have taken her
+lover, and I have not a doubt but that is the reason she has discovered
+she can no longer work at home, that she must sell her property and
+spend the money cooped up in a city, to study her profession further."
+
+"Linda," said Eileen, her face pale with anger, "you are positively
+insufferable. Will you leave my room and close the door after you?"
+
+"Well, Katy has just informed me," said Linda, "that this dinner party
+doesn't come off without my valued assistance, and before I agree to
+assist, I'll know ONE thing. Are you proposing to entertain these three
+men yourself, or have you asked Marian?"
+
+Eileen indicated an open note lying on her dressing table.
+
+"I did not know they were coming until an hour ago," she said. "_I_
+barely had time to fill the vases and dust, and then I ran up to dress
+so that there would be someone presentable when they arrive."
+
+"All right then, we'll agree that this is a surprise party, but if John
+Gilman has told you so much about them, you must have been expecting
+them, and in a measure prepared for them at any time. Haven't you talked
+it over with Marian, and told her that you would want her when they
+came?"
+
+Eileen was extremely busy with another wave of hair. She turned her back
+and her voice was not quite steady as she answered. "Ever since Marian
+got this 'going to the city to study' idea in her head I have scarcely
+seen her. She had an awful job to empty the house, and pack such things
+as she wants to keep, and she is working overtime on a very special plan
+that she thinks maybe she'll submit in a prize competition offered by
+a big firm of San Francisco architects, so I have scarcely seen her for
+six weeks."
+
+"And you never once went over to help her with her work, or to encourage
+her or to comfort her? You can't think Marian can leave this valley and
+not be almost heartbroken," said Linda. "You just make me almost wonder
+at you. When you think of the kind of friends that Marian Thorne's
+father and mother, and our father and mother were, and how we children
+were reared together, and the good times we have had in these two
+houses--and then the awful day when the car went over the cliff, and
+how Marian clung to us and tried to comfort us, when her own health was
+broken--and Marian's the same Marian she has always been, only nicer
+every day--how you can sit there and say you have scarcely seen her in
+six of the hardest weeks of her life, certainly surprises me. I'll tell
+you this: I told Katy I would help her, but I won't do it if you don't
+go over and make Marian come tonight."
+
+Eileen turned to her sister and looked at her keenly. Linda's brow was
+sullen, and her jaw set.
+
+"A bed would look mighty good to me and I will go and get into mine this
+minute if you don't say you will go and ask her, in such a way that she
+comes," she threatened.
+
+Eileen hesitated a second and then said: "All right, since you make such
+a point of it I will ask her."
+
+"Very well," said Linda. "Then I'll help Katy the very best I can."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. The House of Dreams
+
+In less than an hour, Linda was in the kitchen, dressed in an old green
+skirt and an orange blouse. Katy pinned one of her aprons on the girl
+and told her that her first job was to set the table.
+
+"And Miss Eileen has given most particular orders that I use the very
+best of everything. Lay the table for four, and you are to be extremely
+careful in serving not to spill the soup."
+
+Linda stood very quietly for a second, her heavy black brows drawn
+together in deep thought.
+
+"When did Eileen issue these instructions?" she inquired.
+
+"Not five minutes ago," said Katy. "She just left me kitchen and I'll
+say I never saw her lookin' such a perfect picture. That new dress of
+hers is the most becoming one she has ever had."
+
+Almost unconsciously, Linda's hand reached to the front of her well-worn
+blouse, and she glanced downward at her skirt and shoes.
+
+"Um-hm," she said meditatively, "another new dress for Eileen, which
+means that I will get nothing until next month's allowance comes in, if
+I do then. The table set for four, which, interpreted, signifies that
+she has asked Marian in such a way that Marian won't come. And the
+caution as to care with the soup means that I am to serve my father's
+table like a paid waitress. Katy, I have run for over three years on
+Eileen's schedule, but this past year I am beginning to use my brains
+and I am reaching the place of self-assertion. That programme won't do,
+Katy. It's got to be completely revised. You just watch me and see how I
+follow those instructions."
+
+Then Linda marched out of the kitchen door and started across the lawn
+in the direction of a big brown house dimly outlined through widely
+spreading branches of ancient live oaks, palm, and bamboo thickets.
+She entered the house without knocking and in the hall uttered a low
+penetrating whistle. It was instantly answered from upstairs. Linda
+began climbing, and met Marian at the top.
+
+"Why, Marian," she cried, "I had no idea you were so far along. The
+house is actually empty."
+
+"Practically everything went yesterday," answered Marian. "Those things
+of Father's and Mother's and my own that I wish to keep I have put in
+storage, and the remainder went to James's Auction Rooms. The house is
+sold, and I am leaving in the morning."
+
+"Then that explains," questioned Linda, "why you refused Eileen's
+invitation to dinner tonight?"
+
+"On the contrary," answered Marian, "an invitation to dinner tonight
+would be particularly and peculiarly acceptable to me, since the kitchen
+is barren as the remainder of the house, and I was intending to slip
+over when your room was lighted to ask if I might spend the night with
+you."
+
+Linda suddenly gathered her friend in her arms and held her tight.
+
+"Well, thank heaven that you felt sufficiently sure of me to come to me
+when you needed me. Of course you shall spend the night with me; and I
+must have been mistaken in thinking Eileen had been here. She probably
+will come any minute. There are guests for the night. John is bringing
+that writer friend of his. Of course you know about him. It's Peter
+Morrison."
+
+Marian nodded her head. "Of course! John has always talked of him. He
+had some extremely clever articles in The Post lately."
+
+"Well, he is one," said Linda, "and an architect who is touring with him
+is two; they are looking for a location to build a house for the writer.
+You can see that it would be a particularly attractive feather in our
+cap if he would endorse our valley sufficiently to home in it. So
+Eileen has invited them to sample our brand of entertainment, and in the
+morning no doubt she will be delighted to accompany them and show them
+all the beautiful spots not yet preempted."
+
+"Oh, heavens," cried Marian, "I'm glad I never showed her my spot!"
+
+"Well, if you are particular about wanting a certain place I sincerely
+hope you did not," said Linda.
+
+"I am sure I never did," answered Marian. "I so love one spot that I
+have been most secretive about it. I am certain I never went further
+than to say there was a place on which I would love to build for myself
+the house of my dreams. I have just about finished getting that home
+on paper, and I truly have high hopes that I may stand at least a fair
+chance of winning with it the prize Nicholson and Snow are offering.
+That is one of the reasons why I am hurrying on my way to San Francisco
+much sooner than I had expected to go. I haven't a suitable dinner dress
+because my trunks have gone, but among such old friends it won't matter.
+I have one fussy blouse in my bag, and I'll be over as soon as I can see
+to closing up the house and dressing."
+
+Linda hurried home, and going to the dining room, she laid the table for
+six in a deft and artistic manner. She filled a basket with beautiful
+flowers of her own growing for a centerpiece, and carefully followed
+Eileen's instruction to use the best of everything. When she had
+finished she went to the kitchen.
+
+"Katy," she said, "take a look at my handiwork."
+
+"It's just lovely," said Katy heartily.
+
+"I quite agree with you," answered Linda, "and now in pursuance of a
+recently arrived at decision, I have resigned, vamoosed, quit, dead
+stopped being waitress for Eileen. I was seventeen my last birthday.
+Hereafter when there are guests I sit at my father's table, and you will
+have to do the best you can with serving, Katy."
+
+"And it's just exactly right ye are," said Katy. "I'll do my best, and
+if that's not good enough, Miss Eileen knows what she can do."
+
+"Now listen to you," laughed Linda. "Katy, you couldn't be driven to
+leave me, by anything on this earth that Eileen could do; you know you
+couldn't."
+
+Katy chuckled quietly. "Sure, I wouldn't be leaving ye, lambie," she
+said. "We'll get everything ready, and I can serve I six as nicely as
+anyone. But you're not forgetting that Miss Eileen said most explicit to
+lay the table for FOUR?'
+
+"I am not forgetting," said Linda. "For Eileen's sake I am I sorry
+to say that her ship is on the shoals. She is not going to have clear
+sailing with little sister Linda any longer. This is the year of woman's
+rights, you know, Katy, and I am beginning to realize that my rights
+have been badly infringed upon for lo these many years. If Eileen
+chooses to make a scene before guests, that is strictly up to Eileen.
+Now what is it you want me to do?"
+
+Katy directed and Linda worked swiftly. Soon they heard a motor stop,
+and laughing voices told them that the guests had arrived.
+
+"Now I wonder," said Linda, "whether Marian is here yet."
+
+At that minute Marian appeared at the kitchen door.
+
+"Linda," she said breathlessly, "I am feeling queer about this. Eileen
+hasn't been over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Linda casually. "The folks have come, and
+she was only waiting to make them a bit at home before she ran after
+you."
+
+Marian hesitated.
+
+"She was not allowing me much time to dress."
+
+"That's 'cause she knew you did not need it," retorted Linda. "The more
+you fuss up, the less handsome you are, and you never owned anything in
+your life so becoming as that old red blouse. So farewell, Katy, we're
+due to burst into high society tonight. We're going to help Eileen vamp
+a lawyer, and an author, and an architect, one apiece. Which do you
+prefer, Marian?"
+
+"I'll take the architect," said Marian. "We should have something in
+common since I am going to be a great architect myself one of these
+days."
+
+"Why, that is too bad," said Linda. "I'll have to rearrange the table if
+you insist, because I took him, and left you the author, and it was for
+love of you I did it. I truly wanted him myself, all the time."
+
+They stopped in the dining room and Marian praised Linda's work in
+laying the table; and then, together they entered the living room.
+
+At the moment of their entrance, Eileen was talking animatedly about the
+beauties of the valley as a location for a happy home. When she saw the
+two girls she paused, the color swiftly faded from her face, and Linda,
+who was watching to see what would happen, noticed the effort she made
+at self-control, but she was very sure that their guests did not.
+
+It never occurred to Linda that anyone would consider good looks in
+connection with her overgrown, rawboned frame and lean face, but she was
+accustomed to seeing people admire Marian, for Marian was a perfectly
+modeled woman with peach bloom cheeks, deep, dark eyes, her face framed
+in a waving mass of hair whose whiteness dated from the day that the
+brakes of her car failed and she plunged down the mountain with her
+father beside her, and her mother and Doctor and Mrs. Strong in the back
+seat. Ten days afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin
+white. Now it framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos.
+"Striking" was perhaps the one adjective which would best describe her.
+
+John Gilman came hastily to greet them. Linda, after a swift glance
+at Eileen, turned astonished eyes on their guests. For one second
+she looked at the elder of them, then at the younger. There was no
+recognition in her eyes, and there was a decided negative in a swift
+movement of her head. Both men understood that she did not wish them to
+mention that they ever had seen her previously. For an instant there
+was a strained situation. Eileen was white with anger. John Gilman was
+looking straight at Marian, and in his soul he must have wondered if
+he had been wise in neglecting her for Eileen. Peter Morrison and his
+architect, Henry Anderson, had two things to think about. One was the
+stunning beauty of Marian Thorne as she paused in the doorway, the light
+misting her white hair and deepening the tints of her red waist The
+other was why the young girl facing them had forbidden them to reveal
+that two hours before they had seen her in the canyon. Katy, the
+efficient life-saver of the Strong family, announced dinner, and Linda
+drew back the curtains and led the way to the dining room, saying
+when they had arrived: "I didn't have time in my hour's notice to make
+elaborate place cards as I should have liked to do, so these little pen
+sketches will have to serve."
+
+To cover his embarrassment and to satisfy his legal mind, John Gilman
+turned to Linda, asking: "Why 'an hour'? I told Eileen a week ago I was
+expecting the boys today."
+
+"But that does not prove that Eileen mentioned it to me," answered Linda
+quietly; "so you must find your places from the cards I could prepare in
+a hurry."
+
+This same preparation of cards at the round table placed Eileen between
+the architect and the author, Marian between the author and John Gilman,
+and Linda between Gilman and the architect, which added one more tiny
+gale to the storm of fury that was raging in the breast of white-faced
+Eileen. The situation was so strained that without fully understanding
+it, Marian, who was several years older than either of the Strong
+sisters, knew that although she was tired to the point of exhaustion
+she should muster what reserve force she could to the end of making the
+dinner party particularly attractive, because she was deeply interested
+in drawing to the valley every suitable home seeker it was possible
+to locate there. It was the unwritten law of the valley that whenever
+a home seeker passed through, every soul who belonged exerted the
+strongest influence to prove that the stars hung lower and shone bigger
+and in bluer heavens than anywhere else on earth; that nowhere could
+be found air to equal the energizing salt breezes from the sea, snow
+chilled, perfumed with almond and orange; that the sun shone brighter
+more days in the year, and the soil produced a greater variety of
+vegetables and fruits than any other spot of the same size on God's
+wonderful footstool. This could be done with unanimity and enthusiasm
+by every resident of Lilac Valley for the very simple reason that it was
+the truth. The valley stood with its steep sides raying blue from myriad
+wild lilacs; olives and oranges sloped down to the flat floor, where
+cultivated ranches and gardens were so screened by eucalyptus and pepper
+trees, palm and live oak, myriads of roses of every color and variety,
+and gaudy plants gathered there from the entire girth of the
+tropical world, that to the traveler on the highway trees and flowers
+predominated. The greatest treasure of the valley was the enthusiastic
+stream of icy mountain water that wandered through the near-by canyon
+and followed the length of the valley on its singing, chuckling way
+to the ocean. All the residents of Lilac Valley had to do to entrance
+strangers with the location was to show any one of a dozen vantage
+points, and let visitors test for themselves the quality of the sunshine
+and air, and study the picture made by the broad stretch of intensively
+cultivated valley, walled on either side by mountains whose highest
+peaks were often cloud-draped and for ever shifting their delicate
+pastel shades from gray to blue, from lavender to purple, from tawny
+yellow to sepia, under the play of the sun and clouds.
+
+They had not been seated three minutes before Linda realized from her
+knowledge of Eileen that the shock had been too great, if such a thing
+might be said of so resourceful a creature as Eileen. Evidently she was
+going to sulk in the hope that this would prove that any party was a
+failure at which she did not exert herself to be gracious. It had not
+been in Linda's heart to do more than sit quietly in the place belonging
+by right to her, but when she realized what was going to happen, she
+sent Marian one swift appealing glance, and then desperately plunged
+into conversation to cover Eileen's defection.
+
+"I have been told," she said, addressing the author, "that you are
+looking for a home in California. Is this true, or is it merely that
+every good Californian hopes this will happen when any distinguished
+Easterner comes our way?"
+
+"I can scarcely answer you," said Peter Morrison, "because my ideas on
+the subject are still slightly nebulous, but I am only too willing to
+see them become concrete."
+
+"You have struck exactly the right place," said Linda. "We have concrete
+by the wagon load in this valley and we are perfectly willing to donate
+the amount required to materialize your ideas. Do you dream of a whole
+ranch or only a nest?"
+
+"Well, the fact is," answered Peter Morrison with a most attractive
+drawl in his slow speech, "the fact is the dimensions of my dream must
+fit my purse. Ever since I finished college I have been in newspaper
+work and I have lived in an apartment in New York except while I was
+abroad. When I came back my paper sent me to San Francisco and from
+there I motored down to see for myself if the wonderful things that are
+written about Los Angeles County are true."
+
+"That is not much of a compliment to us," said Linda slowly. "How do you
+think we would dare write them if they were not true?"
+
+This caused such a laugh that everyone felt much easier. Marian turned
+her dark eyes toward Peter Morrison.
+
+"Linda and I are busy people," she said. "We waste little time
+in indirections, so I hope it's not out of the way for me to ask
+straightforwardly if you are truly in earnest, about wanting a home in
+Lilac Valley?"
+
+"Then I'll have to answer you," said Peter, "that I have an attractive
+part of the 'makin's' and I am in deadly earnest about wanting a home
+somewhere. I am sick in my soul of narrow apartments and wheels and the
+rush and roar of the city. There was a time when I ate and drank it.
+It was the very breath of life to me. I charged on Broadway like a
+caterpillar tank charging in battle; but it is very remarkable how
+quickly one changes in this world. I have had some success in my work,
+and the higher I go, the better work I feel I can do in a quiet place
+and among less enervating surroundings. John and I were in college
+together, roommates, and no doubt he has told you that we graduated with
+the same class. He has found his location here and I would particularly
+enjoy having a home near him. They tell me there are well-trained
+servants to look after a house and care for a bachelor, so I truly feel
+that if I can find a location I would like, and if Henry can plan me a
+house, and I can stretch my purse to cover the investment, that there
+is a very large possibility that somewhere within twenty miles of Los
+Angeles I may find the home of my dreams."
+
+"One would almost expect," said Marian, "that a writer would say
+something more original. This valley is filled with people who came here
+saying precisely what you have said; and the lure of the land won them
+and here they are, shameless boosters of California."
+
+"Why shameless?" inquired Henry Anderson.
+
+"Because California so verifies the wildest statement that can be made
+concerning her that one may go the limit of imagination without shame,"
+laughed Marian. "I try in all my dealings to stick to the straight and
+narrow path."
+
+"Oh, kid, don't stick to the straight and narrow," broke in Linda,
+"there's no scenery."
+
+Eileen laid down her fork and stared in white-lipped amazement at the
+two girls, but she was utterly incapable of forgetting herself and her
+neatly arranged plans to have the three cultivated and attractive
+young men all to herself for the evening. She realized too, from the
+satisfaction betrayed in the glances these men were exchanging among
+each other, the ease with which they sat, and the gusto with which they
+ate the food Katy was deftly serving them, that something was happening
+which never had happened at the Strong table since she had presided
+as its head, her sole endeavor having been to flatter her guests or to
+extract flattery for herself from them.
+
+"That is what makes this valley so adorable," said Marian when at last
+she could make herself heard. "It is neither straight nor narrow. The
+wing of a white sea swallow never swept a lovelier curve on the breast
+of the ocean than the line of this valley. My mother was the dearest
+little woman, and she used to say that this valley was outlined by a
+gracious gesture from the hand of God in the dawn of Creation."
+
+Peter Morrison deliberately turned in his chair, his eyes intent on
+Marian's earnest face.
+
+"You almost make me want to say, in the language of an old hymn I used
+to hear my mother sing, 'Here will I set up my rest.' With such a name
+as Lilac Valley and with such a thought in the heart concerning it, I
+scarcely feel that there is any use in looking further. How about it,
+Henry? Doesn't it sound conclusive to you?"
+
+"It certainly does," answered Henry Anderson, "and from what I could see
+as we drove in, it looks as well as it sounds."
+
+Peter Morrison turned to his friend.
+
+"Gilman," he said, "you're a lawyer; you should know the things I'd like
+to. Are there desirable homesites still to be found in the valley,
+and does the inflation of land at the present minute put it out of my
+reach?"
+
+"Well, that is on a par with the average question asked a lawyer,"
+answered Gilman, "but part of it I can answer definitely and at once.
+I think every acre of land suitable for garden or field cultivation is
+taken. I doubt if there is much of the orchard land higher up remaining
+and what there is would command a rather stiff price; but if you would
+be content with some small plateau at the base of a mountain where you
+could set any sort of a house and have--say two or three acres, mostly
+of sage and boulders and greasewood and yucca around it."
+
+"Why in this world are you talking about stones and sage and
+greasewood?" cried Linda. "Next thing they'll be asking about mountain
+lions and rattlesnakes."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Gilman, "I fear none of us has remembered to
+present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist. She got her start from her
+father, who was one of the greatest nerve specialists the world ever
+has known. She knows every inch of the mountains, the canyons and the
+desert. She always says that she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe,
+while her father hunted the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland.
+What should I have said when describing a suitable homesite for Peter,
+Linda?"
+
+"You should have assumed that immediately, Peter,"--Linda lifted her
+eyes to Morrison's face with a sparkle of gay challenge, and by way of
+apology interjected--"I am only a kid, you know, so I may call John's
+friend Peter--you should have assumed that sage and greasewood would
+simply have vanished from any home location chosen by Peter, leaving it
+all lacy blue with lilac, and misty white with lemonade bush, and lovely
+gold with monkey flower, and purple with lupin, and painted blood red
+with broad strokes of Indian paint brush, and beautifully lighted with
+feathery flames from Our Lord's Candles, and perfumy as altar incense
+with wild almond."
+
+"Oh, my soul," said Peter Morrison. "Good people, I have located. I have
+come to stay. I would like three acres but I could exist with two; an
+acre would seem an estate to me, and my ideas of a house, Henry, are
+shriveling. I did have a dream of something that must have been precious
+near a home. There might have been an evanescent hint of flitting
+draperies and inexperienced feet in it, but for the sake of living and
+working in such a location as Miss Linda describes, I would gladly cut
+my residence to a workroom and a sleeping room and kitchen."
+
+"Won't do," said Linda. "A house is not a house in California without
+a furnace and a bathroom. We are cold as blue blazes here when the sun
+goes down and the salty fog creeps up from the sea, and the icy mist
+rolls down from the mountains to chill our bones; and when it has not
+rained for six months at a stretch, your own private swimming pool is
+a comfort. This to add verisimilitude to what everyone else in Lilac
+Valley is going to tell you."
+
+"I hadn't thought I would need a fire," said Peter, "and I was depending
+on the ocean for my bathtub. I am particularly fond of a salt rub."
+
+So far, Eileen had not deigned to enter the conversation. It was all so
+human, so far from her ideas of entertaining that the disapproval on her
+lips was not sufficiently veiled to be invisible, and John Gilman,
+glancing in her direction, realized that he was having the best time he
+had ever had in the Strong household since the passing of his friends,
+Doctor and Mrs. Strong, vaguely wondered why. And it occurred to him
+that Linda and Marian were dominating the party. He said the most
+irritating thing possible in the circumstances: "I am afraid you are not
+feeling well this evening, Eileen."
+
+Eileen laughed shortly.
+
+"The one perfect thing about me," she said with closely cut precision,
+"is my health. I haven't the faintest notion what it means to be ill. I
+am merely waiting for the conversation to take a I turn where I can join
+in it intelligently."
+
+"Why, bless the child!" exclaimed Linda. "Can't you talk intelligently
+about a suitable location for a home? On what subject is a woman
+supposed to be intelligent if she is not at her best on the theme of
+home. If you really are not interested you had better begin to polish
+up, because it appeals to me that the world goes just so far in one
+direction, and then it whirls to the right-about and goes equally as far
+in the opposite direction. If Daddy were living I think he would say we
+have reached the limit with apartment house homes minus fireplaces, with
+restaurant dining minus a blessing, with jazz music minus melody, with
+jazz dancing minus grace, with national progress minus cradles."
+
+"Linda!" cried Eileen indignantly.
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Linda. "Do I get the shillalah for that? Weren't
+all of us rocked in cradles? I think that the pendulum has swung far
+and it is time to swing back to where one man and one woman choose any
+little spot on God's footstool, build a nest and plan their lives in
+accord with personal desire and inclination instead of aping their
+neighbors."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Henry Anderson. "Miss Linda, if you see any suitable
+spot, and you think I would serve for a bug-catcher, won't you please
+stake the location?"
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," said Linda. "Would it be the old case
+of 'I furnish the bread and you furnish the water'?"
+
+"No," said Peter Morrison, "it would not. Henry is doing mighty well. I
+guarantee that he would furnish a cow that would produce real cream."
+
+"How joyous!" said Linda. "I feel quite competent to manage the bread
+question. We'll call that settled then. When I next cast an appraising
+eye over my beloved valley, I shan't select the choicest spot in it for
+Peter Morrison to write a book in; and I want to warn you people when
+you go hunting to keep a mile away from Marian's plot. She has had her
+location staked from childhood and has worked on her dream house until
+she has it all ready to put the ice in the chest and scratch the match
+for the living room fire-logs. The one thing she won't ever tell is
+where her location is, but wherever it is, Peter Morrison, don't you
+dare take it."
+
+"I wouldn't for the world," said Peter Morrison gravely. "If Miss Thorne
+will tell me even on which side of the valley her location lies, I will
+agree to stay on the other side."
+
+"Well there is one thing you can depend upon," said the irrepressible
+Linda before Marian had time to speak. "It is sure to be on the sunny
+side. Every living soul in California is looking for a place in the
+sun."
+
+"Then I will make a note of it," said Peter Morrison. "But isn't there
+enough sun in all this lovely valley that I may have a place in it too?"
+
+"You go straight ahead and select any location you like," said Marian.
+"I give you the freedom of the valley. There's not one chance in ten
+thousand that you would find or see anything attractive about the one
+secluded spot I have always hoped I might some day own."
+
+"This is not fooling, then?" asked Peter Morrison. "You truly have a
+place selected where you would like to live?"
+
+"She truly has the spot selected and she truly has the house on paper
+and it truly is a house of dreams," said Linda. "I dream about it
+myself. When she builds it and lives in it awhile and finds out all the
+things that are wrong with it, then I am going to build one like it,
+only I shall eliminate all the mistakes she has made."
+
+"I have often wondered," said Henry Anderson, "if such a thing ever
+happened as that people built a house and lived in it, say ten years,
+and did not find one single thing about it that they would change if
+they had it to build over again. I never have heard of such a case. Have
+any of you?"
+
+"I am sure no one has," said John Gilman meditatively, "and it's a queer
+thing. I can't see why people don't plan a house the way they want it
+before they build."
+
+Marian turned to him--the same Marian he had fallen in love with when
+they were children.
+
+"Mightn't it be," she asked, "that it is due to changing conditions
+caused by the rapid development of science and invention? If one had
+built the most perfect house possible five years ago and learned today
+that infinitely superior lighting and heating and living facilities
+could be installed at much less expense and far greater convenience,
+don't you think that one would want to change? Isn't life a series of
+changes? Mustn't one be changing constantly to keep abreast of one's day
+and age?"
+
+"Why, surely," answered Gilman, "and no doubt therein lies at least part
+of the answer to Anderson's question."
+
+"And then," added Marian, "things happen in families. Sometimes more
+babies than they expect come to newly married people and they require
+more room."
+
+"My goodness, yes!" broke in Linda. "Just look at Sylvia Townsend--twins
+to begin with."
+
+"Linda!" breathed Eileen, aghast.
+
+"So glad you like my name, dear," murmured Linda sweetly.
+
+"And then," continued Marian, "changes come to other people as they have
+to me. I can't say that I had any fault to find with either the comforts
+or the conveniences of Hawthorne House until Daddy and Mother were swept
+from it at one cruel sweep; and after that it was nothing to me but
+a haunted house, and I don't feel that I can be blamed for wanting to
+leave it. I will be glad to know that there are people living in it who
+won't see a big strong figure meditatively smoking before the fireplace
+and a gray dove of a woman sitting on the arm of his chair. I will be
+glad, if Fate is kind to me and people like my houses, to come back
+to the valley when I can afford to and build myself a home that has no
+past--a place, in fact, where I can furnish my own ghost, and if I meet
+myself on the stairs then I won't be shocked by me.
+
+"I don't think there is a soul in the valley who blames you for selling
+your home and going, Marian," said Linda soberly. "I think it would be
+foolish if you did not."
+
+The return to the living room brought no change. Eileen pouted while
+Linda and Marian thoroughly enjoyed themselves and gave the guests a
+most entertaining evening. So disgruntled was Eileen, when the young
+men had gone, that she immediately went to her room, leaving Linda and
+Marian to close the house and make their own arrangements for the night.
+Whereupon Linda deliberately led Marian to the carefully dusted and
+flower-garnished guest room and installed her with every comfort and
+convenience that the house afforded. Then bringing her brushes from her
+own room, she and Marian made themselves comfortable, visiting far into
+the night.
+
+"I wonder," said Linda, "if Peter Morrison will go to a real estate man
+in the morning and look over the locations remaining in Lilac Valley."
+
+"Yes, I think he will," said Marian conclusively.
+
+"It seems to me," said Linda, "that we did a whole lot of talking about
+homes tonight; which reminds me, Marian, in packing have you put in your
+plans? Have you got your last draft with you?"
+
+"No," answered Marian, "it's in one of the cases. I haven't anything but
+two or three pencil sketches from which I drew the final plans as I now
+think I'll submit them for the contest. Wouldn't it be a tall feather in
+my cap, Linda, if by any chance l I should win that prize?"
+
+"It would be more than a feather," said Linda. "It would be a whole cap,
+and a coat to wear with it, and a dress to match the coat, and slippers
+to match the dress, and so forth just like 'The House That Jack Built.'
+Have you those sketches, Marian?"
+
+Opening her case, Marian slid from underneath the garments folded in it,
+several sheets on which were roughly penciled sketches of the exterior
+of a house--on the reverse, the upstairs and downstairs floor plans; and
+sitting down, she explained these to Linda. Then she left them lying
+on a table, waiting to be returned to her case before she replaced her
+clothes in the morning. Both girls were fast asleep when a mischievous
+wind slipped down the valley, and lightly lifting the top sheet, carried
+it through the window, across the garden, and dropped it at the foot of
+a honey-dripping loquat.
+
+Because they had talked until late in the night of Marian's plans and
+prospects in the city, of Peter Morrison's proposed residence in the
+valley, of how lonely Linda would be without Marian, of everything
+concerning their lives except the change in Eileen and John Gilman, the
+two girls slept until late in the morning, so that there were but a few
+minutes remaining in which Marian might dress, have a hasty breakfast
+and make her train. In helping her, it fell to Linda to pack Marian's
+case. She put the drawings she found on the table in the bottom, the
+clothing and brushes on top of them, and closing the case, carried it
+herself until she delivered it into the porter's hands as Marian boarded
+her train.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. Linda Starts a Revolution
+
+The last glimpse Marian Thorne had of Linda was as she stood alone,
+waving her hand, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, her final word
+cheery and encouraging. Marian smiled and waved in return until the
+train bore her away. Then she sat down wearily and stared unseeingly
+from a window. Life did such very dreadful things to people. Her
+girlhood had been so happy. Then came the day of the Black Shadow, but
+in her blackest hour she had not felt alone. She had supposed she was
+leaning on John Gilman as securely as she had leaned on her father. She
+had learned, with the loss of her father, that one cannot be sure of
+anything in this world least of all of human life. Yet in her darkest
+days she had depended on John Gilman. She had every reason to believe
+that it was for her that he struggled daily to gain a footing in his
+chosen profession. When success came, when there was no reason that
+Marian could see why they might not have begun life together, there had
+come a subtle change in John, and that change had developed so
+rapidly that in a few weeks' time, she was forced to admit that the
+companionship and loving attentions that once had been all hers were now
+all Eileen's.
+
+She sat in the train, steadily carrying her mile after mile farther from
+her home, and tried to think what had happened and how and why it had
+happened. She could not feel that she had been wrong in her estimate of
+John Gilman. Her valuation of him had been taught her by her father and
+mother and by Doctor and Mrs. Strong and by John Gilman himself. Dating
+from the time that Doctor Strong had purchased the property and built a
+home in Lilac Valley beside Hawthorne House, Marian had admired Eileen
+and had loved her. She was several years older than the beautiful girl
+she had grown up beside. Age had not mattered; Eileen's beauty had not
+mattered. Marian was good looking herself.
+
+She always had known that Eileen had imposed upon her and was selfish
+with her, but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully maneuvered,
+her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in
+retrospection felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a
+small part of it. She never had been able to see the inner workings
+of Eileen's heart. She was not capable of understanding that when
+John Gilman was poor and struggling Eileen had ignored him. It had not
+occurred to Marian that when the success for which he struggled began to
+come generously, Eileen would begin to covet the man she had previously
+disdained. She had always striven to find friends among people of wealth
+and distinction. How was Marian to know that when John began to achieve
+wealth and distinction, Eileen would covet him also?
+
+Marian could not know that Eileen had studied her harder than she ever
+studied any book, that she had deliberately set herself to make the most
+of every defect or idiosyncrasy in Marian, at the same time offering
+herself as a charming substitute. Marian was prepared to be the mental,
+the spiritual, and the physical mate of a man.
+
+Eileen was not prepared to be in truth and honor any of these. She was
+prepared to make any emergency of life subservient to her own selfish
+desires. She was prepared to use any man with whom she came in contact
+for the furtherance of any whim that at the hour possessed her. What she
+wanted was unbridled personal liberty, unlimited financial resources.
+
+Marian, almost numbed with physical fatigue and weeks of mental strain,
+came repeatedly against the dead wall of ignorance when she tried to
+fathom the change that had taken place between herself and John Gilman
+and between herself and Eileen. Daniel Thorne was an older man than
+Doctor Strong. He had accumulated more property. Marian had sufficient
+means at her command to make it unnecessary for her to acquire a
+profession or work for her living, but she had always been interested in
+and loved to plan houses and help her friends with buildings they
+were erecting. When the silence and the loneliness of her empty home
+enveloped her, she had begun, at first as a distraction, to work on the
+drawings for a home that an architect had made for one of her neighbors.
+She had been able to suggest so many comforts and conveniences, and so
+to revise these plans that, at first in a desultory way, later in
+real earnest, she had begun to draw plans for houses. Then, being of
+methodical habit and mathematical mind, she began scaling up the plans
+and figuring on the cost of building, and so she had worked until she
+felt that she was evolving homes that could be built for the same amount
+of money and lived in with more comfort and convenience than the homes
+that many of her friends were having planned for them by architects of
+the city.
+
+To one spot in the valley she had gone from childhood as a secret place
+in which to dream and study. She had loved that retreat until it had
+become a living passion with her. The more John Gilman neglected her,
+the more she concentrated upon her plans, and when the hour came in
+which she realized what she had lost and what Eileen had won, she
+reached the decision to sell her home, go to the city, and study until
+she knew whether she really could succeed at her chosen profession.
+
+Then she would come back to the valley, buy the spot she coveted, build
+the house of which she dreamed, and in it she would spend the remainder
+of her life making homes for the women who knew how to hold the love
+of men. When she reached the city she had decided that if one could not
+have the best in life, one must be content with the next best, and for
+her the next best would be homes for other people, since she might not
+materialize the home she had dreamed for John Gilman and herself. She
+had not wanted to leave the valley. She had not wanted to lose John
+Gilman. She had not wanted to part with the home she had been reared in.
+Yet all of these things seemed to have been forced upon her. All Marian
+knew to do was to square her shoulders, take a deep breath, put regrets
+behind her, and move steadily toward the best future she could devise
+for herself.
+
+She carried letters of introduction to the San Francisco architects,
+Nicholson and Snow, who had offered a prize for the best house that
+could be built in a reasonable time for fifteen thousand dollars. She
+meant to offer her plans in this competition. Through friends she had
+secured a comfortable place in which to live and work. She need undergo
+no hardships in searching for a home, in clothing herself, in paying for
+instruction in the course in architecture she meant to pursue.
+
+Concerning Linda she could not resist a feeling of exultation. Linda
+was one of the friends in Lilac Valley about whom Marian could think
+wholeheartedly and lovingly. Sometimes she had been on the point of
+making a suggestion to Linda, and then she had contented herself with
+waiting in the thought that very soon there must come to the girl a
+proper sense of her position and her rights. The experience of the
+previous night taught Marian that Linda had arrived. She would no longer
+be the compliant little sister who would run Eileen's errands, wait upon
+her guests and wear disreputable clothing. When Linda reached a point
+where she was capable of the performance of the previous night, Marian
+knew that she would proceed to live up to her blue china in every
+ramification of life. She did not know exactly how Linda would follow up
+the assertion of her rights that she had made, but she did know that
+in some way she would follow it up, because Linda was a very close
+reproduction of her father.
+
+She had been almost constantly with him during his life, very much alone
+since his death. She was a busy young person. From Marian's windows
+she had watched the business of carrying on the wild-flower garden that
+Linda and her father had begun. What the occupation was that kept the
+light burning in Linda's room far into the night Marian did not know.
+For a long time she had supposed that her studies were difficult for
+her, and when she had asked Linda if it were not possible for her to
+prepare her lessons without so many hours of midnight study she had
+caught the stare of frank amazement with which the girl regarded her
+and in that surprised, almost grieved look she had realized that very
+probably a daughter of Alexander Strong, who resembled him as Linda
+resembled him, would not be compelled to overwork to master the
+prescribed course of any city high school. What Linda was doing during
+those midnight hours Marian did not know, but she did know that she was
+not wrestling with mathematics and languages--at least not all of the
+time. So Marian knowing Linda's gift with a pencil, had come to the
+conclusion that she was drawing pictures; but circumstantial evidence
+was all she had as a basis for her conviction. Linda went her way
+silently and alone. She was acquainted with everyone living in Lilac
+Valley, frank and friendly with all of them; aside from Marian she
+had no intimate friend. Not another girl in the valley cared to follow
+Linda's pursuits or to cultivate the acquaintance of the breeched,
+booted girl, constantly devoting herself to outdoor study with her
+father during his lifetime, afterward alone.
+
+For an instant after Marian had boarded her train Linda stood looking at
+it, her heart so heavy that it pained acutely. She had not said one word
+to make Marian feel that she did not want her to go. Not once had she
+put forward the argument that Marian's going would leave her to depend
+entirely for human sympathy upon the cook, and her guardian, also
+administrator of the Strong estate, John Gilman. So long as he was
+Marian's friend Linda had admired John Gilman. She had gone to him for
+some measure of the companionship she had missed in losing her father.
+Since Gilman had allowed himself to be captivated by Eileen, Linda
+had harbored a feeling concerning him almost of contempt. Linda was so
+familiar with every move that Eileen made, so thoroughly understood that
+there was a motive back of her every action, that she could not see why
+John Gilman, having known her from childhood, should not understand her
+also.
+
+She had decided that the time had come when she would force Eileen to
+give her an allowance, however small, for her own personal expenses,
+that she must in some way manage to be clothed so that she was not a
+matter of comment even among the boys of her school, and she could see
+no reason why the absolute personal liberty she always had enjoyed so
+long as she disappeared when Eileen did not want her and appeared when
+she did, should not extend to her own convenience as well as Eileen's.
+
+Life was a busy affair for Linda. She had not time to watch Marian's
+train from sight. She must hurry to the nearest street car and make all
+possible haste or she would be late for her classes. Throughout the day
+she worked with the deepest concentration, but she could not keep down
+the knowledge that Eileen would have things to say, possibly things to
+do, when they met that evening, for Eileen was capable of disconcerting
+hysteria. Previously Linda had remained stubbornly silent during any
+tirade in which Eileen chose to indulge. She had allowed herself to be
+nagged into doing many things that she despised, because she would not
+assert herself against apparent injustice. But since she had come fully
+to realize the results of Eileen's course of action for Marian and for
+herself, she was deliberately arriving at the conclusion that hereafter
+she would speak when she had a defense, and she would make it her
+business to let the sun shine on any dark spot that she discovered in
+Eileen.
+
+Linda knew that if John Gilman were well acquainted with Eileen, he
+could not come any nearer to loving her than she did. Such an idea as
+loving Eileen never had entered Linda's thoughts. To Linda, Eileen was
+not lovable. That she should be expected to love her because they had
+the same parents and lived in the same home seemed absurd. She was
+slightly disappointed, on reaching home, to find that Eileen was not
+there.
+
+"Will the lady of the house dine with us this evening? she asked as she
+stood eating an apple in the kitchen.
+
+"She didn't say," answered Katy. "Have ye had it out about last night
+yet?"
+
+"No," answered Linda. "That is why I was asking about her. I want to
+clear the atmosphere before I make my new start in life."
+
+"Now, don't ye be going too far, lambie," cautioned Katy "Ye young
+things make such an awful serious business of life these days. In your
+scramble to wring artificial joy out of it you miss all the natural joy
+the good God provided ye."
+
+"It seems to me, Katy," said Linda slowly, "that you should put that
+statement the other way round. It seems that life makes a mighty serious
+business for us young things, and it seems to me that if we don't get
+the right start and have a proper foundation life Is going to be spoiled
+for us. One life is all I've got to live in this world, and I would
+like it to be the interesting and the beautiful kind of life that Father
+lived."
+
+Linda dropped to a chair.
+
+"Katy," she said, leaning forward and looking intently into the earnest
+face of the woman before her, "Katy, I have been thinking an awful lot
+lately. There is a question you could answer for me if you wanted to."
+
+"Well, I don't see any raison," said Katy, "why I shouldn't answer ye
+any question ye'd be asking me."
+
+Linda's eyes narrowed as they did habitually in deep thought She was
+looking past Katy down the sunlit spaces of the wild garden that was her
+dearest possession, and then her eyes strayed higher to where the blue
+walls that shut in Lilac Valley ranged their peaks against the sky.
+"Katy," she said, scarcely above her breath, "was Mother like Eileen?"
+
+Katy stiffened. Her red face paled slightly. She turned her back and
+slowly slid into the oven the pie she was carrying. She closed the door
+with more force than was necessary and then turned and deliberately
+studied Linda from the top of her shining black head to the tip of her
+shoe.
+
+"Some," she said tersely.
+
+"Yes, I know 'some'," said Linda, "but you know I was too young to pay
+much attention, and Daddy managed always to make me so happy that I
+never realized until he was gone that he not only had been my father but
+my mother as well. You know what I mean, Katy."
+
+"Yes," said Katy deliberately, "I know what ye mean, lambie, and I'll
+tell ye the truth as far as I know it. She managed your father, she
+pampered him, but she deceived him every day, just about little things.
+She always made the household accounts bigger than they were, and used
+the extra money for Miss Eileen and herself--things like that. I'm
+thinkin' he never knew it. I'm thinking he loved her deeply and trusted
+her complete. I know what ye're getting at. She was not enough like
+Eileen to make him unhappy with her. He might have been if he had known
+all there was to know, but for his own sake I was not the one to give
+her away, though she constantly made him think that I was extravagant
+and wasteful in me work." Linda's eyes came back from the mountains and
+met Katy's straightly.
+
+"Katy," she said, "did you ever see sisters as different as Eileen and I
+are?"
+
+"No, I don't think I ever did," said Katy.
+
+"It puzzles me," said Linda slowly. "The more I think about it, the
+less I can understand why, if we are sisters, we would not accidentally
+resemble each other a tiny bit in some way, and I must say I can't see
+that we do physically or mentally."
+
+"No," said Katy, "ye were just as different as ye are now when I came to
+this house new and ye were both little things."
+
+"And we are going to be as different and to keep on growing more
+different every day of our lives, because red war breaks out the minute
+Eileen comes home. I haven't a notion what she will say to me for what
+I did last night and what I am going to do in the future, but I have a
+definite idea as to what I am going to say to her."
+
+"Now, easy; ye go easy, lambie," cautioned Katy.
+
+"I wouldn't regret it," said Linda, "if I took Eileen by the shoulders
+and shook her till I shook the rouge off her cheek, and the brilliantine
+off her hair, and a million mean little subterfuges out of her soul.
+You know Eileen is lovely when she is natural, and if she would be
+straight-off-the-bat square, I would be proud to be her sister. As it
+is, I have my doubts, even about this sister business."
+
+"Why, Linda, child, ye are just plain crazy," said Katy. "What kind of
+notions are you getting into your head?"
+
+"I hear the front door," said Linda, "and I am going to march straight
+to battle. She's going up the front stairs. I did mean to short-cut up
+the back, but, come to think of it, I have served my apprenticeship
+on the back stairs. I believe I'll ascend the front myself. Good-bye,
+darlin', wish me luck."
+
+Linda swung Katy around, hugged her tight, and dropped a kiss on the top
+of her faithful head.
+
+"Ye just stick right up for your rights," Katy advised her. "Ye're a
+great big girl. 'Tain't going to be long till ye're eighteen. But mind
+your old Katy about going too far. If ye lose your temper and cat-spit,
+it won't get ye anywhere. The fellow that keeps the coolest can always
+do the best headwork."
+
+"I get you," said Linda, "and that is good advice for which I thank
+you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. The Smoke of Battle
+
+Then Linda walked down the hall, climbed the front stairs, and presented
+herself at Eileen's door, there to receive one of the severest shocks of
+her young life. Eileen had tossed her hat and fur upon a couch, seated
+herself at her dressing table, and was studying her hair in the effort
+to decide whether she could fluff it up sufficiently to serve for the
+evening or whether she must take it down and redress it. At Linda's step
+in the doorway she turned a smiling face upon her and cried: "Hello,
+little sister, come in and tell me the news."
+
+Linda stopped as if dazed. The wonderment in which she looked at Eileen
+was stamped all over her. A surprised braid of hair hung over one of her
+shoulders. Her hands were surprised, and the skirt of her dress, and her
+shoes flatly set on the floor.
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" she ejaculated, and then walked to where she
+could face Eileen, and seated herself without making any attempt to
+conceal her amazement.
+
+"Linda," said Eileen sweetly, "you would stand far better chance of
+being popular and making a host of friends if you would not be
+so coarse. I am quite sure you never heard Mama or me use such an
+expression."
+
+For one long instant Linda was too amazed to speak. Then she recovered
+herself.
+
+"Look here, Eileen, you needn't try any 'perfect lady' business on me,"
+she said shortly. "Do you think I have forgotten the extent of your
+vocabulary when the curling iron gets too hot or you fail to receive an
+invitation to the Bachelors' Ball?"
+
+Linda never had been capable of understanding Eileen. At that minute she
+could not know that Eileen had been facing facts through the long hours
+of the night and all through the day, and that she had reached the
+decision that for the future her only hope of working Linda to her will
+was to conciliate her, to ignore the previous night, to try to put their
+relationship upon the old basis by pretending that there never had been
+a break. She laughed softly.
+
+"On rare occasions, I grant it. Of course a little swear slips out
+sometimes. What I am trying to point out is that you do too much of it."
+
+"How did you ever get the idea," said Linda, "that I wanted to be
+popular and have hosts of friends? What would I do with them if I had
+them?"
+
+"Why, use them, my child, use them," answered Eileen promptly.
+
+"Let's cut this," said Linda tersely. "I am not your child. I'm getting
+to the place where I have serious doubt as to whether I am your sister
+or not. If I am, it's not my fault, and the same clay never made two
+objects quite so different. I came up here to fight, and I'm going
+to see it through. I'm on the warpath, so you may take your club and
+proceed to battle."
+
+"What have we to fight about?" inquired Eileen.
+
+"Every single thing that you have done that was unfair to me all my
+life," said Linda. "Since all of it has been deliberate you probably
+know more about the details than I do, so I'll just content myself
+with telling you that for the future, last night marked a change in the
+relations between us. I am going to be eighteen before so very long, and
+I have ceased to be your maid or your waitress or your dupe. You are not
+going to work me one single time when I have got brains to see through
+your schemes after this. Hereafter I take my place in my father's house
+and at my father's table on an equality with you."
+
+Eileen looked at Linda steadily, trying to see to the depths of her
+soul. She saw enough to convince her that the young creature in front of
+her was in earnest.
+
+"Hm," she said, "have I been so busy that I have failed to notice what a
+great girl you are getting?"
+
+"Busy!" scoffed Linda. "Tell that to Katy. It's a kumquat!"
+
+"Perhaps you are too big," continued Eileen, "to be asked to wait on the
+table any more."
+
+"I certainly am," retorted Linda, "and I am also too big to wear such
+shoes or such a dress as I have on at the present min. ute. I know all
+about the war and the inflation of prices and the reduction in income,
+but I know also that if there is enough to run the house, and dress
+you, and furnish you such a suite of rooms as you're enjoying right now,
+there is enough to furnish me suitable clothes, a comfortable bedroom
+and a place where I can leave my work without putting away everything I
+am doing each time I step from the room. I told you four years ago that
+you might take the touring car and do what you pleased with it. I have
+never asked what you did or what you got out of it, so I'll thank you
+to observe equal silence about anything I choose to do now with the
+runabout, which I reserved for myself. I told you to take this suite,
+and this is the first time that I have ever mentioned to you what you
+spent on it."
+
+Linda waved an inclusive hand toward the fully equipped, dainty
+dressing table, over rugs of pale blue, and beautifully decorated walls,
+including the sleeping room and bath adjoining.
+
+"So now I'll ask you to keep off while I do what I please about the
+library and the billiard room. I'll try to get along without much money
+in doing what I desire there, but I must have some new clothes. I want
+money to buy me a pair of new shoes for school. I want a pair of pumps
+suitable for evenings when there are guests to dinner. I want a couple
+of attractive school dresses. This old serge is getting too hot and too
+worn for common decency. And I also want a couple of dresses something
+like you are wearing, for afternoons and evenings."
+
+Eileen stared aghast at Linda.
+
+"Where," she inquired politely, "is the money for all this to come
+from?"
+
+"Eileen," said Linda in a low tense voice, "I have reached the place
+where even the BOYS of the high school are twitting me about how I am
+dressed, and that is the limit. I have stood it for three years from the
+girls. I am an adept in pretending that I don't see, and I don't hear. I
+have got to the point where I am perfectly capable of walking into your
+wardrobe and taking out enough of the clothes there and selling them at
+a second-hand store to buy me what I require to dress me just plainly
+and decently. So take warning. I don't know where you are going to
+get the money, but you are going to get it. If you would welcome a
+suggestion from me, come home only half the times you dine yourself and
+your girl friends at tearooms and cafes in the city, and you will save
+my share that way. I am going to give you a chance to total your budget,
+and then I demand one half of the income from Father's estate above
+household expenses; and if I don't get it, on the day I am eighteen I
+shall go to John Gilman and say to him what I have said to you, and I
+shall go to the bank and demand that a division be made there, and that
+a separate bank book be started for me."
+
+Linda's amazement on entering the room had been worthy of note.
+Eileen's at the present minute was beyond description. Dumbfounded was a
+colorless word to describe her state of mind.
+
+"You don't mean that," she gasped in a quivering voice when at last she
+could speak.
+
+"I can see, Eileen, that you are taken unawares," said Linda. "I have
+had four long years to work up to this hour. Hasn't it even dawned on
+you that this worm was ever going to turn? You know exquisite moths and
+butterflies evolve in the canyons from very unprepossessing and lowly
+living worms. You are spending your life on the butterfly stunt. Have I
+been such a weak worm that it hasn't ever occurred to you that I might
+want to try a plain, everyday pair of wings sometime myself?"
+
+Eileen's face was an ugly red, her hands were shaking, her voice was
+unnatural, but she controlled her temper.
+
+"Of course," she said, "I have always known that the time would come,
+after you finished school and were of a proper age, when you would want
+to enter society."
+
+"No, you never knew anything of the kind," said Linda bluntly, "because
+I have not the slightest ambition to enter society either now or then.
+All I am asking is to enter the high school in a commonly decent,
+suitable dress; to enter our dining room as a daughter; to enter a
+workroom decently equipped for my convenience. You needn't be surprised
+if you hear some changes going on in the billiard room and see some
+changes going on in the library. And if I feel that I can muster the
+nerve to drive the runabout, it's my car, it's up to me."
+
+"Linda!" wailed Eileen, "how can you think of such a thing? You wouldn't
+dare."
+
+"Because I haven't dared till the present is no reason why I should
+deprive myself of every single pleasure in life," said Linda. "You
+spend your days doing exactly what you please; driving that runabout
+for Father was my one soul-satisfying diversion. Why shouldn't I do the
+thing I love most, if I can muster the nerve?"
+
+Linda arose, and walking over to a table, picked up a magazine lying
+among some small packages that Eileen evidently had placed there on
+entering her room.
+
+"Are you subscribing to this?" she asked.
+
+She turned in her hands and leafed through the pages of a most
+attractive magazine, Everybody's Home. It was devoted to poetry, good
+fiction, and everything concerning home life from beef to biscuits, and
+from rugs to roses.
+
+"I saw it on a newsstand," said Eileen. "I was at lunch with some girls
+who had a copy and they were talking about some articles by somebody
+named something--Meredith, I think it was--Jane Meredith, maybe she's
+a Californian, and she is advocating the queer idea that we go back to
+nature by trying modern cooking on the food the aborigines ate. If we
+find it good then she recommends that we specialize on the growing of
+these native vegetables for home use and for export--as a new industry."
+
+"I see," said Linda. "Out-Burbanking Burbank, as it were."
+
+"No, not that," said Eileen. "She is not proposing to evolve new forms.
+She is proposing to show us how to make delicious dishes for luncheon or
+dinner from wild things now going to waste. What the girls said was so
+interesting that I thought I'd get a copy and if I see anything good
+I'll turn it over to Katy."
+
+"And where's Katy going to get the wild vegetables?" asked Linda
+sceptically.
+
+"Why you might have some of them in your wild garden, or you could
+easily find enough to try--all the prowling the canyons you do ought to
+result in something."
+
+"So it should," said Linda. "I quite agree with you. Did I understand
+you to say that I should be ready to go to the bank with you to arrange
+about my income next week?"
+
+Again the color deepened in Eileen's face, again she made a visible
+effort at self-control.
+
+"Oh, Linda," she said, "what is the use of being so hard? You will make
+them think at the bank that I have not treated you fairly."
+
+"_I_?" said Linda, "_I_ will make them think? Don't you think it is YOU
+who will make them think? Will you kindly answer my question?"
+
+"If I show you the books," said Eileen, "if I divide what is left after
+the bills are paid so that you say yourself that it is fair, what more
+can you ask?"
+
+Linda hesitated.
+
+"What I ought to do is exactly what I have said I would do," she said
+tersely, "but if you are going to put it on that basis I have no desire
+to hurt you or humiliate you in public. If you do that, I can't see that
+I have any reason to complain, so we'll call it a bargain and we'll say
+no more about it until the first of the month, unless the spirit moves
+you, after taking a good square look at me, to produce some shoes and a
+school dress instanter."
+
+"I'll see what I can do," answered Eileen.
+
+"All right then," said Linda. "See you at dinner."
+
+She went to her own room, slipped off her school dress, brushed her
+hair, and put on the skirt and blouse she had worn the previous evening,
+these being the only extra clothing she possessed. As she straightened
+her hair she looked at herself intently.
+
+"My, aren't you coming on!" she said to the figure in the glass.
+"Dressing for dinner! First thing you know you'll be a perfect lady."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. Jane Meredith
+
+When Eileen came down to dinner that evening Linda understood at a
+glance that an effort was to be made to efface thoroughly from the mind
+of John Gilman all memory of the Eileen of the previous evening. She had
+decided on redressing her hair, while she wore one of her most becoming
+and attractive gowns. To Linda and Katy during the dinner she was simply
+charming. Having said what she wanted to say and received the assurance
+she desired, Linda accepted her advances cordially and displayed such
+charming proclivities herself that Eileen began covertly to watch her,
+and as she watched there slowly grew in her brain the conviction that
+something had happened to Linda. At once she began studying deeply in an
+effort to learn what it might be. There were three paramount things
+in Eileen's cosmos that could happen to a girl: She could have lovely
+clothing. Linda did not have it. She could have money and influential
+friends. Since Marian's going Linda had practically no friend; she was
+merely acquainted with almost everyone living in Lilac Valley. She could
+have a lover. Linda had none. But stay! Eileen's thought halted at the
+suggestion. Maybe she had! She had been left completely, to her own
+devices when she was not wanted about the house. She had been mingling
+with hundreds of boys and girls in high school. She might have met some
+man repeatedly on the street cars, going to and from school. In school
+she might have attracted the son of some wealthy and influential family;
+which was the only kind of son Eileen chose to consider in connection
+with Linda. Through Eileen's brain ran bits of the conversation of the
+previous evening. She recalled that the men she had intended should
+spend the evening waiting on her and paying her pretty compliments had
+spent it eating like hungry men, laughing and jesting with Linda and
+Marian, giving every evidence of a satisfaction with their entertainment
+that never had been evinced with the best brand of attractions she had
+to offer.
+
+Eileen was willing to concede that Marian Thorne had been a beautiful
+girl, and she had known, previous to the disaster, that it was quite as
+likely that any man might admire Marian's flashing dark beauty as
+her blonde loveliness. Between them then it would have been merely a
+question of taste on the part of the man. Since Marian's dark head had
+turned ashen, Eileen had simply eliminated her at one sweep. That white
+hair would brand Marian anywhere as an old woman. Very likely no man
+ever would want to marry her. Eileen was sure she would not want to if
+she were a man. No wonder John Gilman had ceased to be attracted by a
+girl's face with a grandmother setting.
+
+As for Linda, Eileen never had considered her at all except as a
+convenience to serve her own purposes. Last night she had learned that
+Linda had a brain, that she had wit, that she could say things to which
+men of the world listened with interest. She began to watch Linda.
+She appraised with deepest envy the dark hair curling naturally on her
+temples. She wondered how hair that curled naturally could be so thick
+and heavy, and she thought what a crown of glory would adorn Linda's
+head when the day came to coil those long dark braids around it and
+fasten them with flashing pins. She drew some satisfaction from the
+sunburned face and lean figure before her, but it was not satisfaction
+of soul-sustaining quality. There was beginning to be something
+disquieting about Linda. A roundness was creeping over her lean frame; a
+glow was beginning to color her lips and cheek bones; a dewy look could
+be surprised in her dark eyes occasionally. She had the effect of a
+creature with something yeasty bottled inside it that was beginning to
+ferment and might effervesce at any minute. Eileen had been so surprised
+the previous evening and again before dinner, that she made up her mind
+that hereafter one might expect almost anything from Linda. She would no
+longer follow a suggestion unless the suggestion accorded with her sense
+of right and justice. It was barely possible that it might be required
+to please her inclinations. Eileen's mind worked with unbelievable
+swiftness. She tore at her subject like a vulture tearing at a feast,
+and like a vulture she reached the vitals swiftly. She prefaced her
+question with a dry laugh. Then she leaned forward and asked softly:
+"Linda, dear, why haven't you told me?"
+
+Linda's eyes were so clear and honest as they met Eileen's that she
+almost hesitated.
+
+"A little more explicit, please," said the girl quietly.
+
+"WHO IS HE?" asked Eileen abruptly.
+
+"Oh, I haven't narrowed to an individual," said Linda largely "You have
+noticed a flock of boys following me from school and hanging around the
+front door? I have such hosts to choose from that it's going to take a
+particularly splendid knight on a snow-white charger--I think 'charger'
+is the proper word--to capture my young affections."
+
+Eileen was satisfied. There wasn't any he. She might for a short time
+yet cut Linda's finances to the extreme limit. Whenever a man appeared
+on the horizon she would be forced to make a division at least
+approaching equality.
+
+Linda followed Eileen to the living room and sat down with a book until
+John Gilman arrived. She had a desire to study him for a few minutes.
+She was going to write Marian a letter that night. She wanted to know
+if she could honestly tell her that Gilman appeared lonely and seemed to
+miss her. Katy had no chance to answer the bell when it rang. Eileen was
+in the hall. Linda could not tell what was happening from the murmur of
+voices. Presently John and Eileen entered the room, and as Linda greeted
+him she did have the impression that he appeared unusually thoughtful
+and worried. She sat for half an hour, taking slight part in the
+conversation. Then she excused herself and went to her room, and as
+she went she knew that she could not honestly write Marian what she had
+hoped, for in thirty minutes by the clock Eileen's blandishments had
+worked, and John Gilman was looking at her as if she were the most
+exquisite and desirable creature in existence.
+
+Slowly Linda climbed the stairs and entered her room. She slid the bolt
+of her door behind her, turned on the lights, unlocked a drawer, and
+taking from it a heap of materials she scattered them over a small
+table, and picking up her pencil, she sat gazing at the sheet before her
+for some time. Then slowly she began writing:
+
+It appeals to me that, far as modern civilization has gone in culinary
+efforts, we have not nearly reached the limits available to us as I
+pointed out last month. We consider ourselves capable of preparing and
+producing elaborate banquets, yet at no time are we approaching anything
+even to compare in lavishness and delicacy with the days of Lucullus.
+We are not feasting on baked swans, peacock tongues and drinking our
+pearls. I am not recommending that we should revive the indulgence of
+such lavish and useless expenditure, but I would suggest that if we tire
+with the sameness of our culinary efforts, we at least try some of
+the new dishes described in this department, established for the sole
+purpose of their introduction. In so doing we accomplish a multiple
+purpose. We enlarge the resources of the southwest. We tease stale
+appetites with a new tang. We offer the world something different, yet
+native to us. We use modern methods on Indian material and the results
+are most surprising. In trying these dishes I would remind you that few
+of us cared for oysters, olives, celery--almost any fruit or vegetable
+one could mention on first trial. Try several times and be sure you
+prepare dishes exactly right before condemning them as either fad or
+fancy. These are very real, nourishing and delicious foods that are
+being offered you. Here is a salad that would have intrigued the palate
+of Lucullus, himself. If you do not believe me, try it. The vegetable
+is slightly known by a few native mountaineers and ranchers. Botanists
+carried it abroad where under the name of winter-purslane it is used
+in France and England for greens or salad, while remaining practically
+unknown at home. Boiled and seasoned as spinach it makes equally good
+greens. But it is in salad that it stands pre-eminent.
+
+Go to any canyon--I shall not reveal the name of my particular
+canyon--and locate a bed of miner's lettuce (Montia perfoliata). Growing
+in rank beds beside a cold, clean stream, you will find these pulpy,
+exquisitely shaped, pungent round leaves from the center of which lifts
+a tiny head of misty white lace, sending up a palate-teasing, spicy
+perfume. The crisp, pinkish stems snap in the fingers. Be sure that you
+wash the leaves carefully so that no lurking germs cling to them. Fill
+your salad bowl with the crisp leaves, from which the flowerhead has
+been plucked. For dressing, dice a teacup of the most delicious bacon
+you can obtain and fry it to a crisp brown together with a small sliced
+onion. Add to the fat two tablespoons of sugar, half a teaspoon of
+mustard; salt will scarcely be necessary the bacon will furnish that.
+Blend the fat, sugar, and mustard, and pour in a measure of the best
+apple vinegar, diluted to taste. Bring this mixture to the boiling
+point, and when it has cooled slightly pour it over the lettuce leaves,
+lightly turning with a silver fork. Garnish the edge of the dish with
+a deep border of the fresh leaves bearing their lace of white bloom
+intact, around the edge of the bowl, and sprinkle on top the sifted
+yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, heaping the diced whites in the center.
+
+Linda paused and read this over carefully.
+
+"That is all right," she said. "I couldn't make that much better."
+
+She made a few corrections here and there, and picking up a colored
+pencil, she deftly sketched in a head piece of delicate sprays of
+miners' lettuce tipped at differing angles, fringy white with bloom.
+Below she printed: "A delicious Indian salad. The second of a series
+of new dishes to be offered made from materials used by the Indians.
+Compounded and tested in her own diet kitchen by the author."
+
+Swiftly she sketched a tail piece representing a table top upon which
+sat a tempting-looking big salad bowl filled with fresh green leaves,
+rimmed with a row of delicate white flowers, from which you could almost
+scent a teasing delicate fragrance arising; and beneath, in a clear,
+firm hand, she stroked in the name, Jane Meredith. She went over her
+work carefully, then laid it flat on a piece of cardboard, shoved it
+into an envelope, directed it to the editor of Everybody's Home, laid it
+inside her geometry, and wrote her letter to Marian before going to bed.
+
+In the morning on her way to the street car she gaily waved to a passing
+automobile going down Lilac Valley, in which sat John Gilman and Peter
+Morrison and his architect, and as they were driving in the direction
+from which she had come, Linda very rightly surmised that they were
+going to pick up Eileen and make a tour of the valley, looking for
+available building locations; and she wondered why Eileen had not told
+her that they were coming. Linda had been right about the destination
+of the car. It turned in at the Strong driveway and stopped at the door.
+John Gilman went to ring the bell and learn if Eileen were ready. Peter
+followed him. Henry Anderson stepped from the car and wandered over the
+lawn, looking at the astonishing array of bushes, vines, flowers, and
+trees.
+
+From one to another he went, fingering the waxy leaves, studying the
+brilliant flower faces. Finally turning a corner and crossing the wild
+garden, to which he paid slight attention, he started down the other
+side of the house. Here an almost overpowering odor greeted his
+nostrils, and he went over to a large tree covered with rough, dark
+green, almost brownish, lance-shaped leaves, each branch terminating
+in a heavy spray of yellowish-green flowers, whose odor was of cloying
+sweetness. The bees were buzzing over it. It was not a tree with which
+he was familiar, and stepping back, he looked at it carefully. Then at
+its base, wind-driven into a crevice between the roots, his attention
+was attracted to a crumpled sheet of paper, upon which he could see
+lines that would have attracted the attention of any architect. He went
+forward instantly, picked up the sheet, and straightening it out he
+stood looking at it.
+
+"Holy smoke!" he breathed softly. "What a find!"
+
+He looked at the reverse of the sheet, his face becoming more intent
+every minute. When he heard Peter Morrison's voice calling him he
+hastily thrust the paper into his coat pocket; but he had gone only
+a few steps when he stopped, glanced keenly over the house and lawn,
+turned his back, and taking the sheet from his pocket, he smoothed it
+out, folded it carefully, and put it in an inside pocket. Then he joined
+the party.
+
+At once they set out to examine the available locations that yet
+remained in Lilac Valley. Nature provided them a wonderful day of snappy
+sunshine and heady sea air. Spring favored them with lilac walls at
+their bluest, broken here and there with the rose-misted white mahogany.
+The violet nightshade was beginning to add deeper color to the hills
+in the sunniest wild spots. The panicles of mahonia bloom were showing
+their gold color. Wild flowers were lifting leaves of feather and lace
+everywhere, and most agreeable on the cool morning air was a faint
+breath of California sage. Up one side of the valley, weaving in and
+out, up and down, over the foothills they worked their way. They stopped
+for dinner at one of the beautiful big hotels, practically filled with
+Eastern tourists. Eileen never had known a prouder moment than when she
+took her place at the head of the table and presided over the dinner
+which was served to three most attractive specimens of physical manhood,
+each of whom was unusually well endowed with brain, all flattering her
+with the most devoted attention. This triumph she achieved in a dining
+room seating hundreds of people, its mirror-lined walls reflecting
+her exquisite image from many angles, to the click of silver, and
+the running accompaniment of many voices. What she had expected to
+accomplish in her own dining room had come to her before a large
+audience, in which, she had no doubt, there were many envious women.
+Eileen rayed loveliness like a Mariposa lily, and purred in utter
+contentment like a deftly stroked kitten.
+
+When they parted in the evening Peter Morrison had memoranda of three
+locations that he wished to consider. That he might not seem to be
+unduly influenced or to be giving the remainder of Los Angeles County
+its just due, he proposed to motor around for a week before reaching
+an ultimate decision, but in his heart he already had decided that
+somewhere near Los Angeles he would build his home, and as yet he had
+seen nothing nearly so attractive as Lilac Valley.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. Trying Yucca
+
+On her way to school that morning Linda stopped at the post office
+and pasted the required amount of stamps upon the package that she was
+mailing to New York. She hurried from her last class that afternoon
+to the city directory to find the street and number of James Brothers,
+figuring that the firm with whom Marian dealt would be the proper people
+for her to consult. She had no difficulty in finding the place for which
+she was searching, and she was rather agreeably impressed with the men
+to whom she talked. She made arrangements with their buyer to call at
+her home in Lilac Valley at nine o'clock the following Saturday morning
+to appraise the articles with which she wished to part.
+
+Then she went to one of the leading book stores of the city and made
+inquiries which guided her to a reliable second-hand book dealer, and
+she arranged to be ready to receive his representative at ten o'clock on
+Saturday.
+
+Reaching home she took a note book and pencil, and studied the billiard
+room and the library, making a list of the furniture which she did not
+actually need. After that she began on the library shelves, listing such
+medical works as were of a technical nature. Books of fiction, history,
+art, and biography, and those books written by her father she did not
+include. She found that she had a long task which would occupy several
+evenings. Her mind was methodical and she had been with her father
+through sufficient business transactions to understand that in order to
+drive a good bargain she must know how many volumes she had to offer and
+the importance of their authors as medical authorities; she should also
+know the exact condition of each set of books. Since she had made up
+her mind to let them go, and she knew the value of many of the big,
+leather-bound volumes, she determined that she would not sell them until
+she could secure the highest possible price for them.
+
+Two months previously she would have consulted John Gilman and asked him
+to arrange the transaction for her. Since he had allowed himself to be
+duped so easily--or at least it had seemed easy to Linda; for, much
+as she knew of Eileen, she could not possibly know the weeks of secret
+plotting, the plans for unexpected meetings, the trumped-up business
+problems necessary to discuss, the deliberate flaunting of her physical
+charms before him, all of which had made his conquest extremely hard
+for Eileen, but Linda, seeing only results, had thought it contemptibly
+easy--she would not ask John Gilman anything. She would go ahead on the
+basis of her agreement with Eileen and do the best she could alone.
+
+She counted on Saturday to dispose of the furniture. The books might
+go at her leisure. Then the first of the week she could select such
+furniture as she desired in order to arrange the billiard room for her
+study. If she had a suitable place in which to work in seclusion, there
+need be no hurry about the library. She conscientiously prepared all
+the lessons required in her school course for the next day and then,
+stacking her books, she again unlocked the drawer opened the previous
+evening, and taking from it the same materials, set to work. She wrote:
+
+Botanists have failed to mention that there is any connection between
+asparagus, originally a product of salt marshes, and Yucca, a product of
+the alkaline desert. Very probably there is no botanical relationship,
+but these two plants are alike in flavor. From the alkaline, sunbeaten
+desert where the bayonet plant thrusts up a tender bloom head six inches
+in height, it slowly increases in stature as it travels across country
+more frequently rain washed, and winds its way beside mountain streams
+to where in more fertile soil and the same sunshine it develops
+magnificent specimens from ten to fifteen and more feet in height.
+The plant grows a number of years before it decides to flower. When it
+reaches maturity it throws up a bloom stem as tender as the delicate
+head of asparagus, thick as one's upper arm, and running to twice one's
+height. This bloom stem in its early stages is colored the pale pink of
+asparagus, with faint touches of yellow, and hints of blue. At maturity
+it breaks into a gorgeous head of lavender-tinted, creamy pendent
+flowers covering the upper third of its height, billowing out slightly
+in the center, so that from a distance the waxen torch takes on very
+much the appearance of a flaming candle. For this reason, in Mexico,
+where the plant flourishes in even greater abundance than in California,
+with the exquisite poetry common to the tongue and heart of the
+Spaniard, Yucca Whipplei has been commonly named "Our Lord's Candle." At
+the most delicate time of their growth these candlesticks were roasted
+and eaten by the Indians. Based upon this knowledge, I would recommend
+two dishes, almost equally delicious, which may be prepared from this
+plant.
+
+Take the most succulent young bloom stems when they have exactly the
+appearance of an asparagus head at its moment of delicious perfection.
+With a sharp knife, cut them in circles an inch in depth. Arrange these
+in a shallow porcelain baking dish, sprinkle with salt, dot them with
+butter, add enough water to keep them from sticking and burning. Bake
+until thoroughly tender. Use a pancake turner to slide the rings to a
+hot platter, and garnish with circles of hard-boiled egg. This you will
+find an extremely delicate and appetizing dish.
+
+The second recipe I would offer is to treat this vegetable precisely as
+you would creamed asparagus. Cut the stalks in six-inch lengths, quarter
+them to facilitate cooking and handling, and boil in salted water.
+Drain, arrange in a hot dish, and pour over a carefully made cream
+sauce. I might add that one stalk would furnish sufficient material for
+several families. This dish should be popular in southwestern states
+where the plant grows profusely; and to cultivate these plants for
+shipping to Eastern markets would be quite as feasible as the shipping
+of asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes, or lettuce.
+
+I have found both these dishes peculiarly appetizing, but I should be
+sorry if, in introducing Yucca as a food, I became instrumental in the
+extermination of this universal and wonderfully beautiful plant. For
+this reason I have hesitated about including Yucca among these articles;
+but when I see the bloom destroyed ruthlessly by thousands who cut it to
+decorate touring automobiles and fruit and vegetable stands beside the
+highways, who carry it from its native location and stick it in the
+parching sun of the seashore as a temporary shelter, I feel that the
+bloom stems might as well be used for food as to be so ruthlessly
+wasted.
+
+The plant is hardy in the extreme, growing in the most unfavorable
+places, clinging tenaciously to sheer mountain and canyon walls. After
+blooming and seeding the plant seems to have thrown every particle of
+nourishment it contains into its development, it dries out and dies (the
+spongy wood is made into pincushions for the art stores); but from the
+roots there spring a number of young plants, which, after a few years
+of growth, mature and repeat their life cycle, while other young plants
+develop from the widely scattered seeds. The Spaniards at times call the
+plant Quiota. This word seems to be derived from quiotl, which is
+the Aztec name for Agave, from which plant a drink not unlike beer is
+produced, and suggests the possibility that there might have been a time
+when the succulent flower stem of the Yucca furnished drink as well as
+food for the Indians.
+
+After carefully re-reading and making several minor corrections, Linda
+picked up her pencil, and across the top of a sheet of heavy paper
+sketched the peaks of a chain of mountains. Across the base she drew
+a stretch of desert floor, bristling with the thorns of many different
+cacti brilliant with their gold, pink, and red bloom, intermingled with
+fine grasses and desert flower faces.
+
+At the left she painstakingly drew a huge plant of yucca with a perfect
+circle of bayonets, from the center of which uprose the gigantic flower
+stem the length of her page, and on the misty bloom of the flaming
+tongue she worked quite as late as Marian Thorne had ever seen a light
+burning in her window. When she had finished her drawing she studied it
+carefully a long time, adding a touch here and there, and then she said
+softly: "There, Daddy, I feel that even you would think that a faithful
+reproduction Tomorrow night I'll paint it."
+
+John Gilman saw the light from Linda's window when he brought Eileen
+home that night, and when he left he glanced that way again, and was
+surprised to see the room still lighted, and the young figure bending
+over a worktable. He stood very still for a few minutes, wondering what
+could keep Linda awake so far into the night, and while his thoughts
+were upon her he wondered, too, why she did not care to have beautiful
+clothes such as Eileen wore; and then he went further and wondered why,
+when she could be as entertaining as she had been the night she joined
+them at dinner, she did not make her appearance oftener; and then,
+because the mind is a queer thing, and he had wondered about a given
+state of affairs, he went a step further, and wondered whether the
+explanation lay in Linda's inclinations or in Eileen's management,
+and then his thought fastened tenaciously upon the subject of Eileen's
+management.
+
+He was a patient man. He had allowed his reason and better judgment to
+be swayed by Eileen's exquisite beauty and her blandishments. He did not
+regret having discovered before it was too late that Marian Thorne
+was not the girl he had thought her. He wanted a wife cut after the
+clinging-vine pattern. He wanted to be the dominating figure in
+his home. It had not taken Eileen long to teach him that Marian was
+self-assertive and would do a large share of dominating herself. He had
+thought that he was perfectly satisfied and very happy with Eileen; yet
+that day he repeatedly had felt piqued and annoyed with her. She had
+openly cajoled and flirted with Henry Anderson past a point which was
+agreeable for any man to see his sweetheart go with another man With
+Peter Morrison she had been unspeakably charming in a manner with which
+John was very familiar.
+
+He turned up his coat collar, thrust his hands in his pockets, and swore
+softly. Looking straight ahead of him, he should have seen a stretch of
+level sidewalk, bordered on one hand by lacy, tropical foliage, on the
+other, by sheets of level green lawn, broken everywhere by the uprising
+boles of great trees, clumps of rare vines, and rows of darkened homes,
+attractive in architectural 'design' vine covered, hushed for the night.
+What he really saw was a small plateau, sun illumined, at the foot of a
+mountain across the valley, where the lilac wall was the bluest, where
+the sun shone slightly more golden than anywhere else in the valley,
+where huge live oaks outstretched rugged arms, where the air had a tang
+of salt, a tinge of sage, an odor of orange, shot through with snowy
+coolness, thrilled with bird song, and the laughing chuckle of a big
+spring breaking from the foot of the mountain. They had left the road
+and followed a narrow, screened path by which they came unexpectedly
+into this opening. They had stood upon it in wordless enchantment,
+looking down the slope beneath it, across the peace of the valley, to
+the blue ranges beyond.
+
+"Just where are we?" Peter Morrison had asked at last.
+
+John Gilman had been looking at a view which included Eileen. She lifted
+her face, flushed and exquisite, to Peter Morrison and answered in a
+breathless undertone, yet John had distinctly heard her:
+
+"How wonderful it would be if we were at your house. Oh, I envy the
+woman who shares this with you!"
+
+It had not been anything in particular, yet all day it had teased John
+Gilman's sensibilities. He felt ashamed of himself for not being more
+enthusiastic as he searched records and helped to locate the owner of
+that particular spot. To John, there was a new tone in Peter's voice,
+a possessive light in his eyes as he studied the location, and made
+excursions in several directions, to fix in his mind the exact position
+of the land.
+
+He had indicated what he considered the topographical location for a
+house--stood on it facing the valley, and stepped the distance suitably
+far away to set a garage and figured on a short private road down to the
+highway. He very plainly was deeply prepossessed with a location John
+Gilman blamed himself for not having found first. Certainly nature had
+here grown and walled a dream garden in which to set a house of dreams.
+So, past midnight, Gilman stood in the sunshine, looking at the face of
+the girl he had asked to marry him and who had said that she would;
+and a small doubt crept into his heart, and a feeling that perhaps life
+might be different for him if Peter Morrison decided to come to Lilac
+Valley to build his home. Then the sunlight faded, night closed in, but
+as he went his homeward way John Gilman was thinking, thinking deeply
+and not at all happily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. The Bear Cat
+
+     "Friday's child is loving and giving,
+     But Saturday's child must work for a living,"
+
+Linda was chanting happily as she entered the kitchen early Saturday
+morning.
+
+"Katy, me blessing," she said gaily, "did I ever point out to you the
+interesting fact that I was born on Saturday? And a devilish piece of
+luck it was, for I have been hustling ever since. It's bad enough to
+have been born on Monday and spoiled wash day, but I call Saturday the
+vanishing point, the end of the extreme limit."
+
+Katy laughed, and, as always, turned adoring eyes on Linda.
+
+"I am not needing ye, lambie," she said. "Is it big business in the
+canyon ye're having today? Shall I be ready to be cooking up one of them
+God-forsaken Red Indian messes for ye when ye come back?"
+
+Linda held up a warning finger.
+
+"Hiss, Katy," she said. "That is a dark secret. Don't you be forgetting
+yourself and saying anything like that before anyone, or I would be
+ruined entirely."
+
+"Well, I did think when ye began it," said Katy, "that of all the wild
+foolishness ye and your pa had ever gone through with, that was the
+worst, but that last mess ye worked out was so tasty to the tongue that
+I thought of it a lot, and I'm kind o' hankering for more."
+
+Linda caught Katy and swung her around the kitchen in a wild war dance.
+Her gayest laugh bubbled clear from the joy peak of her soul.
+
+"Katy," she said, "if you had lain awake all night trying to say
+something that would particularly please me, you couldn't have done
+better. That was a quaint little phrase and a true little phrase, and
+I know a little spot that it will fit exactly. What am I doing today?
+Well, several things, Katy. First, anything you need about the house.
+Next, I am going to empty the billiard room and sell some of the excess
+furniture of the library, and with the returns I am going to buy me a
+rug and a table and some tools to work with, so I won't have to clutter
+up my bedroom with my lessons and things I bring in that I want to save.
+And then I am going to sell the technical stuff from the library and use
+that money where it will be of greatest advantage to me. And then, Katy,
+I am going to manicure the Bear Cat and I am going to drive it again."
+
+Linda hesitated. Katy stood very still, thinking intently, but finally
+she said: "That's all right; ye have got good common sense; your nerves
+are steady; your pa drilled ye fine. Many's the time he has bragged to
+me behind your back what a fine little driver he was making of ye. I
+don't know a girl of your age anywhere that has less enjoyment than ye.
+If it would be giving ye any happiness to be driving that car, ye just
+go ahead and drive it, lambie, but ye promise me here and now that
+ye will be mortal careful. In all my days I don't think I have seen a
+meaner-looking little baste of a car."
+
+"Of course I'll be careful, Katy," said Linda. "That car was not bought
+for its beauty. Its primal object in this world was to arrive. Gee, how
+we shot curves, and coasted down the canyons, and gassed up on the level
+when some poor soul went batty from nerve strain! The truth is, Katy,
+that you can't drive very slowly. You have got to go the speed for which
+it was built. But I have had my training. I won't forget. I adore that
+car, Katy, and I don't know how I have ever kept my fingers off it
+this long. Today it gets a bath and a facial treatment, and when I have
+thought up some way to meet my big problem, you're going to have a ride,
+Katy, that will quite uplift your soul. We'll go scooting through the
+canyons, and whizzing around the mountains, and roaring along the beach,
+as slick as a white sea swallow."
+
+"Now, easy, lambie, easy," said Katy. "Ye're planning to speed that
+thing before ye've got it off the jacks."
+
+"No, that was mere talk," said Linda. "But, Katy, this is my great day.
+I feel in my bones that I shall have enough money by night to get me
+some new tires, which I must have before I can start out in safety."
+
+"Of course ye must, honey. I would just be tickled to pieces to let ye
+have what ye need."
+
+Linda slid her hand across Katy's lips and gathered her close in her
+arms.
+
+"You blessed old darling," she said. "Of course you would, but I don't
+need it, Katy. I can sit on the floor to work, if I must, and instead of
+taking the money from the billiard table to buy a worktable, I can buy
+tires with that. But here's another thing I want to tell you, Katy. This
+afternoon a male biped is coming to this house, and he's not coming to
+see Eileen. His name is Donald Whiting, and when he tells you it is, and
+stands very straight and takes off his hat, and looks you in the eye
+and says, 'Calling on Miss Linda Strong,' walk him into the living room,
+Katy, and seat him in the best chair and put a book beside him and the
+morning paper; and don't you forget to do it with a flourish. He is
+nothing but a high-school kid, but he's the first boy that ever in all
+my days asked to come to see me so it's a big event; and I wish to my
+soul I had something decent to wear."
+
+"Well, with all the clothes in this house," said Katy; and then she
+stopped and shut her lips tight and looked at Linda with belligerent
+Irish eyes.
+
+"I know it," nodded Linda in acquiescence; "I know what you think; but
+never mind. Eileen has agreed to make me a fair allowance the first of
+the month, and if that isn't sufficient, I may possibly figure up some
+way to do some extra work that will bring me a few honest pennies, so
+I can fuss up enough to look feminine at times, Katy. In the meantime,
+farewell, oh, my belovedest. Call me at half-past eight, so I will be
+ready for business at nine."
+
+Then Linda went to the garage and began operations. She turned the hose
+on the car and washed the dust from it carefully. Then she dried it with
+the chamois skins as she often had done before. She carefully examined
+the cushioning, and finding it dry and hard, she gave it a bath of olive
+oil and wiped and manipulated it. She cleaned the engine with extreme
+care. At one minute she was running to Katy for kerosene to pour through
+the engine to loosen the carbon. At another she was telephoning for the
+delivery of oil, gasoline, and batteries for which she had no money to
+pay, so she charged them to Eileen, ordering the bill to be sent on the
+first of the month. It seemed to her that she had only a good start when
+Katy came after her.
+
+The business of appraising the furniture was short, and Linda was well
+satisfied with the price she was offered for it. After the man had gone
+she showed Katy the pieces she had marked to dispose of, and told
+her when they would be called for. She ate a few bites of lunch while
+waiting for the book man, and the results of her business with him quite
+delighted Linda. She had not known that the value of books had risen
+with the price of everything else. The man with whom she dealt had known
+her father. He had appreciated the strain in her nature which made her
+suggest that he should number and appraise the books, but she must be
+allowed time to go through each volume in order to remove any scraps of
+paper or memoranda which her father so frequently left in books to which
+he was referring. He had figured carefully and he had made Linda a far
+higher price than could have been secured by a man. As the girl went
+back to her absorbing task in the garage, she could see her way clear to
+the comforts and conveniences and the material that she needed for her
+work. When she reached the car she patted it as if it had been a living
+creature.
+
+"Cheer up, nice old thing," she said gaily. "I know how to get new tires
+for you, and you shall drink all the gasoline and oil your tummy can
+hold. Now let me see. What must I do next? I must get you off your
+jacks; and oh, my gracious there are the grease cups, and that's a nasty
+job, but it must be done; and what is the use of Saturday if I can't do
+it? Daddy often did."
+
+Linda began work in utter absorption. She succeeded in getting the car
+off the jacks. She was lying on her back under it, filling some of the
+most inaccessible grease cups, and she was softly singing as she worked:
+
+"The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes--"
+
+At that minute Donald Whiting swung down the street, turned in at the
+Strong residence, and rang the bell. Eileen was coming down the stairs,
+dressed for the street. She had inquired for Linda, and Katy had told
+her that she thought Miss Linda had decided to begin using her car, and
+that she was in the garage working on it. To Eileen's credit it may be
+said that she had not been told that a caller was expected. Linda never
+before had had a caller and, as always, Eileen was absorbed in her own
+concerns. Had she got the rouge a trifle brighter on one cheek than on
+the other? Was the powder evenly distributed? Would the veil hold the
+handmade curls in exactly the proper place? When the bell rang her one
+thought might have been that some of her friends were calling for her.
+She opened the door, and when she learned that Linda was being asked
+for, it is possible that she mistook the clean, interesting, and
+well-dressed youngster standing before her for a mechanic. What she said
+was: "Linda's working on her car. Go around to the left and you will
+find her in the garage, and for heaven's sake, get it right before you
+let her start out, for we've had enough horror in this family from motor
+accidents."
+
+Then she closed the door before him and stood buttoning her gloves; a
+wicked and malicious smile spreading over her face.
+
+"Just possibly," she said, "that youngster is from a garage, but if he
+is, he's the best imitation of the real thing that I have seen in these
+chaotic days."
+
+Donald Whiting stopped at the garage door and looked in, before Linda
+had finished her grease cups, and in time to be informed that he might
+wear common-sense shoes if he chose. At his step, Linda rolled her black
+head on the cement floor and raised her eyes. She dropped the grease
+cup, and her face reddened deeply.
+
+"Oh, my Lord!" she gasped breathlessly. "I forgot to tell Katy when to
+call me!"
+
+In that instant she also forgot that the stress of the previous four
+years had accustomed men to seeing women do any kind of work in any kind
+of costume; but soon Linda realized that Donald Whiting was not paying
+any particular attention either to her or to her occupation. He was
+leaning forward, gazing at the car with positively an enraptured
+expression on his eager young face.
+
+"Shades of Jehu!" he cried. "It's a Bear Cat!"
+
+Linda felt around her head for the grease cup.
+
+"Why, sure it's a Bear Cat," she said with the calmness of complete
+recovery. "And it's just about ready to start for its very own cave in
+the canyon."
+
+Donald Whiting pitched his hat upon the seat, shook off his coat, and
+sent it flying after the hat. Then he began unbuttoning and turning back
+his sleeves.
+
+"Here, let me do that," he said authoritatively. "Gee! I have never yet
+ridden in a Bear Cat. Take me with you, will you, Linda?"
+
+"Sure," said Linda, pressing the grease into the cup with a little
+paddle and holding it up to see if she had it well filled. "Sure, but
+there's no use in you getting into this mess, because I have only got
+two more. You look over the engine. Did you ever grind valves, and do
+you think these need it?"
+
+"Why, they don't need it," said Donald, "if they were all right when it
+was jacked up."
+
+"Well, they were," said Linda. "It was running like a watch when it went
+to sleep. But do we dare take it out on these tires?"
+
+"How long has it been?" asked Donald, busy at the engine.
+
+"All of four years," answered Linda.
+
+Donald whistled softly and started a circuit of the car, kicking the
+tires and feeling them.
+
+"Have you filled them?" he asked.
+
+"No," said Linda. "I did not want to start the engine until I had
+finished everything else."
+
+"All right," he said, "I'll look at the valves first and then, if it is
+all ready, there ought to be a garage near that we can run to carefully,
+and get tuned up."
+
+"There is," said Linda. "There is one only a few blocks down the street
+where Dad always had anything done that he did not want to do himself."
+
+"That's that, then," said Donald.
+
+Linda crawled from under the car and stood up, wiping her hands on a bit
+of waste.
+
+"Do you know what tires cost now?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"They have 'em at the garage," answered Donald, "and if I were you,
+I wouldn't get a set; I would get two. I would-put them on the rear
+wheels. You might be surprised at how long some of these will last.
+Anyway, that would be the thing to do."
+
+"Of course," said Linda, in a relieved tone. "That would be the thing to
+do."
+
+"Now," she said, "I must be excused a few minutes till I clean up so I
+am fit to go on the streets. I hope you won't think I forgot you were
+coming."
+
+
+
+Donald laughed drily.
+
+"When 'shoes' was the first word I heard," he said, "I did not for a
+minute think you had forgotten."
+
+"No, I didn't forget," said Linda. "What I did do was to become so
+excited about cleaning up the car that I let time go faster than I
+thought it could. That was what made me late."
+
+"Well, forget it!" said Donald. "Run along and jump into something, and
+let us get our tires and try Kitty out."
+
+Linda reached up and released the brakes. She stepped to one side of the
+car and laid her hands on it.
+
+"Let us run it down opposite the kitchen door," she said, "then you go
+around to the front, and I'll let you in, and you can read something a
+few minutes till I make myself presentable."
+
+"Oh, I'll stay out here and look around the yard and go over the car
+again," said the boy. "What a bunch of stuff you have got growing here;
+I don't believe I ever saw half of it before." "It's Daddy's and my
+collection," said Linda. "Some day I'll show you some of the things, and
+tell you how we got them, and why they are rare. Today I just naturally
+can't wait a minute until I try my car."
+
+"Is it really yours?" asked Donald enviously.
+
+"Yes," said Linda. "It's about the only thing on earth that is
+peculiarly and particularly mine. I haven't a doubt there are improved
+models, but Daddy had driven this car only about nine months. It was
+going smooth as velvet, and there's no reason why it should not keep it
+up, though I suspect that by this time there are later models that could
+outrun it."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said the boy. "It looks like some little old car to
+me. I bet it can just skate."
+
+"I know it can," said Linda, "if I haven't neglected something. We'll
+start carefully, and we'll have the inspector at the salesrooms look it
+over."
+
+Then Linda entered the kitchen door to find Katy with everything edible
+that the house afforded spread before her on the table.
+
+"Why, Katy, what are you doing?" she asked.
+
+"I was makin' ready," explained Katy, "to fix ye the same kind of lunch
+I would for Miss Eileen. Will ye have it under the live oak, or in the
+living room?"
+
+"Neither," said Linda. "Come upstairs with me, and in the storeroom
+you'll find the lunch case and the thermos bottles and don't stint
+yourself, Katy. This is a rare occasion. It never happened before.
+Probably it will never happen again. Let's make it high altitude while
+we are at it."
+
+"I'll do my very best with what I happen to have," said Katy; "but I
+warn you right now I am making a good big hole in the Sunday dinner."
+
+"I don't give two whoops," said Linda, "if there isn't any Sunday
+dinner. In memory of hundreds of times that we have eaten bread and
+milk, make it a banquet, Katy, and we'll eat bread and milk tomorrow."
+
+Then she took the stairway at a bound, and ran to her room. In a
+very short time she emerged, clad in a clean blouse and breeches' her
+climbing boots, her black hair freshly brushed and braided.
+
+"I ought to have something," said Linda, "to shade my eyes. The
+glare's hard on them facing the sun."
+
+Going down the hall she came to the storeroom, opened a drawer' and
+picked out a fine black felt Alpine hat that had belonged to her father.
+She carried it back to her room and, standing at the glass, tried it on,
+pulling it down on one side, turning it up at the other, and striking
+a deep cleft across the crown. She looked at herself intently for a
+minute, and then she reached up and deliberately loosened the hair at
+her temples.
+
+"Not half bad, all things considered, Linda," she said. "But, oh, how
+you do need a tich of color."
+
+She ran down the hall and opened the door to Eileen's room, and going
+to her chiffonier, pulled out a drawer containing an array of gloves,
+veils, and ribbons. At the bottom of the ribbon stack, her eye caught
+the gleam of color for which she was searching, and she deftly slipped
+out a narrow scarf of Roman stripes with a deep black fringe at the
+end. Sitting down, she fitted the hat over her knee, picked up the
+dressing-table scissors, and ripped off the band. In its place she
+fitted the ribbon, pinning it securely and knotting the ends so that the
+fringe reached her shoulder. Then she tried the hat again. The result
+was blissfully satisfactory. The flash of orange, the blaze of red, the
+gleam of green, were what she needed.
+
+"Thank you very much, sister mine," she said, "I know you I would be
+perfectly delighted to loan me this."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. One Hundred Per Cent Plus
+
+Then she went downstairs and walked into the kitchen, prepared for what
+she would see, by what she heard as she approached.
+
+With Katy's apron tied around his waist, Donald Whiting was occupied in
+squeezing orange, lemon, and pineapple juice over a cake of ice in a big
+bowl, preparatory to the compounding of Katy's most delicious brand of
+fruit punch. Without a word, Linda stepped to the bread board and
+began slicing the bread and building sandwiches, while Katy hurried her
+preparations for filling the lunch box. A few minutes later Katy packed
+them in the car, kissed Linda good-bye, and repeatedly cautioned Donald
+to make her be careful.
+
+As the car rolled down the driveway and into the street, Donald looked
+appraisingly at the girl beside him.
+
+"Is it the prevailing custom in Lilac Valley for young ladies to kiss
+the cook?" inquired Donald laughingly.
+
+"Now, you just hush," said Linda. "Katy is NOT the cook, alone. Katy's
+my father, and my mother, and my family, and my best friend--"
+
+"Stop right there," interposed Donald. "That is quite enough for any
+human to be. Katy's a multitude. She came out to the car with the
+canteen, and when I offered to help her, without any 'polly foxin',' she
+just said: 'Sure. Come in and make yourself useful.' So I went, and I am
+expecting amazing results from the job she gave me."
+
+"Come to think of it," said Linda, "I have small experience with
+anybody's cooking except Katy's and my own, but so far as I know, she
+can't very well be beaten."
+
+Carefully she headed the car into the garage adjoining the salesrooms.
+There she had an ovation. The manager and several of the men remembered
+her. The whole force clustered around the Bear Cat and began to examine
+it, and comment on it, and Linda climbed out and asked to have the
+carburetor adjusted, while the mechanic put on a pair of tires. When
+everything was satisfactory, she backed to the street, and after a few
+blocks of experimental driving, she headed for the Automobile Club to
+arrange for her license and then turned straight toward Multiflores
+Canyon, but she did not fail to call Donald Whiting's attention to every
+beauty of Lilac Valley as they passed through. When they had reached
+a long level stretch of roadway leading to the canyon, Linda glanced
+obliquely at the boy beside her.
+
+"It all comes back as natural as breathing," she said. "I couldn't
+forget it any more than I could forget how to walk, or to swim. Sit
+tight. I am going to step on the gas for a bit, just for old sake's
+sake."
+
+"That's all right," said Donald, taking off his hat and giving his head
+a toss so that the wind might have full play through his hair. "But
+remember our tires are not safe. Better not go the limit until we get
+rid of these old ones, and have a new set all around."
+
+Linda settled back in her seat, took a firm grip on the wheel, and
+started down the broad, smooth highway, gradually increasing the speed.
+The color rushed to her cheeks. Her eyes were gleaming.
+
+"Listen to it purr!" she cried to Donald. "If you hear it begin to
+growl, tell me."
+
+And then for a few minutes they rode like birds on the path of the wind.
+When they approached the entrance to the canyon, gradually Linda slowed
+down. She turned an exultant flashing face to Donald Whiting.
+
+"That was a whizzer," said the boy. "I'll tell you I don't know what I'd
+give to have a car like this for my very own. I'll bet not another girl
+in Los Angeles has a car that can go like that."
+
+"And I don't believe I have any business with it," said Linda; "but
+since circumstances make it mine, I am going to keep it and I am going
+to drive it."
+
+"Of course you are," said Donald emphatically. "Don't you ever let
+anybody fool you out of this car, because if they wanted to, it would be
+just because they are jealous to think they haven't one that will go as
+fast."
+
+"There's not the slightest possibility of my giving it up so long as I
+can make the engine turn over," she said. "I told you how Father always
+took me around with him, and there's nothing in this world I am so sure
+of as I am sure that I am spoiled for a house cat. I have probably less
+feminine sophistication than any girl of my age in the world, and I
+probably know more about camping and fishing and the scientific why and
+wherefore of all outdoors than most of them. I just naturally had such
+a heavenly time with Daddy that it never has hurt my feelings to be left
+out of any dance or party that ever was given. The one thing that has
+hurt is the isolation. Since I lost Daddy I haven't anyone but Katy.
+Sometimes, when I see a couple of nice, interesting girls visiting with
+their heads together, a great feeling of envy wells up in my soul, and I
+wish with all my heart that I had such a friend."
+
+"Ever try to make one?" asked Donald. "There are mighty fine girls in
+the high school."
+
+"I have seen several that I thought I would like to be friends with,"
+said Linda, "but I am so lacking in feminine graces that I haven't known
+how to make advances, in the first place, and I haven't had the courage,
+in the second."
+
+"I wish my sister were not so much older than you," said Donald.
+
+"How old is your sister?" inquired Linda.
+
+"She will be twenty-three next birthday," said Donald; "and of all the
+nice girls you ever saw, she is the queen."
+
+"Yes," she assented, "I am sure I have heard your sister mentioned. But
+didn't you tell me she had been reared for society?"
+
+"No, I did not," said Donald emphatically. "I told you Mother j believed
+in dressing her as the majority of other girls were dressed, but I
+didn't say she had been reared for society. She has been reared with an
+eye single to making a well-dressed, cultured, and gracious woman."
+
+"I call that fine," said Linda. "Makes me envious of you. Now forget
+everything except your eyes and tell me what you see. Have you ever been
+here before?"
+
+"I have been through a few times before, but seems to me I | never saw
+it looking quite so pretty."
+
+Linda drove carefully, but presently Donald uttered an exclamation as
+she swerved from the road and started down what appeared to be quite a
+steep embankment and headed straight for the stream.
+
+"Sit tight," she said tersely. "The Bear Cat just loves its cave. It
+knows where it is going."
+
+She broke through a group of young willows and ran the car! into a tiny
+plateau, walled in a circle by the sheer sides of the! canyon reaching
+upward almost out of sight, topped with great jagged overhanging
+boulders. Crowded to one side, she stopped the car and sat quietly,
+smiling at Donald Whiting.
+
+"How about it?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+The boy looked around him, carefully examining the canyon walls, and
+then at the level, odorous floor where one could not step without
+crushing tiny flowers of white, cerise, blue, and yellow. Big ferns grew
+along the walls, here and there "Our Lord's Candles" lifted high torches
+not yet lighted, the ambitious mountain stream skipped and circled and
+fell over its rocky bed, while many canyon wrens were singing.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "that anyone driving along here at an ordinary
+rate of speed would see that car?"
+
+"No," said Donald, getting her idea, "I don't believe they would."
+
+
+
+"All right, then," said Linda. "Toe up even and I'll race YoU to the
+third curve where you see the big white sycamore."
+
+Donald had a fleeting impression of a flash of khaki, a gleam of red,
+and a wave of black as they started. He ran with all the speed he had
+ever attained at a track meet. He ran with all his might. He ran until
+his sides strained and his breath came short; but the creature beside
+him was not running; she was flying; and long before they neared the
+sycamore he knew he was beaten, so he laughingly cried to her to stop
+it. Linda turned to him panting and laughing.
+
+"I make that dash every time I come to the canyon, to keep my muscle
+up, but this is the first time I have had anyone to race with in a long
+time."
+
+Then together they slowly walked down the smooth black floor between
+the canyon walls. As they crossed a small bridge Linda leaned over and
+looked down.
+
+"Anyone at your house care about 'nose twister'?" she asked lightly.
+
+"Why, isn't that watercress?" asked Donald.
+
+"Sure it is," said Linda. "Anyone at your house like it?"
+
+"Every one of us," answered Donald. "We're all batty about cress
+salad--and, say, that reminds me of something! If you know so much
+about this canyon and everything in it, is there any place in it where
+a fellow could find a plant, a kind of salad lettuce, that the Indians
+used to use?"
+
+"Might be," said Linda carelessly. "For why?"
+
+"Haven't you heard of the big sensation that is being made in feminine
+circles by the new department in Everybody's Home?" inquired Donald.
+"Mother and Mary Louise were discussing it the other day at lunch, and
+they said that some of the recipes for dishes to be made from stuff the
+Indians used sounded delicious. One reminded them of cress, and when we
+saw the cress I wondered if I could get them some of the other."
+
+"Might," said Linda drily, "if you could give me a pretty good idea of
+what it is that you want."
+
+"When you know cress, it's queer that you wouldn't know other things in
+your own particular canyon," said Donald.
+
+Linda realized that she had overdone her disinterestedness a trifle.
+
+"I suspect it's miners' lettuce you want," she said. "Of course I know
+where there's some, but you will want it as fresh as possible if you
+take any, so we'll finish our day first and gather it the last thing
+before we leave."
+
+How it started neither of them noticed, but they had not gone far before
+they were climbing the walls and hanging to precarious footings. Her
+cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant, her lips laughing, Linda was
+showing Donald thrifty specimens of that Cotyledon known as "old hen and
+chickens," telling him of the rare Echeveria of the same family, and her
+plunge down the canyon side while trying to uproot it, exulting that she
+had brought down the plant without a rift in the exquisite bloom on its
+leaves.
+
+Linda told about her fall, and the two men who had passed at that
+instant, and how she had met them later, and who they were, and what
+they were doing. Then Donald climbed high for a bunch of larkspur, and
+Linda showed him how to turn his back to the canyon wall and come down
+with the least possible damage to his person and clothing. When at last
+both of them were tired they went back to the car. Linda spread an
+old Indian blanket over the least flower-grown spot she could select,
+brought out the thermos bottles and lunch case, and served their lunch.
+With a glass of fruit punch in one hand and a lettuce sandwich in the
+other, Donald smiled at Linda.
+
+"I'll agree about Katy. She knows how," he said appreciatively.
+
+"Katy is more than a cook," said Linda quietly. "She is a human being.
+She has the biggest, kindest heart. When anybody's sick or in trouble
+she's the greatest help. She is honest; she has principles; she is
+intelligent. In her spare time she reads good books and magazines.
+She knows what is going on in the world. She can talk intelligently
+on almost any subject. It's no disgrace to be a cook. If it were, Katy
+would be unspeakable. Fact is, at the present minute there's no one in
+all the world so dear to me as Katy. I always talk Irish with her."
+
+"Well, I call that rough on your sister," said Donald.
+
+"Maybe it is," conceded Linda. "I suspect a lady wouldn't have i
+said that, but Eileen and I are so different. She never has made the
+slightest effort to prove herself lovable to me, and so I have never
+learned to love her. Which reminds me--how did you happen to come to the
+garage?"
+
+"The very beautiful young lady who opened the door mistook me for a
+mechanic. She told me I would find you working on your car and for
+goodness' sake to see that it was in proper condition before you drove
+it."
+
+Linda looked at him with wide, surprised eyes in which a trace of
+indignation was plainly discernible.
+
+"Now listen to me," she said deliberately. "Eileen is a most
+sophisticated young lady. If she saw you, she never in this world,
+thought you were a mechanic sent from a garage presenting yourself at
+our front door."
+
+"There might have been a spark of malice in the big blue-gray I eyes
+that carefully appraised me," said Donald.
+
+"Your choice of words is good," said Linda, refilling the punch glass.
+"'Appraise' fits Eileen like her glove. She appraises every thing on a
+monetary basis, and when she can't figure that it's going to be worth an
+appreciable number of dollars and cents to her--'to the garage wid it,'
+as Katy would say."
+
+When they had finished their lunch Linda began packing the box and
+Donald sat watching her.
+
+"At this point," said Linda, "Daddy always smoked. Do you smoke?"
+
+There was a hint of deeper color in the boy's cheeks.
+
+"I did smoke an occasional cigarette," he said lightly, "up to the day,
+not a thousand years ago, when a very emphatic young lady who should
+have known, insinuated that it was bad for the nerves, and going on the
+presumption that she knew, I haven't smoked a cigarette since and I'm
+not going to until I find out whether I can do better work without
+them."
+
+Linda folded napkins and packed away accessories thoughtfully. Then she
+looked into the boy's eyes.
+
+"Now we reach the point of our being here together," she said. "It's
+time to fight, and I am sorry we didn't go at it gas and bomb the minute
+we met.  You're so different from what I thought you were. If anyone had
+told me a week ago that you would take off your coat and mess with my
+automobile engine, or wear Katy's apron and squeeze lemons in our
+kitchen I would have looked him over for Daddy's high sign of hysteria,
+at least. It's too bad to I have such a good time as I have had this
+afternoon, and then end with a fight."
+
+"That's nothing," said Donald. "You couldn't have had as good a time as
+I have had. You're like another boy. A fellow can be just a fellow with
+you, and somehow you make everything you touch mean something it never
+meant before. You have made me feel that I would be about twice the man
+I am if I had spent the time I have wasted in plain jazzing around,
+hunting Cotyledon or trap-door spiders' nests."
+
+"I get you," said Linda. "It's the difference between a girl reared in
+an atmosphere of georgette and rouge, and one who has grown up in the
+canyons with the oaks and sycamores. One is natural and the other is
+artificial. Most boys prefer the artificial."
+
+"I thought I did myself," said Donald, "but today has taught me that I
+don't. I think, Linda, that you would make the finest friend a fellow
+ever had. I firmly and finally decline to fight with you; but for God's
+sake, Linda, tell me how I can beat that little cocoanut-headed Jap."
+
+Linda slammed down the lid to the lunch box. Her voice was smooth and
+even but there was battle in her eyes and she answered decisively:
+"Well, you can't beat him calling him names. There is only one way on
+God's footstool that you can beat him. You can't beat him legislating
+against him. You can't beat him boycotting him. You can't beat him with
+any tricks. He is as sly as a cat and he has got a whole bag full of
+tricks of his own, and he has proved right here in Los Angeles that
+he has got a brain that is hard to beat. All you can do, and be a man
+commendable to your own soul, is to take his subject and put your brain
+on it to such purpose that you cut pigeon wings around him. What are you
+studying in your classes, anyway?"
+
+"Trigonometry, Rhetoric, Ancient History, Astronomy," answered Donald.
+
+"And is your course the same as his?" inquired Linda.
+
+"Strangely enough it is," answered Donald. "We have been in the same
+classes all through high school. I think the little monkey--"
+
+"Man, you mean," interposed Linda.
+
+"'Man,'" conceded Donald. "Has waited until I selected my course all the
+way through, and then he has announced what he would take. He probably
+figured that I had somebody with brains back of the course I selected,
+and that whatever I studied would be suitable for him."
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said Linda. "They are quick; oh! they are
+quick; and they know from their cradles what it is that they have in
+the backs of their heads. We are not going to beat them driving them to
+Mexico or to Canada, or letting them monopolize China. That is merely
+temporizing. That is giving them fertile soil on which to take the best
+of their own and the level best of ours, and by amalgamating the two,
+build higher than we ever have. There is just one way in all this world
+that we can beat Eastern civilization and all that it intends to do to
+us eventually. The white man has dominated by his color so far in the
+history of the world, but it is written in the Books that when the men
+of color acquire our culture and combine it with their own methods of
+living and rate of production, they are going to bring forth greater
+numbers, better equipped for the battle of life, than we are. When they
+have got our last secret, constructive or scientific, they will take it,
+and living in a way that we would not, reproducing in numbers we don't,
+they will beat us at any game we start, if we don't take warning while
+we are in the ascendancy, and keep there."
+
+"Well, there is something to think about," said Donald Whiting,
+staring past Linda at the side of the canyon as if he had seen the
+same handwriting on the wall that dismayed Belshazzar at the feast that
+preceded his downfall.
+
+"I see what you're getting at," he said. "I had thought that there might
+be some way to circumvent him."
+
+"There is!" broke in Linda hastily. "There is. You can beat him, but you
+have got to beat him in an honorable way and in a way that is open to
+him as it is to you."
+
+"I'll do anything in the world if you will only tell me how," said
+Donald. "Maybe you think it isn't grinding me and humiliating me
+properly. Maybe you think Father and Mother haven't warned me. Maybe
+you think Mary Louise isn't secretly ashamed of me. How can I beat him,
+Linda?"
+
+Linda's eyes were narrowed to a mere line. She was staring at the wall
+back of Donald as if she hoped that Heaven would intercede in her favor
+and write thereon a line that she might translate to the boy's benefit.
+
+"I have been watching pretty sharply," she said. "Take them as a race,
+as a unit--of course there are exceptions, there always are--but the
+great body of them are mechanical. They are imitative. They are not
+developing anything great of their own in their own country. They are
+spreading all over the world and carrying home sewing machines and
+threshing machines and automobiles and cantilever bridges and submarines
+and aeroplanes--anything from eggbeaters to telescopes. They are not
+creating one single thing. They are not missing imitating everything
+that the white man can do anywhere else on earth. They are just like the
+Germans so far as that is concerned."
+
+"I get that, all right enough," said Donald. "Now go on. What is your
+deduction? How the devil am I to beat the best? He is perfect, right
+straight along in everything."
+
+The red in Linda's cheeks deepened. Her eyes opened their widest. She
+leaned forward, and with her closed fist, pounded the blanket before
+him.
+
+"Then, by gracious," she said sternly, "you have got to do something
+new. You have got to be perfect, PLUS."
+
+"'Perfect, plus?'" gasped Donald.
+
+"Yes, sir!" said Linda emphatically. "You have got to be perfect, plus.
+If he can take his little mechanical brain and work a thing out till he
+has got it absolutely right, you have got to go further than that and
+discover something pertaining to it not hitherto thought of and start
+something NEW. I tell you you must use your brains. You should be more
+than an imitator. You must be a creator!"
+
+Donald started up and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Well, some job I call that," he said. "Who do you think I am, the
+Almighty?"
+
+"No," said Linda quietly, "you are not. You are merely His son, created
+in His own image, like Him, according to the Book, and you have got to
+your advantage the benefit of all that has been learned down the ages.
+We have got to take up each subject in your course, and to find some
+different books treating this same subject. We have got to get at it
+from a new angle. We must dig into higher authorities. We have got to
+coach you till, when you reach the highest note possible for the parrot,
+you can go ahead and embellish it with a few mocking-bird flourishes.
+All Oka Sayye knows how to do is to learn the lesson in his book
+perfectly, and he is 100 per cent. I have told you what you must do
+to add the plus, and you can do it if you are the boy I take you for.
+People have talked about the 'yellow peril' till it's got to be a
+meaningless phrase. Somebody must wake up to the realization that
+it's the deadliest peril that ever has menaced white civilization. Why
+shouldn't you have your hand in such wonderful work?"
+
+"Linda," said the boy breathlessly, "do you realize that you have been
+saying 'we'? Can you help me? Will you help me?"
+
+"No," said Linda, "I didn't realize that I had said 'we.' I didn't mean
+two people, just you and me. I meant all the white boys and girls of the
+high school and the city and the state and the whole world. If we are
+going to combat the 'yellow peril' we must combine against it. We have
+got to curb our appetites and train our brains and enlarge our hearts
+till we are something bigger and finer and numerically greater than this
+yellow peril. We can't take it and pick it up and push it into the sea.
+We are not Germans and we are not Turks. I never wanted anything in all
+this world worse than I want to see you graduate ahead of Oka Sayye. And
+then I want to see the white boys and girls of Canada and of England and
+of Norway and Sweden and Australia, and of the whole world doing exactly
+what I am recommending that you do in your class and what I am doing
+personally in my own. I have had Japs in my classes ever since I have
+been in school, but Father always told me to study them, to play the
+game fairly, but to BEAT them in some way, in some fair way, to beat
+them at the game they are undertaking."
+
+"Well, there is one thing you don't take into consideration," said
+Donald. "All of us did not happen to be fathered by Alexander Strong.
+Maybe we haven't all got your brains."
+
+"Oh, posher!" said Linda. "I know of a case where a little Indian was
+picked up from a tribal battlefield in South America and brought to this
+country and put into our schools, and there was nothing that any
+white pupil in the school could do that he couldn't, so long as it was
+imitative work. You have got to be constructive. You have got to work
+out some way to get ahead of them; and if you will take the history
+of the white races and go over their great achievements in mechanics,
+science, art, literature--anything you choose--when a white man is
+constructive, when he does create, he can simply cut circles around
+the colored races. The thing is to get the boys and girls of today to
+understand what is going on in the world, what they must do as their
+share in making the world safe for their grandchildren. Life is a
+struggle. It always has been. It always will be. There is no better
+study than to go into the canyons or the deserts and efface yourself
+and watch life. It's an all-day process of the stronger annihilating
+the weaker. The one inexorable thing in the world is Nature. The eagle
+dominates the hawk; the hawk, the falcon; the falcon, the raven; and
+so on down to the place where the hummingbird drives the moth from his
+particular trumpet flower. The big snake swallows the little one. The
+big bear appropriates the desirable cave."
+
+"And is that what you are recommending people to do?"
+
+"No," said Linda, "it is not. That is wild. We go a step ahead of the
+wild, or we ourselves become wild. We have brains, and with our brains
+we must do in a scientific way what Nature does with tooth and claw.
+In other words, and to be concrete, put these things in the car while
+I fold the blanket. We'll gather our miners' lettuce and then we'll go
+home and search Daddy's library and see if there is anything bearing in
+a higher way on any subject you are taking, so that you can get from it
+some new ideas, some different angle, some higher light, something
+that will end in speedily prefacing Oka Sayye's perfect with your
+pluperfect!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. Katy to the Rescue
+
+Linda delivered Donald Whiting at his door with an armload of books
+and a bundle of miners' lettuce and then drove to her home in Lilac
+Valley--in the eye of the beholder on the floor-level macadam road; in
+her own eye she scarcely grazed it. The smooth, easy motion of the car,
+the softly purring engine were thrilling. The speed at which she was
+going was like having wings on her body. The mental stimulus she had
+experienced in concentrating her brain on Donald Whiting's problem had
+stimulated her imagination. The radiant color of spring; the chilled,
+perfumed, golden air; the sure sense of having found a friend, had
+ruffled the plumes of her spirit. On the home road Donald had plainly
+indicated that he would enjoy spending the morrow with her, and she had
+advised him to take the books she had provided and lock himself in his
+room and sweat out some information about Monday's lessons which would
+at least arrest his professor's attention, and lead his mind to the
+fact that something was beginning to happen. And then she had laughingly
+added: "Tomorrow is Katy's turn. I told the old dear I would take her as
+soon as I felt the car was safe. Every day she does many things that she
+hopes will give me pleasure. This is one thing I can do that I know will
+delight her."
+
+"Next Saturday, then?" questioned Donald. And Linda nodded.
+
+
+
+"Sure thing. I'll be thinking up some place extra interesting. Come
+in the morning if you want, and we'll take a lunch and go for the day.
+Which do you like best, mountains or canyons or desert or sea?"
+
+"I like it best wherever what you're interested in takes you," said
+Donald simply.
+
+"All right, then," answered Linda, "we'll combine business and
+pleasure."
+
+So they parted with another meeting arranged.
+
+When she reached home she found Katy tearfully rejoicing, plainly
+revealing how intensely anxious she had been. But when Linda told
+her that the old tires had held, that the car ran wonderfully, that
+everything was perfectly safe, that she drove as unconsciously as she
+breathed, and that tomorrow Katy was to go for a long ride, her joy was
+incoherent.
+
+Linda laughed. She patted Katy and started down the hallway, when she
+called back: "What is this package?"
+
+"A delivery boy left it special only a few minutes ago. Must be
+something Miss Eileen bought and thought she would want tomorrow, and
+then afterward she got this invitation and went on as she was."
+
+Linda stood gazing at the box. It did look so suspiciously like a dress
+box.
+
+"Katy," she said, "I have just about got an irresistible impulse to
+peep. I was telling Eileen last night of a dress I saw that I thought
+perfect. It suited me better than any other dress I ever did see. It was
+at 'The Mode.' This box is from 'The Mode.' Could there be a possibility
+that she sent it up specially for me?"
+
+"I think she would put your name on it if she meant it for ye," said
+Katy.
+
+"One peep would show me whether it is my dress or not," said Linda, "and
+peep I'm going to."
+
+She began untying the string.
+
+"There's one thing," said Katy, "Miss Eileen's sizes would never fit
+ye."
+
+"Might," conceded Linda. "I am taller than she is, but I could wear her
+waists if I wanted to, and she always alters her skirts herself to save
+the fees. Glory be! This is my dress, and there's a petticoat and
+stockings to match it. Why, the nice old thing! I suggested hard enough,
+but in my heart I hardly thought she would do it. Oh, dear, now if I
+only had some shoes, and a hat."
+
+Linda was standing holding the jacket in one hand, the stockings in the
+other, her face flaming. Katy drew herself to full height. She reached
+over and picked the things from Linda's fingers.
+
+"If ye know that is your dress, lambie," she said authoritatively, "ye
+go right out and get into that car and run to town and buy ye a pair of
+shoes."
+
+"But I have no credit anywhere and I have no money, yet," said Linda.
+
+"Well, I have," said Katy, "and this time ye're going to stop your
+stubbornness and take enough to get ye what you need. Ye go to the best
+store in Los Angeles and come back here with a pair of shoes that just
+match those stockings, and ye go fast, before the stores close. If ye've
+got to speed a little, do it in the country and do it judacious."
+
+"Katy, you're arriving!" cried Linda. "'Judicious speeding' is one thing
+I learned better than any other lesson about driving a motor car. Three
+fourths of the driving Father and I did we were speeding judiciously."
+
+Katy held the skirt to Linda's waist.
+
+"Well, maybe it's a little shorter than any you have been wearing, but
+it ain't as short as Eileen and all the rest of the girls your age have
+them, so that's all right, honey. Slip on your coat."
+
+Katy's fingers were shaking as she lifted the jacket and Linda slipped
+into it.
+
+"Oh, Lord," she groaned, "ye can't be wearing that! The sleeves don't
+come much below your elbows."
+
+"You will please to observe," said Linda, "that they are flowing sleeves
+and they are not intended to come below the elbows; but it's a piece of
+luck I tried it on, for it reminds me that it's a jacket suit and I
+must have a blouse. When you get the shoe money, make it enough for
+a blouse--two blouses, Katy, one for school and one to fuss up in a
+little."
+
+Without stopping to change her clothing, Linda ran to the garage and
+hurried back to the city. It was less than an hour's run, but she made
+it in ample time to park her car and buy the shoes. She selected a pair
+of low oxfords of beautiful color, matching the stockings. Then she
+hurried to one of the big drygoods stores and bought the two waists and
+an inexpensive straw hat that would harmonize with the suit; a hat small
+enough to stick, in the wind, with brim enough to shade her eyes. In
+about two hours she was back with Katy and they were in her room trying
+on the new clothing.
+
+"It dumbfounds me," said Linda, "to have Eileen do this for me."
+
+She had put on the shoes and stockings, a plain georgette blouse of
+a soft, brownish wood-gray, with a bit of heavy brown silk embroidery
+decorating the front, and the jacket. The dress was of silky changeable
+tricolette, the skirt plain. Where a fold lifted and was strongly
+lighted, it was an exquisite silver-gray; where a shadow fell deeply
+it was gray-brown. The coat reached half way to the knees. It had a
+rippling skirt with a row of brown embroidery around it, a deep belt
+with double buttoning at the waistline, and collar and sleeves in a more
+elaborate pattern of the same embroidery as the skirt. Linda perched the
+hat on her head, pulled it down securely, and faced Katy.
+
+"Now then!" she challenged.
+
+"And it's a perfect dress!" said Katy proudly, "and you're just the
+colleen to wear it. My, but I wisht your father could be seeing ye the
+now."
+
+With almost reverent hands Linda removed the clothing and laid it away.
+Then she read a letter from Marian that was waiting for her, telling
+Katy scraps of it in running comment as she scanned the sheets.
+
+"She likes her boarding place. There are nice people in it. She has got
+a wonderful view from the windows of her room. She is making friends.
+She thinks one of the men at Nicholson and Snow's is just fine; he is
+helping her all he can, on the course she is taking. And she wants us
+to look carefully everywhere for any scrap of paper along the hedge or
+around the shrubbery on the north side of the house. One of her three
+sheets of plans is missing. I don't see where in the world it could have
+gone, Katy."
+
+Katy spread out her hands in despair.
+
+"There was not a scrap of a sheet of paper in the room when I cleaned
+it," she said, "not a scrap. And if I had seen a sheet flying around the
+yard I would have picked it up. She just must be mistaken about having
+lost it here. She must have opened her case on the train and lost it
+there."
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+"I put that stuff in the case myself," she said, "and the clothes on top
+of it, and she wouldn't have any reason for taking those things out on
+the train. I can't understand, but she did have three rough sketches.
+She had her heart set on winning that prize and it would be a great help
+to her, and certainly it was the most comprehensive and convenient plan
+for a house of that class that I ever have seen. If I ever have a house,
+she is going to plan it, even if she doesn't get to plan John Gilman's
+as he always used to say that she should. And by the way, Katy, isn't
+it kind of funny for Eileen to go away over Sunday when it's his only
+holiday?"
+
+"Oh, she'll telephone him," said Katy, "and very like, he'll go down, or
+maybe he is with her. Ye needn't waste any sympathy on him. Eileen will
+take care that she has him so long as she thinks she wants him."
+
+Later it developed that Eileen had secured the invitation because she
+was able to produce three most eligible men. Not only was John Gilman
+with the party, but Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson were there as
+well. It was in the nature of a hastily arranged celebration, because
+the deal for three acres of land that Peter Morrison most coveted on the
+small plateau, mountain walled, in Lilac Valley, was in escrow. He had
+made a payment on it. Anderson was working on his plans. Contractors had
+been engaged, and on Monday work would begin. The house was to be built
+as soon as possible, and Peter Morrison had arranged that the garage was
+to be built first. This he meant to occupy as a residence so that he
+could be on hand to superintend the construction of the new home and to
+protect, as far as possible, the natural beauty and the natural growth
+of the location.
+
+Early Sunday morning Linda and Katy, with a full lunch box and a full
+gasoline tank, slid from the driveway and rolled down the main street of
+Lilac Valley toward the desert.
+
+"We'll switch over and strike San Fernando Road," said Linda, "and I'll
+scout around Sunland a bit and see if I can find anything that will
+furnish material for another new dish."
+
+That day was wonderful for Katy. She trotted after Linda over sandy
+desert reaches, along the seashore, up mountain trails, and through
+canyons connected by long stretches of motoring that was more like
+flying than riding. She was tired but happy when she went to bed. Monday
+morning she was an interested spectator as Linda dressed for school.
+
+"Sure, and hasn't the old chrysalis opened up and let out the nicest
+little lady-bird moth, Katy?" inquired Linda as she smoothed her
+gray-gold skirts. "I think myself that this dress is a trifle too good
+for school. When I get my allowance next week I think I'll buy me a
+cloth skirt and a couple of wash waists and save this for better; but it
+really was good of Eileen to take so much pains and send it to me, when
+she was busy planning a trip."
+
+Katy watched Linda go, and she noted the new light in her eyes, the new
+lift of her head, and the proud sureness of her step, and she wondered
+if a new dress could do all that for a girl, she scarcely believed that
+it could. And, too, she had very serious doubts about the dress. She
+kept thinking of it during the day, and when Eileen came, in the middle
+of the afternoon, at the first words on her lips: "Has my dress come?"
+Katy felt a wave of illness surge through her. She looked at Eileen so
+helplessly that that astute reader of human nature immediately Suspected
+something.
+
+"I sent it special," she said, "because I didn't know at the time that I
+was going to Riverside and I wanted to work on it. Isn't it here yet?"
+
+Then Katy prepared to do battle for the child of her heart.
+
+"Was the dress ye ordered sent the one Miss Linda was telling ye about?"
+she asked tersely.
+
+"Yes, it was," said Eileen. "Linda has got mighty good taste. Any dress
+she admired was sure to be right. She said there was a beautiful dress
+at 'The Mode'. I went and looked, and sure enough there was, a perfect
+beauty."
+
+"But she wanted the dress for herself," said Katy.
+
+"It was not a suitable dress for school," said Eileen.
+
+"Well, it strikes me," said Katy, "that it was just the spittin' image
+of fifty dresses I've seen ye wear to school.
+
+"What do you know about it?" demanded Eileen.
+
+"I know just this," said Katy with determination. "Ye've had one new
+dress in the last few days and you're not needin' another. The blessed
+Virgin only knows when Miss Linda's had a dress. She thought ye'd done
+yourself proud and sent it for her, and she put it on, and a becoming
+and a proper thing it was too! I advanced her the money myself and sent
+her to get some shoes to match it since she had her car fixed and could
+go in a hurry. A beautiful dress it is, and on her back this minute it
+is!"
+
+Eileen was speechless with anger. Her face was a sickly white and the
+rouge spots on her cheeks stood a glaring admission.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me--" she gasped.
+
+"Not again," said the daughter of Erin firmly, "because I have already
+told ye wance. Linda's gone like a rag bag since the Lord knows when.
+She had a right to the dress, and she thought it was hers, and she took
+it. And if ye ever want any more respect or obedience or love from the
+kiddie, ye better never let her know that ye didn't intend it for her,
+for nothing was ever quite so fair and right as that she should have it;
+and while you're about it you'd better go straight to the store and get
+her what she is needin' to go with it, or better still, ye had better
+give her a fair share of the money of which there used to be such a
+plenty, and let her get her things herself, for she's that tasty nobody
+can beat her when she's got anything to do with."
+
+Eileen turned on Katy in a gust of fury.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan," she said shrilly, "pack your trunk and see how
+quick you can get out of this house. I have stood your insolence for
+years, and I won't endure it a minute longer!"
+
+Katy folded her red arms and lifted her red chin, and a steel-blue light
+flashed from her steel-gray eyes.
+
+"Humph!" she said, "I'll do nothing of the sort. I ain't working for ye
+and I never have been no more than I ever worked for your mother. Every
+lick I ever done in this house I done for Linda and Doctor Strong and
+for nobody else. Half of this house and everything in it belongs to
+Linda, and it's a mortal short time till she's of age to claim it.
+Whichever is her half, that half I'll be staying in, and if ye manage so
+as she's got nothing to pay me, I'll take care of her without pay till
+the day comes when she can take care of me. Go to wid ye, ye triflin',
+lazy, self-possessed creature. Ten years I have itched to tell ye what I
+thought of ye, and now ye know it."
+
+As Katy's rage increased, Eileen became intimidated. Like every
+extremely selfish person she was a coward in her soul.
+
+"If you refuse to go on my orders," she said, "I'll have John Gilman
+issue his."
+
+Then Katy set her left hand on her left hip, her lower jaw shot past the
+upper, her doubled right fist shook precious near the tip of Eileen's
+exquisite little nose.
+
+"I'm darin' ye," she shouted. "I'm just darin' ye to send John Gilman
+in the sound of my voice. If ye do, I'll tell him every mean and selfish
+thing ye've done to me poor lambie since the day of the Black Shadow.
+Send him to me? Holy Mither, I wish ye would! If ever I get my chance at
+him, don't ye think I won't be tellin' him what he has lost, and what he
+has got? And as for taking orders from him, I am taking my orders from
+the person I am working for, and as I told ye before, that's Miss Linda.
+Be off wid ye, and primp up while I get my supper, and mind ye this, if
+ye tell Miss Linda ye didn't mean that gown for her and spoil the happy
+day she has had, I won't wait for ye to send John Gilman to me; I'll
+march straight to him. Put that in your cigarette and smoke it! Think
+I've lost me nose as well as me sense?"
+
+Then Katy started a triumphal march to the kitchen and cooled down by
+the well-known process of slamming pots and pans for half an hour. Soon
+her Irish sense of humor came to her rescue.
+
+"Now, don't I hear myself telling Miss Linda a few days ago to kape her
+temper, and to kape cool, and to go aisy. Look at the aise of me when I
+got started. By gracious, wasn't I just itching to wallop her?"
+
+Then every art that Katy possessed was bent to the consummation of
+preparing a particularly delicious dinner for the night.
+
+Linda came in softly humming something to herself about the kind of
+shoes that you might wear if you chose. She had entered the high school
+that morning with an unusually brilliant color. Two or three girls, who
+never had noticed her before, had nodded to her that morning, and one or
+two had said: "What a pretty dress you have!" She had caught the
+flash of approval in the eyes of Donald Whiting, and she had noted the
+flourish with which he raised his hat when he saw her at a distance, and
+she knew what he meant when he held up a book, past the covers of which
+she could see protruding a thick fold of white paper. He had foresworn
+whatever pleasure he might have thought of for Sunday. He had prepared
+notes on some subject that he thought would further him. The lift of his
+head, the flourish of his hat, and the book all told Linda that he had
+struggled and that he felt the struggle had brought an exhilarating
+degree of success. That had made the day particularly bright for Linda.
+She had gone home with a feeling of uplift and exultation in her heart.
+As she closed the front door she cried up the stairway: "Eileen, are you
+there?"
+
+"Yes," answered a rather sulky voice from above.
+
+Linda ascended, two steps at a bound.
+
+"Thank you over and over, old thing!" she cried as she raced down the
+hallway. "Behold me! I never did have a more becoming dress, and Katy
+loaned me money, till my income begins, to get shoes and a little scuff
+hat to go with it. Aren't I spiffy?"
+
+She pirouetted in the doorway. Eileen gripped the brush she was
+wielding, tight.
+
+"You have good taste," she said. "It's a pretty dress, but You're always
+howling about things being suitable. Do you call that suitable for
+school?"
+
+"It certainly is an innovation for me," said Linda, "but there are
+dozens of dresses of the same material, only different cut and colors
+in the high school today. As soon as I get my money I'll buy a skirt and
+some blouses so I won't have to wear this all the time; but I surely do
+thank you very much, and I surely have had a lovely day. Did you have a
+nice time at Riverside?"
+
+Eileen slammed down the brush and turned almost a distorted face to
+Linda. She had temper to vent. In the hour's reflection previous to
+Linda's coming, she realized that she had reached the limit with Katy.
+If she antagonized her by word or look, she would go to John Gilman, and
+Eileen dared not risk what she would say.
+
+"No, I did not have a lovely time," she said. "I furnished the men for
+the party and I expected to have a grand time, but the first thing we
+did was to run into that inflated egotist calling herself Mary Louise
+Whiting, and like a fool, Janie Brunson introduced her to Peter
+Morrison. I had paired him with Janie on purpose to keep my eye on him."
+
+Linda tried hard but she could not suppress a chuckle: "Of course you
+would!" she murmured softly.
+
+Eileen turned her back. That had been her first confidence to Linda.
+She was so aggrieved at that moment that she could have told unanswering
+walls her tribulations. It would have been better if she had done
+so. She might have been able to construe silence as sympathy. Linda's
+laughter she knew exactly how to interpret. "Served you right," was what
+it meant.
+
+"I hadn't the least notion you would take an interest in anything
+concerning me," she said. "People can talk all they please about Mary
+Louise Whiting being a perfect lady but she is a perfect beast. I have
+met her repeatedly and she has always ignored me, and yesterday she
+singled out for her special attention the most desirable man in my
+party--"
+
+"'Most desirable,'" breathed Linda. "Poor John! I see his second fiasco.
+Lavender crystals, please!"
+
+Eileen caught her lip in mortification. She had not intended to say what
+she thought.
+
+"Well, you can't claim," she hurried on to cover her confusion, "that it
+was not an ill-bred, common trick for her to take possession of a man
+of my party, and utterly ignore me. She has everything on earth that I
+want; she treats me like a dog, and she could give me a glorious time by
+merely nodding her head."
+
+"I am quite sure you are mistaken," said Linda. "From what I've heard of
+her, she wouldn't mistreat anyone. Very probably what she does is merely
+to feel that she is not acquainted with you. You have an unfortunate
+way, Eileen, of defeating your own ends. If you wanted to attract Mary
+Louise Whiting, you missed the best chance you ever could have had, at
+three o'clock Saturday afternoon, when you maliciously treated her only
+brother as you would a mechanic, ordered him to our garage, and shut our
+door in his face."
+
+Eileen turned to Linda. Her mouth fell open. A ghastly greenish white
+flooded her face.
+
+"What do you mean?" she gasped.
+
+"I mean," said Linda, "that Donald Whiting was calling on me, and you
+purposely sent him to the garage."
+
+Crash down among the vanities of Eileen's dressing table went her lovely
+head, and she broke into deep and violent sobs. Linda stood looking at
+her a second, slowly shaking her head. Then she turned and went to her
+room.
+
+Later in the evening she remembered the Roman scarf and told Eileen
+of what she had done, and she was unprepared for Eileen's reply: "That
+scarf always was too brilliant for me. You're welcome to it if you want
+it."
+
+"Thank you," said Linda gravely, "I want it very much indeed."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. Assisting Providence
+
+Linda went to the library to see to what state of emptiness it had been
+reduced by the removal of several pieces of furniture she had ordered
+taken away that day. As she stood on the threshold looking over the
+room as usual, a throb of loving appreciation of Katy swept through her
+heart. Katy had been there before her. The room had been freshly
+swept and dusted, the rugs had been relaid, the furniture rearranged
+skilfully, and the table stood at the best angle to be lighted either
+by day or night. On the table and the mantel stood big bowls of lovely
+fresh flowers. Linda was quite certain that anyone entering the room for
+the first time would have felt it completely furnished, and she doubted
+if even Marian would notice the missing pieces. Cheered in her heart,
+she ran up to the billiard room, and there again Katy had preceded
+her. The windows were shining. The walls and floor had been cleaned.
+Everything was in readiness for the new furniture. Her heart full of
+gratitude, Linda went to her room, prepared her lessons for the next
+day, and then drew out her writing materials to answer Marian's letter.
+She wrote:
+
+I have an acute attack of enlargement of the heart. So many things
+have happened since your leaving. But first I must tell you about your
+sketch. We just know you did not leave it here. Katy says there was not
+a scrap in our bedroom when she cleaned it; and as she knows you make
+plans and how precious they are to you, I guarantee she would have saved
+it if she had found anything looking like a parallelogram on a piece of
+paper. And I have very nearly combed the lawn, not only the north side,
+but the west, south, and east; and then I broke the laws and went over
+to your house and crawled through a basement window and worked my way
+up, and I have hunted every room in it, but there is nothing there. You
+must have lost that sketch after you reached San Francisco. I hope to
+all that's peaceful you did not lay it down in the offices of Nicholson
+and Snow, or where you take your lessons. I know nothing about
+architecture, but I do know something about comfort in a home, and I
+thought that was the most comfortable and convenient-looking house I
+ever had seen.
+
+Now I'll go on and tell you all the news, and I don't know which is
+the bigger piece to burst on you first. Would you be more interested in
+knowing that Peter Morrison has bought three acres on the other side of
+the valley from us and up quite a way, or in the astonishing fact that I
+have a new dress, a perfect love of a dress, really too good for school?
+You know there was blood in my eye when you left, and I didn't wait long
+to start action. I have managed to put the fear of God into Eileen's
+heart so that she has agreed to a reasonable allowance for me from the
+first of next month; but she must have felt at least one small wave of
+contrition when I told her about a peculiarly enticing dress I had seen
+at The Mode. She sent it up right away, and Katy, blessed be her loving
+footprints, loaned me money to buy a blouse and some shoes to match,
+so I went to school today looking very like the Great General Average,
+minus rouge, lipstick, hairdress, and French heels.
+
+I do hope you will approve of two things I have done.
+
+Then Linda recounted the emptying of the billiard room, the inroads in
+the library, the listing of the technical books, and what she proposed
+to do with the money. And then, her face slightly pale and her fingers
+slightly trembling, she wrote:
+
+And, Marian dear, I hope you won't be angry with me when I tell you
+that I have put the Bear Cat into commission and driven it three times
+already. It is running like the feline it is, and I am being as careful
+as I can. I know exactly how you will feel. It is the same feeling that
+has held me all these months, when I wouldn't even let myself think
+of it. But something happened at school one day, Marian. You know the
+Whitings? Mary Louise Whiting's brother is in the senior class. He is
+a six-footer, and while he is not handsome he is going to be a real man
+when he is fully developed, and steadied down to work. One day last
+week he made it his business to stop me in the hall and twit me about
+my shoes, and incidentally to ask me why I didn't dress like the other
+girls; and some way it came rougher than if it had been one of the
+girls. The more I thought about it the more wronged I felt, so I ended
+in a young revolution that is to bring me an income, a suitable place to
+work in and has brought me such a pretty dress. I think it has brought
+Eileen to a sense of at least partial justice about money, and it
+brought me back the Bear Cat. You know the proudest moment of my life
+was when Father would let me drive the little beast, and it all came
+back as natural as breathing. Please don't worry, Marian. Nothing shall
+happen, I promise you.
+
+It won't be necessary to tell you that Katy is her darling old self,
+loyal and steadfast as the sun, and quite as necessary and as comforting
+to me. And I have a couple of other interests in life that are going
+to--I won't say make up for your absence, because nothing could do
+that--but they are going to give me something interesting to think
+about, something agreeable to work at, while you are gone. But, oh,
+Marian, do hurry. Work all day and part of the night. Be Saturday's
+child yourself if you must, just so you get home quick, and where your
+white head makes a beacon light for the truest, lovingest pal you will
+ever have,
+
+                                                 LINDA.
+
+Linda laid down the pen, slid down in her chair, and looked from the
+window across the valley, and she wondered if in her view lay the
+location that had been purchased by Peter Morrison. She glanced back at
+her letter and sat looking at the closing lines and the signature.
+
+"Much good that will do her," she commented. "When a woman loves a man
+and loves him with all her heart, as Marian loved John, and when she
+loses him, not because she has done a single unworthy thing herself,
+but because he is so rubber spined that he will let another woman
+successfully intrigue him, a lot of comfort she is going to get from the
+love of a schoolgirl!"
+
+Linda's eyes strayed to the window again, and traveled down to the city
+and up the coast, all the way to San Francisco, and out of the thousands
+of homes there they pictured a small, neat room, full of Marian's
+belongings, and Marian herself bending over a worktable, absorbed in the
+final draft of her precious plans. Linda could see Marian as plainly as
+she ever had seen her, but she let her imagination run, and she fancied
+that when Marian was among strangers and where no one knew of John
+Gilman's defection, that hers might be a very heavy heart, that hers
+might be a very sad face. Then she went to planning. She had been
+desolate, heart hungry, and isolated herself. First she had endured,
+then she had fought; the dawn of a new life was breaking over her hill.
+She had found work she was eager to do. She could put the best of her
+brain, the skill of her fingers, the creative impulse of her heart, into
+it.
+
+She was almost sure that she had found a friend. She had a feeling that
+when the coming Saturday had been lived Donald Whiting would be her
+friend. He would want her advice and her help in his work. She would
+want his companionship and the stimulus of his mind, in hers. What Linda
+had craved was a dear friend among the girls, but no girl had offered
+her friendship. This boy had, so she would accept what the gods of
+time and circumstance provided. It was a very wonderful thing that had
+happened to her. Now why could not something equally wonderful happen to
+Marian? Linda wrinkled her brows and thought deeply.
+
+"It's the worst thing in all this world to work and work with nobody to
+know about it and nobody to care," thought Linda. "Marian could break a
+record if she thought John Gilman cared now as he used to. It's almost
+a necessary element to her success. If he doesn't care, she ought to be
+made to feel that somebody cares. This thing of standing alone, since
+I have found a friend, appeals to me as almost insupportable. Let me
+think."
+
+It was not long until she had worked out a scheme for putting an
+interest in Marian's life and giving her something for which to work,
+until a more vital reality supplanted it. The result was that she took
+some paper, went down to the library, and opening the typewriter, wrote
+a letter. She read it over, making many changes and corrections, and
+then she copied it carefully. When she came to addressing it she was
+uncertain, but at last she hit upon a scheme of sending it in the care
+of Nicholson and Snow because Marian had told her that she meant to
+enter their contest immediately she reached San Francisco, and she would
+have left them her address. On the last reading of the letter she had
+written, she decided that it was a manly, straightforward production,
+which should interest and attract any girl. But how was she to sign
+it? After thinking deeply for a long time, she wrote "Philip Sanders,
+General Delivery," and below she added a postscript:
+
+To save you the trouble of inquiring among your friends as to who Philip
+Sanders is, I might as well tell you in the beginning that he isn't. He
+is merely an assumption under which I shall hide my personality until
+you let me know whether it is possible that you could become even
+slightly interested in me, as a small return for the very deep and
+wholesome interest abiding in my heart for you.
+
+"Abiding," said Linda aloud. "It seems to me that there is nothing in
+all the world quite so fine as a word. Isn't 'abiding' a good word?
+Doesn't it mean a lot? Where could you find one other word that
+means being with you and also means comforting you and loving you
+and sympathizing with you and surrounding you with firm walls and a
+cushioned floor and a starry roof? I love that word. I hope it impresses
+Marian with all its wonderful meaning."
+
+She went back to her room, put both letters into her Geometry, and
+in the morning mailed them. She stood a long time hesitating with the
+typewritten letter in her hand, but finally dropped it in the letter box
+also.
+
+"It will just be something," she said, "to make her think that some man
+appreciates her lovely face and doesn't care if her hair is white, and
+sees how steadfast and fine she is."
+
+And then she slowly repeated, "'steadfast,' that is another fine word.
+It has pearls and rubies all over it."
+
+After school that evening she visited James Brothers' and was paid the
+full amount of the appraisement of her furniture. Then she went to an
+art store and laid in a full supply of the materials she needed for the
+work she was trying to do. Her fingers were trembling as she handled the
+boxes of water colors and selected the brushes and pencils for her work,
+and sheets of drawing paper upon which she could do herself justice.
+When the transaction was finished, she had a few dollars remaining. As
+she put them in her pocket she said softly:
+
+"That's gasoline. Poor Katy! I'm glad she doesn't need her money,
+because she is going to have to wait for the allowance or the sale of
+the books or on Jane Meredith. But it's only a few days now, so that'll
+be all right."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. The Lay of the Land
+
+Linda entered the street car for her daily ride to Lilac Valley. She
+noticed Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson sitting beside each other,
+deeply engrossed in a drawing. She had been accustomed to ride in the
+open section of the car as she liked the fresh air. She had a fleeting
+thought of entering the body of the car and sitting where they would see
+her; and then a perverse spirit in Linda's heart said to her:
+
+"That is precisely what Eileen would do. You sit where you belong."
+
+Whereupon Linda dropped into the first vacant seat she could reach, but
+it was only a few moments before Peter Morrison, looking up from the
+plans he was studying, saw her, and lifting his hat, beckoned her to
+come and sit with him. They made room for her between them and spreading
+the paper across her lap, all three of them began to discuss the plans
+for the foundation for Peter's house. Anderson had roughly outlined the
+grounds, sketching in the trees that were to be saved, the spring, and
+the most available route for reaching the road. The discussion was as to
+where the road should logically enter the grounds, and where the garage
+should stand.
+
+"Which reminds me," said Linda--"haven't you your car with you? Or was
+that a hired one you were touring in?"
+
+"Mine," said Peter Morrison, "but we toured so far, it's in the shop for
+a general overhauling today."
+
+"That being the case," said Linda, "walk home with me and I'll take you
+to your place in mine and bring you back to the cars, if you only want
+to stay an hour or two."
+
+"Why, that would be fine," said Peter. "You didn't mention, the other
+evening, that you had a car."
+
+"No," said Linda, "I had been trying to keep cars out of my thought for
+a long time, but I could endure it no longer the other day, so I got
+mine out and tuned it up. If you don't mind stacking up a bit, three can
+ride in it very comfortably."
+
+That was the way it happened that Linda walked home after school that
+afternoon between Peter Morrison and his architect, brought out the Bear
+Cat, and drove them to Peter's location.
+
+All that day, workmen had been busy under the management of a
+well-instructed foreman, removing trees and bushes and stones
+and clearing the spot that had been selected for the garage and
+approximately for the house.
+
+The soft brownish gray of Linda's dress was exactly the color to
+intensify the darker brown of her eyes. There was a fluctuating red in
+her olive cheeks, a brilliant red framing her even white teeth. Once
+dressed so that she was satisfied with the results, Linda immediately
+forgot her clothes, and plunged into Morrison's plans.
+
+"Peter," she said gravely, with Peter perfectly cognizant of the twinkle
+in her dark eyes, "Peter, you may save money in a straight-line road,
+but you're going to sin against your soul if you build it. You'll have
+to economize in some other way, and run your road around the base of
+those boulders, then come in straight to the line here, and then you
+should swing again and run out on this point, where guests can have one
+bewildering glimpse of the length of our blue valley, and then whip them
+around this clump of perfumy lilac and elders, run them to your side
+entrance, and then scoot the car back to the garage. I think you should
+place the front of your house about here." Linda indicated where. "So
+long as you're buying a place like this you don't want to miss one
+single thing; and you do want to make the very most possible out of
+every beauty you have. And you mustn't fail to open up and widen the
+runway from that energetic, enthusiastic spring. Carry it across your
+road, sure. It will cost you another little something for a safe bridge,
+but there's nothing so artistic as a bridge with a cold stream running
+under it. And think what a joyful time I'll have, gathering specimens
+for you of every pretty water plant that grows in my particular canyon.
+Any time when you're busy in your library and you hear my car puffing up
+the incline and around the corner and rattling across the bridge, you'll
+know that I am down here giving you a start of watercress and miners'
+lettuce and every lovely thing you could mention that likes to be
+nibbled or loved-up, while it dabbles its toes in the water."
+
+Peter Morrison looked at Linda reflectively. He looked for such a long
+moment that Henry Anderson reached a nebulous conclusion. "Fine!" he
+cried. "Every one of those suggestions is valuable to an inexperienced
+man. Morrison, shan't I make a note of them?"
+
+"Yes, Henry, you shall," said Peter. "I am going to push this thing as
+fast as possible, so far as building the garage is concerned and getting
+settled in it. After that I don't care if I live on this spot until we
+know each other by the inch, before I begin building my home. At the
+present minute it appeals to me that 'home' is about the best word in
+the language of any nation. I have a feeling that what I build here is
+going to be my home, very possibly the only one I shall ever have. We
+must find the spot on which the Lord intended that a house should grow
+on this hillside, and then we must build that house so that it has
+a room suitable for a workshop in which I may strive, under the best
+conditions possible, to get my share of the joy of life and to earn the
+money that I shall require to support me and entertain my friends; and
+that sounds about as selfish as anything possibly could. It seems to
+be mostly 'me' and 'mine,' and it's not the real truth concerning this
+house. I don't believe there is a healthy, normal man living who has not
+his dream. I have no hesitation whatever in admitting that I have mine.
+This house must be two things. It has got to be a concrete workshop for
+me, and it has got to be an abstract abiding place for a dream. It's
+rather difficult to build a dream house for a dream lady, so I don't
+know what kind of a fist I am going to make of it."
+
+Linda sat down on a boulder and contemplated her shoes for a minute.
+Then she raised her ever-shifting, eager, young eyes to Peter, and it
+seemed to him as he looked into them that there were little gold lights
+flickering at the bottom of their darkness.
+
+"Why, that's just as easy," she said. "A home is merely a home. It
+includes a front porch and a back porch and a fireplace and a bathtub
+and an ice chest and a view and a garden around it; all the rest is
+incidental. If you have more money, you have more incidentals. If you
+don't have so much, you use your imagination and think you have just as
+much on less."
+
+"Now, I wonder," said Peter, "when I find my dream lady, if she will
+have an elastic imagination."
+
+"Haven't you found her yet?" asked Linda casually.
+
+"No," said Peter, "I haven't found her, and unfortunately she hasn't
+found me. I have had a strenuous time getting my start in life. It's
+mostly a rush from one point of interest to another, dropping at
+any wayside station for refreshment and the use of a writing table.
+Occasionally I have seen a vision that I have wanted to follow, but I
+never have had time. So far, the lady of this house is even more of a
+dream than the house."
+
+"Oh, well, don't worry," said Linda comfortingly. "The world is full of
+the nicest girls. When you get ready for a gracious lady I'll find you
+one that will have an India-rubber imagination and a great big loving
+heart and Indian-hemp apron strings so that half a dozen babies can
+swing from them."
+
+Morrison turned to Henry Anderson.
+
+"You hear, Henry?" he said. "I'm destined to have a large family. You
+must curtail your plans for the workroom and make that big room back of
+it into a nursery."
+
+"Well, what I am going to do," said Henry Anderson, "is to build a place
+suitable for your needs. If any dream woman comes to it, she will have
+to fit herself to her environment."
+
+Linda frowned.
+
+"Now, that isn't a bit nice of you," she said, "and I don't believe
+Peter will pay the slightest attention to you. He'll let me make you
+build a lovely room for the love of his heart, and a great big bright
+nursery on the sunny side for his small people."
+
+"I never believed," said Henry Anderson, "in counting your chickens
+before they are hatched. There are a couple of acres around Peter's
+house, and he can build an addition as his needs increase."
+
+"Messy idea," said Linda promptly. "Thing to do, when you build a house,
+is to build it the way you want it for the remainder of your life,
+so you don't have to tear up the scenery every few years, dragging in
+lumber for expansion. And I'll tell you another thing. If the homemakers
+of this country don't get the idea into their heads pretty soon that
+they are not going to be able to hold their own with the rest of the
+world, with no children, or one child in the family, there's a sad day
+of reckoning coming. With the records at the patent office open to
+the world, you can't claim that the brain of the white man is not
+constructive. You can look at our records and compare them with those
+of countries ages and ages older than we are, which never discovered
+the beauties of a Dover egg-beater or a washing machine or a churn or
+a railroad or a steamboat or a bridge. We are head and shoulders above
+other nations in invention, and just as fast as possible, we are falling
+behind in the birth rate. The red man and the yellow man and the brown
+man and the black man can look at our egg-beaters and washing machines
+and bridges and big guns, and go home and copy them; and use them while
+rearing even bigger families than they have now. If every home in Lilac
+Valley had at least six sturdy boys and girls growing up in it with the
+proper love of country and the proper realization of the white man's
+right to supremacy, and if all the world now occupied by white men could
+make an equal record, where would be the talk of the yellow peril? There
+wouldn't be any yellow peril. You see what I mean?"
+
+Linda lifted her frank eyes to Peter Morrison.
+
+"Yes, young woman," said Peter gravely, "I see what you mean, but this
+is the first time I ever heard a high-school kid propound such ideas.
+Where did you get them?"
+
+"Got them in Multiflores Canyon from my father to start with," said
+Linda, "but recently I have been thinking, because there is a boy in
+high school who is making a great fight for a better scholarship record
+than a Jap in his class. I brood over it every spare minute, day or
+night, and when I say my prayers I implore high Heaven to send him an
+idea or to send me one that I can pass on to him, that will help him to
+beat that Jap."
+
+"I see," said Peter Morrison. "We'll have to take time to talk this
+over. It's barely possible I might be able to suggest something."
+
+"You let that kid fight his own battles," said Henry Anderson roughly.
+"He's no proper bug-catcher. I feel it in my bones."
+
+For the first time, Linda's joy laugh rang over Peter Morrison's
+possession.
+
+"I don't know about that," she said gaily. "He's a wide-awake specimen;
+he has led his class for four years when the Jap didn't get ahead of
+him. But, all foolishness aside, take my word for it, Peter, you'll be
+sorry if you don't build this house big enough for your dream lady and
+for all the little dreams that may spring from her heart."
+
+"Nightmares, you mean," said Henry Anderson. "I can't imagine a bunch
+of kids muddying up this spring and breaking the bushes and using
+slingshots on the birds."
+
+"Yes," said Linda with scathing sarcasm, "and wouldn't our government be
+tickled to death to have a clear spring and a perfect bush and a singing
+bird, if it needed six men to go over the top to handle a regiment of
+Japanese!"
+
+Then Peter Morrison laughed.
+
+"Well, your estimate is too low, Linda," he said in his nicest drawling
+tone of voice. "Believe me, one U. S. kid will never march in a whole
+regiment of Japanese. They won't lay down their guns and walk to
+surrender as bunches of Germans did. Nobody need ever think that. They
+are as good fighters as they are imitators. There's nothing for you to
+do, Henry, but to take to heart what Miss Linda has said. Plan the house
+with a suite for a dream lady, and a dining room, a sleeping porch and a
+nursery big enough for the six children allotted to me."
+
+"You're not really in earnest?" asked Henry Anderson in doubting
+astonishment.
+
+"I am in the deepest kind of earnest," said Peter Morrison. "What Miss
+Linda says is true. As a nation, our people are pampering themselves and
+living for their own pleasures. They won't take the trouble or endure
+the pain required to bear and to rear children; and the day is rolling
+toward us, with every turn of the planet one day closer, when we are
+going to be outnumbered by a combination of peoples who can take our own
+tricks and beat us with them. We must pass along the good word that the
+one thing America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES AND
+HEARTS BIG ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our grandfathers,
+when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child in the family, and if
+you didn't have a dozen you weren't doing your manifest duty."
+
+"Well, if that is the way you see the light, we must enlarge this house.
+As designed, it included every feminine convenience anyway. But when I
+build my house I am going to build it for myself."
+
+"Then don't talk any more about being my bug-catcher," said Linda
+promptly, "because when I build my house it's going to be a nest that
+will hold six at the very least. My heart is perfectly set on a brood of
+six."
+
+Linda was quite unaware that the two men were studying her closely, but
+if she had known what was going on in their minds she would have had
+nothing to regret, because both of them found her very attractive, and
+both of them were wondering how anything so superficial as Eileen could
+be of the same blood as Linda.
+
+"Are we keeping you too late?" inquired Peter.
+
+"No," said Linda, "I am as interested as I can be. Finish everything you
+want to do before we go. I hope you're going to let me come over often
+and watch you with your building. Maybe I can get an idea for some
+things I want to do. Eileen and I have our house divided by a Mason and
+Dixon line. On her side is Mother's suite, the dining room, the living
+room and the front door. On mine there's the garage and the kitchen and
+Katy's bedroom and mine and the library and the billiard room. At
+the present minute I am interested in adapting the library to my
+requirements instead of Father's, and I am emptying the billiard room
+and furnishing it to make a workroom. I have a small talent with a brush
+and pencil, and I need some bare walls to tack my prints on to dry, and
+I need numerous places for all the things I am always dragging in from
+the desert and the canyons; and since I have the Bear Cat running,
+what I have been doing in that line with a knapsack won't be worthy of
+mention."
+
+"How did it come," inquired Henry Anderson, "that you had that car
+jacked up so long?"
+
+"Why, hasn't anybody told you," asked Linda, "about our day of the Black
+Shadow?"
+
+"John Gilman wrote me when it happened," said Peter softly, "but I don't
+believe it has been mentioned before Henry. You tell him."
+
+Linda turned to Henry Anderson, and with trembling lips and paling
+cheeks, in a few brief sentences she gave him the details. Then she
+said to Peter Morrison in a low voice: "And that is the why of Marian
+Thorne's white head. Anybody tell you that?"
+
+"That white head puzzled me beyond anything I ever saw," he said. "I
+meant to ask John about it. He used to talk to me and write to me often
+about her, and lately he hasn't; when I came I saw the reason, and so
+you see I felt reticent on the subject."
+
+"Well, there's nothing the matter with my tongue," said Linda. "It's
+loose at both ends. Marian was an expert driver. She drove with the same
+calm judgment and precision and graceful skill that she does everything
+else, but the curve was steep and something in the brakes was defective.
+It broke with a snap and there was not a thing she could do. Enough was
+left of the remains of the car to prove that. Ten days afterward her
+head was almost as white as snow. Before that it was as dark as mine.
+But her body is just as young and her heart is just as young and her
+face is even more beautiful. I do think that a white crown makes her
+lovelier than she was before. I have known Marian ever since I can
+remember, and I don't know one thing about her that I could not look you
+straight in the eye and tell you all about. There is not a subterfuge
+or an evasion or a small mean deceit in her soul. She is the brainiest
+woman and the biggest woman I know."
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said Peter Morrison. "And while you are
+talking about nice women, we met a mighty fine one at Riverside on
+Sunday. Her name is Mary Louise Whiting. Do you know her?"
+
+"Not personally," said Linda. "I don't recall that I ever saw her. I
+know her brother, Donald. He is the high-school boy who is having the
+wrestle with the Jap."
+
+"I liked her too," said Henry Anderson. "And by the way, Miss Linda,
+haven't bug-catchers any reputation at all as nest builders? Is it true
+that among feathered creatures the hen builds the home?"
+
+"No, it's not," said Linda promptly. "Male birds make a splendid record
+carrying nest material. What is true is that in the majority of cases
+the female does the building."
+
+"Well, what I am getting at," said Henry Anderson, "is this. Is there
+anything I can do to help you with that billiard room that you're going
+to convert to a workroom? What do you lack in it that you would like to
+have? Do you need more light or air, or a fireplace, or what? When you
+take us to the station, suppose you drive us past your house and give
+me a look at that room and let me think over it a day or two. I might be
+able to make some suggestion that would help you."
+
+"Now that is positively sweet of you," said Linda. "I never thought of
+such a thing as either comfort or convenience. I thought I had to take
+that room as it stands and do the best I could with it, but since you
+mention it, it's barely possible that more air might be agreeable and
+also more light, and if there could be a small fireplace built in front
+of the chimney where it goes up from the library fireplace, it certainly
+would be a comfort, and it would add something to the room that nothing
+else could.
+
+"No workroom really has a soul if you can't smell smoke and see red when
+you go to it at night."
+
+"You little outdoor heathen," laughed Peter Morrison. "One would think
+you were an Indian."
+
+"I am a fairly good Indian," said Linda. "I have been scouting around
+with my father a good many years. How about it, Peter? Does the road go
+crooked?"
+
+"Yes," said Peter, "the road goes crooked."
+
+"Does the bed of the spring curve and sweep across the lawn and drop off
+to the original stream below the tree-tobacco clump there?"
+
+"If you say so, it does," said Peter.
+
+"Including the bridge?" inquired Linda.
+
+"Including the bridge," said Peter. "I'll have to burn some midnight
+oil, but I can visualize the bridge."
+
+"And is this house where you 'set up your rest,' as you so beautifully
+said the other night at dinner, going to lay its corner stone and grow
+to its roof a selfish house, or is it going to be generous enough for a
+gracious lady and a flight of little footsteps?"
+
+Peter Morrison took off his hat. He turned his face toward the length of
+Lilac Valley and stood, very tall and straight, looking far away before
+him. Presently he looked down at Linda.
+
+"Even so," he said softly. "My shoulders are broad enough; I have a
+brain; and I am not afraid to work. If my heart is not quite big enough
+yet, I see very clearly how it can be made to expand."
+
+"I have been told," said Linda in a low voice, "that Mary Louise Whiting
+is a perfect darling."
+
+Peter looked at her from the top of her black head to the tips of her
+brown shoes. He could have counted the freckles bridging her nose. The
+sunburn on her cheeks was very visible; there was something arresting in
+the depth of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the lithe slenderness of
+her young body; she gave the effect of something smoldering inside that
+would leap at a breath.
+
+"I was not thinking of Miss Whiting," he said soberly.
+
+Henry Anderson was watching. Now he turned his back and commenced
+talking about plans, but in his heart he said: "So that's the lay of the
+land. You've got to hustle yourself, Henry, or you won't have the ghost
+of a show."
+
+Later, when they motored down the valley and stopped at the Strong
+residence, Peter refused to be monopolized by Eileen. He climbed the two
+flights of stairs with Henry Anderson and Linda and exhausted his fund
+of suggestions as to what could be done to that empty billiard room
+to make an attractive study of it. Linda listened quietly to all their
+suggestions, and then she said:
+
+"It would be fine to have another window, and a small skylight would be
+a dream, and as for the fireplace you mention, I can't even conceive how
+great it would be to have that; but my purse is much more limited than
+Peter's, and while I have my school work to do every day, my earning
+capacity is nearly negligible. I can only pick up a bit here and there
+with my brush and pencil--place cards and Easter cards and valentines,
+and once or twice magazine covers, and little things like that. I don't
+see my way clear to lumber and glass and bricks and chimney pieces."
+
+Peter looked at Henry, and Henry looked at Peter, and a male high sign,
+ancient as day, passed between them.
+
+"Easiest thing in the world," said Peter. "It's as sure as shooting that
+when my three or four fireplaces, which Henry's present plans call for,
+are built, there is going to be all the material left that can be used
+in a light tiny fireplace such as could be built on a third floor, and
+when the figuring for the house is done it could very easily include the
+cutting of a skylight and an extra window or two here, and getting the
+material in with my stuff, it would cost you almost nothing."
+
+Linda's eyes opened wide and dewy with surprise and pleasure.
+
+"Why, you two perfectly nice men!" she said. "I haven't felt as I do
+this minute since I lost Daddy. It's wonderful to be taken care of. It's
+better than cream puffs with almond flavoring."
+
+Henry Anderson looked at Linda keenly.
+
+"You're the darndest kid!" he said. "One minute you're smacking your
+lips over cream puffs, and the next you're going to the bottom of the
+yellow peril. I never before saw your combination in one girl. What's
+the explanation?" For the second time that evening Linda's specialty in
+rapture floated free.
+
+"Bunch all the component parts into the one paramount fact that I am
+Saturday's child," she said, "so I am constantly on the job of working
+for a living, and then add to that the fact that I was reared by a nerve
+specialist."
+
+Then they went downstairs, and the men refused both Eileen's and Linda's
+invitation to remain for dinner. When they had gone Eileen turned to
+Linda with a discontented and aggrieved face.
+
+"In the name of all that's holy, what are you doing or planning to do?"
+she demanded.
+
+"Not anything that will cost you a penny beyond my natural rights," said
+Linda quietly.
+
+"That is not answering my question," said Eileen. "You're not of age and
+you're still under the authority of a guardian. If you can't answer me,
+possibly you can him. Shall I send John Gilman to ask what I want to
+know of you?"
+
+"When did I ever ask you any questions about what you chose to do?"
+asked Linda. "I am merely following the example that you have previously
+set me. John Gilman and I used to be great friends. It might help both
+of us to have a family reunion. Send him by all means."
+
+"You used to take pride," suggested Eileen, "in leading your class."
+
+"And has anyone told you that I am not leading my class at the present
+minute?" asked Linda.
+
+"No," said Eileen, "but what I want to point out to you is that the
+minute you start running with the boys you will quit leading your
+class."
+
+"Don't you believe it," said Linda quietly. "I'm not built that way.
+I shan't concentrate on any boy to the exclusion of chemistry and
+geometry, never fear it."
+
+Then she thoughtfully ascended the stairs and went to work.
+
+Eileen went to her room and sat down to think; and the more she thought,
+the deeper grew her anger and chagrin; and to the indifference that
+always had existed in her heart concerning Linda was added in that
+moment a new element. She was jealous of her. How did it come that a
+lanky, gangling kid in her tees had been paid a visit by the son of
+possibly the most cultured and influential family of the city, people of
+prestige, comfortable wealth, and unlimited popularity? For four years
+she had struggled to gain an entrance in some way into Louise Whiting's
+intimate circle of friends, and she had ended by shutting the door on
+the only son of the family. And why had she ever allowed Linda to keep
+the runabout? It was not proper that a young girl should own a high
+powered car like that. It was not proper that she should drive it and go
+racing around the country, heaven knew where, and with heaven knew whom.
+Eileen bit her lip until it almost bled. Her eyes were hateful and her
+hands were nervous as she reviewed the past week. She might think any
+mean thing that a mean brain could conjure up, but when she calmed down
+to facts she had to admit that there was not a reason in the world why
+Linda should not drive the car she had driven for her father, or why
+she should not take with her Donald Whiting or Peter Morrison or Henry
+Anderson. The thing that rankled was that the car belonged to Linda. The
+touring car which she might have owned and driven, had she so desired,
+lay in an extremely slender string of pearls around her neck at that
+instant. She reflected that if she had kept her car and made herself
+sufficiently hardy to drive it, she might have been the one to
+have taken Peter Morrison to his home location and to have had many
+opportunities for being with him.
+
+"I've been a fool," said Eileen, tugging at the pearls viciously. "They
+are nothing but a little bit of a string that looks as if I were trying
+to do something and couldn't, at best. What I've got to do is to think
+more of myself. I've got to plan some way to prevent Linda from being
+too popular until I really get my mind made up as to what I want to do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. Leavening the Bread of Life
+
+"'A house that is divided against itself cannot stand,'" quoted Linda.
+"I must keep in mind what Eileen said, not that there is the slightest
+danger, but to fall behind in my grades is a thing that simply must not
+happen. If it be true that Peter and Henry can so easily and so cheaply
+add a few improvements in my workroom in connection with Peter's
+building, I can see no reason why they shouldn't do it, so long as I pay
+for it. I haven't a doubt but that there will be something I can do
+for Peter, before he finishes his building, that he would greatly
+appreciate, while, since I'm handy with my pencil, I MIGHT be able to
+make a few head and tail pieces for some of his articles that would make
+them more attractive. I don't want to use any friend of mine: I don't
+want to feel that I am not giving quite as much as I get, but I think I
+see my way clear, between me and the Bear Cat, to pay for all the favors
+I would receive in altering my study.
+
+"First thing I do I must go through Father's books and get the money for
+them, so I'll know my limitation when I come to select furniture. And
+I don't know that I am going to be so terribly modest when it comes to
+naming the sum with which I'll be satisfied for my allowance. Possibly I
+shall exercise my age-old prerogative and change my mind; I may just say
+'half' right out loud and stick to it. And there's another thing. Since
+the editor of Everybody's Home has started my department and promised
+that if it goes well he will give it to me permanently, I can certainly
+depend on something from that. He has used my Introduction and two
+instalments now. I should think it might be fair to talk payments pretty
+soon. He should give me fifty dollars for a recipe with its perfectly
+good natural history and embellished with my own vegetable and floral
+decorations.
+
+"In the meantime I think I might buy my worktable and possibly an easel,
+so I can have real room to spread out my new material and see how it
+would feel to do one drawing completely unhampered. I'll order the table
+tonight, and then I'll begin on the books, because I must have Saturday
+free; and I must be thinking about the most attractive and interesting
+place I can take Donald to. I just have to keep him interested until
+he gets going of his own accord, because he shall beat Oka Sayye. I
+wouldn't let Donald say it but I don't mind saying myself to myself
+with no one present except myself that in all my life I have never seen
+anything so masklike as the stolid little square head on that Jap. I
+have never seen anything I dislike more than the oily, stiff, black
+hair standing up on it like menacing bristles. I have never had but one
+straight look deep into his eyes, but in that look I saw the only thing
+that ever frightened me in looking into a man's eyes in my whole life.
+And there is one thing that I have to remember to caution Donald about.
+He must carry on this contest in a perfectly open, fair, and aboveboard
+way, and he simply must not antagonize Oka Sayye. There are so many of
+the Japs. They all look so much alike, and there's a blood brotherhood
+between them that will make them protect each other to the death against
+any white man. It wouldn't be safe for Donald to make Oka Sayye hate
+him. He had far better try to make him his friend and put a spirit of
+honest rivalry into his heart; but come to think of it, there wasn't
+anything like that in my one look into Oka Sayye's eyes. I don't know
+what it was, but whatever it was it was something repulsive."
+
+With this thought in her mind Linda walked slowly as she approached
+the high school the next time. Far down the street, over the walks and
+across the grounds, her eyes were searching eagerly for the tall slender
+figure of Donald Whiting. She did not see him in the morning, but at
+noon she encountered him in the hall.
+
+"Looking for you," he cried gaily when he saw her. "I've got my pry in
+on Trig. The professor's interested. Dad fished out an old Trig that
+he used when he was a boy and I have some new angles that will keep my
+esteemed rival stirring up his gray matter for some little time."
+
+"Good for you! Joyous congratulations! You've got the idea!" cried
+Linda. "Go to it! Start something all along the line, but make it
+something founded on brains and reason and common sense. But, Donald, I
+was watching for you. I wanted to say a word."
+
+Donald Whiting bent toward her. The faintest suspicion of a tinge of
+color crept into his cheeks.
+
+"That's fine," he said. "What was it you wanted?"
+
+"Only this," she said in almost a breathless whisper. "There is nothing
+in California I am afraid of except a Jap, and I am afraid of them, not
+potentially, not on account of what all of us know they are planning
+in the backs of their heads for the future, but right here and now,
+personally and physically. Don't antagonize Oka Sayye. Don't be too
+precipitate about what you're trying to do. Try to make it appear that
+you're developing ideas for the interest and edification of the whole
+class. Don't incur his personal enmity. Use tact."
+
+"You think I am afraid of that little jiu-jitsu?" he scoffed. "I can
+lick him with one hand."
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said Linda, measuring his height and apparent
+strength and fitness. "I haven't a doubt of it. But let me ask you this
+confidentially: Have you got a friend who would slip in and stab him in
+the back in case you were in an encounter and he was getting the better
+of you?"
+
+Donald Whiting's eyes widened. He looked at Linda amazed.
+
+"Wouldn't that be going rather far?" he asked. "I think I have some
+fairly good friends among the fellows, but I don't know just whom I
+would want to ask to do me that small favor."
+
+"That is precisely the point," cried Linda. "You haven't a friend you
+would ask; and you haven't a friend who would do it, if you did. But
+don't believe for one second that Oka Sayye hasn't half a dozen who
+would make away with you at an unexpected time and in a secluded place,
+and vanish, if it would in any way further Oka Sayye's ambition, or help
+establish the supremacy of the Japanese in California."
+
+"Um-hm," said Donald Whiting.
+
+He was looking far past Linda and now his eyes were narrowed in thought.
+"I believe you're RIGHT about it."
+
+"I've thought of you so often since I tried to spur you to beat Oka
+Sayye," said Linda. "I feel a sort of responsibility for you. It's to
+the honor and glory of all California, and the United States, and the
+white race everywhere for you to beat him, but if any harm should come
+to you I would always feel that I shouldn't have urged it."
+
+"Now that's foolishness," said Donald earnestly. "If I am such a dub
+that I didn't have the ambition to think up some way to beat a Jap
+myself, no matter what happens you shouldn't regret having been the one
+to point out to me my manifest duty. Dad is a Harvard man, you know, and
+that is where he's going to send me, and in talking about it the other
+night I told him about you, and what you had said to me. He's the
+greatest old scout, and was mightily interested. He went at once and
+opened a box of books in the garret and dug out some stuff that will be
+a big help to me. He's going to keep posted and see what he can do; he
+said even worse things to me than you did; so you needn't feel that you
+have any responsibility; besides that, it's not proved yet that I can
+beat Oka Sayye."
+
+"Yes, it is!" said Linda, sending a straight level gaze deep into his
+eyes. "Yes, it is! Whenever a white man makes up his mind what he's
+going to do, and puts his brain to work, he beats any man, of any other
+color. Sure you're going to beat him."
+
+"Fat chance I have not to," said Donald, laughing ruefully. "If I don't
+beat him I am disgraced at home, and with you; before I try very long in
+this highly specialized effort I am making, every professor in the high
+school and every member of my class is bound to become aware of what
+is going on. You're mighty right about it. I have got to beat him or
+disgrace myself right at the beginning of my nice young career."
+
+"Of course you'll beat him," said Linda.
+
+"At what hour did you say I should come, Saturday?"
+
+"Oh, come with the lark for all I care," said Linda. "Early morning in
+the desert is a mystery and a miracle, and the larks have been there
+just long enough to get their voices properly tuned for their purest
+notes."
+
+Then she turned and hurried away. Her first leisure minute after
+reaching home she went to the library wearing one of Katy's big aprons,
+and carrying a brush and duster. Beginning at one end of each shelf, she
+took down the volumes she intended to sell, carefully dusted them, wiped
+their covers, and the place on which they had stood, and then opened and
+leafed through them so that no scrap of paper containing any notes or
+memoranda of possible value should be overlooked. It was while handling
+these volumes that Linda shifted several of the books written by her
+father, to separate them from those with which she meant to part. She
+had grown so accustomed to opening each book she handled and looking
+through it, that she mechanically opened the first one she picked up and
+from among its leaves there fell a scrap of loose paper. She picked it
+up and found it was a letter from the publishers of the book. Linda's
+eyes widened suddenly as she read:
+
+MY DEAR STRONG:
+
+Sending you a line of congratulations. You have gone to the head of the
+list of "best sellers" among medical works, and the cheque I draw you
+for the past six months' royalties will be considerably larger than that
+which goes to your most esteemed contemporary on your chosen subject.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+The signature was that of Frederic Dickman, the editor of one of the
+biggest publishing houses of the country.
+
+"Hm," she said to herself softly. "Now that is a queer thing. That
+letter was written nearly five years ago. I don't know why I never
+thought of royalties since Daddy went. I frequently heard him
+mention them before. I suppose they're being paid to John Gilman as
+administrator, or to the Consolidated Bank, and cared for with Father's
+other business. There's no reason why these books should not keep on
+selling. There are probably the same number of young men, if not a
+greater number, studying medicine every year. I wonder now, about these
+royalties. I must do some thinking."
+
+Then Linda began to examine books more carefully than before. The letter
+she carried with her when she went to her room; but she made a point of
+being on the lawn that evening when John Gilman came, and after talking
+to him a few minutes, she said very casually: "John, as Father's
+administrator, does a royalty from his medical books come to you?"
+
+"No," said Gilman. "It is paid to his bank."
+
+"I don't suppose," said Linda casually, "it would amount to enough to
+keep one in shoes these inflated days."
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that," said John testily. "I have seen a few of
+those cheques in your Father's time. You should be able to keep fairly
+well supplied with shoes."
+
+"So I should," said Linda drily. "So I should."
+
+Then she led him to the back of the house and talked the incident out
+of his mind as cleverly as possible by giving him an intensive botanical
+study of Cotyledon. But she could not interest him quite so deeply
+as she had hoped, for presently he said: "Eileen tells me that you're
+parting with some of the books."
+
+"Only technical ones for which I could have no possible use," said
+Linda. "I need clothes, and have found that had I a proper place to work
+in and proper tools to work with, I could earn quite a bit with my brush
+and pencil, and so I am trying to get enough money together to fit up
+the billiard room for a workroom, since nobody uses it for anything
+else."
+
+"I see," said John Gilman. "I suppose running a house is extremely
+expensive these days, but even so the income from your estate should be
+sufficient to dress a schoolgirl and provide for anything you would want
+in the way of furnishing a workroom."
+
+"That's what I have always thought myself," said Linda; "but Eileen
+doesn't agree with me, and she handles the money. When the first of
+the month comes, we are planning to go over things together, and she is
+going to make me a proper allowance."
+
+"That is exactly as it should be," said Gilman. "I never realized till
+the other night at dinner that you have grown such a great girl, Linda.
+That's fine! Fix your workroom the way you would like to have it, and
+if there's anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to
+command me. I haven't seen you often lately."
+
+"No," said Linda, "but I don't feel that it is exactly my fault. Marian
+and I were always pals. When I saw that you preferred Eileen, I kept
+with Marian to comfort her all I could. I don't suppose she cared,
+particularly. She couldn't have, or she would at least have made some
+effort to prevent Eileen from monopolizing you. She probably was mighty
+glad to be rid of you; but since you had been together so much, I
+thought she might miss you, so I tried to cover your defection."
+
+John Gilman's face flushed. He stood very still, while he seemed deeply
+thoughtful.
+
+"Of course you were free to follow your inclinations, or Eileen's
+machinations, whichever you did follow," Linda said lightly, "but 'them
+as knows' could tell you, John, as Katy so well puts it, that you have
+made the mistake of your young life."
+
+Then she turned and went to the garage, leaving John to his visit with
+Eileen.
+
+The Eileen who took possession of John was an Eileen with whom he was
+not acquainted. He had known, the night of the dinner party, that Eileen
+was pouting, but there had been no chance to learn from her what
+her grievance was, and by the next time they met she was a bundle of
+flashing allurement, so he ignored the occurrence. This evening, for the
+first time, it seemed to him that Eileen was not so beautiful a woman as
+he had thought her. Something had roiled the blood in her delicate veins
+until it had muddied the clear freshness of her smooth satiny skin.
+There was discontent in her eyes, which were her most convincing
+attraction. They were big eyes, wide open and candid. She had so trained
+them through a lifetime of practice that she could meet other eyes
+directly while manipulating her most dextrous evasion. Whenever Eileen
+was most deceptively subtle, she was looking straight at her victim with
+the innocent appeal of a baby in her gaze.
+
+John Gilman had had his struggle. He had succeeded. He had watched, and
+waited, and worked incessantly, and when his opportunity came he was
+ready. Success had come to such a degree that in a short time he had
+assured himself of comfort for any woman he loved. He knew that his
+appearance was quite as pleasing as that of his friend. He knew that
+in manner and education they were equals. He was now handling large
+business affairs. He had made friends in high places. Whenever Eileen
+was ready, he would build and furnish a home he felt sure would be
+equal, if not superior, to what Morrison was planning. Why had Eileen
+felt that she would envy any woman who shared life with Peter Morrison?
+
+All that day she had annoyed him, because there must have been in the
+very deeps of his soul "a still, small voice" whispering to him that
+he had not lived up to the best traditions of a gentleman in his course
+with Marian. While no definite plans had been made, there had been
+endless assumption. Many times they had talked of the home they would
+make together. When he reached the point where he decided that he never
+had loved Marian as a man should love the woman he marries, he felt
+justified in turning to Eileen, but in his heart he knew that if he had
+been the man he was pleased to consider himself, he would have gone to
+Marian Thorne and explained, thereby keeping her friendship, while he
+now knew that he must have earned her contempt.
+
+The day at Riverside had been an enigma he could not solve. Eileen was
+gay to a degree that was almost boisterous. She had attracted attention
+and comment which no well-bred woman would have done.
+
+The growing discontent in John's soul had increased under Linda's direct
+attack. He had known Linda since she was four years old and had been
+responsible for some of her education. He had been a large influence
+in teaching Linda from childhood to be a good sport, to be sure she was
+right and then go ahead, and if she hurt herself in the going, to rub
+the bruise, but to keep her path.
+
+A thing patent to the eye of every man who turned an appraising look
+upon Linda always had been one of steadfast loyalty. You could depend
+upon her. She was the counterpart of her father; and Doctor Strong had
+been loved by other men. Wherever he had gone he had been surrounded.
+His figure had been one that attracted attention. When he had spoken,
+his voice and what he had to say had commanded respect. And then there
+had emanated from him that peculiar physical charm which gives such
+pleasing and distinguished personality to a very few people in this
+world. This gift too had descended to Linda. She could sit and look
+straight at you with her narrow, interested eyes, smile faintly, and
+make you realize what she thought and felt without opening her lips.
+John did not feel very well acquainted with the girl who had dominated
+the recent dinner party, but he did see that she was attractive, that
+both Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson had been greatly amused and very
+much entertained by her. He had found her so interesting himself that he
+had paid slight attention to Eileen's pouting.
+
+Tonight he was forced to study Eileen, for the sake of his own comfort
+to try to conciliate her. He was uncomfortable because he was unable
+to conduct himself as Eileen wished him to, without a small sickening
+disgust creeping into his soul. Before the evening was over he became
+exasperated, and ended by asking flatly: "Eileen, what in the dickens is
+the matter with you?"
+
+It was a new tone and a new question on nerves tensely strung.
+
+"If you weren't blind you'd know without asking," retorted Eileen hotly.
+
+"Then I am 'blind,' for I haven't the slightest notion. What have I
+done?"
+
+"Isn't it just barely possible," asked Eileen, "that there might be
+other people who would annoy and exasperate me? I have not hinted that
+you have done anything, although I don't know that it's customary for a
+man calling on his betrothed to stop first for a visit with her sister."
+
+"For the love of Mike!" said John Gilman. "Am I to be found fault with
+for crossing the lawn a minute to see how Linda's wild garden is coming
+on? I have dug and helped set enough of those plants to justify some
+interest in them as they grow."
+
+"And the garden was your sole subject of conversation?" inquired Eileen,
+implied doubt conveyed nicely.
+
+"No, it was not," answered Gilman, all the bulldog in his nature coming
+to the surface.
+
+"As I knew perfectly," said Eileen. "I admit that I'm not feeling
+myself. Things began going wrong recently, and everything has gone wrong
+since. I think it all began with Marian Thorne's crazy idea of selling
+her home and going to the city to try to ape a man."
+
+"Marian never tried to ape a man in her life," said John, instantly
+yielding to a sense of justice. "She is as strictly feminine as any
+woman I ever knew."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you think studying architecture is a woman's
+work?" sneered Eileen.
+
+"Yes, I do," said Gilman emphatically. "Women live in houses. They're
+in them nine tenths of the time to a man's one tenth. Next to rocking
+a cradle I don't know of any occupation in this world more distinctly
+feminine than the planning of comfortable homes for homekeeping people."
+
+Eileen changed the subject swiftly. "What was Linda saying to you?" she
+asked.
+
+"She was showing me a plant, a rare Echeveria of the Cotyledon family,
+that she tobogganed down one side of Multiflores Canyon and delivered
+safely on the roadway without its losing an appreciable amount of
+'bloom' from its exquisitely painted leaves."
+
+Eileen broke in rudely. "Linda has missed Marian. There's not a possible
+thing to make life uncomfortable for me that she is not doing. You
+needn't tell me you didn't see and understand her rude forwardness the
+other night!"
+
+"No, I didn't see it," said John, "because the fact is I thought the kid
+was positively charming, and so did Peter and Henry because both of them
+said so. There's one thing you must take into consideration, Eileen. The
+time has come when she should have clothes and liberty and opportunity
+to shape her life according to her inclinations. Let me tell you she
+will attract attention in georgette and laces."
+
+"And where are the georgette and laces to come from?" inquired Eileen
+sarcastically. "All outgo and no income for four years is leaving the
+Strong finances in mighty precarious shape, I can tell you."
+
+"All right," said Gilman, "I'm financially comfortable now. I'm ready.
+Say the word. We'll select our location and build our home, and let
+Linda have what there is of the Strong income till she is settled in
+life. You have pretty well had all of it for the past four years."
+
+"Yes," said Eileen furiously, "I have 'pretty well' had it, in a few
+little dresses that I have altered myself and very frequently made
+entirely. I have done the best I could, shifting and skimping, and it's
+not accomplished anything that I have really wanted. According to men,
+the gas and the telephone and the electric light and the taxes and
+food and cook pay for themselves. All a woman ever spends money on is
+clothes!"
+
+"Eileen," chuckled John Gilman, "this sounds exactly as if we were
+married, and we're not, yet."
+
+"No," said Eileen, "thank heaven we're not. If it's come to the place
+where you're siding with everybody else against me, and where you're
+more interested in what my kid sister has to say to you than you are in
+me, I don't think we ever shall be."
+
+Then, from stress of nerve tension and long practice, some big tears
+gushed up and threatened to overflow Eileen's lovely eyes. That never
+should happen, for tears are salt water and they cut little rivers
+through even the most carefully and skillfully constructed complexion,
+while Eileen's was looking its worst that evening. She hastily applied
+her handkerchief, and John Gilman took her into his arms; so the
+remainder of the evening it was as if they were not married. But when
+John returned to the subject of a home and begged Eileen to announce
+their engagement and let him begin work, she evaded him, and put him
+off, and had to have time to think, and she was not ready, and there
+were many excuses, for none of which Gilman could see any sufficient
+reason. When he left Eileen that night, it was with a heavy heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. Saturday's Child
+
+Throughout the week Linda had worked as never during her life
+previously, in order to save Saturday for Donald Whiting. She ran the
+Bear Cat down to the garage and had it looked over once more to be sure
+that everything was all right. Friday evening, on her way from school,
+she stopped at a grocery where she knew Eileen kept an account, and for
+the first time ordered a few groceries. These she carried home with her,
+and explained to Katy what she wanted.
+
+Katy fully realized that Linda was still her child, with no thought in
+her mind save standing at the head of her classes, carrying on the work
+she had begun with her father, keeping up her nature study, and getting
+the best time she could out of life in the open as she had been taught
+to do from her cradle.
+
+Katy had not the slightest intention of opening her lips to say one word
+that might put any idea into the head of her beloved child, but she saw
+no reason why she herself should not harbor all the ideas she pleased.
+
+Whereupon, actuated by a combination of family pride, love, ambition in
+her chosen profession, Katy made ready to see that on the morrow the
+son of Frederick Whiting should be properly nourished on his outing with
+Linda.
+
+At six o'clock Saturday morning Linda ran the Bear Cat to the back door,
+where she and Katy packed it. Before they had finished, Donald Whiting
+came down the sidewalk, his cheeks flushed with the exercise of walking,
+his eyes bright with anticipation, his cause forever won--in case he had
+a cause--with Katy, because she liked the wholesome, hearty manner in
+which he greeted Linda, and she was dumbfounded when he held out his
+hand to her and said laughingly: "Blessed among women, did you put in a
+fine large consignment of orange punch?"
+
+"No," said Katy, "I'll just tell ye flat-footed there ain't going to be
+any punch, but, young sir, you're eshcortin' a very capable young lady,
+and don't ye bewail the punch, because ye might be complimenting your
+face with something ye would like a hape better."
+
+"Can't be done, Katy," cried Donald.
+
+"Ye must have a poor opinion of us," laughed Katy, "if ye are thinking
+ye can get to the end of our limitations in one lunch. Fourteen years me
+and Miss Linda's been on this lunch-box stunt. Don't ye be thinkin' ye
+can exhaust us in any wan trip, or in any wan dozen."
+
+So they said good-bye to Katy and rolled past Eileen's room on the way
+to the desert. Eileen stood at the window watching them, and never had
+her heart been so full of discontent and her soul the abiding place of
+such envy or her mind so busy. Just when she had thought life was going
+to yield her what she craved, she could not understand how or why things
+should begin to go wrong.
+
+As the Bear Cat traversed Lilac Valley, Linda was pointing out Peter
+Morrison's location. She was telling Donald Whiting where to find
+Peter's articles, and what a fine man he was, and that he had promised
+to think how he could help with their plan to make of Donald a better
+scholar than was Oka Sayye.
+
+"Well, I call that mighty decent of a stranger," said Donald.
+
+"But he is scarcely more of a stranger than I am," answered Linda. "He
+is a writer. He is interested in humanity. It's the business of every
+man in this world to reach out and help every boy with whom he comes in
+contact into the biggest, finest manhood possible. He only knows that
+you're a boy tackling a big job that means much to every white boy to
+have you succeed with, and for that reason he's just as interested as I
+am. Maybe, when we come in this evening, I'll run up to his place, and
+you can talk it over with him. If your father helped you at one angle,
+it's altogether probable that Peter Morrison could help you at another."
+
+Donald Whiting rubbed his knee reflectively. He was sitting half turned
+in the wide seat so that he might watch Linda's hands and her face while
+she drove.
+
+"Well, that's all right," he said heartily. "You can write me down as
+willing and anxious to take all the help I can get, for it's going to be
+no microscopic job, that I can tell you. One week has waked up the Jap
+to the fact that there's something doing, and he's digging in and has
+begun, the last day or two, to speak up in class and suggest things
+himself. Since I've been studying him and watching him, I have come to
+the conclusion that he is much older than I am. Something he said in
+class yesterday made me think he had probably had the best schooling
+Japan could give him before he came here. The next time you meet him
+look for a suspicion of gray hairs around his ears. He's too blamed
+comprehensive for the average boy of my age. You said the Japs were the
+best imitators in the world and I have an idea in the back of my head
+that before I get through with him, Oka Sayye is going to prove your
+proposition."
+
+Linda nodded as she shot the Bear Cat across the streetcar tracks and
+headed toward the desert. The engine was purring softly as it warmed up.
+The car was running smoothly. The sun of early morning was shining on
+them through bracing, salt, cool air, and even in the valley the larks
+were busy, and the mockingbirds, and from every wayside bush the rosy
+finches were singing. All the world was coming to the exquisite bloom of
+a half-tropical country. Up from earth swept the heavy odors of blooming
+citrus orchards, millions of roses, and the overpowering sweetness of
+gardens and cultivated flowers; while down from the mountains rolled the
+delicate breath of the misty blue lilac, the pungent odor of California
+sage, and the spicy sweet of the lemonade bush. They were two young
+things, free for the day, flying down a perfect road, adventuring with
+Providence. They had only gone a few miles when Donald Whiting took off
+his hat, stuffed it down beside him, and threw back his head, shaking
+his hair to the wind in a gesture so soon to become familiar to Linda.
+She glanced across at him and found him looking at her. A smile broke
+over her lips. One of her most spontaneous laughs bubbled up in her
+throat.
+
+"Topping, isn't it!" she cried gaily.
+
+"It's the best thing that ever happened to me," answered Donald Whiting
+instantly. "Our car is a mighty good one and Dad isn't mean about
+letting me drive it. I can take it frequently and can have plenty of
+gas and take my crowd; but lordy, I don't believe there's a boy or girl
+living that doesn't just positively groan when they see one of these
+little gray Bear Cats go loping past. And I never even had a ride in one
+before. I can't get over the fact that it's yours. It wouldn't seem so
+funny if it belonged to one of the fellows."
+
+With steady hand and gradually increasing speed, Linda put the Bear Cat
+over the roads of early morning. Sometimes she stopped in the shade of
+pepper, eucalyptus, or palm, where the larks were specializing in their
+age-old offertory. And then again they went racing until they reached
+the real desert. Linda ran the car under the shade of a tall clump of
+bloom-whitened alders. She took off her hat, loosened the hair at her
+temples, and looked out across the long morning stretch of desert.
+
+"It's just beginning to be good," she said. She began pointing with
+her slender hand. "That gleam you see over there is the gold of a
+small clump of early poppies. The purple beyond it is lupin. All these
+exquisite colors on the floor are birds'-eyes and baby blue eyes, and
+the misty white here and there is forget-me-not. It won't be long til
+thousands and thousands of yucca plants will light their torches all
+over the desert and all the alders show their lacy mist. Of course you
+know how exquisitely the Spaniards named the yucca 'Our Lord's Candles.'
+Isn't that the prettiest name for a flower, and isn't it the prettiest
+thought?"
+
+"It certainly is," answered Donald.
+
+"Had any experience with the desert?" Linda asked lightly.
+
+"Hunted sage hens some," answered Donald.
+
+"Oh, well, that'll be all right," said Linda. "I wondered if you'd go
+murdering yourself like a tenderfoot."
+
+"What's the use of all this artillery?" inquired Donald as he stepped
+from the car.
+
+"Better put on your hat. You're taller than most of the bushes; you'll
+find slight shade," cautioned Linda. "The use is purely a matter
+of self-protection. The desert has got such a devil of a fight for
+existence, without shade and practically without water, that it can't
+afford to take any other chance of extermination, and so it protects
+itself with needles here and spears there and sabers at other places and
+roots that strike down to China everywhere. First thing we are going to
+get is some soap."
+
+"Great hat!" exclaimed Donald. "If you wanted soap why didn't you bring
+some?"
+
+"For all you know," laughed Linda, "I may be going to education you up a
+little. Dare you to tell me how many kinds of soap I can find today that
+the Indians used, and where I can find it."
+
+"Couldn't tell you one to save my life," said Donald.
+
+"And born and reared within a few miles of the desert!" scoffed Linda.
+"Nice Indian you'd make. We take our choice today between finding
+deer-brush and digging for amole, because the mock oranges aren't ripe
+enough to be nice and soapy yet. I've got the deer-brush spotted, and
+we'll pass an amole before we go very far. Look for a wavy blue-green
+leaf like a wide blade of grass and coming up like a lily."
+
+So together they went to the deer-brush and gathered a bunch of flowers
+that Linda bound together with some wiry desert grass and fastened to
+her belt. It was not long before Donald spied an amole, and having found
+one, discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way past
+thorns and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they reached
+a huge barrel cactus that she had located with the glasses. Beside this
+bristling monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which
+Donald handed to her. She drew it lightly across the armor protecting
+the plant.
+
+"Short of Victrola needles?" she inquired. "Because if you are, these
+make excellent ones. A lot more singing quality to them than the steel
+needles, not nearly so metallic."
+
+"Well, I am surely going to try that," said Donald. "Never heard of such
+a thing."
+
+Linda chopped off a section of plant. Then she picked one of the knives
+from the bucket and handed it to him.
+
+"All right, you get what you want," she said, "while I operate on the
+barrel."
+
+She set her feet firmly in the sand, swung the axe, and with a couple of
+deft strokes sliced off the top of the huge plant, and from the heart of
+it lifted up half a bucketful of the juicy interior, with her dipper.
+
+"If we didn't have drink, here is where we would get it, and mighty good
+it is," she said, pushing down with the dipper until she formed a small
+pool in the heart of the plant which rapidly filled. "Have a taste."
+
+"Jove, that is good!" said Donald. "What are you going to do with it?"
+
+"Show you later," laughed Linda. "Think I'll take a sip myself."
+
+Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the car. Once
+Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an extremely curious little
+plant spreading over the ground, a tiny reddish vine with quaint round
+leaves that looked as if a drop of white paint rimmed with maroon had
+fallen on each of them.
+
+"I never saw that before," said Donald. "What are you going to do with
+it?"
+
+"Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite," said Linda. "That
+is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites you, score each side
+of the wound with the cleanest, sharpest knife you have and then bruise
+the plant and bind it on with your handkerchief, and forget it."
+
+"Is that what you do?" inquired Donald.
+
+"Why sure," said Linda, "that is what I would do if a snake were so
+ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn't seem to be much of the
+antagonistic element in my nature. I don't go through the desert
+exhaling the odor of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent or slip away so
+silently that I never see them."
+
+"Now what on earth do you mean by that?" inquired Donald.
+
+"Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he took me
+to the mountains and the desert. If you are afraid, your system throws
+off formic acid, and the animals need only the suspicion of a scent of
+it to make them ready to fight. Any animal you encounter or even a bee,
+recognizes it. One of the first things that I remember about Daddy was
+seeing him sit on the running board of the runabout buckling up his
+desert boots while he sang to me,
+
+  'Let not your heart be troubled
+  Neither let it be afraid,'
+
+as he got ready to take me on his back and go into the desert for our
+first lesson; he told me that a man was perfectly safe in going to the
+forest or the desert or anywhere he chose among any kind of animals if
+he had sufficient self-control that no odor of fear emanated from him.
+He said that a man was safe to make his way anywhere he wanted to go, if
+he started his journey by recognizing a blood brotherhood with anything
+living he would meet on the way; and I have heard Enos Mills say that
+when he was snow inspector of Colorado he traveled the crest of the
+Rockies from one end of the state to the other without a gun or any
+means of self-defense."
+
+"Now, that is something new to think about," said Donald.
+
+"And it's something that is very true," said Linda. "I have seen it
+work times without number. Father and I went quietly up the mountains,
+through the canyons, across the desert, and we would never see a snake
+of any kind, but repeatedly we would see men with guns and dogs out to
+kill, to trespass on the rights of the wild, and they would be hunting
+for sticks and clubs and firing their guns where we had passed never
+thinking of lurking danger. If you start out in accord, at one with
+Nature, you're quite as safe as you are at home, sometimes more so. But
+if you start out to stir up a fight, the occasion is very rare on which
+you can't succeed."
+
+"And that reminds me," said Donald, with a laugh, "that a week ago I
+came to start a fight with you. What has become of that fight we were
+going to have, anyway?"
+
+"You can search me," laughed Linda, throwing out her hands in a graceful
+gesture. "There's not a scrap of fight in my system concerning you, but
+if Oka Sayye were having a fight with you and I were anywhere around,
+you'd have one friend who would help you to handle the Jap."
+
+Donald looked at Linda thoughtfully.
+
+"By the great hocus-pocus," he said, "you know, I believe you. If two
+fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I know would
+quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would stand by and help
+a fellow if he needed it."
+
+"That I surely would," said Linda; "but don't you say 'most of the girls
+I know' and then make a statement like that concerning girls, because
+you prove that you don't know them at all. A few years ago, I very
+distinctly recall how angry many women were at this line in one of
+Kipling's poems:
+
+    The female of the species is more deadly than the male,
+
+and there was nothing to it save that a great poet was trying to pay
+womanhood everywhere the finest compliment he knew how. He always has
+been fundamental in his process of thought. He gets right back to the
+heart of primal things. When he wrote that line he was not really
+thinking that there was a nasty poison in the heart of a woman or death
+in her hands. What he was thinking was that in the jungle the female
+lion or tiger or jaguar must go and find a particularly secluded cave
+and bear her young and raise them to be quite active kittens before she
+leads them out, because there is danger of the bloodthirsty father
+eating them when they are tiny and helpless. And if perchance a male
+finds the cave of his mate and her tiny young and enters it to do
+mischief, then there is no recorded instance I know of in which the
+female, fighting in defense of her young, has not been 'more deadly than
+the male.' And that is the origin of the much-discussed line concerning
+the female of the species, and it holds good fairly well down the line
+of the wild. It's even true among such tiny things as guinea pigs and
+canary birds. There is a mother element in the heart of every girl.
+Daddy used to say that half the women in the world married the men they
+did because they wanted to mother them. You can't tell what is in a
+woman's heart by looking at her. You must bring her face to face with an
+emergency before you can say what she'll do, but I would be perfectly
+willing to stake my life on this: There is scarcely a girl you know who
+would see you getting the worst of a fight, say with Oka Sayye, or
+someone who meant to kill you or injure you, who would not pick up the
+first weapon she could lay her hands on, whether it was an axe or a
+stick or a stone, and go to your defense, and if she had nothing else to
+fight with, I have heard of women who put up rather a tidy battle with
+their claws. Sounds primitive, doesn't it?"
+
+"It sounds true," said Donald reflectively. "I see, young lady, where
+one is going to have to measure his words and think before he talks to
+you."
+
+"Pretty thought!" said Linda lightly. "We'll have a great time if you
+must stop to consider every word before you say it."
+
+"Well, anyway," said Donald, "when are we going to have that fight which
+was the purpose of our coming together?"
+
+"Why, we're not ever going to have it," answered Linda. "I have got
+nothing in this world to fight with you about since you're doing
+your level best to beat Oka Sayye. I have watched your head above the
+remainder of your class for three years and wanted to fight with you on
+that point."
+
+"Now that's a queer thing," said Donald, "because I have watched you for
+three years and wanted to fight with you about your drygoods, and now
+since I've known you only such a short while, I don't care two whoops
+what you wear. It's a matter of perfect indifference to me. You can wear
+French heels or baby pumps, or go barefoot. You would still be you."
+
+ "Is it a truce?" asked Linda.  I
+
+"No, ma'am," said Donald, "it's not a truce. That implies war and
+we haven't fought. It's not armed neutrality; it's not even watchful
+waiting. It's my friend, Linda Strong. Me for her and her for me, if you
+say so."
+
+He reached out his hand. Linda laid hers in it, and looking into his
+eyes, she said: "That is a compact. We'll test this friendship business
+and see what there is to it. Now come on; let's run for the canyon."
+
+It was only a short time until the Bear Cat followed its trail of the
+previous Saturday, and, rushing across the stream, stopped at its former
+resting place, while Linda and Donald sat looking at the sheer-walled
+little room before them.
+
+"I can see," said Linda, "a stronger tinge in the green. There are more
+flowers in the carpet. There is more melody in the birds' song. We are
+going to have a better time than we had last Saturday. First let's fix
+up our old furnace, because we must have a fire today."
+
+So they left the car, and under Linda's direction they reconstructed
+the old fireplace at which the girl and her father had cooked when
+botanizing in Multiflores. In a corner secluded from wind, using the
+wall of the canyon for a back wall, big boulders the right distance
+apart on each side, and small stones for chinking, Linda superintended
+the rebuilding of the fireplace.
+
+She unpacked the lunch box, set the table, and when she had everything
+in readiness she covered the table, and taking a package, she carried it
+on a couple of aluminium pie pans to where her fire was burning crisply.
+With a small field axe she chopped a couple of small green branches,
+pointed them to her liking, and peeled them. Then she made a poker from
+one of the saplings they had used to move the rocks, and beat down her
+fire until she had a bright bed of deep coals. When these were arranged
+exactly to her satisfaction, she pulled some sprays of deer weed
+bloom from her bundle and, going down to the creek, made a lather and
+carefully washed her hands, tucking the towel she used in drying them
+through her belt. Then she came back to the fire and, sitting down
+beside it, opened the package and began her operations. On the long,
+slender sticks she strung a piece of tenderloin beef, about three inches
+in circumference and one fourth of an inch in thickness, then half a
+slice of bacon, and then a slice of onion. This she repeated until her
+skewer would bear no more weight. Then she laid it across the rocks
+walling her fire, occasionally turning it while she filled the second
+skewer. Then she brought from the car the bucket of pulp she had taken
+from the barrel cactus, transferred it to a piece of cheesecloth and
+deftly extracted the juice. To this she added the contents of a thermos
+bottle containing a pint of sugar that had been brought to the boiling
+point with a pint of water and poured over some chopped spearmint to
+which had been added the juice of half a dozen lemons and three or four
+oranges. From a small, metal-lined compartment, Linda took a chunk of
+ice and dropped it into this mixture.
+
+She was sitting on the ground, one foot doubled under her, the other
+extended. She had taken off her hat; the wind and the bushes had
+roughened her hair. Exercise had brought deep red to her cheeks and
+her lips. Happiness had brought a mellow glow to her dark eyes. She
+had turned back her sleeves, and her slender hands were fascinatingly
+graceful in their deft handling of everything she touched. They were
+a second edition of the hands with which Alexander Strong had felt out
+defective nerve systems and made delicate muscular adjustments. She was
+wholly absorbed in what she was doing. Sitting on the blanket across
+from her Donald Whiting was wholly absorbed in her and he was thinking.
+He was planning how he could please her, how he could earn her
+friendship. He was admitting to himself that he had very little, if
+anything, to show for hours of time that he had spent in dancing, at
+card games, beach picnics, and races. All these things had been amusing.
+But he had nothing to show for the time he had spent or the money he had
+wasted. Nothing had happened that in any way equipped him for his battle
+with Oka Sayye. Conversely, this girl, whom he had resented, whom he had
+criticized, who had claimed his notice only by her radical difference
+from the other girls, had managed, during the few minutes he had first
+talked with her in the hall, to wound his pride, to spur his ambition,
+to start him on a course that must end in lasting and material benefit
+to him even if he failed in making a higher record of scholarship than
+Oka Sayye. It was very certain that the exercise he was giving his
+brain must be beneficial. He had learned many things that were intensely
+interesting to him and he had not even touched the surface of what he
+could see that she had been taught by her father or had learned through
+experience and personal investigation. She had been coming to the
+mountains and the canyons alone, for four years doing by herself what
+she would have done under her father's supervision had he lived. That
+argued for steadfastness and strength of character. She would not utter
+one word of flattery. She would say nothing she did not mean. Watching
+her intently, Donald Whiting thought of all these things. He thought of
+what she had said about fighting for him, and he wondered if it really
+was true that any girl he knew would fight for him. He hardly believed
+it when he remembered some of his friends, so entirely devoted to
+personal adornment and personal gratification. But Linda had said that
+all women were alike in their hearts. She knew about other things. She
+must know about this. Maybe all women would fight for their young or for
+their men, but he knew of no other girl who could drive a Bear Cat with
+the precision and skill with which Linda drove. He knew no other girl
+who was master of the secrets of the desert and the canyons and the
+mountains. Certainly he knew no other girl who would tug at great
+boulders and build a fireplace and risk burning her fingers and
+scorching her face to prepare a meal for him. So he watched Linda and so
+he thought.
+
+At first he thought she was the finest pal a boy ever had, and then he
+thought how he meant to work to earn and keep her friendship; and then,
+as the fire reddened Linda's cheeks and she made running comments while
+she deftly turned her skewers of brigand beefsteak, food that half the
+Boy Scouts in the country had been eating for four years, there came an
+idea with which he dallied until it grew into a luring vision.
+
+"Linda," he asked suddenly, "do you know that one of these days you're
+going to be a beautiful woman?"
+
+Linda turned her skewers with intense absorption. At first he almost
+thought she had not heard him, but at last she said quietly: "Do you
+really think that is possible, Donald?"
+
+"You're lovely right now!" answered the boy promptly.
+
+"For goodness' sake, have an eye single to your record for truth and
+veracity," said Linda. "Doesn't this begin to smell zippy?"
+
+"It certainly does," said Donald. "It's making me ravenous. But honest,
+Linda, you are a pretty girl."
+
+"Honest, your foot!" said Linda scornfully. "I am not a pretty girl.
+I am lean and bony and I've got a beak where I should have a nose.
+Speaking of pretty girls, my sister, Eileen, is a pretty girl. She is a
+downright beautiful girl."
+
+"Yes," said Donald, "she is, but she can't hold a candle to you. How did
+she look when she was your age?"
+
+"I can't remember Eileen," said Linda, "when she was not exquisitely
+dressed and thinking more about taking care of her shoes than anything
+else in the world. I can't remember her when she was not curled, and
+even when she was a tiny thing Mother put a dust of powder on her nose.
+She said her skin was so delicate that it could not bear the sun. She
+never could run or play or motor much or do anything, because she
+has always had to be saved for the sole purpose of being exquisitely
+beautiful. Talk about lilies of the field, that's what Eileen is! She
+is an improvement on the original lily of the field--she's a lily of the
+drawing room. Me, now, I'm more of a Joshua tree."
+
+Donald Whiting laughed, as Linda intended that he should.
+
+A minute afterward she slid the savory food from a skewer upon one of
+the pie pans, tossed back the cover from the little table, stacked
+some bread-and-butter sandwiches beside the meat and handed the pan to
+Donald.
+
+"Fall to," she said, "and prove that you're a man with an appreciative
+tummy. Father used to be positively ravenous for this stuff. I like it
+myself."
+
+She slid the food from the second skewer to a pan for herself, settled
+the fire to her satisfaction and they began their meal. Presently she
+filled a cup from the bucket beside her and handed it to Donald. At the
+same time she lifted another for herself.
+
+"Here's to the barrel cactus," she said. "May the desert grow enough
+of them so that we'll never lack one when we want to have a Saturday
+picnic."
+
+Laughingly they drank this toast; and the skewers were filled a second
+time. When they could eat no more they packed away the lunch things,
+buried the fire, took the axe and the field glasses, and started on a
+trip of exploration down the canyon. Together they admired delicate
+and exquisite ferns growing around great gray boulders. Donald tasted
+hunters' rock leek, and learned that any he found while on a hunting
+expedition would furnish a splendid substitute for water. Linda told him
+of rare flowers she lacked and what they were like and how he would be
+able to identify what she wanted in case he should ever find any when he
+was out hunting or with his other friends. They peeped into the nesting
+places of canyon wrens and doves and finches, and listened to the
+exquisite courting songs of the birds whose hearts were almost bursting
+with the exuberance of spring and the joy of home making. When they were
+tired out they went back to the dining room and after resting a time,
+they made a supper from the remnants of their dinner. When they were
+seated in the car and Linda's hand was on the steering wheel, Donald
+reached across and covered it with his own.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said. "Before we leave here I want to ask you a
+question and I want you to make me a promise."
+
+"All right," said Linda. "What's your question?"
+
+"What is there," said Donald, "that I can do that would give you such
+pleasure as you have given me?"
+
+Linda could jest on occasions, but by nature she was a serious person.
+She looked at Donald reflectively.
+
+"Why, I think," she said at last, "that having a friend, having someone
+who understands and who cares for the things I do, and who likes to go
+to the same places and to do the same things, is the biggest thing that
+has happened to me since I lost my father. I don't see that you are in
+any way in my debt, Donald."
+
+"All right then," said the boy, "that brings me to the promise I want
+you to make me. May we always have our Saturdays together like this?"
+
+"Sure!" said Linda, "I would be mightily pleased. I'll have to work
+later at night and scheme, maybe. By good rights Saturday belongs to me
+anyway because I am born Saturday's child."
+
+"Well, hurrah for Saturday! It always was a grand old day," said Donald,
+"and since I see what it can do in turning out a girl like you, I've got
+a better opinion of it than ever. We'll call that settled. I'll always
+ask you on Friday at what hour to come, and hereafter Saturday is ours."
+
+"Ours it is," said Linda.
+
+Then she put the Bear Cat through the creek and on the road and, driving
+swiftly as she dared, ran to Lilac Valley and up to Peter Morrison's
+location.
+
+She was amazed at the amount of work that had been accomplished. The
+garage was finished. Peter's temporary work desk and his cot were in it.
+A number of his personal belongings were there. The site for his house
+had been selected and the cellar was being excavated.
+
+Linda descended from the Bear Cat and led Donald before Peter.
+
+"Since you're both my friends," she said, "I want you to know each
+other. This is Donald Whiting, the Senior I told you about, Mr.
+Morrison. You know you said you would help him if you could."
+
+"Certainly," said Peter. "I am very glad to know any friend of yours,
+Miss Linda. Come over to my workroom and let's hear about this."
+
+"Oh, go and talk it over between yourselves," said Linda. "I am going up
+here to have a private conversation with the spring. I want it to tell
+me confidentially exactly the course it would enjoy running so that when
+your house is finished and I come to lay out your grounds I will know
+exactly how it feels about making a change."
+
+"Fine!" said Peter. "Take your time and become extremely confidential,
+because the more I look at the location and the more I hear the gay
+chuckling song that that water sings, the more I am in love with your
+plan to run it across the lawn and bring it around the boulder."
+
+"It would be a downright sin not to have that water in a convenient
+place for your children to play in, Peter," said Linda.
+
+"Then that's all settled," said Peter. "Now, Whiting, come this way and
+we'll see whether I can suggest anything that will help you with your
+problem."
+
+"Whistle when you are ready, Donald," called Linda as she turned away.
+
+Peter Morrison glanced after her a second, and then he led Donald
+Whiting to a nail keg in the garage and impaled that youngster on
+the mental point of a mental pin and studied him as carefully as any
+scientist ever studied a rare specimen. When finally he let him go, his
+mental comment was: "He's a mighty fine kid. Linda is perfectly safe
+with him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. Linda's Hearthstone
+
+Early the following week Linda came from school one evening to find a
+load of sand and a heap of curiously marked stones beside the back door.
+
+"Can it possibly be, Katy," she asked, "that those men are planning to
+begin work on my room so soon? I am scared out of almost seven of my
+five senses. I had no idea they would be ready to begin work until after
+I had my settlement with Eileen or was paid for the books."
+
+"Don't ye be worried," said Katy. "There's more in me stocking than me
+leg, and you're as welcome to it as the desert is welcome to rain, an'
+nadin' it 'most as bad."
+
+"Anyway," said Linda, "it will surely take them long enough so that I
+can pay by the time they finish."
+
+But Linda was not figuring that back of the projected improvements
+stood two men, each of whom had an extremely personal reason for greatly
+desiring to please her. Peter Morrison had secured a slab of sandstone.
+He had located a marble cutter to whom he meant to carry it, and was
+spending much thought that he might have been using on an article in
+trying to hit upon exactly the right line or phrase to build in above
+Linda's fire--something that would convey to her in a few words a sense
+of friendship and beauty.
+
+While Peter gazed at the unresponsive gray sandstone and wrote line
+after line which he immediately destroyed, Henry Anderson explored the
+mountain and came in, red faced and perspiring, from miles of climbing
+with a bright stone in each hand, or took the car to bring in small
+heaps too heavy to carry that he had collected near the roads. They were
+two men striving for the favor of the same girl. How Linda would have
+been amused had she understood the situation, or how Eileen would have
+been provoked, neither of the men knew nor did they care.
+
+The workmen came after Linda left and went before her return. Having
+been cautioned to silence, Katy had not told her when work actually
+began; and so it happened that, going to her room one evening, she
+unlocked the door and stepped inside to face the completed fireplace.
+The firebox was not very large but ample. The hearthstone was a
+big sheet of smooth gray sandstone. The sides and top were Henry's
+collection of brilliant boulders, carefully and artistically laid
+in blue mortar, and over the firebox was set Peter's slab of gray
+sandstone. On it were four deeply carved lines. The quaint Old English
+lettering was filled even to the surface with a red mortar, while the
+capitals were done in dull blue. The girl slowly read:
+
+  Voiceless stones, with Flame-tongues Preach     Sermons struck
+from Nature's Lyre; Notes of Love and Trust and Hope Hourly sing in
+Linda's Fire.
+
+In the firebox stood a squat pair of black andirons, showing age and
+usage. A rough eucalyptus log waited across them while the shavings from
+the placing of the mantel and the cutting of the windows were tucked
+beneath it. Linda stood absorbed a minute. She looked at the skylight,
+flooding the room with the light she so needed coming from the right
+angle. She went over to the new window that gave her a view of the
+length of the valley she loved and a most essential draft. When she
+turned back to the fireplace her hands were trembling.
+
+"Now isn't that too lovely of them?" she said softly. "Isn't that
+altogether wonderful? How I wish Daddy were here to sit beside my fire
+and share with me the work I hope to do here."
+
+In order to come as close to him as possible she did the next best
+thing. She sat down at her table and wrote a long letter to Marian,
+telling her everything she could think of that would interest her.
+Then she re-read with extreme care the letter she had found at the Post
+Office that day in reply to the one she had written Marian purporting to
+come from an admirer. Writing slowly and thinking deeply, she answered
+it. She tried to imagine that she was Peter Morrison and she tried to
+say the things in that letter that she thought Peter would say in the
+circumstances, because she felt sure that Marian would be entertained
+by such things as Peter would say. When she finished, she read it over
+carefully, and then copied it with equal care on the typewriter, which
+she had removed to her workroom.
+
+When she heard Katy's footstep outside her door, she opened it and drew
+her in, slipping the bolt behind her. She led her to the fireplace and
+recited the lines.
+
+"Now ain't they jist the finest gentlemen?" said Katy. "Cut right off
+of a piece of the same cloth as your father. Now some way we must
+get together enough money to get ye a good-sized rug for under your
+worktable, and then ye've got to have two bits of small ones, one for
+your hearthstone and one for your aisel; and then ye're ready, colleen,
+to show what ye can do. I'm so proud of ye when I think of the grand
+secret it's keepin' for ye I am; and less and less are gettin' me
+chances for the salvation of me soul, for every night I'm a-sittin'
+starin' at the magazines ye gave me when I ought to be tellin' me beads
+and makin' me devotions. Ain't it about time the third was comin' in?"
+
+"Any day now," said Linda in a whisper. "And, Katy, you'll be careful?
+That editor must think that 'Jane Meredith' is full of years and ripe
+experience. I probably wouldn't get ten cents, no not even a for-nothing
+chance, if he knew those articles were written by a Junior."
+
+"Junior nothing!" scoffed Katy. "There was not a day of his life that
+your pa did not spend hours drillin' ye in things the rest of the
+girls in your school never heard of. 'Tain't no high-school girl that's
+written them articles. It's Alexander Strong speakin' through the medium
+of his own flesh and blood."
+
+"Why, so it is, Katy!" cried Linda delightedly. "You know, I never
+thought of that. I have been so egoistical I thought I was doing them
+myself."
+
+"Paid ye anything yet?" queried Katy.
+
+"No," said Linda, "they haven't. It seems that the amount of interest
+the articles evoke is going to decide what I am to be paid for them, but
+they certainly couldn't take the recipe and the comments and the sketch
+for less than twenty-five or thirty dollars, unless recipes are like
+poetry. Peter said the other day that if a poet did not have some other
+profession to support him, he would starve to death on all he was paid
+for writing the most beautiful things that ever are written in all this
+world. Peter says even an effort to write a poem is a beautiful thing."
+
+"Well, maybe that used to be the truth," said Katy as she started toward
+the door, "but I have been reading some things labeled 'poetry' in the
+magazines of late, and if the holy father knows what they mean, he's
+even bigger than ever I took him to be."
+
+"Katy," said Linda, "we are dreadful back numbers. We are letting this
+world progress and roll right on past us without a struggle. We haven't
+either one been to a psychoanalyst to find out the color of our auras."
+
+"Now God forbid," said Katy. "I ain't going to have one of them things
+around me. The colors I'm wearin' satisfy me entoirely."
+
+"And mine are going to satisfy me very shortly, now," laughed Linda,
+"because tomorrow is my big day with Eileen. Next time we have a minute
+together, old dear, I'll have started my bank account."
+
+"Right ye are," said Katy, "jist exactly right. You're getting such
+a great girl it's the proper thing ye should be suitably dressed, and
+don't ye be too modest."
+
+"The unfortunate thing about that, Katy, is that l intimated the other
+day that I would be content with less than half, since she is older and
+she should have her chance first."
+
+"Now ain't that jist like ye?" said Katy. "I might have known ye would
+be doing that very thing."
+
+"After I have gone over the accounts," said Linda, "I'll know better
+what to demand. Now fly to your cooking, Katy, and let me sit down at
+this table and see if I can dig out a few dollars of honest coin; but
+I'm going to have hard work to keep my eyes on the paper with that
+fireplace before me. Isn't that red and blue lettering the prettiest
+thing, Katy, and do you notice that tiny 'P. M.' cut down in the lower
+left-hand corner nearly out of sight? That, Katy, stands for 'Peter
+Morrison,' and one of these days Peter is going to be a large figure on
+the landscape. The next Post he has an article in I'll buy for you."
+
+"It never does," said Katy, "to be makin' up your mind in this world so
+hard and fast that ye can't change it. In the days before John Gilman
+got bewitched out of his senses I did think, barrin' your father, that
+he was the finest man the Lord ever made; but I ain't thought so much of
+him of late as I did before."
+
+"Same holds good for me," said Linda.
+
+"I've studied this Peter," continued Katy, "like your pa used to study
+things under his microscope. He's the most come-at-able man. He's got
+such a kind of a questionin' look on his face, and there's a bit of a
+stoop to his shoulders like they had been whittled out for carryin'
+a load, and there's a kind of a whimsy quiverin' around his lips that
+makes me heart stand still every time he speaks to me, because I can't
+be certain whether he is going to make me laugh or going to make me cry,
+and when what he's sayin' does come with that little slow drawl, I can't
+be just sure whether he's meanin' it or whether he's jist pokin' fun
+at me. He said the quarest thing to me the other day when he was here
+fiddlin' over the makin' of this fireplace. He was standin' out beside
+your desert garden and I come aven with him and I says to him: 'Them's
+the rare plants Miss Linda and her pa have been goin' to the deserts and
+the canyons, as long as he lived, to fetch in; and then Miss Linda
+went alone, and now the son of Judge Whiting, the biggest lawyer in Los
+Angeles, has begun goin' with her. Ain't it the brightest, prettiest
+place?' I says to him. And he stood there lookin', and he says to me:
+'No, Katy, that is a graveyard.' Now what in the name of raison was the
+man meanin' by that?"
+
+Linda stared at the hearth motto reflectively.
+
+"A graveyard!" she repeated. "Well, if anything could come farther from
+a graveyard than that spot, I don't know how it would do it. I haven't
+the remotest notion what he meant. Why didn't you ask him?"
+
+"Well, the truth is," said Katy, "that I proide myself on being able to
+kape me mouth shut when I should."
+
+"I'll leave to think over it," said Linda. "At present I have no
+more idea than you in what respect my desert garden could resemble a
+graveyard. Oh! yes, there's one thing I wanted to ask you, Katy. Has
+Eileen been around while this room was being altered?"
+
+"She came in yesterday," answered Katy, "when the hammerin' and sawin'
+was goin' full blast."
+
+"What I wanted to find out'" said Linda, "was whether she had been here
+and seen this room or not, because if she hasn't and she wants to see
+it, now is her time. After I get things going here and these walls are
+covered with drying sketches this room is going to be strictly private.
+You see that you keep your key where nobody gets hold of it."
+
+"It's on a string round me neck this blessed minute," said Katy. "I
+didn't see her come up here, but ye could be safe in bettin' anything
+ye've got that she came."
+
+"Yes, I imagine she did," said Linda. "She would be sufficiently curious
+that she would come to learn how much I have spent if she had no other
+interest in me."
+
+She looked at the fireplace reflectively.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "what Eileen thought of that and I wonder if she
+noticed that little 'P. M.' tucked away down there in the corner."
+
+"Sure she did," said Katy. "She has got eyes like a cat. She can see
+more things in a shorter time than anybody I ever knew." So that evening
+at dinner Linda told Eileen that the improvements she had made for her
+convenience in the billiard room were finished, and asked her if she
+would like to see them.
+
+"I can't imagine what you want to stick yourself off up there alone
+for," said Eileen. "I don't believe I am sufficiently interested in
+garret skylights and windows to climb up to look at them. What everybody
+in the neighborhood can see is that you have absolutely ruined the looks
+of the back part of the house."
+
+"Good gracious!" said Linda. "Have I? You know I never thought of that."
+
+"Of course! But all you've got to do is go on the cast lawn and take
+a look at that side and the back end of the house to see what you have
+done," said Eileen. "Undoubtedly you've cut the selling price of the
+house one thousand, at least. But it's exactly like you not to have
+thought of what chopping up the roof and the end of the house as
+you have done, would make it look like. You have got one of those
+single-track minds, Linda, that can think of only one thing at a time,
+and you never do think, when you start anything, of what the end is
+going to be."
+
+"Very likely there's a large amount of truth in that," said Linda
+soberly. "Perhaps I do get an idea and pursue it to the exclusion of
+everything else. It's an inheritance from Daddy, this concentrating
+with all my might on one thing at a time. But I am very sorry if I have
+disfigured the house."
+
+"What I want to know," said Eileen, "is how in this world, at present
+wages and cost of material, you're expecting to pay men for the work you
+have had done."
+
+"I can talk more understandingly about that," said Linda quietly, "day
+after tomorrow. I'll get home from school tomorrow as early as I can,
+and then we'll figure out our financial situation exactly."
+
+Eileen made no reply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. Producing the Evidence
+
+When Linda hurried home the next evening, her first word to Katy was to
+ask if Eileen were there.
+
+"No, she isn't here," said Katy, "and she's not going to be."
+
+"Not going to be!" cried Linda, her face paling perceptibly.
+
+"She went downtown this morning and she telephoned me about three
+sayin' she had an invoitation to go with a motor party to Pasadena this
+afternoon, an' she wasn't knowin' whether she could get home the night
+or not."
+
+"I don't like it," said Linda. "I don't like it at all."
+
+She liked it still less when Eileen came home for a change of clothing
+the following day, and again went to spend the night with a friend,
+without leaving any word whatever.
+
+"I don't understand this," said Linda, white lipped and tense. "She does
+not want to see me. She does not intend to talk business with me if she
+can possibly help it. She is treating me as if I were a four-year-old
+instead of a woman with as much brain as she has. If she appears while
+I am gone tomorrow and starts away again, you tell her Come to think of
+it, you needn't tell her anything; I'll give you a note for her."
+
+So Linda sat down and wrote:
+
+DEAR EILEEN:
+
+It won't be necessary to remind you of our agreement night before last
+to settle on an allowance from Father's estate for me. Of course I
+realize that you are purposely avoiding seeing me, for what reason I
+can't imagine; but I give you warning, that if you have been in this
+house and have read this note, and are not here with your figures ready
+to meet me when I get home tomorrow night, I'll take matters into my own
+hands, and do exactly what I think best without the slightest reference
+to what you think about it. If you don't want something done that you
+will dislike, even more than you dislike seeing me, you had better heed
+this warning.
+
+LINDA.
+
+She read it over slowly: "My, that sounds melodramatic!" she commented.
+"It's even got a threat in it, and it's a funny thing to threaten my own
+sister. I don't think that it's a situation that occurs very frequently,
+but for that matter I sincerely hope that Eileen isn't the kind of
+sister that occurs frequently."
+
+Linda went up to her room and tried to settle herself to work, but found
+that it was impossible to fix her attention on what she was doing. Her
+mind jumped from one thing to another in a way that totally prohibited
+effective work of any kind. A sudden resolve came into her heart. She
+would not wait any longer. She would know for herself just how she was
+situated financially. She wrote a note to the editor of Everybody's
+Home, asking him if it would be convenient to let her know what
+reception her work was having with his subscribers, whether he desired
+her to continue the department in his magazines, and if so, what was
+the best offer he could make her for the recipes, the natural history
+comments accompanying them, and the sketches. Then she went down to the
+telephone book and looked up the location of the Consolidated Bank. She
+decided that she would stop there on her way from school the next day
+and ask to be shown the Strong accounts.
+
+While she was meditating these heroic measures the bell rang and Katy
+admitted John Gilman. Strangely enough, he was asking for Linda, not for
+Eileen. At the first glimpse of him Linda knew that something was wrong;
+so without any prelude she said abruptly: "What's the matter, John?
+Don't you know where I Eileen is either?"
+
+"Approximately," he answered. "She has 'phoned me two or three times,
+but I haven't seen her for three days. Do you know where she is or
+exactly why she is keeping away from home as she is?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I do. I told you the other day the time had come
+when I was going to demand a settlement of Father's estate and a fixed
+income. That time came three days ago and I have not seen Eileen since."
+
+They entered the living room. As Linda passed the table, propped against
+a candlestick on it, she noticed a note addressed to herself.
+
+"Oh, here will be an explanation," she said. "Here is a note for me. Sit
+down a minute till I read it."
+
+She seated herself on the arm of a chair, tore open the note, and
+instantly began reading aloud.
+
+"Dear little sister--"
+
+"Pathetic," interpolated Linda, "in consideration of the fact that I am
+about twice as big as she is. However, we'll let that go, and focus on
+the enclosure." She waved a slender slip of paper at Gilman. "I never
+was possessed of an article like this before in all my tender young
+life, but it seems to me that it's a cheque, and I can't tell you quite
+how deeply it amuses me. But to return to business, at the present
+instant I am:
+
+DEAR LITTLE SISTER:
+
+It seems that all the friends I have are particularly insistent on
+seeing me all at once and all in a rush. I don't think I ever had quite
+so many invitations at one time in my life before, and the next two or
+three days seem to be going to be equally as full. But I took time to
+run into the bank and go over things carefully. I find that after the
+payment of taxes and insurance and all the household expenses, that by
+wearing old clothes I have and making them over I can afford to turn
+over at least seventy-five dollars a month to you for your clothing and
+personal expenses. As I don't know exactly when I can get home, I am
+enclosing a cheque which is considerably larger than I had supposed I
+could make it, and I can only do this by skimping myself; but of course
+you are getting such a big girl and beginning to attract attention, so
+it is only right that you should have the very best that I can afford to
+do for you. I am not taking the bill from The Mode into consideration. I
+paid that with last month's expenses.
+
+With love,
+
+EILEEN.
+
+Linda held the letter in one hand, the cheque in the other, and stared
+questioningly at John Gilman.
+
+"What do you think of that?" she inquired tersely.
+
+"It seems to me," said Gilman, "that a more pertinent question would be,
+what do you think of it?"
+
+"Rot!" said Linda tersely. "If I were a stenographer in your office I
+would think that I was making a fairly good start; but I happen to be
+the daughter of Alexander Strong living in my own home with my
+only sister, who can afford to flit like the flittingest of social
+butterflies from one party to another as well dressed as, and better
+dressed than, the Great General Average. You have known us, John, ever
+since Eileen sat in the sun to dry her handmade curls, while I was
+leaving a piece of my dress on every busk in Multiflores Canyon. Right
+here and now I am going to show you something!"
+
+Linda started upstairs, so John Gilman followed her. She went to the
+door of Eileen's suite and opened it.
+
+"Now then," she said, "take a look at what Eileen feels she can afford
+for herself. You will observe she has complete and exquisite furnishings
+and all sorts of feminine accessories on her dressing table. You will
+observe that she has fine rugs in her dressing room and bathroom. Let me
+call your attention to the fact that all these drawers are filled with
+expensive comforts and conveniences."
+
+Angrily Linda began to open drawers filled with fancy feminine apparel,
+daintily and neatly folded, everything in perfect order: gloves, hose,
+handkerchiefs, ribbons, laces, all in separate compartments She
+pointed to the high chiffonier, the top decorated with candlesticks and
+silver-framed pictures. Here the drawers revealed heaps of embroidered
+underclothing and silken garments. Then she walked to the closet and
+threw the door wide.
+
+She pushed hangers on their rods, sliding before the perplexed and
+bewildered man dress after dress of lace and georgette, walking suits of
+cloth, street dresses of silk, and pretty afternoon gowns, heavy coats,
+light coats, a beautiful evening coat. Linda took this down and held it
+in front of John Gilman.
+
+"I see things marked in store windows," she said. "Eileen paid not a
+penny less than three hundred for this one coat. Look at the rows of
+shoes, and pumps, and slippers, and what that box is or I don't know."
+
+Linda slid to the light a box screened by the hanging dresses, and
+with the toe of her shoe lifted the lid, disclosing a complete smoking
+outfit--case after case of cigarettes. Linda dropped the lid and shoved
+the box back. She stood silent a second, then she looked at John Gilman.
+
+"That is the way things go in this world," she said quietly. "Whenever
+you lose your temper, you always do something you didn't intend to do
+when you started. I didn't know that, and I wouldn't have shown it to
+you purposely if I had known it; but it doesn't alter the fact that you
+should know it. If you did know it no harm's done but if you didn't know
+it, you shouldn't be allowed to marry Eileen without knowing as much
+about her as you did about Marian, and there was nothing about Marian
+that you didn't know. I am sorry for that, but since I have started this
+I am going through with it. Now give me just one minute more."
+
+Then she went down the hall, threw open the door to her room, and
+walking in said: "You have seen Eileen's surroundings; now take a look
+at mine. There's my bed; there's my dresser and toilet articles; and
+this is my wardrobe."
+
+She opened the closet door and exhibited a pair of overalls in which she
+watered her desert garden. Next ranged her khaki breeches and felt hat.
+Then hung the old serge school dress, beside it the extra skirt and
+orange blouse. The stack of underclothing on the shelves was pitifully
+small, visibly dilapidated. Two or three outgrown gingham dresses hung
+forlornly on the opposite wall. Linda stood tall and straight before
+John Gilman.
+
+"What I have on and one other waist constitute my wardrobe," she said,
+"and I told Eileen where to get this dress and suggested it before I got
+it."
+
+Gilman looked at her in a dazed fashion.
+
+"I don't understand," he said slowly. "If that isn't the dress I saw
+Eileen send up for herself, I'm badly mistaken. It was the Saturday we
+went to Riverside. It surely is the very dress."
+
+Linda laughed bleakly.
+
+"That may be," she said. "The one time she ever has any respect for me
+is in a question of taste. She will agree that I know when colors are
+right and a thing is artistic. Now then, John, you are the administrator
+of my father's estate; you have seen what you have seen. What are you
+going to do about it?"
+
+"Linda," he said quietly, "what my heart might prompt me to do in
+consideration of the fact that I am engaged to marry Eileen, and what my
+legal sense tells me I must do as executor of your father's wishes, are
+different propositions. I am going to do exactly what you tell me to.
+What you have shown me, and what I'd have realized, if I had stopped to
+think, is neither right nor just."
+
+Then Linda took her tun at deep thought.
+
+"John," she said at last, "I am feeling depressed over what I have just
+done. I am not sure that in losing my temper and bringing you up here I
+have played the game fairly. You don't need to do anything. I'll manage
+my affairs with Eileen myself. But I'll tell you before you go, that you
+needn't practice any subterfuges. When she reaches the point where she
+is ready to come home, I'll tell her that you were here, and what you
+have seen. That is the best I can do toward squaring myself with my own
+conscience."
+
+Slowly they walked down the hall together. At the head of the stairs
+Linda took the cheque that she carried and tore it into bits. Stepping
+across the hall, she let the little heap slowly flutter to the rug in
+front of Eileen's door. Then she went back to her room and left John
+Gilman to his own reflections.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. A Rock and a Flame
+
+The first time Linda entered the kitchen after her interview with
+Gilman, Katy asked in deep concern, "Now what ye been doing, lambie?"
+
+"Doing the baby act, Katy," confessed Linda. "Disgracing myself. Losing
+my temper. I wish I could bring myself to the place where I would think
+half a dozen times before I do a thing once."
+
+"Now look here," said Katy, beginning to bristle, "ain't it the truth
+that ye have thought for four years before ye did this thing once?"
+
+"Quite so," said Linda. "But since I am the daughter of the finest
+gentleman I ever knew, I should not do hasty, regrettable things. On the
+living-room table I found a note sweeter than honey, and it contained a
+cheque for me that wouldn't pay Eileen's bills for lunches, candy,
+and theaters for a month; so in undue heat I reduced it to bits and
+decorated the rug before her door. But before that, Katy, I led my
+guardian into the room, and showed him everything. I meant to tell him
+that, since he had neglected me for four years, he could see that I had
+justice now, but when I'd personally conducted him from Eileen's room
+to mine, and when I took a good look at him there was something on his
+face, Katy, that I couldn't endure. So I told him to leave it to me;
+that I would tell Eileen myself what I had done, and so I will. But I am
+sorry I did it, Katy; I am awfully sorry. You always told me to keep
+my temper and I lost it completely. From now on I certainly will try to
+behave myself more like a woman than a spoiled child. Now give me a dust
+cloth and brushes. I am almost through with my job in the library and
+I want to finish, because I shall be forced to use the money from the
+books to pay for my skylight and fireplace."
+
+Linda went to the library and began work, efficiently, carefully, yet
+with a precise rapidity habitual to her. Down the long line of heavy
+technical books, she came to the end of the shelf. Three books from
+the end she noticed a difference in the wall behind the shelf. Hastily
+removing the other two volumes, she disclosed a small locked door having
+a scrap of paper protruding from the edge which she pulled out and upon
+which she read:
+
+In the event of my passing, should anyone move these books and find this
+door, these lines are to inform him that it is to remain untouched. The
+key to it is in my safety-deposit vault at the Consolidated Bank. The
+Bank will open the door and attend to the contents of the box at the
+proper time.
+
+Linda fixed the paper back exactly as she had found it. She stood
+looking at the door a long time, then she carefully wiped it, the wall
+around it, and the shelf. Going to another shelf, she picked out the
+books that had been written by her father and, beginning at the end of
+the shelf, she ranged them in a row until they completely covered the
+opening. Then she finished filling the shelf with other books that she
+meant to keep, but her brain was working, milling over and over the
+question of what that little compartment contained and when it was to
+be opened and whether John Gilman knew about it, and whether the
+Consolidated Bank would remember the day specified, and whether it would
+mean anything important to her.
+
+She carried the dusters back to Katy, and going to her room,
+concentrated resolutely upon her work; but she Was unable to do anything
+constructive. Her routine lessons she could prepare, but she could not
+even sketch a wild rose accurately. Finally she laid down her pencil,
+washed her brushes, put away her material, and locking her door, slipped
+the key into her pocket. Going down to the garage she climbed into the
+Bear Cat and headed straight for Peter Morrison. She drove into his
+location and blew the horn. Peter stepped from the garage, and seeing
+her, started in her direction. Linda sprang down and hurried toward
+him. He looked at her intently as she approached and formed his own
+conclusions.
+
+"Sort of restless," said Linda. "Couldn't evolve a single new idea with
+which to enliven the gay annals of English literature and Greek history.
+A personal history seems infinitely more insistent and unusual. I ran
+away from my lessons, and my work, and came to you, Peter, because I had
+a feeling that there was something you could give me, and I thought you
+would."
+
+Peter smiled a slow curious smile.
+
+"I like your line of thought, Linda," he said quietly. "It greatly
+appeals to me. Any time an ancient and patriarchal literary man named
+Peter Morrison can serve as a rock upon which a young thing can rest,
+why he'll be glad to be that rock."
+
+"What were you doing?" asked Linda abruptly.
+
+"Come and see," said Peter.
+
+He led the way to the garage. His worktable and the cement floor around
+it were littered with sheets of closely typed paper.
+
+"I'll have to assemble them first," said Peter, getting down on his
+knees and beginning to pick them up.
+
+Linda sat on a packing case and watched him. Already she felt comforted.
+Of course Peter was a rock, of course anyone could trust him, and of
+course if the tempest of life beat upon her too strongly she could
+always fly to Peter.
+
+"May I?" she inquired, stretching her hand in the direction of a sheet.
+
+"Sure," said Peter.
+
+"What is it?" inquired Linda lightly. "The bridge or the road or the
+playroom?"
+
+"Gad!" he said slowly. "Don't talk about me being a rock! Rocks are
+stolid, stodgy unresponsive things. I thought I was struggling with
+one of the biggest political problems of the day from an economic and
+psychological standpoint. If I'd had sense enough to realize that it
+was a bridge I was building, I might have done the thing with some
+imagination and subtlety. If you want a rock and you say I am a rock, a
+rock I'll be, Linda. But I know what you are, and what you will be to me
+when we really become the kind of friends we are destined to be."
+
+"I wonder now," said Linda, "if you are going to say that I could be any
+such lovely thing on the landscape as a bridge."
+
+"No," said Peter slowly, "nothing so prosaic. Bridges are common in
+this world. You are going to be something uncommon. History records
+the experiences of but one man who has seen a flame in the open. I am a
+second Moses and you are going to be my burning bush. I intended to read
+this article to you."
+
+Peter massed the sheets, straightened them on the desk, and deliberately
+ripped them across several times. Linda sprang to her feet and stretched
+out her hands.
+
+"Why, Peter!" she cried in a shocked voice. "That is perfectly
+inexcusable. There are hours and hours of work on that, and I have not a
+doubt but that it was good work."
+
+"Simple case of mechanism," said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller
+size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his
+wastebasket. "A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clockwork. I have
+got the idea now. I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way
+I look I can see a golden-flame tongue of inspiration burning. I'll
+rewrite that thing and animate it. Take me for a ride, Linda."
+
+Linda rose and walked to the Bear Cat. Peter climbed in and sat beside
+her. Linda laid her hands on the steering wheel and started the car. She
+ran it down to the highway and chose a level road leading straight
+down the valley through cultivated country. In all the world there was
+nothing to equal the panorama that she spread before Peter that evening.
+She drove the Bear Cat past orchards, hundreds of acres of orchards
+of waxen green leaves and waxen white bloom of orange, grapefruit, and
+lemon. She took him where seas of pink outlined peach orchards, and
+other seas the more delicate tint of the apricots. She glided down
+avenues lined with palm and eucalyptus, pepper and olive, and through
+unbroken rows, extending for miles, of roses, long stretches of white,
+again a stretch of pink, then salmon, yellow, and red. Nowhere in all
+the world are there to be found so many acres of orchard bloom and
+so many miles of tree-lined, rose-decorated roadway as in southern
+California. She sent the little car through the evening until she felt
+that it was time to go home, and when at last she stopped where they had
+started, she realized that neither she nor Peter had spoken one word. As
+he stepped from the car she leaned toward him and reached out her hand.
+
+"Thank you for the fireplace, Peter," she said.
+
+Peter took the hand she extended and held it one minute in both his own.
+Then very gently he straightened it out in the palm of one of his hands
+and with the other hand turned back the fingers and laid his lips to the
+heart of it.
+
+"Thank you, Linda, for the flame," he said, and turning abruptly, he
+went toward his workroom.
+
+Stopping for a bite to eat in the kitchen, Linda went back to her room.
+She sat down at the table and picking up her pencil, began to work, and
+found that she could work. Every stroke came true and strong. Every idea
+seemed original and unusual. Quite as late as a light ever had shone in
+her window, it shone that night, the last thing she did being to
+write another anonymous letter to Marian, and when she reread it Linda
+realized that it was an appealing letter. She thought it certainly would
+comfort Marian and surely would make her feel that someone worth while
+was interested in her and in her work. She loved some of the whimsical
+little touches she had put into it, and she wondered if she had made
+it so much like Peter Morrison that it would be suggestive of him
+to Marian. She knew that she had no right to do that and had no such
+intention. She merely wanted a model to copy from and Peter seemed the
+most appealing model at hand.
+
+After school the next day Linda reported that she had finished going
+through the books and was ready to have them taken. Then, after a few
+minutes of deep thought, she made her way to the Consolidated Bank. At
+the window of the paying teller she explained that she wished to see
+the person connected with the bank who had charge of the safety-deposit
+boxes and who looked after the accounts pertaining to the estate of
+Alexander Strong. The teller recognized the name. He immediately became
+deferential.
+
+"I'll take you to the office of the president," he said. "He and Doctor
+Strong were very warm friends. You can explain to him what it is you
+want to know."
+
+Before she realized what was happening, Linda found herself in an office
+that was all mahogany and marble. At a huge desk stacked with papers sat
+a man, considerably older than her father. Linda remembered to have seen
+him frequently in their home, in her father's car, and she recalled one
+fishing expedition to the Tulare Lake region where he had been a member
+of her father's party.
+
+"Of course you have forgotten me, Mr. Worthington," she said as she
+approached his desk. "I have grown such a tall person during the past
+four years."
+
+The white-haired financier rose and stretched out his hand.
+
+"You exact replica of Alexander Strong," he said laughingly, "I couldn't
+forget you any more than I could forget your father. That fine fishing
+trip where you proved such a grand little scout is bright in my memory
+as one of my happiest vacations. Sit down and tell me what I can do for
+you."
+
+Linda sat down and told him that she was dissatisfied with the manner in
+which her father's estate was being administered.
+
+He listened very carefully to all she had to say, then he pressed a
+button and gave a few words of instruction to the clerk who answered
+it. When several ledgers and account books were laid before him,
+with practiced hand he turned to what he wanted. The records were not
+complicated. They covered a period of four years. They showed exactly
+what monies had been paid into the bank for the estate. They showed what
+royalties had been paid on the books. Linda sat beside him and watched
+his pencil running up and down columns, setting down a list of items,
+and making everything plain. Paid cheques for household expenses I and
+drygoods bills were all recorded and deducted. With narrow, alert eyes,
+Linda was watching, and her brain was keenly alive. As she realized the
+discrepancy between the annual revenue from the estate and the totaling
+of the expenses, she had an inspiration. Something she never before had
+thought of occurred to her. She looked the banker in the eye and said
+very quietly: "And now, since she is my sister and I am going to be of
+age very shortly and these things must all be gone into and opened up,
+would it be out of place for me to ask you this afternoon to let me have
+a glimpse at the private account of Miss Eileen Strong?"
+
+The banker drew a deep breath and looked at Linda keenly.
+
+"That would not be customary," he said slowly.
+
+"No?" said Linda. "But since Father and Mother went out at the same time
+and there was no will and the property would be legally divided equally
+between us upon my coming of age, would my sister be entitled to a
+private account?"
+
+"Had she any sources of obtaining money outside the estate?"
+
+"No," said Linda. "At least none that I know of. Mother had I some
+relatives in San Francisco who were very wealthy people, but they never
+came to see us and we never went there. I know nothing about them. I
+never had any money from them and I am quite sure Eileen never had."
+
+Linda sat very quietly a minute and then she looked at the banker.
+
+"Mr. Worthington," she said, "the situation is slightly peculiar. My
+guardian, John Gilman, is engaged to marry my sister Eileen. She is a
+beautiful girl, as you no doubt recall, and he is very much in love with
+her. Undoubtedly she has been able, at least recently, to manage affairs
+very much in her own way. She is more than four years my senior, and has
+always had charge of the household accounts and the handling of the bank
+accounts. Since there is such a wide discrepancy between the returns
+from the property and the expenses that these books show, I am forced to
+the conclusion that there must be upon your books, or the books of some
+other bank in the city, a private account in Eileen's name or in the
+name of the Strong estate."
+
+"That I can very easily ascertain," said Mr. Worthington, reaching again
+toward the button on his desk. A few minutes later the report came that
+there was a private account in the name of Miss Eileen Strong. Again
+Linda was deeply thoughtful.
+
+"Is there anything I can do," she inquired, "to prevent that account
+from being changed or drawn out previous to my coming of age?"
+
+Then Mr. Worthington grew thoughtful.
+
+"Yes," he said at last. "If you are dissatisfied, if you feel that you
+have reason to believe that money rightfully belonging to you is being
+diverted to other channels, you have the right to issue an injunction
+against the bank, ordering it not to pay out any further money on
+any account nor to honor any cheques drawn by Miss Strong until the
+settlement of the estate. Ask your guardian to execute and deliver such
+an injunction, or merely ask him, as your guardian and the administrator
+of the estate, to give the bank a written order to that effect."
+
+"But because he is engaged to Eileen, I told him I would not bring him
+into this matter," said Linda. "I told him that I would do what I wanted
+done, myself."
+
+"Well, how long is it until this coming birthday of yours?" inquired Mr.
+Worthington.
+
+"Less than two weeks," answered Linda.
+
+For a time the financier sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda.
+It was a keen, searching look. It went to the depths of her eyes; it
+included her face and hair; it included the folds of her dress, the cut
+of her shoe, and rested attentively on the slender hands lying quietly
+in her lap.
+
+"I see the circumstances very clearly," he said. "I sympathize with your
+position. Having known your father and being well acquainted with your
+guardian, would you be satisfied if I should take the responsibility of
+issuing to the clerks an order not to allow anything to be drawn from
+the private account until the settlement of the estate?"
+
+"Perfectly satisfied," said Linda.
+
+"It might be," said Mr. Worthington, "managing matters i that way, that
+no one outside of ourselves need ever know of il Should your sister not
+draw on the private account in the mean time, she would be free to draw
+household cheques on the monthly income and if in the settlement of the
+estate she turns in this private account or accounts, she need never
+know of the restriction concerning this fund."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Linda. "That will fix everything finely."
+
+On her way to the street car, Linda's brain whirled.
+
+"It's not conceivable," she said, "that Eileen should be enriching
+herself at my expense. I can't imagine her being dishonest in money
+affairs, and yet I can recall scarcely a circumstance in life in which
+Eileen has ever hesitated to be dishonest when a lie served her purpose
+better than the truth. Anyway, matters are safe now."
+
+The next day the books were taken and a cheque for their value was
+waiting for Linda when she reached home. She cashed this cheque and
+went straight to Peter Morrison for his estimate of the expenses for the
+skylight and fireplace. When she asked for the bill Peter hesitated.
+
+"You wouldn't accept this little addition to your study as a gift from
+Henry and me?" he asked lightly. "It would be a great pleasure to us if
+you would."
+
+"I could accept stones that Henry Anderson had gathered from the
+mountains and canyons, and I could accept a verse carved on stone, and
+be delighted with the gift; but I couldn't accept hours of day labor
+at the present price of labor, so you will have to give me the bill,
+Peter."
+
+Peter did not have the bill, but he had memoranda, and when Linda paid
+him she reflected that the current talk concerning the inflated price of
+labor was greatly exaggerated.
+
+For two evenings as Linda returned from school and went to her room she
+glanced down the hall and smiled at the decoration remaining on Eileen's
+rug. The third evening it was gone, so that she knew Eileen was either
+in her room or had been there. She did not meet her sister until
+dinnertime. She was prepared to watch Eileen, to study her closely. She
+was not prepared to admire her, but in her heart she almost did that
+very thing. Eileen had practiced subterfuges so long, she was so
+accomplished, that it would have taken an expert to distinguish reality
+from subterfuge. She entered the dining room humming a gay tune. She was
+carefully dressed and appealingly beautiful. She blew a kiss to Linda
+and waved gaily to Katy.
+
+"I was rather afraid," she said lightly, "that I might find you two in
+mourning when I got back. I never stayed so long before, did I? Seemed
+as if every friend I had made special demand on my time all at once.
+Hope you haven't been dull without me."
+
+"Oh, no," said Linda quietly. "Being away at school all day, of course
+I wouldn't know whether you were at home or not, and I have grown so
+accustomed to spending my evenings alone that I don't rely on you for
+entertainment at any time."
+
+"In other words," said Eileen, "it doesn't make any difference to you
+where I am."
+
+"Not so far as enjoying your company is concerned," said Linda.
+"Otherwise, of course it makes a difference. I hope you had a happy
+time."
+
+"Oh, I always have a happy time," answered Eileen lightly. "I certainly
+have the best friends."
+
+"That's your good fortune," answered Linda.
+
+At the close of the meal Linda sat waiting. Eileen gave Katy
+instructions to have things ready for a midnight lunch for her and John
+Gilman and then, humming her tune again, she left the dining room and
+went upstairs. Linda stood looking after her.
+
+ "Now or never," she said at last.  "I have no business to let
+her meet John until I have recovered my self-respect. But the Lord help
+me to do the thing decently!"
+
+So she followed Eileen up the stairway. She tapped at the door, and
+without waiting to hear whether she was invited or not, opened it and
+stepped inside. Eileen was sitting before the window, a big box of candy
+beside her, a magazine in her fingers.
+
+Evidently she intended to keep her temper in case the coming interview
+threatened to become painful.
+
+"I was half expecting you," she said, "you silly hothead. I found the
+cheque I wrote you when I got home this afternoon. That was a foolish
+thing to do. Why did you tear it up? If it were too large or if it were
+not enough why didn't you use it and ask for another? Because I had
+to be away that was merely to leave you something to go on until I got
+back."
+
+Then Linda did the most disconcerting thing possible. In her effort at
+self-control she went too far. She merely folded her hands in her lap
+and sat looking straight at Eileen without saying one word. It did not
+show much on the surface, but Eileen really had a conscience, she really
+had a soul; Linda's eyes, resting rather speculatively on her, were
+honest eyes, and Eileen knew what she knew. She flushed and fidgeted,
+and at last she broke out impatiently: "Oh, for goodness' sake, Linda,
+don't play 'Patience-on-a-monument.' Speak up and say what it is that
+you want. If that cheque was not big enough, what will satisfy you?"
+
+"Come to think of it," said Linda quietly, "I can get along with what I
+have for the short time until the legal settlement of our interests is
+due. You needn't bother any more about a cheque."
+
+Eileen was surprised and her face showed it; and she was also relieved.
+That too her face showed.
+
+"I always knew," she said lightly, "that I had a little sister with
+a remarkably level head and good common sense. I am glad that you
+recognize the awful inflation of prices during the war period, and how I
+have had to skimp and scheme and save in order to make ends meet and to
+keep us going on Papa's meager income."
+
+All Linda's good resolutions vanished. She was under strong nervous
+tension. It irritated her to have Eileen constantly referring to their
+monetary affairs as if they were practically paupers, as if their
+father's life had been a financial failure, as if he had not been able
+to realize from achievements recognized around the world a comfortable
+living for two women.
+
+"Oh, good Lord!" she said shortly. "Bluff the rest of the world like
+a professional, Eileen, but why try it with me? You're right about my
+having common sense. I'll admit that I am using it now. I will be of
+age in a few days, and then we'll take John Gilman and go to the
+Consolidated Bank, and if it suits your convenience to be absent for
+four or five days at that period, I'll take John Gilman and we'll go
+together."
+
+Eileen was amazed. The receding color in her cheeks left the rouge on
+them a ghastly, garish thing.
+
+"Well, I won't do anything of the sort," she said hotly, "and neither
+will John Gilman."
+
+"Unfortunately for you," answered Linda, "John Gilman is my guardian,
+not yours. He'll be forced to do what the law says he must, and what
+common decency tells him he must, no matter what his personal feelings
+are; and I might as well tell you that your absence has done you no
+good. You'd far better have come home, as you agreed to, and gone over
+the books and made me a decent allowance, because in your absence John
+came here to ask me where you were, and I know that he was anxious."
+
+"He came here!" cried Eileen.
+
+"Why, yes," said Linda. "Was it anything unusual? Hasn't he been coming
+here ever since I can remember? Evidently you didn't keep him as well
+posted this time as you usually do. He came here and asked for me."
+
+"And I suppose," said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into her
+white cheeks, "that you took pains to make things uncomfortable for me."
+
+"I am very much afraid," said Linda, "that you are right. You have
+made things uncomfortable for me ever since I can remember, for I can't
+remember the time when you were not finding fault with me, putting me in
+the wrong and getting me criticized and punished if you possibly could.
+It was a fair understanding that you should be here, and you were not,
+and I was seeing red about it; and just as John came in I found your
+note in the living room and read it aloud.'
+
+"Oh, well, there was nothing in that," said Eileen in a relieved tone.
+
+"Nothing in the wording of it, no," said Linda, "but there was
+everything in the intention back of it. Because you did not live up to
+your tacit agreement, and because I had been on high tension for two or
+three days, I lost my temper completely. I brought John Gilman up here
+and showed him the suite of rooms in which you have done for yourself,
+for four years. I gave him rather a thorough inventory of your dressing
+table and drawers, and then I opened the closet door and called his
+attention to the number and the quality of the garments hanging there.
+The box underneath them I thought was a shoe box, but it didn't prove to
+be exactly that; and for that I want to tell you, as I have already told
+John, I am sorry. I wouldn't have done that if I had known what I was
+doing."
+
+"Is that all?" inquired Eileen, making a desperate effort at
+self-control.
+
+"Not quite," said Linda. "When I finished with your room, I took him
+back and showed him mine in even greater detail than I showed him yours.
+I thought the contrast would be more enlightening than anything either
+one of us could say."
+
+"And I suppose you realize," said Eileen bitterly, "that you lost me
+John Gilman when you did it."
+
+"I?" said Linda. "I lost you John Gilman when I did it? But I didn't
+do it. You did it. You have been busy for four years doing it. If you
+hadn't done it, it wouldn't have been there for me to show him. I can't
+see that this is profitable. Certainly it's the most distressing thing
+that ever has occurred for me. But I didn't feel that I could let you
+meet John Gilman tonight without telling you what he knows. If you have
+any way to square your conscience and cleanse your soul before you meet
+him, you had better do it, for he's a mighty fine man and if you lose
+him you will have lost the best chance that is likely ever to come to
+you."
+
+Linda sat studying Eileen. She saw the gallant effort she was making
+to keep her self-possession, to think with her accustomed rapidity, to
+strike upon some scheme whereby she could square herself. She rose and
+started toward the door.
+
+"What you'll say to John I haven't the faintest notion," she said. "I
+told him very little. I just showed him."
+
+Then she went out and closed the door after her. At the foot of the
+stairs she met Katy admitting Gilman. Without any preliminaries she
+said: "I repeat, John, that I'm sorry for what happened the other day.
+I have just come from Eileen. She will be down as soon as Katy tells her
+you're here, no doubt. I have done what I told you I would. She knows
+what I showed you so you needn't employ any subterfuges. You can be
+frank and honest with each other."
+
+"I wish to God we could," said John Gilman.
+
+Linda went to her work. She decided that she would gauge what happened
+by the length of time John stayed. If he remained only a few minutes it
+would indicate that there had been a rupture. If he stayed as long as he
+usually did, the chances were that Eileen's wit had triumphed as usual.
+
+At twelve o'clock Linda laid her pencils in the box, washed the brushes,
+and went down the back stairs to the ice chest for a glass of milk. The
+living room was still lighted and Linda thought Eileen's laugh quite
+as gay as she ever had heard it. Linda closed her lips very tight and
+slowly climbed the stairs. When she entered her room she walked up to
+the mirror and stared at herself in the glass for a long time, and then
+of herself she asked this question:
+
+"Well, how do you suppose she did it?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. Spanish Iris
+
+Just as Linda was most deeply absorbed with her own concerns there came
+a letter from Marian which Linda read and reread several times; for
+Marian wrote:
+
+MY DEAREST PAL:
+
+Life is so busy up San Francisco way that it makes Lilac Valley look in
+retrospection like a peaceful sunset preliminary to bed time.
+
+But I want you to have the consolation and the comfort of knowing that I
+have found at least two friends that I hope will endure. One is a woman
+who has a room across the hall from mine in my apartment house. She is
+a newspaper woman and life is very full for her, but it is filled with
+such intensely interesting things that I almost regret having made my
+life work anything so prosaic as inanimate houses; but then it's my
+dream to enliven each house I plan with at least the spirit of home.
+This woman--her name is Dana Meade--enlivens every hour of her working
+day with something concerning the welfare of humanity. She is a
+beautiful woman in her soul, so extremely beautiful that I can't at this
+minute write you a detailed description of her hair and her eyes and her
+complexion, because this nice, big, friendly light that radiates
+from her so lights her up and transfigures her that everyone says how
+beautiful she is, and yet I have a vague recollection that her nose is
+what you would call a "beak," and I am afraid her cheek bones are too
+high for good proportion, and I know that her hair is not always so
+carefully dressed as it should be, but what is the difference when
+the hair is crowned with a halo? I can't swear to any of these things;
+they're sketchy impressions. The only thing I am absolutely sure about
+is the inner light that shines to an unbelievable degree. I wish she
+had more time and I wish I had more time and that she and I might become
+such friends as you and I are. I can't tell you, dear, how much I think
+of you. It seems to me that you're running a sort of undercurrent in my
+thoughts all day long.
+
+You will hardly credit it, Linda, but a few days ago I drove a car
+through the thickest traffic, up a steep hill, and round a curve. I did
+it, but practically collapsed when it was over. The why of it was this:
+I think I told you before that in the offices of Nicholson and Snow
+there is a man who is an understanding person. He is the junior partner
+and his name is Eugene Snow. I happened to arrive at his desk the day
+I came for my instructions and to make my plans for entering their
+contest. He was very kind to me and went out of his way to smooth out
+the rough places. Ever since, he makes a point of coming to me and
+talking a few minutes when I am at the office or when he passes me on my
+way to the drafting rooms where I take my lessons. The day I mention I
+had worked late and hard the night before. I had done the last possible
+thing to the plans for my dream house. At the last minute, getting it
+all on paper, working at the specifications, at which you know I am
+wobbly, was nervous business; and when I came from the desk after having
+turned in my plans, perhaps I showed fatigue. Anyway, he said to me that
+his car was below. He said also that he was a lonely person, having lost
+his wife two years ago, and not being able very frequently to see his
+little daughter who is in the care of her grandmother, there were times
+when he was hungry for the companionship he had lost. He asked me if I
+would go with him for a drive and I told him that I would. I am rather
+stunned yet over what happened. The runabout he led me to was greatly
+like yours, and, Linda, he stopped at a florist's and came out with an
+armload of bloom--exquisite lavender and pale pink and faint yellow and
+waxen white--the most enticing armload of spring. For one minute I
+truly experienced a thrill. I thought he was going to give that mass of
+flowers to me, but he did not. He merely laid it across my lap and said:
+"Edith adored the flowers from bulbs. I never see such bloom that my
+heart does not ache with a keen, angry ache to think that she should be
+taken from the world, and the beauty that she so loved, so early and so
+ruthlessly. We'll take her these as I would take them to her were she
+living."
+
+So, Linda dear, I sat there and looked at color and drank in fragrance,
+and we whirled through the city and away to a cemetery on a beautiful
+hill, and filled a vase inside the gates of a mausoleum with these
+appealing flowers. Then we sat down, and a man with a hurt heart told
+me about his hurt, and what an effort he was making to get through the
+world as the woman he loved would have had him; and before I knew what
+I was doing, Linda, I told him the tellable part of my own hurts. I even
+lifted my turban and bowed my white head before him. This hurt--it was
+one of the inexorable things that come to people in this world--I could
+talk about. That deeper hurt, which has put a scar that never will be
+effaced on my soul, of course I could not tell him about. But when we
+went back to the car he said to me that he would help me to get
+back into the sunlight. He said the first thing I must do to regain
+self-confidence was to begin driving again. I told him I could not, but
+he said I must, and made me take the driver's seat of a car I had
+never seen and take the steering wheel of a make of machine I had never
+driven, and tackle two or three serious problems for a driver. I did it
+all right, Linda, because I couldn't allow myself to fail the kind of a
+man Mr. Snow is, when he was truly trying to help me, but in the depths
+of my heart I am afraid I am a coward forever, for there is a ghastly
+illness takes possession of me as I write these details to you. But
+anyway, put a red mark on your calendar beside the date on which you
+get this letter, and joyfully say to yourself that Marian has found two
+real, sympathetic friends.
+
+In a week or ten days I shall know about the contest. If I win, as I
+really have a sneaking hope that I shall, since I have condensed the
+best of two dozen houses into one and exhausted my imagination on
+my dream home, I will surely telegraph, and you can make it a day of
+jubilee. If I fail, I will try to find out where my dream was not true
+and what can be done to make it materialize properly; but between us,
+Linda girl, I am going to be dreadfully disappointed. I could use the
+material value that prize represents. I could start my life work which
+I hope to do in Lilac Valley on the prestige and the background that it
+would give me. I don't know, Linda, whether you ever learned to pray
+or not, but I have, and it's a thing that helps when the black
+shadow comes, when you reach the land of "benefits forgot and friends
+remembered not."
+
+And this reminds me that I should not write to my very dearest friend
+who has her own problems and make her heart sad with mine; so to the
+joyful news of my two friends add a third, Linda, for I am going to tell
+you a secret because it will make you happy. Since I have been in San
+Francisco some man, who for a reason of his own does not tell me his
+name, has been writing me extremely attractive letters. I have had
+several of them and I can't tell you, Linda, what they mean to me or
+how they help me. There is a touch of whimsy about them. I can't as
+yet connect them with anybody I ever met, but to me they are taking the
+place of a little lunch on the bread of life. They are such real, such
+vivid, such alive letters from such a real person that I have been
+doing the very foolish and romantic thing of answering them as my heart
+dictates and signing my own name to them, which on the surface looks
+unwise when the man in the case keeps his identity in the background;
+but since he knows me and knows my name it seems useless to do anything
+else: and answer these letters I shall and must; because every one of
+them is to me a strong light thrown on John Gilman. Every time one of
+these letters comes to me I have the feeling that I would like to reach
+out through space and pick up the man who is writing them and dangle him
+before Eileen and say to her: "Take HIM. I dare you to take HIM." And my
+confidence, Linda, is positively supreme that she could not do it.
+
+You know, between us, Linda, we regarded Eileen as a rare creature, a
+kind of exotic thing, made to be kept in a glass house with tempered air
+and warmed water; but as I go about the city and at times amuse myself
+at concerts and theaters, I am rather dazed to tell you, honey, that
+the world is chock full of Eileens. On the streets, in the stores,
+everywhere I go, sometimes half a dozen times in a day I say to myself:
+"There goes Eileen." I haven't a doubt that Eileen has a heart, if
+it has not become so calloused that nobody could ever reach it, and I
+suspect she has a soul, but the more I see of her kind the more I feel
+that John Gilman may have to breast rather black water before he finds
+them.
+
+With dearest love, be sure to remember me to Katherine O'Donovan. Hug
+her tight and give her my unqualified love. Don't let her forget me.
+
+As ever,
+
+MARIAN.
+
+This was the letter that Linda read once, then she read it again and
+then she read it a third time, and after that she lost count and reread
+it whenever she was not busy doing something else, for it was a letter
+that was the next thing to laying hands upon Marian. The part of the
+letter concerning the unknown man who was writing Marian, Linda pondered
+over deeply.
+
+"That is the best thing I ever did in my life," she said in
+self-commendation. "It's doing more than I hoped it would. It's giving
+Marian something to think about. It's giving her an interest in life.
+It's distracting her attention. Without saying a word about John Gilman
+it is making her see for herself the weak spots in him through the very
+subtle method of calling her attention to the strength that may lie
+in another man. For once in your life, Linda, you have done something
+strictly worth while. The thing for you to do is to keep it up, and in
+order to keep it up, to make each letter fresh and original, you will
+have to do a good deal of sticking around Peter Morrison's location and
+absorbing rather thoroughly the things he says. Peter doesn't know he is
+writing those letters but he is in them till it's a wonder Marian does
+not hear him drawl and see the imps twisting his lips as she reads them.
+Before I write another single one I'll go see Peter. Maybe he will have
+that article written. I'll take a pencil, and as he reads I'll jot down
+the salient points and then I'll come home and work out a head and tail
+piece for him to send in with it, and in that way I'll ease my soul
+about the skylight and the fireplace."
+
+So Linda took pad and pencils, raided Katy for everything she could find
+that was temptingly edible, climbed into the Bear Cat, and went to see
+Peter as frankly as she would have crossed the lawn to visit Marian.
+He was not in the garage when she stopped her car before it, but the
+workmen told her that he had strolled up the mountain and that probably
+he would return soon. Learning that he had been gone but a short time
+Linda set the Bear Cat squalling at the top of its voice. Then she took
+possession of the garage, and clearing Peter's worktable spread upon it
+the food she had brought, and then started out to find some flowers for
+decorations. When Peter came upon the scene he found Linda, flushed and
+brilliant eyed, holding before him a big bouquet of alder bloom, the
+last of the lilacs she had found in a cool, shaded place, pink filaree,
+blue lupin, and white mahogany panicles. "Peter," she cried. "you can't
+guess what I have been doing!"
+
+Peter glanced at the flowers.
+
+"Isn't it obvious?" he inquired.
+
+"No, it isn't," said Linda, "because I am capable of two processes at
+once. The work of my hands is visible; with it I am going to decorate
+your table. You won't have to go down to the restaurant for your supper
+tonight because I have brought my supper up to share with you, and after
+we finish, you're going to read me your article as you have rewritten
+it. I am going to decorate it and we are going to make a hit with it
+that will be at least a start on the road to greater fame. What you see
+is material. You can pick it up, smell it, admire it and eat it. But
+what I have truly been doing is setting Spanish iris for yards down one
+side of the bed of your stream. When I left it was a foot and a half
+high Peter, and every blue that the sky ever knew in its loveliest
+moments, and a yellow that is the concentrated essence of the best gold
+from the heart of California. Oh, Peter, there is enchantment in the way
+I set it. There are irregular deep beds, and there are straggly places
+where there are only one or two in a ragged streak, and then it runs
+along the edge in a fringy rim, and then it stretches out in a marshy
+place that is going to have some other wild things, arrowheads, and
+orchids, and maybe a bunch of paint brush on a high, dry spot near by. I
+wish you could see it!"
+
+Peter looked at Linda reflectively and then he told her that he could
+see it. He fold her that he adored it, that he was crazy about her
+straggly continuity and her fringy border, but there was not one word of
+truth in what he said, because what he saw was a slender thing, willowy,
+graceful; roughened wavy black hair hanging half her length in heavy
+braids, dark eyes and bright cheeks, a vivid red line of mouth, and
+a bright brown line of freckles bridging a prominent and aristocratic
+nose. What he was seeing was a soul, a young thing, a thing he coveted
+with every nerve and fiber of his being. And while he glibly humored her
+in her vision of decorating his brook, in his own consciousness he was
+saying to himself: "Is there any reason why I should not try for her?"
+
+And then he answered himself. "There is no reason in your life. There
+is nothing ugly that could offend her or hurt her. The reason, the real
+reason, probably lies in the fact that if she were thinking of caring
+for anyone it would be for that attractive young schoolmate she brought
+up here for me to exercise my wits upon. It is very likely that she
+regards me in the light of a grandfatherly person to whom she can come
+with her joys or her problems, as frankly as she has now."
+
+So Peter asked if the irises crossed the brook and ran down both sides.
+Linda sat on a packing case and concentrated on the iris, and finally
+she announced that they did. She informed him that his place was going
+to be natural, that Nature evolved things in her own way. She did not
+grow irises down one side of a brook and arrowheads down the other.
+They waded across and flew across and visited back and forth, riding
+the water or the wind or the down of a bee or the tail of a cow. As she
+served the supper she had brought she very gravely informed him that
+there would be iris on both sides of his brook, and cress and miners'
+lettuce under the bridge; and she knew exactly where the wild clematis
+grew that would whiten his embankment after his workmen had extracted
+the last root of poison oak.
+
+"It may not scorch you, Peter," she said gravely, "but you must look out
+for the Missus and the little things. I haven't definitely decided on
+her yet, but she looks a good deal like Mary Louise Whiting to mc. I saw
+her the other day. She came to school after Donald. I liked her looks
+so well that I said to myself: 'Everybody talks about how fine she is.
+I shouldn't wonder if I had better save her for Peter'; but if I decide
+to, you should act that poison stuff out, because it's sure as shooting
+to attack any one with the soft, delicate skin that goes with a golden
+head."
+
+"Oh, let's leave it in," said Peter, "and dispense with the golden head.
+By the time you get that stream planted as you're planning, I'll have
+become so accustomed to a dark head bobbing up and down beside it that
+I won't take kindly to a sorrel top." "That is positively sacrilegious,"
+said Linda, lifting her hands to her rough black hair. "Never in my life
+saw anything lovelier than the rich gold on Louise Whiting's bare head
+as she bent to release her brakes and start her car. A black head looks
+like a cinder bed beside it; and only think what a sunburst it will be
+when Mary Louise kneels down beside the iris."
+
+When they had finished their supper Linda gathered up the remnants and
+put them in the car, then she laid a notebook and pencil on the table.
+
+"Now I want to hear that article," she said. "I knew you would do it
+over the minute I was gone, and I knew you would keep it to read to me
+before you sent it."
+
+"Hm," said Peter. "Is it second sight or psychoanalysis or telepathy, or
+what?"
+
+"Mostly 'what'," laughed Linda. "I merely knew. The workmen are gone and
+everything is quiet now, Peter. Begin. I am crazy to get the particular
+angle from which you 'make the world safe for democracy.' John used to
+call our attention to your articles during the war. He said we had
+not sent another man to France who could write as humanely and as
+interestingly as you did. I wish I had kept those articles; because I
+didn't get anything from them to compare with what I can get since I
+have a slight acquaintance with the procession that marches around
+your mouth. Peter, you will have to watch that mouth of yours. It's an
+awfully betraying feature. So long as it's occupied with politics
+and the fads and the foibles and the sins and the foolishness and the
+extravagances of humanity, it's all very well. But if you ever get
+in trouble or if ever your heart hurts, or you get mad enough to kill
+somebody, that mouth of yours is going to be a most awfully revealing
+feature, Peter. You will have hard work to settle it down into
+hard-and-fast noncommittal lines."
+
+Peter looked at the girl steadily.
+
+"Have you specialized on my mouth?" he asked.
+
+"Huh-umph!" said Linda, shaking her head vigorously. "When I specialize I
+use a pin and a microscope and go right to the root of matters as I was
+taught. This is superficial. I am extemporizing now."
+
+"Well, if this is extemporizing," said Peter, "God help my soul if you
+ever go at me with a pin and a microscope."
+
+"Oh, but I won't!" cried Linda. "It wouldn't be kind to pin your friends
+on a setting board and use a microscope on them. You might see things
+that were strictly private. You might see things they wouldn't want you
+to see. They might not be your friends any more if you did that. When
+I make a friend I just take him on trust like I did Donald. You're my
+friend, aren't you, Peter?"
+
+"Yes, Linda," said Peter soberly. "Put me to any test you can think of
+if you want proof."
+
+"But I don't believe in PROVING friends, either," said Linda. "I believe
+in nurturing them. I would set a friend in my garden and water his feet
+and turn the sunshine on him and tell him to stay there and grow. I
+might fertilize him, I might prune him, and I might use insecticide on
+him. I might spray him with rather stringent solutions, but I give you
+my word I would not test him. If he flourished under my care I would
+know it, and if he did not I would know it, and that would be all I
+would want to know. I have watched Daddy search for the seat of
+nervous disorders, and sometimes he had to probe very deep to find what
+developed nerves unduly but he didn't ever do any picking and raveling
+and fringing at the soul of a human being merely for the sake of finding
+out what it was made of; and everyone says I am like him."
+
+"I wish I might have known him," said Peter.
+
+"Don't I wish it!" said Linda. "Now then, Peter, go ahead. Read your
+article."
+
+Peter opened a packing case, picked out a sheaf of papers, and sitting
+opposite Linda, began to read. He was dumbfounded to find that he, a man
+who had read and talked extemporaneously before great bodies of learned
+men, should have cold feet and shaking hands and a hammering heart
+because he was trying to read an article on America for Americans before
+a high-school Junior. But presently, as the theme engrossed him, he
+forgot the vision of Linda interesting herself in his homemaking, and
+saw instead a vision of his country threatened on one side by the red
+menace of the Bolshevik, on the other by the yellow menace of the
+Jap, and yet on another by the treachery of the Mexican and the slowly
+uprising might of the black man, and presently he was thundering his
+best-considered arguments at Linda until she imperceptibly drew back
+from him on the packing case, and with parted lips and wide eyes she
+listened in utter absorption. She gazed at a transformed Peter with
+aroused eyes and a white light of patriotism on his forehead, and a
+conception even keener than anything that the war had brought her young
+soul was burning in her heart of what a man means when he tries to
+express his feeling concerning the land of his birth. Presently, without
+realizing what she was doing, she reached for her pad and pencils and
+rapidly began sketching a stretch of peaceful countryside over which
+a coming storm of gigantic proportions was gathering. Fired by Peter's
+article, the touch of genius in Linda's soul became creative and she
+fashioned huge storm clouds wind driven, that floated in such a manner
+as to bring the merest suggestion of menacing faces, black faces,
+yellow faces, brown faces, and under the flash of lightning, just at the
+obscuring of the sun, a huge, evil, leering red face. She swept a stroke
+across her sheet and below this she began again, sketching the same
+stretch of country she had pictured above, strolling in cultivated
+fields, dotting it with white cities, connecting it with smooth
+roadways, sweeping the sky with giant planes. At one side, winging in
+from the glow of morning, she drew in the strong-winged flight of a
+flock of sea swallows, peacefully homing toward the far-distant ocean.
+She was utterly unaware when Peter stopped reading. Absorbed, she bent
+over her work. When she had finished she looked up.
+
+"Now I'll take this home," she said. "I can't do well on color
+with pencils. You hold that article till I have time to put this on
+water-color paper and touch it up a bit here and there, and I believe it
+will be worthy of starting and closing your article."
+
+She pushed the sketches toward him.
+
+"You little wonder!" said Peter softly.
+
+"Yes, 'little' is good," scoffed Linda, rising to very nearly his height
+and reaching for the lunch basket. "'Little' is good, Peter. If I could
+do what I like to myself I would get in some kind of a press and squash
+down about seven inches."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said Peter. "Forget it. What's the difference what the
+inches of your body are so long as your brain has a stature worthy of
+mention?"
+
+"Good-bye!" said Linda. "On the strength of that I'll jazz that sketch
+all up, bluey and red-purple and jade-green. I'll make it as glorious as
+a Catalina sunset."
+
+As she swung the car around the sharp curve at the boulders she looked
+back and laughingly waved her hand at Peter, and Peter experienced a
+wild desire to shriek lest she lose control of the car and plunge down
+the steep incline. A second later, when he saw her securely on the road
+below, he smiled to himself.
+
+"Proves one thing," he said conclusively. "She is over the horrors.
+She is driving unconsciously. Thank God she knew that curve so well she
+could look the other way and drive it mentally."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. The Official Bug-Catcher
+
+Not a mile below the exit from Peter's grounds, Linda perceived a
+heavily laden person toiling down the roadway before her and when she
+ran her car abreast and stopped it, Henry Anderson looked up at her with
+joyful face.
+
+"Sorry I can't uncover, fair lady," he said, "but you see I am very much
+otherwise engaged."
+
+What Linda saw was a tired, disheveled man standing in the roadway
+beside her car, under each arm a boulder the size of her head, one
+almost jet-black, shot through with lines of white and flying figures
+of white crossing between these bands that almost reminded one of winged
+dancers. The other was a combination stone made up of matrix thickly
+imbedded with pebbles of brown, green, pink, and dull blue.
+
+"For pity's sake!" said Linda. "Where are you going and why are you
+personally demonstrating a new method of transporting rock?"
+
+"I am on my way down Lilac Valley to the residence of a friend of mine,"
+said Henry Anderson. "I heard her say the other day that she saved
+every peculiarly marked boulder she could find to preserve coolness and
+moisture in her fern bed."
+
+Linda leaned over and opened the car door.
+
+"All well and good," she said; "but why in the cause of reason didn't
+you leave them at Peter's and bring them down in his car?"
+
+Henry Anderson laid the stones in the bottom of the car, stepped in and
+closed the door behind him. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and
+wiped his perspiring face and soiled hands.
+
+"I had two sufficient personal reasons," he said. "One was that the car
+at our place is Peter Morrison's car, not mine; and the other was that
+it's none of anybody's business but my own if I choose to 'say it' with
+stones."
+
+Linda started the car, being liberal with gas--so liberal that it was
+only a few minutes till Henry Anderson protested.
+
+"This isn't the speedway," he said. "What's your hurry?"
+
+"Two reasons seem to be all that are allowed for things at the present
+minute," answered Linda. "One of mine is that you can't drive this beast
+slow, and the other is that my workroom is piled high with things I
+should be doing. I have two sketches I must complete while I am in the
+mood, and I have had a great big letter from my friend, Marian Thorne,
+today that I want to answer before I go to bed tonight."
+
+"In other words," said Henry Anderson bluntly, "you want me to
+understand that when I have reached your place and dumped these stones I
+can beat it; you have no further use for me."
+
+"You said that," retorted Linda.
+
+"And who ever heard of such a thing," said Henry, "as a young woman
+sending away a person of my numerous charms and attractions in order to
+work, or to write a letter to another woman?"
+
+"But you're not taking into consideration," said Linda, "that I must
+work, and I scarcely know you, while I have known Marian ever since I
+was four years old and she is my best friend."
+
+"Well, she has no advantage over me," said Henry instantly, "because I
+have known you quite as long as Peter Morrison has at least, and I'm
+your official bug-catcher."
+
+"I had almost forgotten about the bugs," said Linda.
+
+"Well, don't for a minute think I am going to give you an opportunity to
+forget," said Henry Anderson.
+
+He reached across and laid his hand over Linda's on the steering gear.
+Linda said nothing, neither did she move. She merely added more gas and
+put the Bear Cat forward at a dizzy whirl. Henry laughed.
+
+"That's all right, my beauty," he said. "Don't you think for a minute
+that I can't ride as fast as you can drive."
+
+A dull red mottled Linda's cheeks. As quickly as it could be done she
+brought the Bear Cat to a full stop. Then she turned and looked at Henry
+Anderson. The expression in her eyes was disconcerting even to that
+cheeky young individual--he had not borne her gaze a second until he
+removed his hand.
+
+"Thanks," said Linda in a dry drawl. "And you will add to my obligation
+if in the future you will remember not to deal in assumptions. I am not
+your 'beauty,' and I'm not anyone's beauty; while the only thing in this
+world that I am interested in at present is to get the best education I
+can and at the same time carry on work that I love to do. I have a year
+to finish my course in the high school and when I finish I will only
+have a good beginning for whatever I decide to study next."
+
+"That's nothing," said the irrepressible Henry. "It will take me two
+years to catch a sufficient number of gold bugs to be really serious,
+but there wouldn't be any harm in having a mutual understanding and
+something definite to work for, and then we might be able, you know, to
+cut out some of that year of high-school grinding. If the plans I have
+submitted in the Nicholson and Snow contest should just happen to be the
+prize winners, that would put matters in such a shape for young Henry
+that he could devote himself to crickets and tumble-bugs at once."
+
+"Don't you think," said Linda quietly, "that you would better forget
+that silly jesting and concentrate the best of your brains on improving
+your plans for Peter Morrison's house?"
+
+"Why, surely I will if that's what you command me to do," said Henry,
+purposely misunderstanding her.
+
+"You haven't mentioned before," said Linda, "that you had submitted
+plans in that San Francisco contest."
+
+"All done and gone," said Henry Anderson lightly. "I had an inspiration
+one day and I saw a way to improve a house with comforts and
+conveniences I never had thought of before. I was enthusiastic over the
+production when I got it on paper and figured it. It's exactly the house
+that I am going to build for Peter, and when I've cut my eye teeth on it
+I am going to correct everything possible and build it in perfection for
+you."
+
+"Look here," said Linda soberly, "I'm not accustomed to this sort of
+talk. I don't care for it. If you want to preserve even the semblance of
+friendship with me you must stop it, and get to impersonal matters and
+stay there."
+
+"All right," he agreed instantly, "but if you don't like my line of
+talk, you're the first girl I ever met that didn't."
+
+"You have my sympathy," said Linda gravely. "You have been extremely
+unfortunate."
+
+Then she started the Bear Cat, and again running at undue speed she
+reached her wild-flower garden. Henry Anderson placed the stones as she
+directed and waited for an invitation to come in, but the invitation
+was not given. Linda thanked him for the stones. She told him that in
+combination with a few remaining from the mantel they would make all she
+would require, and excusing herself she drove to the garage. When she
+came in she found the irrepressible Henry sitting on the back steps
+explaining to Katy the strenuous time he had had finding and carrying
+down the stones they had brought. Katy had a plate of refreshments ready
+to hand him when Linda laughingly passed them and went to her room.
+
+When she had finished her letter to Marian she took a sheet of drawing
+paper, and in her most attractive lettering sketched in the heading, "A
+Palate Teaser," which was a direct quotation from Katy. Below she wrote:
+
+You will find Tunas in the cacti thickets of any desert, but if you are
+so fortunate as to be able to reach specimens which were brought from
+Mexico and set as hedges around the gardens of the old missions, you
+will find there the material for this salad in its most luscious form.
+Naturally it can be made from either Opuntia Fiscus-Indica or Opuntia
+Tuna, but a combination of these two gives the salad an exquisite
+appearance and a tiny touch more delicious flavor, because Tuna, which
+is red, has to my taste a trifle richer and fuller flavor than Indica,
+which is yellow. Both fruits taste more like the best well-ripened
+watermelon than any other I recall.
+
+Bring down the Tunas with a fishing rod or a long pole with a nail in
+the end. With anything save your fingers roll them in the sand or in
+tufts of grass to remove the spines. Slice off either end, score the
+skin down one side, press lightly, and a lush globule of pale gold or
+rosy red fruit larger than a hen's egg lies before you. With a sharp
+knife, beginning with a layer of red and ending with one of yellow,
+slice the fruits thinly, stopping to shake out the seeds as you work. In
+case you live in San Diego County or farther south, where it is possible
+to secure the scarlet berries of the Strawberry Cactus--it is the
+Mammillaria Goodridgei species that you should use--a beautiful
+decoration for finishing your salad can be made from the red
+strawberries of these. If you live too far north to find these, you
+may send your salad to the table beautifully decorated by cutting fancy
+figures from the red Tuna, or by slicing it lengthwise into oblong
+pieces and weaving them into a decoration over the yellow background.
+
+For your dressing use the juice of a lemon mixed with that of an
+orange, sweetened to taste, into which you work, a drop at a time, four
+tablespoons of the best Palermo olive oil. If the salad is large more
+oil and more juice should be used.
+
+To get the full deliciousness of this salad, the fruit must have been
+on ice, and the dressing made in a bowl imbedded in cracked ice, so that
+when ready to blend both are ice-cold, and must be served immediately.
+
+Gigantic specimens of fruit-bearing Cacti can be found all over the
+Sunland Desert near to the city, but they are not possessed of the full
+flavor of the cultivated old mission growths, so that it is well worth
+your while to make a trip to the nearest of these for the fruit with
+which to prepare this salad. And if, as you gather it, you should see
+a vision of a white head, a thin, ascetic, old face, a lean figure
+trailing a brown robe, slender white hands clasping a heavy cross;
+if you should hear the music of worship ascending from the throats of
+Benedictine fathers leading a clamoring choir of the blended voices of
+Spaniard, Mexican, and Indian, combining with the music of the bells and
+the songs of the mocking birds, nest making among the Tunas, it will be
+good for your soul in the line of purging it from selfishness, since in
+this day we are not asked to give all of life to the service of others,
+only a reasonable part of it.
+
+Linda read this over, working in changes here and there, then she picked
+up her pencil and across the top of her sheet indicated an open sky
+with scarcely a hint of cloud. Across the bottom she outlined a bit
+of Sunland Desert she well remembered, in the foreground a bed of
+flat-leaved nopal, flowering red and yellow, the dark red prickly pears,
+edible, being a near relative of the fruits she had used in her salad.
+After giving the prickly pear the place of honor to the left, in higher
+growth she worked in the slender, cylindrical, jointed stems of the
+Cholla, shading the flowers a paler, greenish yellow. On the right,
+balancing the Cholla, she drew the oval, cylindrical columns of the
+hedgehog cactus, and the color touch of the big magenta flowers blended
+exquisitely with the color she already had used. At the left, the length
+of her page, she drew a gigantic specimen of Opuntia Tuna, covered with
+flowers, and well-developed specimens of the pears whose coloring ran
+into the shades of the hedgehog cactus.
+
+She was putting away her working materials when she heard steps and
+voices on the stairs, so she knew that Eileen and John Gilman were
+coming. She did not in the least want them, yet she could think of no
+excuse for refusing them admission that would not seem ungracious. She
+hurried to the wall, snatched down the paintings for Peter Morrison, and
+looked around to see how she could dispose of them. She ended by laying
+one of them in a large drawer which she pushed shut and locked. The
+other she placed inside a case in the wall which formerly had been used
+for billiard cues. At their second tap she opened the door. Eileen
+was not at her best. There was a worried look across her eyes, a
+restlessness visible in her movements, but Gilman was radiant.
+
+"What do you think, Linda?" he cried. "Eileen has just named the day!"
+
+"I did no such thing," broke in Eileen.
+
+"Your pardon, fair lady, you did not," said Gilman. "That was merely a
+figure of speech. I meant named the month. She has definitely promised
+in October, and I may begin to hunt a location and plan a home for us. I
+want the congratulations of my dear friend and my dearer sister."
+
+Linda held out her hand and smiled as bravely as she could.
+
+"I am very glad you are so pleased, John," she said quietly, "and I hope
+that you will be as happy as you deserve to be."
+
+"Now exactly what do you mean by that?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, Linda prides herself on being deep and subtle and conveying hidden
+meanings," said Eileen. "She means what a thousand people will tell you
+in the coming months: merely that they hope you will be happy."
+
+"Of course," Linda hastened to corroborate, wishing if possible to avoid
+any unpleasantness.
+
+"You certainly have an attractive workroom here," said John, "much as I
+hate to see it spoiled for billiards."
+
+"It's too bad," said Linda, "that I have spoiled it for you for
+billiards. I have also spoiled the outside appearance of the house for
+Eileen."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said John. "I looked at it carefully the other
+day as I came up, and I thought your changes enhanced the value of the
+property."
+
+"I am surely glad to hear that," said Linda. "Take a look through my
+skylight and my new window. Imagine you see the rugs I am going to have
+and a few more pieces of furniture when I can afford them; and let me
+particularly point out the fireplace that Henry Anderson and your friend
+Peter designed and had built for me. Doesn't it add a soul and a heart
+to my study?"
+
+John Gilman walked over and looked at the fireplace critically. He read
+the lines aloud, then he turned to Eileen.
+
+"Why, that is perfectly beautiful," he said. "Let's duplicate it in our
+home."
+
+"You bungler!" scoffed Eileen.
+
+"I think you're right," said Gilman reflectively, "exactly right. Of
+course I would have no business copying Linda's special fireplace where
+the same people would see it frequently; and if I had stopped to think a
+second, I might have known that you would prefer tiling to field stone."
+
+"Linda seems very busy tonight," said Eileen. "Perhaps we are bothering
+her."
+
+"Yes," said John, "we'll go at once. I had to run up to tell our good
+news; and I wanted to tell you too, Linda dear, that I think both of us
+misjudged Eileen the other day. You know, Linda, you have always dressed
+according to your father's ideas, which were so much simpler and plainer
+than the manner in which your mother dressed Eileen, that she merely
+thought that you wished to continue in his way. She had no objection to
+your having any kind of clothes you chose, if only you had confided in
+her, and explained to her what you wanted."
+
+Linda stood beside her table, one lean hand holding down the letter she
+had been writing. She stood very still, but she was powerless to raise
+her eyes to the face of either John or Eileen. Above everything she did
+not wish to go any further in revealing Eileen to John Gilman. If he
+knew what he knew and if he felt satisfied, after what he had seen, with
+any explanation that Eileen could trump up to offer, Linda had no desire
+to carry the matter further. She had been ashamed of what she already
+had done. She had felt angry and dissatisfied with herself, so she stood
+before them downcast and silent.
+
+"And it certainly was a great joke on both of us," said John jovially,
+"what we thought about that box of cigarettes, you know. They were a
+prize given by a bridge club at an 'Ambassador' benefit for the Good
+Samaritan Hospital. Eileen, the little card shark she is, won it, and
+she was keeping it hidden away there to use as a gift for my birthday.
+Since we disclosed her plans prematurely, she gave it to me at once, and
+I'm having a great time treating all my friends."
+
+At that instant Linda experienced a revulsion. Previously she had not
+been able to raise her eyes. Now it would have been quite impossible to
+avoid looking straight into Eileen's face. But Eileen had no intention
+of meeting anyone's gaze at that minute. She was fidgeting with a sheet
+of drawing paper.
+
+"Careful you don't bend that," cautioned Linda. Then she looked at
+John Gilman. He BELIEVED what he was saying; he was happy again. Linda
+evolved the best smile she could.
+
+"How stupid of us not to have guessed!" she said.
+
+Closing the door behind them, Linda leaned against it and looked up
+through the skylight at the creep blue of the night, the low-hung stars.
+How long she stood there she did not know. Presently she went to her
+chair, picked up her pencil, and slowly began to draw. At first she
+scarcely realized what she was doing, then she became absorbed in
+her work. Then she reached for her color box and brushes, and shortly
+afterward tacked against the wall an extremely clever drawing of a
+greatly enlarged wasp. Skillfully she had sketched a face that was
+recognizable round the big insect eyes. She had surmounted the face by
+a fluff of bejewelled yellow curls, encased the hind legs upon which the
+creature stood upright in pink velvet Turkish trousers and put tiny gold
+shoes on the feet. She greatly exaggerated the wings into long trails
+and made them of green gauze with ruffled edges. All the remainder of
+the legs she had transformed into so many braceleted arms, each holding
+a tiny fan, or a necklace, a jewel box, or a handkerchief of lace. She
+stood before this sketch, studying it for a few minutes, then she walked
+over to the table and came back with a big black pencil. Steadying her
+hand with a mahl stick rested against the wall, with one short sharp
+stroke she drew a needle-pointed stinger, so screened by the delicate
+wings that it could not be seen unless you scrutinized the picture
+minutely. After that, with careful, interested hands she brought out
+Peter Morrison's drawings and replaced them on the wall to dry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. The Cap Sheaf
+
+Toward the last of the week Linda began to clear the mental decks of her
+ship of life in order that she might have Saturday free for her promised
+day with Donald. She had decided that they would devote that day to
+wave-beaten Laguna. It was a long drive but delightful. It ran over the
+old King's Highway between miles of orange and lemon orchards in full
+flower, bordered by other miles of roses in their prime.
+
+Every minute when her mind was not actively occupied with her lessons
+or her recipes Linda was dreaming of the King's Highway. Almost
+unconsciously she began to chant:
+
+"All in the golden weather, forth let us ride today, You and I together
+on the King's Highway, The blue skies above us, and below the shining
+sea; There's many a road to travel, but it's this road for me."
+
+You must have ridden this road with an understanding heart and the
+arm of God around you to know the exact degree of disappointment that
+swelled in Linda's heart when she answered the telephone early Saturday
+morning and heard Donald Whiting's strained voice speaking into it. He
+was talking breathlessly in eager, boyish fashion.
+
+"Linda, I am in a garage halfway downtown," he was saying, "and it looks
+to me as if to save my soul I couldn't reach you before noon. I have had
+the darnedest luck. Our Jap got sick last week and he sent a new man
+to take his place. There wasn't a thing the matter with our car when
+I drove it in Friday night. This morning Father wanted to use it on
+important business, and it wouldn't run. He ordered me to tinker it
+up enough to get it to the shop. I went at it and when it would go,
+I started You can imagine the clip I was going, and the thing went to
+pieces. I don't know yet how it comes that I saved my skin. I'm pretty
+badly knocked out, but I'll get there by noon if it's a possible thing."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Linda, fervently hoping that the ache in
+her throat would not tincture her voice.
+
+It was half-past eleven when Donald came. Linda could not bring herself
+to give up the sea that day. She found it impossible to drive the King's
+Highway. It seemed equally impossible not to look on the face of the
+ocean, so she compromised by skirting Santa Monica Bay, and taking the
+foothill road she ran it to the north end of the beach drive. When they
+had spread their blankets on the sand, finished their lunch and were
+resting, Linda began to question Donald about what had happened. She
+wanted to know how long Whitings' gardener had been in their employ;
+if they knew where he lived and about his family; if they knew who his
+friends were, or anything concerning him. She inquired about the man
+who had taken his place, and wanted most particularly to know what the
+garage men had found the trouble with a car that ran perfectly on
+Friday night and broke down in half a dozen different places on Saturday
+morning. Finally Donald looked at her, laughingly quizzical.
+
+"Linda," he said, "you're no nerve specialist and no naturalist. You're
+the cross examiner for the plaintiff. What are you trying to get at?
+Make out a case against Yogo Sani?"
+
+"Of course it's all right," said Linda, watching a distant pelican turn
+head down and catapult into the sea. "It has to be all right, but you
+must admit that it looks peculiar. How have you been getting along this
+week?"
+
+Donald waved his hand in the direction of a formation of stone the size
+of a small house.
+
+"Been rolling that to the top of the mountain," he said lightly. Linda's
+eyes narrowed, her face grew speculative. She looked at Donald intently.
+
+"Is it as difficult as that?" she asked in a lowered voice as if the
+surf and the sea chickens might hear.
+
+"It is just as difficult as that," said Donald. "While you're talking
+about peculiar things, I'll tell you one. In class I came right up
+against Oka Sayye on the solution of a theorem in trigonometry. We both
+had the answer, the correct answer, but we had arrived at it by widely
+different routes, and it was up to me to prove that my line of reasoning
+was more lucid, more natural, the inevitable one by which the solution
+should be reached. We got so in earnest that I am afraid both of us were
+rather tense. I stepped over to his demonstration to point out where I
+thought his reasoning was wrong. I got closer to the Jap than I had ever
+been before; and by gracious, Linda! scattered, but nevertheless still
+there, and visible, I saw a sprinkling of gray hairs just in front of
+and over his ears. It caught me unawares, and before I knew what I was
+doing, before the professor and the assembled classroom I blurted it
+out: 'Say, Oka Sayye, how old are you?' If the Jap had had any way of
+killing me, I believe he would have done it. There was a look in his
+eyes that was what I would call deadly. It was only a flash and then,
+very courteously, putting me in the wrong, of course, he remarked that
+he was 'almost ninekleen'; and it struck me from his look and the way he
+said it that it was a lie. If he truly was the average age of the rest
+of the class there was nothing for him to be angry about. Then I did
+take a deliberate survey. From the settled solidity of his frame and the
+shape of his hands and the skin of his face and the set of his eyes in
+his head, I couldn't see that much youth. I'll bet he's thirty if he's a
+day, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he has graduated at the most
+worthwhile university in Japan, before he ever came to this country to
+get his English for nothing."
+
+Linda was watching a sea swallow now, and slowly her lean fingers were
+gathering handfuls of sand and sifting them into a little pyramid she
+was heaping beside her. Again almost under her breath she spoke.
+
+"Donald, do you really believe that?" she asked. "Is it possible that
+mature Jap men are coming here and entering our schools and availing
+themselves of the benefits that the taxpayers of California provide for
+their children?"
+
+"Didn't you know it?" asked Donald. "I hadn't thought of it in
+connection with Oka Sayye, but I do know cases where mature Japs have
+been in grade schools with children under ten."
+
+"Oh, Donald!" exclaimed Linda. "If California is permitting that or ever
+has permitted it, we're too easy. We deserve to become their prey if we
+are so careless."
+
+"Why, I know it's true," said Donald. "I have been in the same classes
+with men more than old enough to be my father."
+
+"I never was," said Linda, industriously sifting sand. "I have been
+in classes with Japs ever since I have been at school, but it was with
+girls and boys of our gardeners and fruit dealers and curio-shop people,
+and they were always of my age and entitled to be in school, since our
+system includes the education of anybody who happens to be in California
+and wants to go to school."
+
+"Did my being late spoil any particular plan you had made, Linda?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "it did."
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry!" cried Donald. "I certainly shall try to see that it
+doesn't occur again. Could we do it next Saturday?"
+
+"I am hoping so," said Linda.
+
+"I told Dad," said Donald, "where I wanted to go and what I wanted to
+do, and he was awfully sorry but he said it was business and it would
+take only a few minutes and he thought I could do it and be on time. If
+he had known I would be detained I don't believe he would have asked it
+of me. He's a grand old peter, Linda."
+
+
+
+"Yes, I know," said Linda. "There's not much you can tell me about
+peters of the grand sort, the real, true flesh-and-blood, bighearted,
+human-being fathers, who will take you to the fields and the woods and
+take the time to teach you what God made and how He made it and why
+He made it and what we can do with it, and of the fellowship and
+brotherhood we can get from Nature by being real kin. The one thing that
+I have had that was the biggest thing in all this world was one of these
+real fathers."
+
+Donald watched as she raised the pyramid higher and higher.
+
+"Did you tell your father whom you were to go with?" she asked.
+
+"Sure I did," said Donald. "Told the whole family at dinner last night.
+Told 'em about all the things I was learning, from where to get soap
+off the bushes to the best spot for material for wooden legs or
+instantaneous relief for snake bite."
+
+"What did they say?" Linda inquired laughingly.
+
+"Unanimously in favour of continuing the course," he said. "I had
+already told Father about you when I asked him for books and any help
+that he could give me with Oka Sayye. Since I had mentioned you last
+night he told Mother and Louise about that, and they told me to bring
+you to the house some time. All of them are crazy to know you. Mother
+says she is just wild to know whether a girl who wears boots and
+breeches and who knows canyons and the desert and the mountains as you
+do can be a feminine and lovable person."
+
+"If I told her how many friends I have, she could have speedily decided
+whether I am lovable or not," said Linda; "but I would make an effort to
+convince her that I am strictly feminine."
+
+"You would convince her of that without making the slightest effort.
+You're infinitely more feminine than any other girl I have ever known."
+
+"How do you figure that?" asked Linda.
+
+"Well," said Donald, "it's a queer thing about you, Linda. I take
+any liberty I pretty nearly please with most of the girls I have been
+associated with. I tie their shoes and pull their hair--down if I want
+to--and hand them round 'most any way the notion takes me, and they just
+laugh and take the same liberties with me, which proves that I am pretty
+much a girl with them or they are pretty much boys with me. But it
+wouldn't occur to me to touch your hair or your shoe lace or the tips of
+your fingers; which proves that you're more feminine than any other
+girl I know, because if you were not I would be treating you more like
+another boy. I thought, the first day we were together, that you were
+like a boy, and I said so, and I thought it because you did not tease me
+and flirt with me, but since I have come to know you better, you're less
+like a boy than any other girl I ever have known."
+
+"Don't get psychological, Donald," said Linda. "Go on with the Jap. I
+haven't got an answer yet to what I really want to know. Have you made
+the least progress this week? Can you beat him?"
+
+Donald hesitated, studying over the answer.
+
+"Beat him at that trig proposition the other day," he said. "Got an
+open commendation before the class. There's not a professor in any of my
+classes who isn't 'hep' to what I'm after by this time, and if I would
+cajole them a little they would naturally be on my side, especially if
+their attention were called to that incident of yesterday; but you said
+I have to beat him with my brains, by doing better work than he does; so
+about the biggest thing I can honestly tell you is that I have held my
+own. I have only been ahead of him once this week, but I haven't failed
+in anything that he has accomplished. I have been able to put some
+additional touches to some work that he has done for which he used to be
+marked A which means your One Hundred. Double A which means your plus
+I made in one instance. And you needn't think that Oka Sayye does not
+realize what I am up to as well as any of the rest of the class, and you
+needn't think that he is not going to give me a run for my brain. All
+I've got will be needed before we finish this term."
+
+"I see," said Linda, slowly nodding her head.
+
+"I wish," said Donald, "that we had started this thing two years ago, or
+better still, four. But of course you were not in the high school four
+years ago and there wasn't a girl in my class or among my friends who
+cared whether I beat the Jap or not. They greatly preferred that I take
+them motoring or to a dance or a picture show or a beach party. You're
+the only one except Mother and Louise who ever inspired me to get down
+to business."
+
+Linda laid her palm on the top of the sand heap and pressed it flat. She
+looked at Donald with laughing eyes.
+
+"Symbolical," she announced. "That sand was the Jap." She stretched her
+hand toward him. "That was you. Did you see yourself squash him?"
+
+Donald's laugh was grim.
+
+"Yes, I saw," he said. "I wish it were as easy as that."
+
+"That was not easy," said Linda; "make a mental computation of all the
+seconds that it took me to erect that pyramid and all the millions of
+grains of sand I had to gather."
+
+Donald was deeply thoughtful, yet a half smile was playing round his
+lips.
+
+"Of all the queer girls I ever knew, you're the cap sheaf, Linda," he
+said.
+
+Linda rose slowly, shook the sand from her breeches and stretched out
+her hand.
+
+"Let's hotfoot it down to the African village and see what the movies
+are doing that is interesting today," she proposed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. Shifting the Responsibility
+
+On her pillow that night before dropping to almost instantaneous sleep
+Linda reflected that if you could not ride the King's Highway, racing
+the sands of Santa Monica was a very excellent substitute. It had been
+a wonderful day after all. When she had left Donald at the Lilac Valley
+end of the car line he had held her hand tight an instant and looked
+into her face with the most engaging of clear, boyish smiles.
+
+"Linda, isn't our friendship the nicest thing that ever happened to us?"
+he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Linda promptly, "quite the nicest. Make your plans for
+all day long next Saturday."
+
+"I'll be here before the birds are awake," promised Donald.
+
+At the close of Monday's sessions, going down the broad walk from the
+high school, Donald overtook Linda and in a breathless whisper he said:
+"What do you think? I came near Oka Sayye again this morning in trig,
+and his hair was as black as jet, dyed to a midnight, charcoal finish,
+and I am not right sure that he had not borrowed some girl's lipstick
+and rouge pot for the benefit of his lips and cheeks. Positively he's
+hectically youthful today. What do you know about that?"
+
+Then he hurried on to overtake the crowd of boys he had left, Linda's
+heart was racing in her breast.
+
+Turning, she re-entered the school building, and taking a telephone
+directory she hunted an address, and then, instead of going to the
+car line that took her to Lilac Valley she went to the address she had
+looked up. With a pencil she wrote a few lines on a bit of scratch paper
+in one of her books. That note opened a door and admitted her to the
+presence of a tall, lean, gray-haired man with quick, blue-gray eyes and
+lips that seemed capable of being either grave or gay on short notice.
+With that perfect ease which Linda had acquired through the young days
+of her life in meeting friends of her father, she went to the table
+beside which this man was standing and stretched out her hand.
+
+"Judge Whiting?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," said the Judge.
+
+"I am Linda Strong, the younger daughter of Alexander Strong. I think
+you knew my father."
+
+"Yes," said the Judge, "I knew him very well indeed, and I have some
+small acquaintance with his daughter through very interesting reports
+that my son brings home."
+
+"Yes, it is about Donald that I came to see you," said Linda.
+
+If she had been watching as her father would have watched, Linda would
+have seen the slight uplift of the Judge's figure, the tensing of his
+muscles, the narrowing of his eyes in the swift, speculative look he
+passed over her from the crown of her bare, roughened black head down
+the gold-brown of her dress to her slender, well-shod feet. The last
+part of that glance Linda caught. She slightly lifted one of the feet
+under inspection, thrust it forward and looked at the Judge with a gay
+challenge in her dark eyes.
+
+"Are you interested in them too?" she asked.
+
+The Judge was embarrassed. A flush crept into his cheeks. He was
+supposed to be master of any emergency that might arise, but one had
+arisen in connection with a slip of a schoolgirl that left him wordless.
+
+"It is very probable," said Linda, "that if my shoes had been like
+most other girls' shoes I wouldn't be here today. I was in the same
+schoolroom with your son for three years, and he never saw me or spoke
+to me until one day he stopped me to inquire why I wore the kind of
+shoes I did. He said he had a battle to wage with me because I tried to
+be a law to myself, and he wanted to know why I wasn't like other girls.
+And I told him I had a crow to pick with HIM because he had the kind of
+brain that would be content to let a Jap beat him in his own school,
+in his own language and in his own country; so we made an engagement to
+fight to a finish, and it ended by his becoming the only boy friend I
+have and the nicest boy friend a girl ever had, I am very sure. That's
+why I'm here."
+
+Linda lifted her eyes and Judge Whiting looked into them till he saw the
+same gold lights in their depths that Peter Morrison had seen. He came
+around the table and placed a big leather chair for Linda. Then he went
+back and resumed his own.
+
+"Of course," said the Judge in his most engaging manner. "I gather from
+what Donald has told me that you have a reason for being here, and I
+want you to understand that I am intensely interested in anything you
+have to say to me. Now tell me why you came."
+
+"I came," said Linda, "because I started something and am afraid of the
+possible result. I think very likely if, in retaliation for what Donald
+said to me about my hair and my shoes, I had not twitted him about the
+use he was making of his brain and done everything in my power to drive
+him into competition with Oka Sayye in the hope that a white man would
+graduate with the highest honors, he would not have gone into this
+competition, which I am now certain has antagonized Oka Sayye."
+
+Linda folded her slim hands on the table and leaned forward.
+
+"Judge Whiting," she said earnestly, "I know very little about men. The
+most I know was what I learned about my father and the men with whom he
+occasionally hunted and fished. They were all such fine men that I must
+have grown up thinking that every man was very like them, but one day I
+came in direct contact with the Jap that Donald is trying to beat, and
+the thing I saw in his face put fear into my heart and it has been there
+ever since. I have almost an unreasoning fear of that Jap, not because
+he has said anything or done anything. It's just instinctive. I may be
+wholly wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time, but there
+are two things I wanted to tell you. I could have told Donald, but if
+I did and his mind went off at a tangent thinking of these things he
+wouldn't be nearly so likely to be in condition to give his best thought
+to his studies. If I really made him see what I think I have seen,
+and fear what I know I fear, he might fail where I would give almost
+anything to see him succeed; so I thought I would come to you and tell
+you about it and ask you please to think it over, and to take extra care
+of him, because I really believe that he may be in danger; and if he is
+I never shall be able to rid myself of a sense of responsibility."
+
+"I see," said Judge Whiting. "Now tell me, just as explicitly as you
+have told me this, exactly what it is that you fear."
+
+"Last Saturday," said Linda, "Donald told me that while standing at the
+board beside Oka Sayye, demonstrating a theorem, he noticed that there
+were gray hairs above the Jap's ears, and he bluntly asked him, before
+the professor and the class, how old he was. In telling me, he said he
+had the feeling that if the Jap could have done so in that instant, he
+would have killed him. He said he was nineteen, but Donald says from the
+matured lines of his body, from his hands and his face and his hair,
+he is certain that he is thirty or more, and he thinks it very probable
+that he may have graduated at home before he came here to get his
+English for nothing from our public schools. I never before had the fact
+called to my attention that this was being done, but Donald told me that
+he had been in classes with matured men when he was less than ten years
+of age. That is not fair, Judge Whiting; it is not right. There should
+be an age specified above which people may not be allowed to attend
+public school."
+
+"I quite agree with you," said the Judge. "That has been done in the
+grades, but there is nothing fair in bringing a boy under twenty in
+competition with a man graduated from the institutions of another
+country, even in the high schools. If this be the case--"
+
+"You can be certain that it is," said Linda, "because Donald whispered
+to me as he passed me half an hour ago, coming from the school building,
+that TODAY Oka Sayye's hair is a uniform, shining black, and he
+also thought that he had used a lipstick and rouge in an effort at
+rejuvenation. Do you think, from your knowledge of Donald, that he would
+imagine that?"
+
+"No," said Judge Whiting, "I don't think such a thing would occur to him
+unless he saw it."
+
+"Neither do I," said Linda. "From the short acquaintance I have with him
+I should not call him at all imaginative, but he is extremely quick and
+wonderfully retentive. You have to show him but once from which cactus
+he can get Victrola needles and fishing hooks, or where to find material
+for wooden legs."
+
+The Judge laughed. "Doesn't prove much," he said. "You wouldn't have
+to show me that more than once either. If anyone were giving me an
+intensive course on such interesting subjects, I would guarantee to
+remember, even at my age."
+
+Linda nodded in acquiescence. "Then you can regard it as quite certain,"
+she said, "that Oka Sayye is making up in an effort to appear younger
+than he is which means that he doesn't want his right questioned to be
+in our schools, to absorb the things that we are taught, to learn our
+language, our government, our institutions, our ideals, our approximate
+strength and our only-too-apparent weakness."
+
+The Judge leaned forward and waited attentively.
+
+"The other matter," said Linda, "was relative to Saturday. There may not
+be a thing in it, but sometimes a woman's intuition proves truer than
+what a man thinks he sees and knows. I haven't SEEN a thing, and I don't
+KNOW a thing, but I don't believe your gardener was sick last week.
+I believe he had a dirty job he wanted done and preferred to save his
+position and avoid risks by getting some other Jap who had no family
+and no interests here, to do it for him. I don't BELIEVE that your car,
+having run all right Friday night, was shot to pieces Saturday morning
+so that Donald went smash with it in a manner that might very easily
+have killed him, or sent him to the hospital for months, while Oka Sayye
+carried off the honors without competition I want to ask you to find out
+whether your regular gardener truly was ill, whether he has a family and
+interests to protect here, or whether he is a man who could disappear in
+a night as Japs who have leased land and have families cannot. I want
+to know about the man who took your gardener's place, and I want the man
+who is repairing your car interviewed very carefully as to what he found
+the trouble with it."
+
+Linda paused. Judge Whiting sat in deep thought, then he looked at
+Linda.
+
+"I see," he said at last. "Thank you very much for coming to me. All
+these things and anything that develops from them shall be handled
+carefully. Of course you know that Donald is my only son and you can
+realize what he is to me and to his mother and sister."
+
+"It is because I do realize that," said Linda, "that I am here. I
+appreciate his friendship, but it is not for my own interests that I am
+asking to have him taken care of while he wages his mental war with this
+Jap. I want Donald to have the victory, but I want it to be a victory
+that will be an inspiration to any boy of white blood among any of our
+allies or among peoples who should be our allies. There's a showdown
+coming between the white race and a mighty aggregation of colored
+peoples one of these days, and if the white man doesn't realize pretty
+soon that his supremacy is not only going to be contested but may be
+lost, it just simply will be lost; that is all there is to it."
+
+The Judge was studying deeply now. Finally he said: "Young lady, I
+greatly appreciate your coming to me. There may be NOTHING in what you
+fear. It MIGHT be a matter of national importance. In any event, it
+shows that your heart is in the right place. May Mrs. Whiting and I pay
+you a visit some day soon in your home?"
+
+"Of course," said Linda simply. "I told Donald to bring his mother the
+first time he came, but he said he did not need to be chaperoned when he
+came to see me, because my father's name was a guarantee to his mother
+that my home would be a proper place for him to visit."
+
+"I wonder how many of his other girl friends invited him to bring his
+mother to see them," said the Judge.
+
+"Oh, he probably grew up with the other girls and was acquainted with
+them from tiny things," said Linda.
+
+"Very likely," conceded the Judge. "I think, after all, I would rather
+have an invitation to make one of those trips with you to the desert or
+the mountains. Is there anything else as interesting as fish hooks and
+Victrola needles and wooden legs to be learned?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Linda, leaning farther forward, a lovely color sweeping
+up into her cheeks, her eyes a-shine. She had missed the fact that the
+Judge was jesting. She had thought him in sober, scientific earnest.
+
+"It's an awfully nice thing if you dig a plant or soil your hands in
+hunting, or anything like that, to know that there are four or five
+different kinds of vegetable soap where you can easily reach them, if
+you know them. If you lose your way or have a long tramp, it's good to
+know which plants will give you drink and where they are. And if you're
+short of implements, you might at any time need a mescal stick, or an
+arrow shaft or an arrow, even. If Donald were lost now, he could keep
+alive for days, because he would know what wood would make him a bow and
+how he could take amole fiber and braid a bow string and where he could
+make arrows and arrow points so that he could shoot game for food. I've
+taught him to make a number of snares, and he knows where to find and
+how to cook his greens and potatoes and onions and where to find his
+pickles and how to make lemonade and tea, and what to use for snake
+bite. It's been such fun, Judge Whiting, and he has been so interested."
+
+"Yes, I should think he would be," said the Judge. "I am interested
+myself. If you would take an old boy like me on a few of those trips, I
+would be immensely pleased."
+
+"You'd like brigand beefsteak," suggested Linda, "and you'd like cress
+salad, and I am sure you'd like creamed yucca."
+
+"Hm," said the Judge. "Sounds to me like Jane Meredith."
+
+Linda suddenly sat straight. A dazed expression crossed her face.
+Presently she recovered.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," she said, "what a great criminal judge knows
+about Jane Meredith?"
+
+"Why, I hear my wife and daughter talking about her," said the Judge.
+
+"I wonder," said Linda, "if a judge hears so many secrets that he
+forgets what a secret is and couldn't possibly keep one to save his
+life."
+
+"On the other hand," said Judge Whiting, "a judge hears so many secrets
+that he learns to be a very secretive person himself, and if a young
+lady just your size and so like you in every way as to be you, told me
+anything and told me that it was a secret, I would guarantee to carry it
+with me to my grave, if I said I would."
+
+One of Linda's special laughs floated out of the windows. Her right hand
+slipped across the table toward the Judge.
+
+"Cross your heart and body?" she challenged.
+
+The Judge took the hand she offered in both of his own.
+
+"On my soul," he said, "I swear it."
+
+"All right," bubbled Linda. "Judge Whiting, allow me to present to
+you Jane Meredith, the author and originator of the Aboriginal Cookery
+articles now running in Everybody's Home."
+
+Linda stood up as she made the presentation and the Judge arose with
+her. When she bowed her dark head before him the Judge bowed equally as
+low, then he took the hand he held and pressed it against his lips.
+
+"I am not surprised," he said. "I am honored, deeply honored, and I am
+delighted. For a high school girl that is a splendid achievement."
+
+"But you realize, of course," said Linda, "that it is vicarious. I
+really haven't done anything. I am just passing on to the world what
+Alexander Strong found it interesting to teach his daughter, because he
+hadn't a son."
+
+"I certainly am fortunate that my son is getting the benefit of this,"
+said Judge Whiting earnestly. "There are girls who make my old-fashioned
+soul shudder, but I shall rest in great comfort whenever I know that my
+boy is with you."
+
+"Sure!" laughed Linda. "I'm not vamping him. I don't know the first
+principles. We're not doing a thing worse than sucking 'hunters' rock
+leek' or roasting Indian potatoes or fishing for trout with cactus
+spines. I have had such a lovely time I don't believe that I'll
+apologize for coming. But you won't waste a minute in making sure about
+Oka Sayye?"
+
+"I won't waste a minute," said the Judge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. The End of Marian's Contest
+
+Coming from school a few days later on an evening when she had been
+detained, Linda found a radiant Katy awaiting her.
+
+"What's up, old dear?" cried Linda. "You seem positively illumined."
+
+"So be," said Katy. "It's a good time I'm havin'. In the first place the
+previous boss of this place ain't nowise so bossy as sue used to be, an'
+livin' with her is a dale aisier. An' then, when Miss Eileen is around
+these days, she is beginning to see things, and she is just black with
+jealousy of ye. Something funny happened here the afternoon, an' she
+was home for once an' got the full benefit of it. I was swapin' the aist
+walk, but I know she was inside the window an' I know she heard. First,
+comes a great big loaded automobile drivin' up, and stopped in front
+with a flourish an' out hops as nice an' nate a lookin' lad as ever you
+clapped your eyes on, an' up he comes to me an' off goes his hat with a
+swape, an' he hands me that bundle an' he says: 'Here's something Miss
+Linda is wantin' bad for her wild garden.'"
+
+Katy handed Linda a bundle of newspaper, inside which, wrapped in a
+man's handkerchief, she found several plants, carefully lifted, the
+roots properly balled, the heads erect, crisp, although in full flower.
+
+"Oh, Katy!" cried Linda. "Look, it's Gallito, 'little rooster'!" "Now
+ain't them jist yellow violets?" asked Katy dubiously.
+
+"No," said Linda, "they are not. They are quite a bit rarer. They are
+really a wild pansy. Bring water, Katy, and help me."
+
+"But I've something else for ye," said Katy.
+
+"I don't care what you have," answered Linda. "I am just compelled to
+park these little roosters at once."
+
+"What makes ye call them that ungodly name?" asked Katy.
+
+"Nothing ungodly about it," answered Linda. "It's funny. Gallito is the
+Spanish name for these violets, and it means 'little rooster.'"
+
+Linda set the violets as carefully as they had been lifted and rinsed
+her hands at the hydrant.
+
+"Now bring on the remainder of the exhibit," she ordered.
+
+"It's there on the top of the rock pile, which you notice has incrased
+since ye last saw it."
+
+"So it has!" said Linda. "So it has! And beautifully colored specimens
+those are too. My fern bed will lift up its voice and rejoice in them.
+And rocks mean Henry Anderson. The box I do not understand."
+
+Linda picked it up, untied the string, and slipped off the wrapping.
+Katy stared in wide-mouthed amazement.
+
+"I was just tickled over that because Miss Eileen saw a good-looking and
+capable young man leave a second package, right on the heels of young
+Whiting," she said. "Whatever have ye got, lambie? What does that mean?"
+
+Linda held up a beautiful box of glass, inside of which could be seen
+swarming specimens of every bug, beetle, insect, and worm that Henry
+Anderson had been able to collect in Heaven only knew what hours of
+search. Linda opened the box. The winged creatures flew, the bettles
+tumbled, the worms went over the top. She set it on the ground and
+laughed to exhaustion. Her eyes were wet as she looked up at Katy.
+
+"That first night Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison were here to dinner,
+Katy," she said, "Anderson made a joke about being my bug-catcher when
+I built my home nest, and several times since he has tried to be silly
+about it, but the last time I told him it was foolishness to which I
+would listen no more, so instead of talking, he has taken this way of
+telling me that he is fairly expert as a bug-catcher. Really, it is
+awfully funny, Katy."
+
+Katy was sober. She showed no appreciation of the fun.
+
+"Ye know, lambie," she said, her hands on her hips, her elbows
+wide-spread, her jaws argumentative, "I've done some blarneying with
+that lad, an' I've fed him some, because he was doin' things that would
+help an' please ye, but now I'm tellin' ye, just like I'll be tellin' ye
+till I die, I ain't STRONG for him. If ever the day comes when ye ask me
+to take on that Whiting kid for me boss, I'll bow my head an' I'll fly
+at his bidding, because he is real, he's goin' to come out a man lots
+like your pa, or hisn. An' if ever the day comes when ye will be telling
+me ye want me to serve Pater Morrison, I'll well nigh get on my knees
+to him. I think he'd be the closest we'd ever come to gettin' the master
+back. But I couldn't say I'd ever take to Anderson. They's something
+about him, I can't just say what, but he puts me back up amazin'."
+
+"Don't worry, ancient custodian of the family," said Linda. "That same
+something in Henry Anderson that antagonizes you, affects me in even
+stronger degree. You must not get the foolish notion that any man has a
+speculative eye on me, because it is not true. Donald Whiting is only a
+boy friend, treating me as a brother would, and Peter Morrison is much
+too sophisticated and mature to pay any serious attention to a girl
+with a year more high school before her. I want to be decent to Henry
+Anderson, because he is Peter's architect, and I'm deeply interested in
+Peter's house and the lady who will live in it. Sometimes I hope it will
+be Donald's sister, Mary Louise. Anyway, I am going to get acquainted
+with her and make it my business to see that she and Peter get their
+chance to know each other well. My job for Peter is to help run his
+brook at the proper angle, build his bridge, engineer his road, and
+plant his grounds; so don't be dreaming any foolish dreams, Katy."
+
+Katy folded her arms, tilted her chin at an unusually aspiring angle,
+and deliberately sniffed.
+
+"Don't ye be lettin' yourself belave your own foolishness," she said. "I
+ain't done with me exhibit yet. On the hall table ye will find a package
+from the Pater Morrison man that Miss Eileen had the joy of takin'
+in and layin' aside for ye, an atop of it rists a big letter that I'm
+thinkin' might mean Miss Marian."
+
+"Oh," cried Linda. "Why are you wasting all this time? If there is a
+letter from Marian it may mean that the competition is decided; but if
+it is, she loses, because she was to telegraph if she won."
+
+Linda rushed into the house and carried her belongings to her workroom.
+She dropped them on the table and looked at them.
+
+"I'll get you off my mind first," she said to the Morrison package,
+which enclosed a new article entitled "How to Grow Good Citizens." With
+it was a scrawled line, "I'm leaving the head and heels of the future to
+you."
+
+"How fine!" exulted Linda. "He must have liked the head and tail pieces
+I drew for his other article, so he wants the same for this, and if he
+is well paid for his article, maybe in time, after I've settled for my
+hearth motto, he will pay me something for my work. Gal-lum-shus!"
+
+As she opened the letter from Marian she slowly shook her head.
+
+"Drat the luck," she muttered, "no good news here."
+
+Slowly and absorbedly she read:
+
+DEAREST LINDA:
+
+No telegram to send. I grazed the first prize and missed the second
+because Henry Anderson wins with plans so like mine that they are
+practically duplicates. I have not seen the winning plans. Mr. Snow told
+me as gently as he could that the judges had ruled me out entirely. The
+winning plans are practically a reversal of mine, more professionally
+drawn, and no doubt the specifications are far ahead of mine, as these
+are my weak spot, although I have worked all day and far into the night
+on the mathematics of house building. Mr. Snow was very kind, and
+terribly cut up about it. I made what I hope was a brave fight, I did so
+believe in those plans that I am afraid to say just how greatly
+disappointed I am. All I can do is to go to work again and try to find
+out how to better my best, which I surely put into the plans I
+submitted. I can't see how Henry Anderson came to hit upon some of my
+personal designs for comforts and conveniences. I had hoped that no man
+would think of my especial kitchen plans. I rather fancied myself as a
+benefactor to my sex, an emancipator from drudgery, as it were. I had a
+concealed feeling that it required a woman who had expended her strength
+combating the construction of a devilish kitchen, to devise some of my
+built-in conveniences, and I worked as carefully on my kitchen table, as
+on any part of the house. If I find later that the winning plans include
+these things I shall believe that Henry Anderson is a mind reader, or
+that lost plans naturally gravitate to him. But there is no use to
+grouch further. I seem to be born a loser. Anyway, I haven't lost you
+and I still have Dana Meade.
+
+I have nothing else to tell you except that Mr. Snow has waited for me
+two evenings out of the week ever since I wrote you, and he has taken
+me in his car and simply forced me to drive him for an hour over what
+appeals to me to be the most difficult roads he could select. So far
+I have not balked at anything but he has had the consideration not to
+direct me to the mountains. He is extremely attractive, Linda, and I do
+enjoy being with him, but I dread it too, because his grief is so deep
+and so apparent that it constantly keeps before me the loss of my own
+dear ones, and those things to which the hymn books refer as "aching
+voids" in my own life.
+
+But there is something you will be glad to hear. That unknown
+correspondent of mine is still sending letters, and I am crazy about
+them. I don't answer one now until I have mulled over it two or three
+days and I try to give him as good as he sends.
+
+I judge from your letters that you are keeping at least even with
+Eileen, and that life is much happier for you. You seem to be
+broadening. I am so glad for the friendship you have formed with Donald
+Whiting. My mother and Mrs. Whiting were friends. She is a charming
+woman and it has seemed to me that in her daughter Louise she has
+managed a happy compound of old-fashioned straightforwardness and
+unswerving principle, festooned with happy trimmings of all that is best
+in the present days. I hope that you do become acquainted with her. She
+is older than you, but she is the kind of girl I know you would like.
+
+Don't worry because I have lost again, Linda dear. Today is my blue
+day. Tomorrow I shall roll up my sleeves and go at it again with all my
+might, and by and by it is written in the books that things will come
+right for me. They cannot go wrong for ever. With dearest love,
+
+MARIAN.
+
+Linda looked grim as she finished the letter.
+
+"Confound such luck," she said emphatically. "I do not understand
+it. How can a man like Henry Anderson know more about comforts and
+conveniences in a home than a woman with Marian's experience and
+comprehension? And she has been gaining experience for the past ten
+years. That partner of his must be a six-cylinder miracle."
+
+Linda went to the kitchen, because she was in pressing need of someone
+to whom to tell her troubles, and there was no one except Katy. What
+Katy said was energetic and emphatic, but it comforted Linda, because
+she agreed with it and what she was seeking at the minute was someone
+who agreed with her. As she went back upstairs, she met Eileen on her
+way to the front door. Eileen paused and deliberately studied Linda's
+face, and Linda stopped and waited quietly until she chose to speak.
+
+"I presume," said Eileen at last, "that you and Katy would call the
+process through which you are going right now, 'taking the bit in your
+teeth,' or some poetic thing like that, but I can't see that you are
+getting much out of it. I don't hear the old laugh or the clatter of
+gay feet as I did before all this war of dissatisfaction broke out. This
+minute if you haven't either cried, or wanted to, I miss my guess."
+
+"You win," said Linda. "I have not cried, because I make it a rule never
+to resort to tears when I can help it; so what you see now is unshed
+tears in my heart. They in no way relate to what you so aptly term my
+'war of dissatisfaction'; they are for Marian. She has lost again, this
+time the Nicholson and Snow prize in architecture."
+
+"Serves her right," said Eileen, laughing contemptuously. "The
+ridiculous idea of her trying to compete in a man's age-old occupation!
+As if she ever could learn enough about joists and beams and girders and
+installing water and gas and electricity to build a house. She should
+have had the sense to know she couldn't do it."
+
+"But," said Linda quietly, "Marian wasn't proposing to be a contractor,
+she only wants to be an architect. And the man who beat her is Peter
+Morrison's architect, Henry Anderson, and he won by such a narrow margin
+that her plans were thrown out of second and third place, because they
+were so very similar to his. Doesn't that strike you as curious?"
+
+"That is more than curious," said Eileen slowly. "That is a very strange
+coincidence. They couldn't have had anything from each other, because
+they only met at dinner, before all of us, and Marian went away the next
+morning; it does seem queer." Then she added with a flash of generosity
+and justice, "It looks pretty good for Marian, at that. If she came so
+near winning that she lost second and third because she was too near
+first to make any practical difference, I must be wrong and she must be
+right."
+
+"You are wrong," said Linda tersely, "if you think Marian cannot
+make wonderful plans for houses. But going back to what my 'war of
+dissatisfaction' is doing to me, it's a pale affair compared with what
+it is doing to you, Eileen. You look a debilitated silhouette of the
+near recent past. Do you feel that badly about giving up a little money
+and authority?"
+
+"I never professed to have the slightest authority over you," said
+Eileen very primly, as she drew back in the shadows. "You have come and
+gone exactly as you pleased. All I ever tried to do was to keep up a
+decent appearance before the neighbors and make financial ends meet."
+
+"That never seemed to wear on you as something seems to do now," said
+Linda. "I am thankful that this week ends it. I was looking for you
+because I wanted to tell you to be sure not to make any date that
+will keep you from meeting me at the office of the president of the
+Consolidated Bank Thursday afternoon. I am going to arrange with John
+to be there and it shouldn't take fifteen minutes to run through matters
+and divide the income in a fair way between us. I am willing for you to
+go on paying the bills and ordering for the house as you have been."
+
+"Certainly you are," sneered Eileen. "You are quite willing for all the
+work and use the greater part of my time to make you comfortable."
+
+Linda suddenly drew back. Her body seemed to recoil, but her head thrust
+forward as if to bring her eyes in better range to read Eileen's face.
+
+"That is utterly unjust, Eileen," she cried.
+
+Then two at a time she rushed the stairs in a race for her room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. The Day of Jubilee
+
+Linda started to school half an hour earlier Wednesday morning because
+that was the day for her weekly trip to the Post Office for any mail
+which might have come to her under the name of Jane Meredith. She had
+hard work to keep down her color when she recognized the heavy gray
+envelope used by the editor of Everybody's Home. As she turned from the
+window with it in her fingers she was trembling slightly and wondering
+whether she could have a minute's seclusion to face the answer which her
+last letter might have brought. There was a small alcove beside a public
+desk at one side of the room. Linda stepped into this, tore open the
+envelope and slipped out the sheet it contained. Dazedly she stared at
+the slip that fell from it. Slowly the color left her cheeks and then
+came rushing back from her surcharged heart until her very ears were
+red, because that slip was very manifestly a cheque for five hundred
+dollars. Mentally and physically Linda shook herself, then she
+straightened to full height, tensing her muscles and holding the sheet
+before her with a hand on each side to keep it from shaking, while she
+read:
+
+MY DEAR MADAM:
+
+I sincerely apologize for having waited so long before writing you of
+the very exceptional reception which your articles have had. I think one
+half their attraction has been the exquisite and appealing pictures you
+have sent for their illustration. At the present minute they are forming
+what I consider the most unique feature in the magazine. I am enclosing
+you a cheque for five hundred dollars as an initial payment on the
+series. Just what the completed series should be worth I am unable to
+say until you inform me how many months you can keep it up at the same
+grade of culinary and literary interest and attractive illustration; but
+I should say at a rough estimate that you would be safe in counting upon
+a repetition of this cheque for every three articles you send in. This
+of course includes payment for the pictures also, which are to me if
+anything more attractive than the recipes, since the local color and
+environment they add to the recipe and the word sketch are valuable in
+the extreme.
+
+If you feel that you can continue this to the extent of even a small
+volume, I shall be delighted to send you a book contract. In considering
+this proposition, let me say that if you could not produce enough
+recipes to fill a book, you could piece it out to the necessary length
+most charmingly and attractively by lengthening the descriptions of the
+environment in which the particular fruits and vegetables you deal with
+are to be found; and in book form you might allow yourself much greater
+latitude in the instructions concerning the handling of the fruits
+and the preparation of the recipes. I think myself that a wonderfully
+attractive book could be made from this material, and hope that you will
+agree with me. Trusting that this will be satisfactory to you and that
+you will seriously consider the book proposition before you decline it,
+I remain, my dear madam, Very truly yours,
+
+HUGH THOMPSON,
+
+Editor, Everybody's Home.
+
+Gripping the cheque and the letter, Linda lurched forward against the
+window casement and shut her eyes tight, because she could feel big,
+nervous gulps of exultation and rejoicing swelling up in her throat. She
+shifted the papers to one hand and surreptitiously slipped the other to
+her pocket. She tried to keep the papers before her and looked straight
+from the window to avoid attracting attention. The tumult of exultation
+in her heart was so wild that she did not surely know whether she wanted
+to sink to the floor, lay her face against the glass, and indulge in
+what for generations women have referred to as "a good cry," or whether
+she wanted to leap from the window and sport on the wind like a driven
+leaf.
+
+Then she returned the letter and cheque to the envelope, and slipped it
+inside her blouse, and started on her way to school. She might as well
+have gone to Multiflores Canyon and pitted her strength against climbing
+its walls for the day, for all the good she did in her school work.
+She heard no word of any recitation by her schoolmates. She had no word
+ready when called on for a recitation herself. She heard nothing that
+was said by any of the professors. On winged feet she was flying back
+and forth from the desert to the mountains, from the canyons to the sea.
+She was raiding beds of amass and devising ways to roast the bulbs and
+make a new dish. She was compounding drinks from mescal and bisnaga. She
+was hunting desert pickles and trying to remember whether Indian rhubarb
+ever grew so far south. She was glad when the dismissal hour came that
+afternoon. With eager feet she went straight to the Consolidated Bank
+and there she asked again to be admitted to the office of the president.
+Mr. Worthington rose as she came in.
+
+"Am I wrong in my dates?" he inquired. "I was not expecting you until
+tomorrow."
+
+"No, you're quite right," said Linda. "At this hour tomorrow. But, Mr.
+Worthington, I am in trouble again."
+
+Linda looked so distressed that the banker pushed a chair to the table's
+side for her, and when she had seated herself, he said quietly: "Tell me
+all about it, Linda. We must get life straightened out as best we can."
+
+"I think I must tell you all about it," said Linda, "because I know just
+enough about banking to know that I have a proposition that I don't
+know how to handle. Are bankers like father confessors and doctors and
+lawyers?"
+
+"I think they are even more so," laughed Mr. Worthington. "Perhaps the
+father confessor takes precedence, otherwise I believe people are quite
+as much interested in their financial secrets as in anything else in all
+this world. Have you a financial secret?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I have what is to me a big secret, and I don't in
+the least know how to handle it, so right away I thought about you and
+that you would be the one to tell me what I could do."
+
+"Go ahead," said Mr. Worthington kindly. "I'll give you my word of honor
+to keep any secret you confide to me."
+
+Linda produced her letter. She opened it and without any preliminaries
+handed it and the cheque to the banker. He looked at the cheque
+speculatively, and then laid it aside and read the letter. He gave every
+evidence of having read parts of it two or three times, then he examined
+the cheque again, and glanced at Linda.
+
+"And just how did you come into possession of this, young lady?" he
+inquired. "And what is it that you want of me?"
+
+"Why, don't you see?" said Linda. "It's my letter and my cheque; I'm
+'Jane Meredith.' Now how am I going to get my money."
+
+For one dazed moment Mr. Worthington studied Linda; then he threw back
+his head and laughed unrestrainedly. He came around the table and took
+both Linda's hands.
+
+"Bully for you!" he cried exultantly. "How I wish your father could see
+the seed he has sown bearing its fruit. Isn't that fine? And do you want
+to go on with this anonymously?"
+
+"I think I must," said Linda. "I have said in my heart that no Jap, male
+or female, young or old, shall take first honors in a class from which
+I graduate; and you can see that if people generally knew this, it would
+make it awfully hard for me to go on with my studies, and I don't know
+that the editor who is accepting this work would take it if he knew
+it were sent him by a high-school Junior. You see the dignified way in
+which he addresses me as 'madam'?"
+
+"I see," said Mr. Worthington reflectively.
+
+"I'm sure," said Linda with demure lips, though the eyes above them
+were blazing and dancing at high tension, "I'm sure that the editor
+is attaching a husband, and a house having a well-ordered kitchen, and
+rather wide culinary experience to that 'dear madam.'"
+
+"And what about this book proposition?" asked the banker gravely. "That
+would be a big thing for a girl of your age. Can you do it, and continue
+your school work?"
+
+"With the background I have, with the unused material I have, and with
+vacation coming before long, I can do it easily," said Linda. "My school
+work is not difficult for me. It only requires concentration for about
+two hours in the preparation that each day brings. The remainder of the
+time I could give to amplifying and producing new recipes."
+
+"I see," said the banker. "So you have resolved, Linda, that you don't
+want your editor to know your real name."
+
+"Could scarcely be done," said Linda.
+
+"But have you stopped to think," said the banker, "that you will be
+asked for personal history and about your residence, and no doubt a
+photograph of yourself. If you continue this work anonymously you're
+going to have trouble with more matters than cashing a cheque."
+
+"But I am not going to have any trouble cashing a cheque," she said,
+"because I have come straight to the man whose business is cheques."
+
+"True enough," he said; "I SHALL have to arrange the cheque; there's not
+a doubt about that; and as for your other bugbears."
+
+"I refuse to be frightened by them," interposed Linda.
+
+"Have you ever done any business at the bank?"
+
+"No," said Linda.
+
+"None of the clerks know you?"
+
+"Not that I remember," said Linda. "I might possibly be acquainted with
+some of them. I have merely passed through the bank on my way to your
+room twice."
+
+"Then," said the banker, "we'll have to risk it. After this estate
+business is settled you will want to open an account in your name."
+
+"Quite true," said Linda.
+
+"Then I would advise you," said Mr. Worthington, "to open this account
+in your own name. Endorse this cheque 'Jane Meredith' and make it
+payable to me personally. Whenever one of these comes, bring it to me
+and I'll take care of it for you. One minute."
+
+He left Linda sitting quietly reading and rereading her letter, and
+presently returned and laid a sheaf of paper money before her.
+
+"Take it to the paying teller. Tell him that you wish to deposit it, and
+ask him to give you a bank book and a cheque book," he said. "Thank you
+very much for coming to me and for confiding in me."
+
+Linda gathered up the money, and said good-bye to the banker. Just as
+she started forward she recognized Eileen at the window of the paying
+teller. It was an Eileen she never before had seen. Her face was
+strained to a ghastly gray. Her hat was not straight and her hands were
+shaking. Without realizing that she was doing it, Linda stepped behind
+one of the huge marble pillars supporting the ceiling and stood there
+breathlessly, watching Eileen. She could gather that she was discussing
+the bank ledger which lay before the teller and that he was refusing
+something that Eileen was imploring him to do. Linda thought she
+understood what it was. Then very clearly Eileen's voice, sharp and
+strained, reached her ears.
+
+"You mean that you are refusing to pay me my deposits on my private
+account?" she cried; and Linda could also hear the response.
+
+"I am very sorry if it annoys or inconveniences you, Miss Strong, but
+since the settlement of the estate takes place tomorrow, our orders are
+to pay out no funds in any way connected with the estate until after
+that settlement has been arranged."
+
+"But this is my money, my own private affair," begged Eileen. "The
+estate has nothing to do with it."
+
+"I am sorry," repeated the teller. "If that is the case, you will have
+no difficulty in establishing the fact in a few minutes' time."
+
+Eileen turned and left the bank, and it seemed that she was almost
+swaying. Linda stood a second with narrowed eyes, in deep thought.
+
+"I think," she said at last, deep down in her heart, "that it looks
+precious much as if there had been a bit of transgression in this
+affair. It looks, too, as if 'the way of the transgressor' were a darned
+hard way. Straight ahead open and aboveboard for you, my girl!"
+
+Then she went quietly to the desk and transacted her own business;
+but her beautiful day was clouded. Her heart was no longer leaping
+exultantly. She was sickened and sorrowful over the evident nerve strain
+and discomfort which Eileen seemed to have brought upon herself. She
+dreaded meeting her at dinner that night, and she wondered all the way
+home where Eileen had gone from the bank and what she had been doing.
+What she felt was a pale affair compared with what she would have felt
+if she could have seen Eileen leave the bank and enter a near-by
+store, go to a telephone booth and put in a long-distance call for San
+Francisco. Her eyes were brilliant, her cheeks by nature redder than
+the rouge she had used upon them. She squared her shoulders, lifted
+her head, as if she irrevocably had made a decision and would not be
+thwarted in acting upon it. While she waited she straightened her hat,
+and tucked up her pretty hair, once more evincing concern about her
+appearance. After a nervous wait she secured her party.
+
+"Am I speaking with Mr. James Heitman?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," came the answer.
+
+"Well, Uncle Jim, this is Eileen."
+
+"Why, hello, girlie," was the quick response. "Delighted that you're
+calling your ancient uncle. Haven't changed the decision in the last
+letter I had from you, have you?"
+
+"Yes," said Eileen, "I have changed it. Do you and Aunt Caroline still
+want me, Uncle Jim?"
+
+"YOU BET WE WANT YOU!" roared the voice over the 'phone. "Here we are,
+with plenty of money and not a relation on earth but you to leave it to.
+You belong to us by rights. We'd be tickled to death to have you, and
+for you to have what's left of the money when we get through with it.
+May I come after you? Say the word, and I'll start this minute."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Jim, could you? Would you?" cried Eileen.
+
+"Well, I'd say I could. We'd be tickled to death, I tell you!"
+
+"How long would it take you to get here?" said Eileen.
+
+"Well, I could reach you by noon tomorrow. Eleven something is the
+shortest time it's been made in; that would give me thirteen--more than
+enough. Are you in that much of a hurry?"
+
+"Yes," gasped Eileen, "yes, I am in the biggest kind of a hurry there
+is, Uncle Jim. This troublesome little estate has to be settled tomorrow
+afternoon. There's going to be complaint about everything that I have
+seen fit to do. I've been hounded and harassed till I am disgusted with
+it. Then I've promised to marry John Gilman as I wrote you, and I don't
+believe you would think that was my best chance with the opportunities
+you could give me. It seems foolish to stay here, abused as I have been
+lately, and as I will be tomorrow. You have the house number. If you
+come and get me out of it by noon tomorrow, I'll go with you. You may
+take out those adoption papers you have always entreated me to agree to
+and I'll be a daughter that you can be proud of. It will be a relief to
+have some real money and some real position, and to breathe freely and
+be myself once more."
+
+"All right for you, girlie!" bellowed the great voice over the line.
+"Pick up any little personal bits you can put in a suitcase, and by
+twelve o'clock tomorrow I'll whisk you right out of that damn mess."
+
+Eileen walked from the telephone booth with her head high, triumph
+written all over her face and figure. They were going to humiliate her.
+She would show them!
+
+She went home immediately. Entering her room, she closed the door and
+stood looking at her possessions. How could she get her trunk from the
+garret? How could she get it to the station? Would it be possible for
+Uncle James to take it in his car? As she pondered these things Eileen
+had a dim memory of a day in her childhood when her mother had gone on
+business to San Francisco and had taken her along. She remembered a
+huge house, all turrets and towers and gables, all turns and twists
+and angles, closed to the light of day and glowing inside with shining
+artificial lights. She remembered stumbling over deep rugs. One vivid
+impression was of walls covered with huge canvases, some of them having
+frames more than a foot wide. She remembered knights in armor, and big
+fireplaces, and huge urns and vases. It seemed to her like the most
+wonderful bazaar she ever had been in. She remembered, too, that she had
+been glad when her mother had taken her out into the sunshine again and
+from the presence of two ponderous people who had objected strongly to
+everything her mother had discussed with them. She paused one instant,
+contemplating this picture. The look of triumph on her face toned down
+considerably. Then she comforted herself aloud.
+
+"I've heard Mother say," she said softly, "that everybody overdid things
+and did not know how to be graceful with immense fortunes got from
+silver and gold mines, and lumber. It will be different now. Probably
+they don't live in the same house, even. There is a small army of
+servants, and there is nothing I can think of that Uncle Jim won't
+gladly get me. I've been too big a fool for words to live this way as
+long as I have. Crush me, will they? I'll show them! I won't even touch
+these things I have strained so to get."
+
+Eileen jerked from her throat the strand of pearls that she had worn
+continuously for four years and threw it contemptuously on her dressing
+table.
+
+"I'll make Uncle Jim get me a rope with two or three strands in it that
+will reach to my waist. 'A suitcase!' I don't know what I would fill a
+suitcase with from here. The trunk may stay in the garret, and while I
+am leaving all this rubbish, I'll just leave John Gilman with it. Uncle
+Jim will give me an income that will buy all the cigarettes I want
+without having to deceive anyone; and I can have money if I want to
+stake something at bridge without being scared into paralysis for fear
+somebody may find it out or the accounts won't balance. I'll put on the
+most suitable thing I have to travel in, and just walk out and leave
+everything else."
+
+That was what Eileen did. At noon the next day her eyes were bright with
+nervousness. Her cheeks alternately paled with fear and flooded red with
+anxiety. She had dressed herself carefully, laid out her hat and gloves
+and a heavy coat in case the night should be chilly. Once she stood
+looking at the dainty, brightly colored dresses hanging in her wardrobe
+A flash of regret passed over her face.
+
+"Tawdry little cheap things and makeshifts," she said. "If Linda feels
+that she has been so terribly defrauded, she can help herself now!"
+
+By twelve o'clock she found herself standing at the window, straining
+her eyes down Lilac Valley. She was not looking at its helpful hills,
+at its appealing curves, at its brilliant colors. She was watching the
+roadway. When Katy rang to call her to lunch, she told her to put the
+things away; she was expecting people who would take her out to lunch
+presently. In the past years she had occasionally written to her uncle.
+Several times when he had had business in Los Angeles she had met him at
+his hotel and dined with him. She reasoned that he would come straight
+to the house and get her, and then they would go to one of the big
+hotels for lunch before they started.
+
+"I shan't feel like myself," said Eileen, "until we are well on the way
+to San Francisco."
+
+At one o'clock she was walking the floor. At two she was almost frantic.
+At half past she almost wished that she had had the good sense to have
+some lunch, since she was very hungry and under tense nerve strain. Once
+she paused before the glass, but what she saw frightened her. Just when
+she felt that she could not endure the strain another minute, grinding
+brakes, the blast of a huge Klaxon, and the sound of a great voice arose
+from the street. Eileen rushed to the window. She took one look, caught
+up the suitcase and raced down the stairs. At the door she met a bluff,
+big man, gross from head to foot. It seemed to Eileen strange that she
+could see in him even a trace of her mother, and yet she could. Red
+veins crossed his cheeks and glowed on his nose. His tired eyes
+were watery; his thick lips had an inclination to sag; but there was
+heartiness in his voice and earnestness in the manner in which he picked
+her up.
+
+"What have they been doing to you down here?" he demanded. "Never should
+have left you this long. Ought to have come down and taken you and
+showed you what you wanted, and then you would have known whether you
+wanted it or not."
+
+At this juncture a huge woman, gross in a feminine way as her husband
+was in his, paddled up the walk.
+
+"I'm comin' in and rest a few minutes," she said. "I'm tired to death
+and I'm pounded to pieces."
+
+Her husband turned toward her. He opened his lips to introduce Eileen.
+His wife forestalled him.
+
+"So this is the Eileen you have been ravin' about for years," she said.
+"I thought you said she was a pretty girl."
+
+Eileen's soul knew one sick instant of recoil. She looked from James
+Heitman to Caroline, his wife, and remembered that he had a habit
+of calling her "Callie." All that paint and powder and lipstick and
+brilliantine could do to make the ponderous, big woman more ghastly had
+been done, but in the rush of the long ride through which her husband
+had forced her, the colors had mixed and slipped, the false waves were
+displaced. She was not in any condition to criticize the appearance
+of another woman. For one second Eileen hesitated, then she lifted her
+shaking hands to her hat.
+
+"I have been hounded out of my senses," she said apologetically, "and
+have been so terribly anxious for fear you wouldn't get here on time.
+Please, Aunt Caroline, let us go to a hotel, some place where we can
+straighten up comfortably."
+
+"Well, what's your hurry?" said Aunt Caroline coolly. "You're not a
+fugitive from justice, are you? Can't a body rest a few minutes and have
+a drink, even? Besides, I am going to see what kind of a place you've
+been living in, and then I'll know how thankful you'll be for what we
+got to offer."
+
+Eileen turned and threw open the door. The big woman walked in. She
+looked down the hall, up the stairway, and went on to the living room.
+She gave it one contemptuous glance, and turning, came back to the door.
+
+"All right, Jim," she said brusquely. "I have seen enough. If you know
+the best hotel in the town, take me there. And then, if Eileen's in such
+a hurry, after we have had a bite we'll start for home."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Caroline, oh, thank you!" cried Eileen.
+
+"You needn't take the trouble to 'aunt' me every time you speak to me,"
+said the lady. "I know you're my niece, but I ain't goin' to remind you
+of it every time I speak to you. It's agein', this 'auntie' business.
+I don't stand for it, and as for a name, I am free to confess I always
+like the way Jim calls me 'Callie.' That sounds younger and more
+companionable than 'Caroline.'"
+
+James Heitman looked at Eileen and winked.
+
+"You just bet, old girl!" he said. "They ain't any of them can beat
+you, not even Eileen at her best. Let's get her out of here. Does this
+represent your luggage, girlie?"
+
+"You said not to bother with anything else," said Eileen.
+
+"So I did," said Uncle Jim, "and I meant just what I said if it's all
+right with you. I suppose I did have, in the back of my head, an idea
+that there might be a trunk or a box--some things that belonged to your
+mother, mebby, and your 'keepsakes.'"
+
+"Oh, never mind," interrupted Eileen. "Do let's go. It's nearly four
+o'clock. Any minute they may send for me from the bank, and I'd be more
+than glad to be out of the way."
+
+"Well, I'm not accustomed to being the porter, but if time's that
+precious, here we go," said Uncle Jim.
+
+He picked up the suitcase with one hand and took his wife's arm with the
+other.
+
+"Scoot down there and climb into that boat," he said proudly to Eileen.
+"We'll have a good dinner in a private room when we get to the hotel. I
+won't even register. And then we'll get out of here when we have rested
+a little."
+
+"Can't we stay all night and go in the morning?" panted his wife.
+
+"No, ma'am, we can't," said James Heitman authoritatively. "We'll eat
+a bite because we need to be fed up, and I sincerely hope they's some
+decent grub to be had in this burg. The first place we come to outside
+of here, that looks like they had a decent bed, we'll stop and make up
+for last night. But we ain't a-goin' to stay here if Eileen wants us to
+start right away, eh, Eileen?"
+
+"Yes, please!" panted Eileen. "I just don't want to meet any of them.
+It's time enough for them to know what has happened after I am gone."
+
+"All right then," said Uncle James. "Pile in and we'll go."
+
+So Eileen started on the road to the unlimited wealth her soul had
+always craved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. Linda's First Party
+
+At the bank Linda and John Gilman waited an hour past the time set for
+Eileen's appearance. Then Linda asserted herself.
+
+"I have had a feeling for some time," she said quietly, "that Eileen
+would not appear today, and if she doesn't see fit to come, there is no
+particular reason why she should. There is nothing to do but go over
+the revenue from the estate. The books will show what Eileen has drawn
+monthly for her expense budget. That can be set aside and the remainder
+divided equally between us. It's very simple. Here is a letter I wrote
+to the publishers of Father's books asking about royalties. I haven't
+even opened it. I will turn it in with the remainder of the business."
+
+They were in the office with the president of the bank. He rang for the
+clerk he wanted and the books he required, and an hour's rapid figuring
+settled the entire matter, with the exception of the private account,
+amounting to several thousands, standing in Eileen's name. None of them
+knew any source of separate income she might have. At a suggestion from
+Linda, the paying teller was called in and asked if he could account for
+any of the funds that had gone into the private account.
+
+"Not definitely," he said, "but the amounts always corresponded
+exactly with the royalties from the books. I strongly suspect that they
+constitute this private account of Miss Eileen's."
+
+But he did not say that she had tried to draw it the day previous.
+
+John Gilman made the suggestion that they should let the matter rest
+until Eileen explained about it. Then Linda spoke very quietly, but with
+considerable finality in her tone.
+
+"No," she said, "I know that Eileen HAD no source of private income.
+Mother used to mention that she had some wealthy relatives in San
+Francisco, but they didn't approve of her marriage to what they called
+a 'poor doctor,' and she would never accept, or allow us to accept,
+anything from them. They never came to see us and we never went to see
+them. Eileen knows no more about them than I do. We will work upon the
+supposition that everything that is here belonged to Father. Set aside
+to Eileen's credit the usual amount for housekeeping expenses. Turn the
+private account in with the remainder. Start two new bank books, one for
+Eileen and one for me. Divide the surplus each month exactly in halves.
+And I believe this is the proper time for the bank to turn over to me
+a certain key, specified by my father as having been left in your
+possession to be delivered to me on my coming of age."
+
+With the key in her possession, Linda and John Gilman left the bank. As
+they stood for a moment in front of the building, Gilman removed his hat
+and ran his hands through his hair as if it were irritating his head.
+
+"Linda," he said in a deeply wistful tone, "I don't understand this. Why
+shouldn't Eileen have come today as she agreed? What is there about this
+that is not according to law and honor and the plain, simple rights of
+the case?"
+
+"I don't know," said Linda; "but there is something we don't understand
+about it. And I am going to ask you, John, as my guardian, closing up my
+affairs today, to go home with me to be present when I open the little
+hidden door I found at the back of a library shelf when I was disposing
+of Daddy's technical books. There was a slip of paper at the edge of it
+specifying that the key was in possession of the Consolidated Bank and
+was to be delivered to me, in the event of Daddy's passing, on my coming
+of age. I have the key, but I would like to have you with me, and Eileen
+if she is in the house, when I open that door. I don't know what is
+behind it, but there's a certain feeling that always has been strong in
+my heart and it never was so strong as it is at this minute."
+
+So they boarded the street car and ran out to Lilac Valley. When Katy
+admitted them Linda put her arm around her and kissed her. She could see
+that the house was freshly swept and beautifully decorated with flowers,
+and her trained nostrils could scent whiffs of delicious odors from
+food of which she was specially fond. In all her world Katy was the one
+person who was celebrating her birthday. She seemed rather surprised
+when Linda and Gilman came in together.
+
+"Where is Eileen?" inquired Linda.
+
+"She must have made some new friends," said Katy. "About four o'clock,
+the biggest car that ever roared down this street rolled up, and the
+biggest man and woman that I ever see came puffin' and pantin' in. Miss
+Eileen did not tell me where she was goin' or when she would be back,
+but I know it won't be the night, because she took her little dressin'
+case with her. Belike it's another of them trips to Riverside or
+Pasadena."
+
+"Very likely," said Linda quietly. "Katy, can you spare a few minutes?"
+
+"No, lambie, I jist can't," said Katy, "because a young person that's
+the apple of me eye is havin' a birthday the day and I have got me
+custard cake in the oven and the custard is in the makin', and after
+Miss Eileen went and I didn't see no chance for nothin' special, I
+jist happened to look out, one of the ways ye do things unbeknownst
+to yourself, and there stood Mr. Pater Morrison moonin' over the
+'graveyard,' like he called it, and it was lookin' like seein' graves he
+was, and I jist took the bull by the horns, and I sings out to him and
+I says: 'Mr. Pater Morrison, it's a good friend ye were to the young
+missus when ye engineered her skylight and her beautiful fireplace, and
+this bein' her birthday, I'm takin' the liberty to ask ye to come to
+dinner and help me celebrate.' And he said he would run up to the garage
+and get into his raygimentals, whatever them might be, and he would be
+here at six o'clock. So ye got a guest for dinner, and if the custard's
+scorched and the cake's flat, it's up to ye for kapin' me here to tell
+ye all this."
+
+Then Katy hurried to the kitchen. Linda looked at John Gilman and
+smiled.
+
+"Isn't that like her?" she said.
+
+Then she led the way to the library, pulled aside the books, fitted the
+key to the little door, and opened it. Inside lay a single envelope,
+sealed and bearing her name. She took the envelope, and walking to her
+father's chair beside his library table, sat down in it, and laying the
+envelope on the table, crossed her hands on top of it.
+
+"John," she said, "ever since I have been big enough to think and reason
+and study things out for myself, there is a feeling I have had--I used
+to think it was unreasonable, then I thought it remote possibility. This
+minute I think it's extremely probable. Before I open this envelope I am
+going to tell you what I believe it contains. I have not the slightest
+evidence except personal conviction, but I believe that the paper inside
+this envelope is written by my father's hand and I believe it tells me
+that he was not Eileen's father and that I am not her sister. If it
+does not say this, then there is nothing in race and blood and inherited
+tendencies."
+
+Linda picked up the paper cutter, ran it across the envelope, slipped
+out the sheet, and bracing herself she read:
+
+MY DARLING LINDA:
+
+These lines are to tell you that your mother went to her eternal sleep
+when you were born. Four years later I met and fell in love with the
+only mother you ever have known. At the time of our marriage we entered
+into a solemn compact that her little daughter by a former marriage and
+mine should be reared as sisters. I was to give half my earnings and to
+do for Eileen exactly as I did for you. She was to give half her love
+and her best attention to your interests.
+
+I sincerely hope that what I have done will not result in any discomfort
+or inconvenience to you.
+
+With dearest love, as ever your father,
+
+ALEXANDER STRONG.
+
+Linda laid the sheet on the table and dropped her hands on top of it.
+Then she looked at John Gilman.
+
+"John," she said, "I believe you had better face the fact that the big
+car and the big people that carried Eileen away today were her mother's
+wealthy relatives from San Francisco. She must have been in touch with
+them. I think very likely she sent for them after I saw her in the bank
+yesterday afternoon, trying with all her might to make the paying teller
+turn over to her the funds of the private account."
+
+John Gilman sat very still for a long time, then he raised tired,
+disappointed eyes to Linda's face.
+
+"Linda," he said, "do you mean you think Eileen was not straight about
+money matters?"
+
+"John," said Linda quietly, "I think it is time for the truth about
+Eileen between you and me. If you want me to answer that question
+candidly, I'll answer it."
+
+"I want the truth," said John Gilman gravely.
+
+"Well," said Linda, "I never knew Eileen to be honest about anything
+in all her life unless the truth served her better than an evasion. Her
+hair was not honest color and it was not honest curl. Her eyebrows were
+not so dark as she made them. Her cheeks and lips were not so red, her
+forehead and throat were not so white, her form was not so perfect. Her
+friends were selected because they could serve her. As long as you were
+poor and struggling, Marian was welcome to you. When you won a great
+case and became prosperous and fame came rapidly, Eileen took you. I
+believe what I told you a minute ago: I think she has gone for good. I
+think she went because she had not been fair and she would not be forced
+to face the fact before you and me and the president of the Consolidated
+today. I think you will have to take your heart home tonight and I think
+that before the night is over you will realize what Marian felt when she
+knew that in addition to having been able to take you from her, Eileen
+was not a woman who would make you happy. I am glad, deeply glad, that
+there is not a drop of her blood in my veins, sorry as I am for you and
+much as I regret what has happened. I won't ask you to stay tonight,
+because you must go through the same black waters Marian breasted, and
+you will want to be alone. Later, if you think of any way I can serve
+you, I will be glad for old sake's sake; but you must not expect me ever
+to love you or respect your judgment as I did before the shadow fell."
+
+Then Linda rose, replaced the letter, turned the key in the lock, and
+quietly slipped out of the room.
+
+When she opened her door and stepped into her room she paused in
+astonishment. Spread out upon the bed lay a dress of georgette with
+little touches of fur and broad ribbons of satin. In color it was
+like the flame of seasoned beechwood. Across the foot of the bed hung
+petticoat, camisole, and hose, and beside the dress a pair of satin
+slippers exactly matching the hose, and they seemed the right size.
+Linda tiptoed to the side of the bed and delicately touched the dress,
+and then she saw a paper lying on the waist front, and picking it up
+read:
+
+Lambie, here's your birthday, from loving old Katy.
+
+The lines were terse and to the point. Linda laid them down, and picking
+up the dress she walked to the mirror, and holding it under her chin
+glanced down the length of its reflection. What she saw almost stunned
+her.
+
+"Oh, good Lord!" she said. "I can't wear that. That isn't me."
+
+Then she tossed the dress on the bed and started in a headlong rush to
+the kitchen. As she came through the door, "You blessed old darling!"
+she cried. "What am I going to say to make you know how I appreciate
+your lovely, lovely gift?"
+
+Katy raised her head. There was something that is supposed to be the
+prerogative of royalty in the lift of it. Her smile was complacent in
+the extreme.
+
+"Don't ye be standin' there wastin' no time talkie'," she said.
+
+"I have oodles of time," said Linda, "but I warn you, you won't know me
+if I put on that frock, Katy."
+
+"Yes, I will, too," said Katy.
+
+"Katy," said Linda, sobering suddenly, "would it make any great
+difference to you if I were the only one here for always, after this?"
+
+Katy laughed contemptuously.
+
+"Well, I'd warrant to survive it," she said coolly.
+
+"But that is exactly what I must tell you, Katy," said Linda soberly.
+"You know I have told you a number of times through these years that I
+did not believe Eileen and I were sisters, and I am telling you now that
+I know it. She did not come to the bank today, and the settlement of
+Father's affairs developed the fact that I was my father's child and
+Eileen was her mother's; and I'm thinking, Katy, that the big car
+you saw and the opulent people in it were Eileen's mother's wealthy
+relatives from San Francisco. My guess is, Katy, that Eileen has gone
+with them for good. Lock her door and don't touch her things until we
+know certainly what she wants done with them."
+
+Katy stood thinking intently, then she lifted her eyes to Linda's.
+
+"Lambie," she whispered softly, "are we ixpicted to go into mourning
+over this?"
+
+A mischievous light leaped into Linda's eyes.
+
+"Well, if there are any such expectations abroad, Katherine O'Donovan,"
+she said soberly, "the saints preserve 'em, for we can't fulfill 'em,
+can we, Katy?"
+
+ "Not to be savin' our souls," answered Katy heartily.  "I'm jist
+so glad and thankful that I don't know what to do, and it's such good
+news that I don't belave one word of it. And while you're talkie', what
+about John Gilman?"
+
+"I think," said Linda quietly, "that tonight is going to teach him how
+Marian felt in her blackest hours."
+
+"Well, he needn't be coming to me for sympathy," said Katy. "But if Miss
+Eileen has gone to live with the folks that come after her the day, ye
+might be savin' a wee crap o' sympathy for her, lambie. They was jist
+the kind of people that you'd risk your neck slidin' down a mountain to
+get out of their way."
+
+"That is too bad," said Linda reflectively; "because Eileen is sensitive
+and constant contact with crass vulgarity certainly would wear on her
+nerves."
+
+"Now you be goin' and gettin' into that dress, lambie," said Katy.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan," said Linda, "you're used to it; come again to
+confession. Tell me truly where and how did you get that dress?"
+
+"'Tain't no rule of polite society to be lookin' gift horses in the
+mouth," said Katy proudly. "HOW I got it is me own affair, jist like ye
+got any gifts ye was ever makin' me, is yours. WHERE I got it? I went
+into the city on the strafe car and I went to the biggest store in the
+city and I got in the elevator and I says to the naygur: 'Let me off
+where real ladies buy ready-to-wear dresses.'
+
+"And up comes a little woman, and her hair was jist as soft and curling
+round her ears, and brown and pretty was her eyes, and the pink that
+God made was in her cheeks, and in a voice like runnin' water she says:
+'Could I do anything for you?' I told her what I wanted. And she says:
+'How old is the young lady, and what's her size, and what's her color?'
+Darlin', ain't that dress the answer to what I told her?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda. "If an artist had been selecting a dress for me he
+would probably have chosen that one. But, old dear, it's not suitable
+for me. It's not the kind of dress that I intended to wear for years and
+years yet. Do you think, if I put it on tonight, I'll ever be able to
+go back to boots and breeches again, and hunt the canyons for plants to
+cook for--you know what?"
+
+Katy stood in what is commonly designated as a "brown study." Then she
+looked Linda over piercingly.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," she said conclusively. "It's my judgment that ye will. I
+think ye'll maybe wrap the braids of ye around your head tonight, and I
+think ye'll put on that frock, and I think ye'll show Pater Morrison how
+your pa's daughter can sit at the head of his table and entertain her
+friends. Then I think ye'll hang it in your closet and put on your boots
+and breeches and go back to your old Multiflores and attind to your
+business, the same as before."
+
+"All right, Katy," said Linda, "if you have that much faith in me I have
+that much faith in myself; but, old dear, I can't tell you how I LOVE
+having a pretty dress for tonight. Katy dear, the 'Day of Jubilee' has
+come. Before you go to sleep I'm coming to your room to tell you fine
+large secrets, that you won't believe for a minute, but I haven't the
+time to do it now."
+
+Then Linda raced to her room and began dressing. She let down the mop of
+her hair waving below her waist and looked at it despairingly.
+
+"That dress never was made for braids down your back," she said,
+glancing toward the bed where it lay shimmering in a mass of lovely
+color. "I am of age today; for state occasions I should be a woman. What
+shall I do with it?"
+
+And then she recalled Katy's voice saying: "Braids round your head."
+
+"Of course," said Linda, "that would be the thing to do. I certainly
+don't need anything to add to my height; I am far too tall now."
+
+So she parted her hair in the middle, brushed it back, divided it in
+even halves, and instead of braiding it, she coiled it around her head,
+first one side and then the other.
+
+She slipped into the dress and struggled with its many and intricate
+fastenings. Then she went to the guest room to stand before the
+full-length mirror there. Slowly she turned. Critically she examined
+herself.
+
+"It's a bit shorter than I would have ordered it," she said, "but it
+reduces my height, it certainly gives wonderful freedom in walking, and
+it's not nearly so short as I see other girls wearing."
+
+Again she studied herself critically.
+
+"Need some kind of ornament for my hair," she muttered, "but I haven't
+got it, and neither do I own beads, bracelet, or a ring; and my ears are
+sticking right out in the air. I am almost offensively uncovered."
+
+Then she went down to show herself to a delighted Katy. When the
+doorbell rang Linda turned toward the hall. Katy reached a detaining
+hand.
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort," she said. "I answered the bell for Miss
+Eileen. Answer the bell I shall for you."
+
+Down the hall went Katy with the light of battle in her eyes and the
+air of a conqueror in the carriage of her head. She was well trained.
+Neither eyelid quivered as she flung the door wide to Peter Morrison.
+He stood there in dinner dress, more imposing than Katy had thought he
+could be. With quick, inner exultation she reached for two parcels he
+carried; over them her delight was so overpowering that Peter Morrison
+must have seen a hint of it. With a flourish Katy seated him, and
+carried the packages to Linda. She returned a second later for a big
+vase, and in this Linda arranged a great sheaf of radiant roses. As Katy
+started to carry them back to the room, Linda said "Wait a second," and
+selecting one half opened, she slipped it out, shortened the stem and
+tucked it among the coils of hair where she would have set an ornament.
+The other package was a big box that when opened showed its interior
+to be divided into compartments in each of which nestled an exquisite
+flower made of spun sugar. The petals, buds, and leaves were
+perfect. There were wonderful roses with pale pink outer petals and
+deeper-colored hearts. There were pink mallows that seemed as if they
+must have been cut from the bushes bordering Santa Monica road. There
+were hollyhocks of white and gold, and simply perfect tulips. Linda
+never before had seen such a treasure candy box. She cried out in
+delight, and hurried to show Katy. In her pleasure over the real flowers
+and the candy flowers Linda forgot her dress, but when she saw Peter
+Morrison standing tall and straight, in dinner dress, she stopped and
+looked the surprise and pleasure she felt. She had grown accustomed
+to Peter in khaki pottering around his building. This Peter she never
+before had seen. He represented something of culture, something of
+pride, a conformity to a nice custom and something more. Linda was not a
+psychoanalyst.
+
+She could not see a wonderful aura of exquisite color enveloping Peter.
+But when Peter saw the girl approaching him, transformed into a woman
+whose shining coronet was jewelled with his living red rose, when he saw
+the beauty of her lithe slenderness clothed in a soft, flaming color,
+something emanated from his inner consciousness that Linda did see,
+and for an instant it disturbed her as she went forward holding out her
+hands.
+
+"Peter," she said gaily, "do you know that this is my Day of Jubilee? I
+am a woman today by law, Peter. Hereafter I am to experience at least
+a moderate degree of financial freedom, and that I shall enjoy. But the
+greatest thing in life is friends."
+
+Peter took both the hands extended to him and looked smilingly into her
+eyes.
+
+"You take my breath," he said. "I knew, the first glimpse I ever had
+of you scrambling from the canyon floor, that this transformation COULD
+take place. My good fortune is beyond words that I have been first to
+see it. Permit me, fair lady."
+
+Peter bent and kissed both her hands. He hesitated a second, then he
+turned the right hand and left one more kiss in its palm.
+
+"To have and to hold!" he said whimsically.
+
+"Thank you," said Linda, closing her fist over it and holding it up for
+inspection. "I'll see that it doesn't escape. And this minute I thank
+you for the candy, which I know is delicious, and for my very first
+sheaf of roses from any man. See what I have done with one of them?"
+
+She turned fully around that he might catch the effect of the rose,
+and in getting that he also got the full effect of the costume, and the
+possibilities of the girl before him. And then she gave him a shock.
+
+"Isn't it a lovely frock?" she said. "Another birthday gift from the
+Strong rock of ages. I have been making a collection of rocks for my
+fern bed, and I have got another collection that is not visible to
+anyone save myself. Katy's a rock, and you're a rock, and Donald is a
+rock, and Marian's a rock, and I am resting securely on all of you. I
+wish my father knew that in addition to Marian and Katy I have found two
+more such wonderful friends."
+
+"And what about Henry Anderson?" inquired Peter. "Aren't you going to
+include him?"
+
+Linda walked over to the chair in which she intended to seat herself.
+
+"Peter," she said, "I wish you hadn't asked me that."
+
+Peter's figure tensed suddenly.
+
+"Look here, Linda," he said sternly, "has that rather bold youngster
+made himself in any way offensive to you?"
+
+"Not in any way that I am not perfectly capable of handling myself,"
+said Linda. She looked at Peter confidently.
+
+"Do you suppose," she said, "that I can sit down in this thing without
+ruining it? Shouldn't I really stand up while I am wearing it?"
+
+Peter laughed unrestrainedly.
+
+"Linda, you're simply delicious," he said. "It seems to me that I have
+seen young ladies in like case reach round and gather the sash to one
+side and smooth out the skirt as they sit."
+
+"Thank you, Peter, of course that would be the way," said Linda. "This
+being my first, I'm lacking in experience."
+
+And thereupon she sat according to direction; while Peter sat opposite
+her.
+
+"Now finish. Just one word more about Henry Anderson," he said. "Are you
+perfectly sure there is nothing I need do for you in that connection?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly," said Linda lightly. "I didn't mean to alarm you. He
+merely carried that bug-catcher nonsense a trifle too far. I wouldn't
+have minded humoring him and fooling about it a little. But, Peter, do
+you know him quite well? Are you very sure of him?"
+
+"No," said Peter, "I don't know him well at all. The only thing I am
+sure about him is that he is doing well in his profession. I chose him
+because he was an ambitious youngster and I thought I could get more
+careful attention from him than I could from some of the older fellows
+who had made their reputation. You see, there are such a lot of things I
+want to know about in this building proposition, and the last four years
+haven't been a time for any man to be careful about saving his money."
+
+"Then," said Linda, "he is all right, of course. He must be. But I think
+I'm like a cat. I'm very complacent with certain people, but when I
+begin to get goose flesh and hair prickles my head a bit, I realize that
+there is something antagonistic around, something for me to beware of. I
+guess it's because I am such a wild creature."
+
+"Do you mean to say," said Peter, "that these are the sensations that
+Henry gives you?"
+
+Linda nodded.
+
+"Now forget Henry," she said. "I have had such a big day I must tell
+you about it, and then we'll come to that last article you left me.
+I haven't had time to put anything on paper concerning it yet, but I
+believe I have an awfully good idea in the paint pot, and I'll find time
+in a day or two to work it out. Peter, I have just come from the bank,
+where I was recognized as of legal age, and my guardian discharged. And
+perhaps I ought to explain to you, Peter, that your friend, John Gilman,
+is not here because this night is going to be a bad one for him. When
+you knew him best he was engaged, or should have been, to Marian Thorne.
+When you met him this time he really was engaged to Eileen. I don't
+know what you think about Eileen. I don't feel like influencing anyone's
+thought concerning her, so I'll merely say that today has confirmed a
+conviction that always has been in my heart. Katy could tell you that
+long ago I said to her that I did not believe Eileen was my sister.
+Today has brought me the knowledge and proof positive that she is not,
+and today she has gone to some wealthy relatives of her mother in San
+Francisco. She expressed her contempt for what she was giving up by
+leaving everything, including the exquisite little necklace of pearls
+which has been a daily part of her since she owned them. I may be
+mistaken, but intuition tells me that with the pearls and the wardrobe
+she has also discarded John Gilman. I think your friend will be
+suffering tonight quite as deeply as my friend suffered when John
+abandoned her at a time when she had lost everything else in life but
+her money. I feel very sure that we won't see Eileen any more. I hope
+she will have every lovely thing in life."
+
+"Amen," said Peter Morrison earnestly. "I loved John Gilman when we were
+in school together, but I have not been able to feel, since I located
+here, that he is exactly the same John; and what you have told me very
+probably explains the difference in him."
+
+When Katy announced dinner Linda arose.
+
+Peter Morrison stepped beside her and offered his arm. Linda rested her
+finger tips upon it and he led her to the head of the table and seated
+her. Then Katy served a meal that, if it had been prepared for Eileen,
+she would have described as a banquet. She gave them delicious, finely
+flavored food, stimulating, exquisitely compounded drinks that she had
+concocted from the rich fruits of California and mints and essences at
+her command. When, at the close of the meal, she brought Morrison some
+of the cigars Eileen kept for John Gilman, she set a second tray before
+Linda, and this tray contained two packages. Linda looked at Katy
+inquiringly, and Katy, her face beaming, nodded her sandy red head
+emphatically.
+
+"More birthday gifts you've havin', me lady," she said in her mellowest
+Irish voice.
+
+"More?" marveled Linda. She picked up the larger package, and opening
+it, found a beautiful book inscribed from her friend Donald, over which
+she passed caressing fingers.
+
+"Why, how lovely of him!" she said. "How in this world did he know?"
+
+Katherine O'Donovan could have answered that question, but she did not.
+The other package was from Marian. When she opened it Linda laughed
+unrestrainedly.
+
+"What a joke!" she said. "I had promised myself that I would not touch
+a thing in Eileen's room, and before I could do justice to Katy's lovely
+dress I had to go there for pins for my hair and powder for my nose.
+This is Marian's way of telling me that I am almost a woman. Will you
+look at this?"
+
+"Well, just what is it?" inquired Peter.
+
+"Hairpins," laughed Linda, "and hair ornaments, and a box of face
+powder, and the little, feminine touches that my dressing table needs
+badly. How would you like, Peter, to finish your cigar in my workroom?"
+
+"I would like it immensely," said Peter.
+
+So together they climbed to the top of the house. Linda knelt and made a
+little ceremony of lighting the first fire in her fireplace. She pushed
+one of her chairs to one side for Peter, and taking the other for
+herself, she sat down and began the process of really becoming
+acquainted with him. Two hours later, as he was leaving her, Peter made
+a circuit of the room, scrutinizing the sketches and paintings that were
+rapidly covering the walls, and presently he came to the wasp. He looked
+at it so closely that he did not miss even the stinger. Linda stood
+beside him when he made his first dazed comment: "If that isn't Eileen,
+and true to the life!"
+
+"I must take that down," said Linda. "I did it one night when my heart
+was full of bitterness."
+
+"Better leave it," said Peter drily.
+
+"Do you think I need it as a warning?" asked Linda.
+
+Peter turned and surveyed her slowly.
+
+"Linda," he said quietly, "what I think of you has not yet been written
+in any of the books."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. Buena Moza
+
+As soon as Peter had left her Linda took her box of candy flowers and
+several of her finest roses and went to Katy's room. She found Katy in a
+big rocking chair, her feet on a hassock, reading a story in Everybody's
+home. When her door opened and she saw her young mistress framed in it
+she tossed the magazine aside and sprang to her feet, but Linda made her
+resume her seat. The girl shortened the stems of the roses and put them
+in a vase on Katy's dresser.
+
+"They may clash with your coloring a mite, Mother Machree," she said,
+"but by themselves they are very wonderful things, aren't they?"
+
+Linda went over, and drawing her dress aside, sat down on the hassock
+and leaning against Katy's knee she held up the box of candy flowers for
+amazed and delighted inspection.
+
+"Ah, the foine gintleman!" cried Katy. "Sure 'twas only a pape I had
+when ye opened the box, an' I didn't know how rare them beauties railly
+was."
+
+"Choose the one you like best," said Linda.
+
+But Katy would not touch the delicate things, so Linda selected a brushy
+hollyhock for her and then sat at her knee again.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan," she said solemnly, "it's up to a couple of young
+things such as we are, stranded on the shoals of the Pacific as we have
+been, to put our heads together and take counsel. You're a host, Katy,
+and while I am taking care of you, I'll be just delighted to have you go
+on looking after your black sheep; but it's going to be lonely, for all
+that. After Eileen has taken her personal possessions, what do you
+say to fixing up that room with the belongings that Marian kept, and
+inviting her to make that suite her home until such time as she may have
+a home of her own again?"
+
+"Foine!" cried Katy. "I'd love to be havin' her. I'd agree to take
+orders from Miss Marian and to be takin' care of her jist almost the
+same as I do of ye, Miss Linda. The one thing I don't like about it is
+that it ain't fair nor right to give even Marian the best. Ye be takin'
+that suite yourself, lambie, and give Miss Marian your room all fixed up
+with her things, or, if ye want her nearer, give her the guest room and
+make a guest room of yours."
+
+"I am willing to follow either of the latter suggestions for myself,"
+said Linda; "it might be pleasant to be across the hall from Marian
+where we could call back and forth to each other. I wouldn't mind a
+change as soon as I have time to get what I'd need to make the change.
+I'll take the guest room for mine, and you may call in a decorator and
+have my room freshly done and the guest things moved into it."
+
+Katy looked belligerent. Linda reached up and touched the frowning lines
+on her forehead.
+
+"Brighten your lovely features with a smile, Katherine me dear," she
+said gaily. "Don't be forgetting that this is our Day of Jubilee. We
+are free--I hope we are free forever--from petty annoyances and
+dissatisfactions and little, galling things that sear the soul and bring
+out all the worst in human nature. I couldn't do anything to Eileen's
+suite, not even if I resorted to tearing out partitions and making it
+new from start to finish, that would eliminate Eileen from it for me. If
+Marian will give me permission to move and install her things in it,
+I think she can use it without any such feeling, but I couldn't. It's
+agreed then, Katy, I am to write to Marian and extend to her a welcome
+on your part as well as on mine?"
+
+"That ye may, lambie," said Katy heartily. "And, as the boss used to be
+sabin', just to make assurance doubly sure, if YoU would address it
+for me I would be writing' a bit of a line myself, conveying' to her me
+sentiments on the subject."
+
+"Oh, fine, Katy; Marian would be delighted!" cried Linda, springing up.
+
+"And, Katy dear, it won't make us feel any more like mourning for Eileen
+when I tell you that it developed at the bank yesterday and today, that
+since she has been managing household affairs she has deposited in a
+separate account all the royalties from Father's books. I had thought
+the matter closed at the bank when this fund was added to the remainder
+of the estate, the household expenses set aside to Eileen, and the
+remainder divided equally between us. I didn't get the proof that she
+was not my sister until after I came home. I think it means that I shall
+have to go back to the bank, have the matter reopened, and unless she
+can produce a will or something proving that she is entitled to it, it
+seems to me that what remains of my father's estate is legally mine. Of
+course, if it develops that he has made any special provision for her,
+she shall have it; otherwise, Katy, we'll be in a position to install
+you as housekeeper and put some light-footed, capable young person under
+you for a step-saver in any direction you want to use her. It means,
+too, that I shall be able to repay your loan immediately and to do the
+things that I wanted to do about the house."
+
+"Now I ain't in any hurry about that money, lambie," said Katy; "and you
+understand of course that the dress you're wearing' I am given' ye."
+
+"Of course, old dear, and you should have seen Peter Morrison light up
+and admire it. He thinks you have wonderful taste, Katy."
+
+Katy threw up both her hands.
+
+"Oh, my Lord, lambie!" she cried, aghast. "Was you telling' him that the
+dress ye were wearing' was a present from your old cook?"
+
+"Why, certainly I was," said Linda, wide eyed with astonish meet. "Why
+shouldn't I? I was proud to. And now, old dear, before I go, the biggest
+secret of all. I had a letter, Katy, from the editor of Everybody's
+Home, and people like our articles, Katy; they are something now and
+folk are letting the editor know about it, and he wants all I can send
+him. He likes the pictures I make; and, Katy, you won't believe it till
+I show you my little bank book, but for the three already published
+with their illustrations he pays me five hundred nice, long, smooth,
+beautifully decorated, paper dollars!"
+
+"Judas praste!" cried Katy, her hands once more aloft. "Ye ain't manin'
+it, lambie?"
+
+"Yes, I are," laughed Linda. "I've got the money; and for each
+succeeding three with their pictures I am to have that much more, and
+when I finish--now steady yourself, Katy, because this is going to be a
+shock--when I finish, blessed old dear heart, he is going to make them
+into a book! That will be my job for this summer, and you shall help me,
+and it will be a part of our great secret. Won't it be the most fun?"
+
+"My soul!" said Katy. "You're jist crazy. I don't belave a word you're
+telling' me."
+
+"But I can prove it, because I have the letter and the bank book," said
+Linda.
+
+Katy threw her arms around the girl and kissed the top of her head and
+cried over her and laughed at the same time and patted her and petted
+her and ended by saying: "Oh, lambie, if only the master could be
+knowin' it."
+
+"But he does know, Katy," said Linda.
+
+She went to her room, removed the beautiful dress and, arranging it on
+a hanger, left it in her closet. Slipping into an old dressing gown, she
+ran to her workroom and wrote a letter to Marian from herself. She tried
+not to tell Marian the big, vital thing that was throbbing in her
+heart all day concerning her work, the great secret that meant such
+a wonderful thing to her, the thing that was beating in her heart and
+fluttering behind her lips like a bird trying to escape its cage;
+but she could tell her in detail of Eileen's undoubted removal to San
+Francisco; she could tell her enough of the financial transactions of
+the day to make her understand what had been happening in the past; and
+she could tell of her latest interview with John Gilman. Once, as she
+sat with her pen poised, thinking how to phrase a sentence, Linda said
+to herself: "I wonder in my heart if he won't try to come crawfishing
+back to Marian now, and if he does, I wonder, oh, how I wonder, what she
+will do." Linda shut her lips very tight and stared up through her
+skylight to the stars, as she was fast falling into a habit of doing
+when she wanted inspiration.
+
+"Well, I know one thing," she said to the shining things above her,
+"Marian will do as she sees fit, of course, but if it were I, and any
+man had discarded me as John Gilman discarded Marian, in case he ever
+wanted to pick me up again he would find I was not there. Much as I plan
+in my heart for the home and the man and the little people that I
+hope to have some day, I would give up all of them before I would be
+discarded and re-sought like that; and knowing Marian as I do, I have
+a conviction that she will feel the same way. From the things she is
+writing about this Snow man I think it is highly probable that he may
+awake some day to learn that he is not so deeply grieved but that he
+would like to have Marian to comfort him in his loneliness; and as for
+his little girl I don't see where he could find a woman who would rear
+her more judiciously and beautifully than Marian would."
+
+She finished her letter, sealed and stamped it, and then, taking out
+a fresh sheet, she lettered in at the top of it, "INDIAN POTATOES" and
+continued:
+
+And very good potatoes they are. You will find these growing everywhere
+throughout California, blooming from May to July, their six long,
+slender, white petals shading to gold at the base, grayish on the
+outside, a pollen-laden pistil upstanding, eight or ten gold-clubbed
+stamens surrounding it, the slender brown stem bearing a dozen or more
+of these delicate blooms, springing high from a base of leaves sometimes
+nearly two feet long and an inch broad, wave margined, spreading in a
+circle around it. In the soil of the plains and the dry hillsides you
+will find an amazingly large solid bulb, thickly enwrapped in a coat
+of brown fiber, the long threads of which can be braided, their amazing
+strength making them suitable for bow strings, lariats, or rope of any
+kind that must needs be improvised for use at the moment. The bulbs
+themselves have many uses. Crushed and rubbed up in water they make a
+delightful cleansing lather. The extracted juice, when cooked down, may
+be used as glue. Of the roasted bulbs effective poultices for bruises
+and boils may be made. It was an Indian custom to dam a small stream and
+throw in mashed Amole bulbs, the effect of which was to stupefy the fish
+so that they could be picked out by hand; all of which does not make it
+appear that the same bulb would serve as an excellent substitute for a
+baked potato; but we must remember how our grandmothers made starch from
+our potatoes, used them to break in the new ironware, and to purify the
+lard; which goes to prove that one vegetable may be valuable for
+many purposes. Amole, whose ponderous scientific name is Chlorogalum
+pomeridiarum, is at its best for my purposes when all the chlorophyll
+from flower and stem has been driven back to the bulb, and it lies ripe
+and fully matured from late August until December.
+
+Remove the fibrous cover down to the second or third layer enclosing the
+bulb. These jackets are necessary as they keep the bulbs from drying out
+and having a hard crust. Roast them exactly as you would potatoes. When
+they can easily be pierced with a silver fork remove from the oven,
+and serve immediately with any course with which you would use baked
+potatoes.
+
+"And gee, but they're good!" commented Linda as she reread what she had
+written.
+
+After that she turned her attention to drawing a hillside whitened
+here and there with amole bloom showing in its purity against the warm
+grayish-tan background. The waving green leaves ran among big rocks
+and overlapped surrounding growth. At the right of her drawing Linda
+sketched in a fine specimen of monkey flower, deepening the yellow from
+the hearts of the amole lilies for the almost human little monkey
+faces. On the left one giant specimen of amole, reared from a base of
+exquisitely waving leaves, ran up the side of the drawing and broke into
+an airy and graceful head of gold-hearted white lilies. For a long time
+Linda sat with poised pencil, studying her foreground. What should she
+introduce that would be most typical of the location and gave her the
+desired splash of contrasting color that she used as a distinctive touch
+in the foreground of all her drawings?
+
+Her pencil flew busily a few minutes while she sketched in a flatly
+growing bush of prickly phlox, setting the flower faces as closely
+as the overlapped scales of a fish, setting them even as they grow in
+nature; and when she resorted to the color box she painted these faces
+a wonderful pink that was not wild rose, not cerise, not lilac, but
+it made one think of all of them. When she could make no further
+improvement on this sketch, she carefully stretched it against the wall
+and tacked it up to dry.
+
+Afterward she cleared her mental decks of all the work she could think
+of in order to have Saturday free, because Saturday was the day upon
+which she found herself planning in the back of her mind throughout
+the strenuous week, to save for riding the King's Highway with Donald
+Whiting. Several times she had met him on the walks or in the hallways,
+and always he had stopped to speak with her and several times he had
+referred to the high hope in which he waited for Saturday. Linda already
+had held a consultation with Katy on the subject of the lunch basket.
+That matter being satisfactorily arranged, there was nothing for her
+to do but to double on her work so that Saturday would be free. Friday
+evening Linda was called from the dinner table to the telephone. She
+immediately recognized the voice inquiring for her as that of Judge
+Whiting, and then she listened breathlessly while he said to her: "You
+will recognize that there is very little I may say over a telephone
+concerning a matter to which you brought my attention. I have a very
+competent man looking into the matter thoroughly, and I find that
+your fear is amply justified. Wherever you go or whatever you do, use
+particular care. Don't have anything to do with any stranger. Just use
+what your judgment and common sense tell you is a reasonable degree of
+caution in every direction no matter how trivial. You understand?"
+
+"I do," said Linda promptly. "Would you prefer that we do not go on any
+more Saturday trips at present?"
+
+The length of time that the Judge waited to answer proved that he had
+taken time to think.
+
+"I can't see," he said finally, "that you would not be safer on such a
+trip where you are moving about, where no one knows who you are, than
+you would where you are commonly found."
+
+"All right then," said Linda. "Ask the party we are considering and he
+will tell you where he will be tomorrow. Thank you very much for letting
+me know. If anything should occur, you will understand that it was
+something quite out of my range of fore-sight."
+
+"I understand," said the Judge.
+
+With all care and many loving admonitions Katy assisted in the start
+made early Saturday morning. The previous Saturday Linda had felt that
+all nature along the road she planned to drive would be at its best,
+but they had not gone far until she modified her decision. They were
+slipping through mists of early morning, over level, carefully made
+roads like pavilion floors. If any one objection could have been made,
+it would have been that the mists of night were weighting too heavily to
+earth the perfume from the blooming orchards and millions of flowers in
+gardens and along the roadside. At that hour there were few cars abroad.
+Linda was dressed in her outing suit of dark green. She had removed
+her hat and slipped it on the seat beside her. She looked at Donald, a
+whimsical expression on her most expressive young face.
+
+"Please to 'scuse me," she said lightly, "if I step on the gas a mite
+while we have the road so much to ourselves and are so familiar with
+it. Later, when we reach stranger country and have to share with others,
+we'll be forced to go slower."
+
+"Don't stint your speed on account of me," said Donald. "I am just
+itching to know what Kitty can do."
+
+"All right, here's your chance," said Linda. "Hear her purr?"
+
+She settled her body a trifle tensely, squared her shoulders, and
+gripped the steering wheel. Then she increased the gas and let the Bear
+Cat roll over the smooth road from Lilac Valley running south into
+Los Angeles. At a speed that was near to flying as a non-professional
+attains, the youngsters traveled that road. Their eyes were shining;
+their blood was racing. Until the point where rougher roads and
+approaching traffic forced them to go slower, they raced, and when they
+slowed down they looked at each other and laughed in morning delight.
+
+"I may not be very wise," said Linda, "but didn't I do the smartest
+thing when I let Eileen have the touring car and saved the Bear Cat for
+us?"
+
+"Nothing short of inspiration," said Donald. "The height of my ambition
+is to own a Bear Cat. If Father makes any mention of anything I would
+like particularly to have for a graduation present, I am cocked and
+primed as to what I shall tell him."
+
+"You'd better save yourself a disappointment," said Linda soberly. "You
+will be starting to college this fall, and when you do you will be gone
+nine months out of the year, and I am fairly sure your father wouldn't
+think shipping a Bear Cat back and forth a good investment, or
+furnishing you one to take to school with you. He would fear you would
+never make a grade that would be a credit to him if he did."
+
+"My!" laughed Donald, "you've got a long head on your shoulders!"
+
+"When you're thrown on your own for four of the longest, lonesomest
+years of your life, you learn to think," said Linda soberly.
+
+She was touching the beginning of Los Angeles traffic. Later she was on
+the open road again. The mists were thinning and lifting. The perfume
+was not so heavy. The sheeted whiteness of the orange groves was broken
+with the paler white of plum merging imperceptibly into the delicate
+pink of apricot and the stronger pink of peach, and there were deep
+green orchards of smooth waxen olive foliage and the lacy-leaved
+walnuts. Then came the citrus orchards again, and all the way on either
+hand running with them were almost uninterrupted miles of roses of every
+color and kind, and everywhere homes ranging from friendly mansions, all
+written over in adorable flower color with the happy invitation, "Come
+in and make yourself at home," to tiny bungalows along the wayside
+crying welcome to this gay pair of youngsters in greetings fashioned
+from white and purple wisteria, gold bignonia, every rose the world
+knows, and myriad brilliant annual and perennial flower faces gathered
+from the circumference of the tropical globe and homing enthusiastically
+on the King's Highway. Sometimes Linda lifted her hand from the wheel
+to wave a passing salute to a particularly appealing flower picture.
+Sometimes she whistled a note or cried a greeting to a mockingbird, a
+rosy finch, or a song sparrow.
+
+"Look at the pie timber!" she cried to Donald, calling his attention
+to a lawn almost covered with red-winged blackbirds. "Four hundred and
+twenty might be baked in that pie," she laughed.
+
+Then a subtle change began to creep over the world. The sun peered over
+the mountains inquiringly, a timid young thing, as if she were asking
+what degree of light and warmth they would like for the day. A new
+brilliancy tinged every flower face in this light, a throbbing ecstasy
+mellowed every bird note; the orchards dropped farther apart, meadows
+filled with grazing cattle flashed past them, the earthy scent of
+freshly turned fields mingled with flower perfume, and on their right
+came drifting in a cool salt breath from the sea. At mid-forenoon, as
+they neared Laguna, they ran past great hills, untouched since the days
+when David cried: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence
+cometh my help." At one particularly beautiful range, draped with the
+flowing emerald of spring, decorated with beds of gold poppy, set with
+flowering madrona and manzanita, with the gold of yellow monkey flower
+or the rich red of the related species, with specimens of lupin growing
+in small trees, here and there adventurous streams singing and flashing
+their unexpected way to the mother breast of the waiting ocean very
+near to the road which at one surprising turn carried them to the
+never-ending wonder of the troubled sea, they drove as slowly as
+the Bear Cat would consent to travel, so that they might study great
+boulders, huge as many of the buildings they had passed, their faces
+scarred by the wrack of ages. Studying their ancient records one
+could see that they had been familiar with the star that rested over
+Bethlehem. On their faces had shone the same moon that opened the
+highways Journeying into Damascus. They had stood the storms that had
+beaten upon the world since the days when the floods subsided, the
+land lifted above the face of the waters in gigantic upheavals that had
+ripped the surface of the globe from north to south and forced up the
+hills, the foothills, and the mountains of the Coast Range. They had
+been born then, they had first seen the light of day, in glowing,
+molten, red-hot, high-piled streams of lava that had gushed forth in
+that awful evolution of birth.
+
+Sometimes Linda stopped the car, they left it, and climbed over the
+faces of these mighty upheavals. Once Linda reached her hand to Donald
+and cried, half laughingly, half in tense earnest: "Oh, kid, we have got
+to hurry. Compared with the age of these, we've only a few minutes. It's
+all right to talk jestingly about 'the crack of doom' but you know
+there really was a crack of doom, and right here is where it cracked and
+spewed out the material that hardened into these very rocks. Beside them
+I feel as a shrimp must feel beside a whale, and I feel that we must
+hurry."
+
+"And so we must," said Donald. "I'm hungry as Likeliest when he waited
+for them to find enough peacock tongues to satisfy his appetite."
+
+"I wonder what brand of home-brew made him think of that," said Linda.
+
+"Well, you know," said Donald, "the world was only a smallish place
+then. They didn't have to go far to find everything to which they had
+access, and it must have been rather a decent time in which to live.
+Awful lot of light and color and music and unique entertainment."
+
+"You're talking," said Linda, "from the standpoint of the king or the
+master. Suppose you had lived then and had been the slave."
+
+"There you go again," said Donald, "throwing a brick into the most
+delicate mechanism of my profound thought. You ought to be ashamed to
+round me up with something scientific and materialistic every time I go
+a-glimmering. Don't you think this would be a fine place to have lunch?"
+
+"You wait and see where we lunch today, and you will have the answer to
+that," said Linda, starting back to the Bear Cat.
+
+A few miles farther on they followed the road around the frowning menace
+of an overhanging rock and sped out directly to the panorama of the sea.
+The sun was shining on it, but, as always round the Laguna shore, the
+rip tide was working itself into undue fury. It came dashing up on the
+ancient rocks until one could easily understand why a poet of long
+ago wrote of sea horses. Some of the waves did suggest monstrous white
+chargers racing madly to place their feet upon the solid rock.
+
+Through the village, up the steep inclines, past placid lakes, past
+waving yellow mustard beds, beside highways where the breastplate of
+Mother Earth gleamed emerald and ruby against the background of billions
+of tiny, shining diamonds of the iceplant, past the old ostrich tree
+reproduced by etchers of note the world over, with grinding brakes,
+sliding down the breathless declivity leading to the shore, Linda
+stopped at last where the rock walls lifted sheer almost to the sky. She
+led Donald to a huge circle carpeted with cerise sand verbena, with
+pink and yellow iceplant bloom, with jewelled iceplant foliage, with the
+running blue of the lovely sea daisy, with the white and pink of the
+sea fig, where the walls were festooned with ferns, lichens, studded all
+over with flaming Our Lord's Candles, and strange, uncanny, grotesque
+flower forms, almost human in their writhing turns as they twisted
+around the rocks and slipped along clinging to the sheer walls. Just
+where the vegetation met the white, sea-washed sand, Linda spread
+the Indian blanket, and Donald brought the lunch box. At their feet
+adventurous waves tore themselves to foam on the sharp rocks. On their
+left they broke in booming spray, tearing and fretting the base of
+cliffs that had stood impregnable through aeons of such ceaseless attack
+and repulse.
+
+"I wonder," said Donald, "how it comes that I have lived all my life in
+California, and today it seems to me that most of the worthwhile things
+I know about her I owe to you. When I go to college this winter the
+things I shall be telling the boys will be how I could gain a living, if
+I had to, on the desert, in Death Valley, from the walls of Multiflores
+Canyon; and how the waves go to smash on the rocks of Laguna, not to
+mention cactus fish hooks, mescal sticks, and brigand beefsteak. It's
+no wonder the artists of all the world come here copying these pictures.
+It's no wonder they build these bungalows and live here for years,
+unsatisfied with their efforts to reproduce the pictures of the Master
+Painter of them all."
+
+"I wonder," said Linda, "if anybody is very easily satisfied. I wonder
+today if Eileen is satisfied with being merely rich. I wonder if we
+are satisfied to have this golden day together. I wonder if the white
+swallows are satisfied with the sea. I wonder if those rocks are
+satisfied and proud to stand impregnable against the constant torment of
+the tide."
+
+"I wonder, oh, Lord, how I wonder," broke in Donald, "about Katherine
+O'Donovan's lunch box. If you want a picture of per feet satisfaction,
+Belinda beloved, lead me to it!"
+
+"Thank heaven you're mistaken," she said; "they spared me the 'Be'--.
+It's truly just 'Linda."'
+
+"Well, I'm not sparing you the 'Be--'," said Donald, busy with the
+fastenings of the lunch basket. "Did you hear where I used it?"
+
+"Yes, child, and I like it heaps," said Linda casually. "It's fine to
+have you like me. Awfully proud of myself."
+
+"You have two members of our family at your feet," said Donald soberly
+as he handed her packages from the box. "My dad is beginning to
+discourse on you with such signs of intelligence that I am almost led
+to believe, from some of his wildest outbursts, that he has had some
+personal experience in some way."
+
+"And why not?" asked Linda lightly. "Haven't I often told you that my
+father constantly went on fishing and hunting trips, that he was a great
+collector of botanical specimens, that he frequently took his friends
+with him? You might ask your father if he does not recall me as having
+fried fish and made coffee and rendered him camp service when I was a
+slip of a thing in the dawn of my teens."
+
+"Well, he didn't just mention it," said Donald, "but I can easily see
+how it might have been."
+
+After they had finished one of Katy's inspired lunches, in which a large
+part of the inspiration had been mental on Linda's part and executive on
+Katy's, they climbed rock faces, skirted wave-beaten promontories, and
+stood peering from overhanging cliffs dipping down into the fathomless
+green sea, where the water boiled up in turbulent fury. Linda pointed
+out the rocks upon which she would sit, if she were a mermaid, to comb
+the seaweed from her hair. She could hear the sea bells ringing in those
+menacing depths, but Donald's ears were not so finely tuned. At the top
+of one of the highest cliffs they climbed, there grew a clump of slender
+pale green bushes, towering high above their heads with exquisitely
+cut blue-green leaves, lance shaped and slender. Donald looked at the
+fascinating growth appraisingly.
+
+"Linda," he said, "do you know that the slimness and the sheerness and
+the audacious foothold and the beauty of that thing remind me of you?
+It is covered all over with the delicate frostbloom you taught me to see
+upon fruit. I find it everywhere but you have never told me what it is."
+
+Linda laughingly reached up and broke a spray of greenish-yellow tubular
+flowers, curving out like clustered trumpets spilling melody from their
+fluted throats.
+
+"You will see it everywhere. You will find these flowers every month
+of the year," she said, "and I am particularly gladsome that this plant
+reminds you of me. I love the bluish-green 'bloom' of its sheer foliage.
+I love the music these flower trumpets make to me. I love the way it
+has traveled, God knows how, all the way from the Argentine and spread
+itself over our country wherever it is allowed footing. I am glad that
+there is soothing in these dried leaves for those who require it. I
+shall be delighted to set my seal on you with it. There are two little
+Spanish words that it suggests to the Mexican--Buena moza--but you shall
+find out for yourself what they mean."
+
+Encountering his father that night at his library door, Donald Whiting
+said to him: "May I come in, Dad? I have something I must look up before
+I sleep. Have you a Spanish lexicon, or no doubt you have this in your
+head."
+
+"Well, I've a halting vocabulary," said the Judge. "What's your phrase?"
+
+"Linda put this flower on me today," said Donald, "and she said she was
+pleased because I said the tall, slender bush it grew on reminded me
+of her. She gave me the Spanish name, but I don't know the exact
+significance of the decoration I am wearing until I learn the meaning of
+the phrase."
+
+"Try me on it," said the Judge.
+
+"'Buena moza,'" quoted Donald.
+
+The Judge threw back his head and laughed heartily.
+
+"Son," he said, "you should know that from the Latin you're learning.
+You should translate it instinctively. I couldn't tell you exactly
+whether a Spaniard would translate 'Buena' 'fine' or 'good.' Knowing
+their high-falutin' rendition of almost everything else I would take my
+chance on 'fine.' Son, your phrase means 'a fine girl.'"
+
+Donald looked down at the flower in his buttonhole, and then he looked
+straight at his father.
+
+"And only the Lord knows, Dad," he said soberly, "exactly how fine
+Linda-girl is."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. A Mouse Nest
+
+LINDA DEAREST:
+
+I am delighted that you had such a wonderful birthday. I would take a
+shot in air that anything you don't understand about it you might with
+reasonable safety charge to Katherine O'Donovan. I think it was great
+of her to have a suitable and a becoming dress waiting for you and a
+congenial man like Peter Morrison to dine with you. He appealed to me as
+being a rare character, highly original, and, I should think, to those
+who know him well he must be entertaining and lovable in the extreme.
+I never shall be worried about you so long as I know that he is taking
+care of you.
+
+I should not be surprised if some day I meet Eileen somewhere, because
+Dana and I are going about more than you would believe possible. I
+heartily join with you in wishing her every good that life can bring
+her. I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can't help feeling, Linda,
+that she is taking a poor way to win the best, and I gravely doubt
+whether she finds it in the spending of unlimited quantities of the
+money of a coarse man who stumbled upon his riches accidentally, as has
+many a man of California and Colorado.
+
+I intended, when I sat down to write, the very first thing I said,
+to thank you for your wonderful invitation, seconded so loyally and
+cordially by Katy, to make my home with you until the time comes--if it
+ever does come--when I shall have a home of my own again. And just
+as simply and wholeheartedly as you made the offer, I accept it. I am
+enclosing the address and the receipt for my furniture in storage, and a
+few lines ordering it delivered at your house and the bill sent to me.
+I only kept a few heirlooms and things of Mother's and Father's that are
+very precious to me. Whenever Eileen takes her things you can order mine
+in and let me know, and I'll take a day or two off and run down for a
+short visit.
+
+Mentioning Eileen makes me think of John. I think of him more frequently
+than I intend or wish that I did, but I feel my ninth life is now
+permanently extinguished concerning him. I thought I detected in your
+letter, Linda dear, a hint of fear that he might come back to me and
+that I might welcome him. If you have any such feeling in your heart,
+abandon it, child, because, while I try not to talk about myself, I do
+want to say that I rejoice in a family inheritance of legitimate pride.
+I couldn't give the finest loyalty and comradeship I had to give to a
+man, have it returned disdainfully, and then furbish up the pieces and
+present it over again. If I can patch those same pieces and so polish
+and refine them that I can make them, in the old phrase, "as good as
+new," possibly in time--but, Linda, one thing is certain as the hills
+of morning. Never in my life will any man make any headway with me again
+with vague suggestions and innuendoes and hints. If ever any man wants
+to be anything in my life, he will speak plainly and say what he wants
+and thinks and hopes and intends and feels in not more than two-syllable
+English. I learned my lesson about the futility of building your house
+of dreams on a foundation of sand. Next time I erect a dream house, it
+is going to have a proper foundation of solid granite. And that may seem
+a queer thing for me to say when you know that I am getting the joy in
+my life, that I do not hesitate to admit I am, from letters written by a
+man whose name I don't know. It may be that I don't know the man, but I
+certainly am very well acquainted with him, and in some way he seems to
+me to be taking on more definite form. I should not be surprised if I
+were to recognize him the first time I met him face to face.
+
+Linda looked through the skylight and cried out to the stars: "Good
+heavens! Have I copied Peter too closely?"
+
+She sat thinking a minute and then she decided she had not.
+
+And in this connection you will want to know how I am progressing in
+my friendship with the junior partner, and what kind of motorist I am
+making. I am still driving twice a week, and lately on Sundays in a
+larger car, taking Dana and a newspaper friend of hers along. I think I
+have driven every hazard that this part of California affords except the
+mountains; Mr. Snow is still merciful about them.
+
+Linda dear, I know what you're dying to know. You want to know whether
+Mr. Snow is in the same depths of mourning as when our acquaintance
+first began. This, my dear child, is very reprehensible of you. Young
+girls with braids down their backs--and by the way, Linda, you did not
+tell me what happened "after the ball was over." Did you go to school
+the next morning with braids down your back, or wearing your coronet?
+Because on that depends what I have to say to you now; if you went with
+braids, you're still my little girl chum, the cleanest, finest kid I
+have ever known; but if you wore your coronet, then you're a woman and
+my equal and my dearest friend, far dearer than Dana even; and I tell
+you this, Linda, because I want you always to understand that you come
+first.
+
+I have tried and tried to visualize you, and can't satisfy my mind as to
+whether the braids are up or down. Going on the assumption that they are
+up, and that life may in the near future begin to hold some interesting
+experiences for you, I will tell you this, beloved child: I don't think
+Mr. Snow is mourning quite so deeply as he was. I have not been asked,
+the last four or five trips we have been on, to carry an armload
+of exquisite flowers to the shrine of a departed love. I have been
+privileged to take them home and arrange them in my room and Dana's. And
+I haven't heard so much talk about loneliness, and I haven't seen such
+tired, sad eyes. It seems to me that a familiar pair of shoulders
+are squaring up to the world again, and a very kind pair of eyes are
+brighter with interest. I don't know how you feel about this; I don't
+know how I feel about it myself. I am sure that Eugene Snow is a man
+who, in the years to come, would line up beside your father and mine,
+and I like him immensely. It is merely a case of not liking him
+less, but of liking my unknown man more. I couldn't quite commit the
+sacrilege, Linda dear, of sending you a sample of the letters I am
+receiving, but they are too fanciful and charming for any words of mine
+to describe adequately. I don't know who this man is, or what he has to
+offer, or whether he intends to offer anything, but it is a ridiculous
+fact, Linda, that I would rather sit with him in a chimney corner
+of field boulders, on a pine floor, with a palm roof and an Ocotillo
+candle, than to glow in the parchment-shielded electric light of the
+halls of a rich man. In a recent letter, Linda, there was a reference
+to a woman who wore "a diadem of crystallized light." It was a beautiful
+thing and I could not help taking it personally. It was his way of
+telling me that he knew me, and knew my tragedy; and, as I said before,
+I am beginning to feel that I have him rather definitely located; and I
+can understand the fine strain in him that prompted his anonymity, and
+his reasons for it. Of course I am not sufficiently confident yet to
+say anything definite, but my heart is beginning to say things that I
+sincerely hope my lips never will be forced to deny.
+
+Linda laid down the letter, folded her hands across it, and once more
+looked at the stars.
+
+"Good gracious!" she said. "I am tincturing those letters with too
+much Peter. I'll have to tone down a bit. Next thing I know she will
+be losing her chance with that wonderful Snow man for a dream. In my
+efforts to comfort her I must have gone too far. It is all right
+to write a gushy love letter and stuff it full of Peter's whimsical
+nonsense, but, in the language of the poet, how am I going to 'deliver
+the goods'? Of course that talk about Louise Whiting was all well
+enough. Equally, of course, I outlined and planted the brook and
+designed the bridge for Marian, whether she knows it or Peter knows it,
+or not. If they don't know it, it's about time they were finding it out.
+I think it's my job to visit Peter more frequently and see if I can't
+invent some way to make him see the light. I will give Katy a hint in
+the morning. Tomorrow evening I'll go up and have supper with him and
+see if he has another article in the stewpan. I like this work with
+Peter. I like having him make me dream dreams and see pictures. I like
+the punch and the virility he puts into my drawings. It's all right
+reproducing monkey flowers and lilies for pastime, but for serious
+business, for real life work, I would rather do Peter's brainstorming,
+heart-thrilling pictures than my merely pretty ones. On the subject of
+Peter, I must remember in the morning to take those old books he gave me
+to Donald. I believe that from one of them he is going to get the very
+material he needs to down the Jap in philosophy. And they are not text
+books which proves that Peter must have been digging into the subject
+and hunted them up in some second-hand store, or even sent away an order
+for them."
+
+In the hall the next morning Linda stopped Donald and gave him the
+books. In the early stages of their friendship she had looked at him
+under half-closed lids and waited to see whether he intended stopping to
+say a word with her when they passed each other or came down the halls
+together. She knew that their acquaintance would be noted and commented
+upon, and she knew how ready the other girls would be to say that
+she was bold and forward, so she was careful to let Donald make the
+advances, until he had called to her so often, and had dug flowers and
+left his friends waiting at her door while he delivered them, that
+she felt free to address him as she chose. He had shown any interested
+person in the high school that he was her friend, that he was speaking
+to her exactly as he did to girls he had known from childhood. He was
+very popular among the boys and girls of his class and the whole school.
+His friendship, coming at the time of Linda's rebellion on the subject
+of clothes, had developed a tendency to bring her other friendships.
+Boys who never had known she was in existence followed Donald's example
+in stopping her to say a word now and then. Girls who had politely
+ignored her now found things to say; and several invitations she had
+not had leisure to accept had been sent to her for afternoon and evening
+entertainments among the young people. Linda had laid out for herself
+something of a task in deciding to be the mental leader of her class.
+There were good brains in plenty among the other pupils. It was only by
+work, concentration, and purpose, only by having a mind keenly alert,
+by independent investigation and introducing new points of view that she
+could hold her prestige. Up to the receipt of her letter containing the
+offer to publish her book she had been able rigorously to exclude from
+her mind the personality and the undertakings of Jane Meredith. She was
+Linda Strong in the high school and for an hour or two at her studies.
+She was Jane Meredith over the desert, through the canyons, beside the
+sea, in her Multiflores kitchen or in Katherine O'Donovan's. But this
+book offer opened a new train of thought, a new series of plans. She
+could see her way--thanks to her father she had the material in her mind
+and the art in her finger tips--to materialize what she felt would be
+even more attractive in book form than anything her editor had been able
+to visualize from her material. She knew herself, she knew her territory
+so minutely. Frequently she smiled when she read statements in her
+botanies as to where plants and vegetables could be found. She knew the
+high home of the rare and precious snow plant. She knew the northern
+limit of the strawberry cactus. She knew where the white sea swallow
+nested. She knew where the Monarch butterfly went on his winter
+migration. She knew where the trap-door spider, with cunning past
+the cunning of any other architect of Nature, built his small, round,
+silken-lined tower and hinged his trap door so cleverly that only he
+could open it from the outside. She had even sat immovable and watched
+him erect his house, and she would have given much to see him weave its
+silver lining.
+
+Linda was fast coming to the place where she felt herself to be one in
+an interested group of fellow workers. She no longer gave a thought to
+what kind of shoes she wore. Other girls were beginning to wear the
+same kind. The legislatures of half a dozen states were passing
+laws regulating the height of heel which might be worn within their
+boundaries. Manufacturers were promising for the coming season that
+suitable shoes would be built for street wear and mountain climbing, for
+the sands of the sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of
+canyons. The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the
+extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down. A sane and sensible
+wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country. Under the impetus of
+Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and those of other
+pupils to lead theirs a higher grade of scholarship was beginning to be
+developed throughout the high school. Pupils were thinking less of what
+they wore and how much amusement they could crowd in, and more about
+making grades that would pass them with credit from year to year. The
+horrors of the war and the disorders following it had begun to impress
+upon the young brains growing into maturity the idea that soon it would
+be their task to take over the problems that were now vexing the world's
+greatest statesmen and its wisest and most courageous women. A tendency
+was manifesting itself among young people to equip themselves to take a
+worthy part in the struggles yet to come. Classmates who had looked with
+toleration upon Linda's common-sense shoes and plain dresses because
+she was her father's daughter, now looked upon her with respect and
+appreciation because she started so many interesting subjects for
+discussion, because she was so rapidly developing into a creature well
+worth looking at. Always she would be unusual because of her extreme
+height, her narrow eyes, her vivid coloring. But a greater maturity, a
+fuller figure, had come to be a part of the vision with which one looked
+at Linda. In these days no one saw her as she was. Even her schoolmates
+had fallen into the habit of seeing her as she would be in the years to
+come.
+
+Thus far she had been able to keep her identities apart without any
+difficulty; but the book proposition was so unexpected, it was such a
+big thing to result from her modest beginning, that Linda realized
+that she must proceed very carefully, she must concentrate with all her
+might, else her school work would begin to suffer in favor of the book.
+Recently so many things had arisen to distract her attention. Many days
+she had not been able to keep Eileen's face off her geometry papers;
+and again she saw Gilman's, anxious and pain-filled. Sometimes she found
+herself lifting her eyes from tasks upon which she was concentrating
+with all her might, and with no previous thought whatever she was
+searching for Donald Whiting, and when she saw him, coming into muscular
+and healthful manhood, she returned to her work with more strength,
+deeper vision, a quiet, assured feeling around her heart. Sometimes,
+over the edge of Literature and Ancient History, Peter Morrison looked
+down at her with gravely questioning eyes and dancing imps twisting his
+mouth muscles, and Linda paused a second to figure upon what had become
+an old problem with her. Why did her wild-flower garden make Peter
+Morrison think of a graveyard? What was buried there besides the feet of
+her rare flowers? She had not as yet found the answer.
+
+This day her thoughts were on Peter frequently because she intended to
+see him that night. She was going to share with him a supper of baked
+ham and beans and bread and butter and pickled onions and little nut
+cakes, still warm from Katy's oven. She was going to take Katy with her
+in order that she might see Peter Morrison's location and the house for
+his dream lady, growing at the foot of the mountain like a gay orchid
+homing on a forest tree. To Linda it was almost a miracle, the rapidity
+with which a house could be erected in California. In a few weeks' time
+she had seen a big cellar scooped out of the plateau, had seen it lined
+and rising to foundation height above the surface in solid concrete,
+faced outside with cracked boulders. She had seen a framework erected,
+a rooftree set, and joists and rafters and beams swinging into place.
+Fretworks of lead and iron pipe were running everywhere, and wires for
+electricity. Soon shingles and flooring would be going into place, and
+Peter said that when he had finished acrobatic performances on beams
+and girders and really stepped out on solid floors where he might tread
+without fear of breaking any of his legs, he would perform a Peacock
+Dance all by himself.
+
+"Peter, you sound like a centipede," said Linda.
+
+"Dear child," said Peter, "when I enter my front door and get to the
+back on two-inch footing, I positively feel that I have numerous legs,
+and I ache almost as badly in the fear that I shall break the two I
+have, as I should if they were really broken."
+
+And then he added a few words on a subject of which he had not before
+spoken to Linda.
+
+"It was like that in France. When we really got into the heat of things
+and the work was actually being done, we were not afraid: we were too
+busy; we were 'supermen.' The time when we were all legs and arms and
+head, and all of them were being blown away wholesale was when the
+shells whined over while we had a rest hour and were trying to sleep,
+or in the cold, dim dawn when we stumbled out stiff, hungry, and sleepy.
+It's not the REAL THING when it's really occurring that gets one. It's
+the devils of imagination tormenting the soul. There is only one thing
+in this world can happen to me that is really going to be as bad as the
+things I dream."
+
+Linda looked down Lilac Valley, her eyes absently focusing on Katy
+busily setting supper on a store box in front of the garage. Then she
+looked at Peter.
+
+"Mind telling?" she inquired lightly.
+
+Peter looked at her speculatively.
+
+"And would a man be telling his heart's best secret to a kid like you?"
+he asked.
+
+"Now, I call that downright mean," said Linda. "Haven't you noticed that
+my braids are up? Don't you see a maturity and a dignity and a general
+matronliness apparent all over me today?"
+
+"Matronliness" was too much for Peter. You could have heard his laugh
+far down the blue valley.
+
+"That's good!" he cried.
+
+"It is," agreed Linda. "It means that my braids are up to stay, so
+hereafter I'm a real woman."
+
+She lingered over the word an instant, glancing whimsically at Peter,
+a trace of a smile on her lips, then she made her way down a slant
+declivity and presently returned with an entire flower plant, new to
+Peter and of unusual beauty.
+
+"And because I am a woman I shall set my seal upon you," she said.
+
+In the buttonhole of his light linen coat she placed a flower of satin
+face of purest gold, the five petals rounded, but sharply tipped, a
+heavy mass of silk stamens, pollen dusted in the heart. She pushed back
+the left side of his coat and taking one of the rough, hairy leaves
+of the plant she located it over Peter's heart, her slim, deft fingers
+patting down the leaf and flattening it out until it lay pasted smooth
+and tight. As she worked, she smiled at him challengingly. Peter knew he
+was experiencing a ceremony of some kind, the significance of which he
+must learn. It was the first time Linda had voluntarily touched him. He
+breathed lightly and held steady, lest he startle her.
+
+"Lovely enough," he said, "to have come from the hills of the stars.
+Don't make me wait, Linda; help me to the interpretation."
+
+"Buena Mujer," suggested Linda.
+
+"Good woman," translated Peter.
+
+Linda nodded, running a finger down the leaf over his heart.
+
+"Because she sticks close to you," she explained. Then startled by the
+look in Peter's eyes, she cried in swift change: "Now we are all going
+to work for a minute. Katy's spreading the lunch. You take this pail and
+go to the spring for water and I shall tidy your quarters for you."
+
+With the eye of experience Linda glanced over the garage deciding that
+she must ask for clean sheets for the cot and that the Salvation Army
+would like the heap of papers. Studying the writing table she heard a
+faint sound that untrained ears would have missed.
+
+"Ah, ha, Ma wood mouse," said Linda, "nibbling Peter's dr. goods are
+you?"
+
+Her cry a minute later answered the question. She came from the garage
+upon Katherine O'Donovan rushing to meet her, holding a man's coat at
+the length of her far-reaching arm.
+
+"I wish you'd look at that pocket. I don't know how long this coat has
+been hanging there, but there is a nest of field mice in it," she said.
+
+Katy promptly retreated to the improvised dining table, seated herself
+upon an end of it, and raised both feet straight into the air.
+
+"Small help I'll be getting from you," said Linda laughingly.
+
+She went to the edge of the declivity that cut back to the garage and
+with a quick movement reversed the coat catching it by the skirts and
+shaking it vigorously.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. The Straight and Narrow
+
+This served exactly the purpose Linda had intended. It dislodged
+the mouse nest and dropped it three feet below her level, but it did
+something else upon which Linda had no time to count. It emptied every
+pocket in the coat and sent the contents scattering down the rough
+declivity.
+
+"Oh my gracious!" gasped Linda. "Look what I have done! Katy, come help
+me quickly; I have to gather up this stuff; but it's no use; I'll have
+to take it to Peter and tell him. I couldn't put these things back in
+the pockets where his hand will reach for them, because I don't know
+which came from inside and which came from out."
+
+Linda sprang down and began hastily gathering up everything she could
+see that had fallen from the coat pockets. She had almost finished when
+her fingers chanced upon a very soiled, befigured piece of paper whose
+impressed folds showed that it had been carried for some time in an
+inner pocket. As her fingers touched this paper her eyes narrowed, her
+breath came in a gasp. She looked at it a second, irresolute, then she
+glanced over the top of the declivity in the direction Peter had taken.
+He was standing in front of the building, discussing some matter with
+the contractor. He had not yet gone to the spring. Shielded by the
+embankment with shaking fingers Linda opened the paper barely enough to
+see that it was Marian's lost sheet of plans; but it was not as Marian
+had lost it. It was scored deeply here and there with heavy lines
+suggestive of alterations, and the margin was fairly covered with fine
+figuring. Linda did not know Peter Morrison's writing or figures. His
+articles had been typewritten and she had never seen his handwriting.
+She sat down suddenly on account of weakened knees, and gazed unseeingly
+down the length of Lilac Valley, her heart sick, her brain tormented.
+Suddenly she turned and studied the house.
+
+"Before the Lord!" she gasped. "I THOUGHT there was something mighty
+familiar even about the skeleton of you! Oh, Peter, Peter, where did you
+get this, and how could you do it?"
+
+For a while a mist blurred her eyes. She reached for the coat and
+started to replace the things she had gathered up, then she shut her
+lips tight.
+
+"Best time to pull a tooth," she said tersely to a terra cotta red
+manzanita bush, "is when it aches."
+
+When Peter returned from the spring he was faced by a trembling girl,
+colorless and trying hard to keep her voice steady. She held out the
+coat to him with one hand, the package of papers with the other, the
+folded drawing conspicuous on the top. With these she gestured toward
+the declivity.
+
+"Mouse nest in your pocket, Peter," she said thickly. "Reversed the coat
+to shake it out, and spilled your stuff."
+
+Then she waited for Peter to be confounded. But Peter was not in the
+faintest degree troubled about either the coat or the papers. What did
+trouble him was the face and the blazing eyes of the girl concerning
+whom he would not admit, even to himself, his exact state of feeling.
+
+"The mouse did not get on you, Linda?" he asked anxiously.
+
+Linda shook her head. Suddenly she lost her self-control.
+
+"Oh, Peter," she wailed, "how could you do it?"
+
+Peter's lean frame tensed suddenly.
+
+"I don't understand, Linda," he said quietly. "Exactly what have I
+done?"
+
+Linda thrust the coat and the papers toward him accusingly and stood
+there wordless but with visible pain in her dark eyes. peter smiled at
+her reassuringly.
+
+"That's not my coat, you know. If there is anything distressing about
+it, don't lay it to me."
+
+"Oh, Peter!" cried Linda, "tell the truth about it. Don't try any
+evasions. I am so sick of them."
+
+A rather queer light sprang into Peter's eyes. He leaned forward
+suddenly and caught the coat from Linda's fingers.
+
+"Well, if you need an alibi concerning this coat," he said, "I think I
+can furnish it speedily."
+
+As he talked he whirled the garment around and shot his long arms into
+the sleeves. Shaking it into place on his shoulders, he slowly turned in
+front of Linda and the surprised Katy. The sleeves came halfway to his
+wrists and the shoulders slid down over his upper arms. He made such a
+quaint and ridiculous figure that Katy burst out laughing. She was very
+well trained, but she knew Linda was deeply distressed.
+
+"Wake up, lambie!" she cried sharply. "That coat ain't belonging to
+Mr. Pater Morrison. That gairment is the property of that bug-catchin'
+architect of his."
+
+Peter shook off the coat and handed it back to Linda.
+
+"Am I acquitted?" he asked lightly; but his surprised eyes were
+searching her from braid to toe.
+
+Linda turned from him swiftly. She thrust the packet into a side pocket
+and started to the garage with the coat. As she passed inside she
+slipped down her hand, slid the sheet of plans from the other papers,
+and slipped it into the front of her blouse. She hung the coat back
+where she had found it, then suddenly sat down on the side of Peter
+Morrison's couch, white and shaken. Peter thought he heard a peculiar
+gasp and when he strayed past the door, casually glancing inward, he
+saw what he saw, and it brought him to his knees beside Linda with all
+speed.
+
+"Linda-girl," he implored, "what in this world has happened?"
+
+Linda struggled to control her voice; but at last she buried her face
+in her hands and frankly emitted a sound that she herself would have
+described as "howling." Peter knelt back in wonder.
+
+"Of all the things I ever thought about you, Linda," he said, "the one
+thing I never did think was that you were hysterical."
+
+If there was one word in Linda's vocabulary more opprobrious than
+"nerves," which could be applied to a woman, it was "hysterics." The
+great specialist had admitted nerves; hysterics had no standing with
+him. Linda herself had no more use for a hysterical woman than she had
+for a Gila monster. She straightened suddenly, and in removing her hands
+from her face she laid one on each of Peter's shoulders.
+
+"Oh, Peter," she wailed, "I am not a hysterical idiot, but I couldn't
+have stood it if that coat had been yours. Peter, I just couldn't have
+borne it!"
+
+Peter held himself rigidly in the fear that he might disturb the hands
+that were gripping him.
+
+"I see I have the job of educating these damned field mice as to where
+they may build with impunity," he said soberly.
+
+But Linda was not to be diverted. She looked straight and deep into his
+eyes.
+
+"Peter," she said affirmatively, "you don't know a thing about that
+coat, do you?"
+
+"I do not," said Peter promptly.
+
+"You never saw what was in its pockets, did you?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge," answered Peter. "What was in the pockets, Linda?"
+
+Linda thought swiftly. Peter adored his dream house. If she told him
+that the plans for it had been stolen by his architect, the house would
+be ruined for Peter. Anyone could see from the candor of his gaze and
+the lines that God and experience had graven on his face that Peter was
+without guile. Suddenly Linda shot her hands past Peter's shoulders and
+brought them together on the back of his neck. She drew his face against
+hers and cried: "Oh Peter, I would have been killed if that coat had
+been yours. I tell you I couldn't have endured it, Peter. I am just
+tickled to death!"
+
+One instant she hugged him tight. If her lips did not brush his cheek,
+Peter deluded himself. Then she sprang up and ran from the garage.
+Later he took the coat from its nail, the papers from its pockets, and
+carefully looked them over. There was nothing among them that would
+give him the slightest clue to Linda's conduct. He looked again,
+penetratingly, searchingly, for he must learn from them a reason; and
+no reason was apparent. With the coat in one hand and the papers in the
+other he stepped outside.
+
+"Linda," he said, "won't you show me? Won't you tell me? What is there
+about this to upset you?"
+
+Linda closed her lips and shook her head. Once more Peter sought in her
+face, in her attitude the information he craved.
+
+"Needn't tell me," he said, "that a girl who will face the desert and
+the mountains and the canyons and the sea is upset by a mouse."
+
+"Well, you should have seen Katy sitting in the midst of our supper with
+her feet rigidly extended before her!" cried the girl, struggling to
+regain her composure. "Put back that coat and come to your supper. It's
+time for you to be fed now. The last workman has gone and we'll barely
+have time to finish nicely and show Katy your dream house before it's
+time to go."
+
+Peter came and sat in the place Linda indicated. His mind was whirling.
+There was something he did not understand, but in her own time, in her
+own way, a girl of Linda's poise and self-possession would tell him what
+had occurred that could be responsible for the very peculiar things
+she had done. In some way she had experienced a shock too great for her
+usual self-possession. The hands with which she fished pickled onions
+from the bottle were still unsteady, and the corroboration Peter needed
+for his thoughts could be found in the dazed way in which Katy watched
+Linda as she hovered over her in serving her. But that was not the time.
+By and by the time would come. The thing to do was to trust Linda and
+await its coming. So Peter called on all the reserve wit and wisdom he
+had at command. He jested, told stories, and to Linda's satisfaction and
+Katy's delight, he ate his supper like a hungry man, frankly enjoying
+it, and when the meal was finished Peter took Katy over the house,
+explaining to her as much detail as was possible at that stage of its
+construction, while Linda followed with mute lips and rebellion surging
+in her heart. When leaving time came, while Katy packed the Bear
+Cat, Linda wandered across toward the spring, and Peter, feeling
+that possibly she might wish to speak with him, followed her. When he
+overtook her she looked at him straightly, her eyes showing the hurt her
+heart felt.
+
+"Peter," she said, "that first night you had dinner with us, was Henry
+Anderson out of your presence one minute from the time you came into the
+house until you left it?"
+
+Peter stopped and studied the ground at his feet intently. Finally he
+said conclusively: "I would go on oath, Linda, that he was not. We were
+all together in the living room, all together in the dining room. We
+left together at night and John was with us."
+
+"I see," said Linda. "Well, then, when you came back the next morning
+after Eileen, before you started on your trip, to hunt a location, was
+he with you all the time?"
+
+Again Peter took his time to answer.
+
+"We came to your house with Gilman," he said. "John started to the front
+door to tell Miss Eileen that we were ready. I followed him. Anderson
+said he would look at the scenery. He must have made a circuit of the
+house, because when we came out ready to start, a very few minutes
+later, he was coming down the other side of the house."
+
+"Ah," said Linda comprehendingly.
+
+"Linda," said Peter quietly, "it is very obvious that something has
+worried you extremely. Am I in any way connected with it?"
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+"Is there anything I can do?"
+
+The negative was repeated. Then she looked at him.
+
+"No, Peter," she said quietly, "I confess I have had a shock, but it is
+in no way connected with you and there is nothing you can do about it
+but forget my foolishness. But I am glad--Peter, you will never know how
+glad I am--that you haven't anything to do with it."
+
+Then in the friendliest fashion imaginable she reached him her hand and
+led the way back to the Bear Cat, their tightly gripped hands swinging
+between them. As Peter closed the door he looked down on Linda.
+
+"Young woman," he said, "since this country has as yet no nerve
+specialist to take the place of your distinguished father, if you have
+any waves to wave to me tonight, kindly do it before you start or after
+you reach the highway. If you take your hands off that steering wheel as
+you round the boulders and strike that declivity as I have seen you
+do heretofore, I won't guarantee that I shall not require a specialist
+myself."
+
+Linda started to laugh, then she saw Peter's eyes and something in them
+stopped her suddenly.
+
+"I did not realize that I was taking any risk," she said. "I won't do it
+again. I will say good-bye to you right here and now so I needn't look
+back."
+
+So she shook hands with Peter and drove away. Peter slowly followed
+down the rough driveway, worn hard by the wheels of delivery trucks, and
+stood upon the highest point of the rocky turn, looking after the small
+gray car as it slid down the steep declivity. And he wondered if there
+could have been telepathy in the longing with which he watched it go,
+for at the level roadway that followed between the cultivated land
+out to the highway Linda stopped the car, stood up in it, and turning,
+looked back straight to the spot upon which Peter stood. She waved both
+hands to him, and then gracefully and beautifully, with outstretched,
+fluttering fingers she made him the sign of birds flying home. And with
+the whimsy in his soul uppermost, Peter reflected, as he turned back for
+a microscopic examination of Henry Anderson's coat and the contents of
+its pockets, that there was one bird above all others which made
+him think of Linda; but he could not at the moment feather Katherine
+O'Donovan. And then he further reflected as he climbed the hill that
+if it had to be done the best he could do would be a bantam hen
+contemplating domesticity.
+
+Linda looked the garage over very carefully when she put away the Bear
+Cat. When she closed the garage doors she was particular about the
+locks. As she came through the kitchen she said to Katy, busy with the
+lunch box:
+
+"Belovedest, have there been any strange Japs poking around here
+lately?"
+
+She nearly collapsed when Katy answered promptly:
+
+"A dale too many of the square-headed haythens. I am pestered to death
+with them. They used to come jist to water the lawn but now they want
+to crane the rugs; they want to do the wash. They are willing to crane
+house. They want to get into the garage; they insist on washing the car.
+If they can't wash it they jist want to see if it nades washin'."
+
+Linda stood amazed.
+
+"And how long has this been going on, Katy?" she finally asked.
+
+"Well, I have had two good months of it," said Katy; "that is, it
+started two months ago. The past month has been workin' up and the last
+ten days it seemed to me they was a Jap on the back steps oftener than
+they was a stray cat, and I ain't no truck with ayther of them. They
+give me jist about the same falin'. Between the two I would trust the
+cat a dale further with my bird than I would the Jap."
+
+"Have you ever unlocked the garage for them, Katy?" asked Linda.
+
+"No," said Katy. "I only go there when I nade something about me work."
+
+"Well, Katy," said Linda, "let me tell you this: the next time you go
+there for anything take a good look for Japs before you open the door.
+Get what you want and get out as quickly as possible and be sure, Katy,
+desperately sure, that you lock the door securely when you leave."
+
+Katy set her hands on her hips, flared her elbows, and lifted her chin.
+
+"What's any of them little haythen been coin' to scare ye, missy?" she
+demanded belligerently. "Don't you think I'm afraid of them! Comes any
+of them around me and I'll take my mopstick over the heads of them."
+
+"And you'll break a perfectly good mopstick and not hurt the Jap when
+you do it," said Linda. "There's an undercurrent of something deep
+and subtle going on in this country right now, Katy. When Japan sends
+college professors to work in our kitchens and relatives of her greatest
+statesmen to serve our tables, you can depend on it she is not doing
+it for the money that is paid them. If California does not wake up very
+shortly and very thoroughly she is going to pay an awful price for the
+luxury she is experiencing while she pampers herself with the service
+of the Japanese, just as the South has pampered herself for generations
+with the service of the Negroes. When the Negroes learn what there is
+to know, then the day of retribution will be at hand. And this is not
+croaking, Katy. It is the truest gospel that was ever preached. Keep
+your eyes wide open for Japs. Keep your doors locked, and if you see one
+prowling around the garage and don't know what he is after, go to the
+telephone and call the police."
+
+Linda climbed the stairs to her workroom, plumped down at the table, set
+her chin in her palms, and lost herself in thought. For half an hour
+she sat immovable, staring at her caricature of Eileen through narrowed
+lids. Then she opened the typewriter, inserted a sheet and wrote:
+
+MY DEAR Mr. SNOW:
+
+I am writing as the most intimate woman friend of Marian Thorne. As
+such, I have spent much thought trying to figure out exactly the reason
+for the decision in your recent architectural competition; why a man
+should think of such a number of very personal, intimate touches that,
+from familiarity with them, I know that Miss Thorne had incorporated in
+her plans, and why his winning house should be her winning house, merely
+reversed.
+
+Today I have found the answer, which I am forwarding to you, knowing
+that you will understand exactly what should be done. Enclosed you will
+find one of the first rough sketches Marian made of her plans. In
+some mysterious manner it was lost on a night when your prize-winning
+architect had dinner at our house where Miss Thorne was also a guest.
+Before retiring she showed to me and explained the plans with which she
+hoped to win your competition. In the morning I packed her suitcase and
+handed it to the porter of her train. When she arrived at San Francisco
+she found that the enclosed sheet was missing.
+
+This afternoon tidying a garage in which Mr. Peter Morrison, the author,
+is living while Henry Anderson completes a residence he is building
+for him near my home, I reversed a coat belonging to Henry Anderson
+to dislodge from its pocket the nest of a field mouse. In so doing I
+emptied all the pockets, and in gathering up their contents I found this
+lost sheet from Marian's plans.
+
+I think nothing more need be said on my part save that I understood the
+winning plan was to become the property of Nicholson and Snow. Without
+waiting to see whether these plans would win or not, Henry Anderson has
+them three fourths of the way materialized in Mr. Morrison's residence
+in Lilac Valley which is a northwestern suburb of Los Angeles.
+
+You probably have heard Marian speak of me, and from her you may obtain
+any information you might care to have concerning my responsibility.
+
+I am mailing the sketch to you rather than to Marian because I feel that
+you are the party most deeply interested in a business way, and I hope,
+too, that you will be interested in protecting my very dear friend from
+the disagreeable parts of this very disagreeable situation.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+LINDA STRONG.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. Putting It Up to Peter
+
+When Peter Morrison finally gave up looking in the pockets of Henry
+Anderson's coat for enlightenment concerning Linda's conduct, it was
+with his mind settled on one point. There was nothing in the coat now
+that could possibly have startled the girl or annoyed her. Whatever had
+been there that caused her extremely peculiar conduct she had carried
+away with her. Peter had settled convictions concerning Linda. From the
+first instant he had looked into her clear young eyes as she stood in
+Multiflores Canyon triumphantly holding aloft the Cotyledon in one
+hand and with the other struggling to induce the skirt of her blouse to
+resume its proper location beneath the band of her trousers, he had felt
+that her heart and her mind were as clear and cool and businesslike
+as the energetic mountain stream hurrying past her. Above all others,
+"straight" was the one adjective he probably would have applied to her.
+Whatever she had taken from Henry's pockets was something that concerned
+her. If she took anything, she had a right to take it; of that Peter
+was unalterably certain. He remembered that a few days before she
+practically had admitted to him that Anderson had annoyed her, and a
+slow anger began to surge up in Peter's carefully regulated heart. His
+thoughts were extremely busy, but the thing he thought most frequently
+and most forcefully was that he would thoroughly enjoy taking Henry
+Anderson by the scruff of the neck, leading him to the sheerest part of
+his own particular share of the mountain, and exhaustively booting him
+down it.
+
+"It takes these youngsters to rush in and raise the devil where there's
+no necessity for anything to happen if just a modicum of common sense
+had been used," growled Peter.
+
+He mulled over the problem for several days, and then he decided he
+should see Linda, and with his first look into her straight-forward
+eyes, from the tones of her voice and the carriage of her head he would
+know whether the annoyance persisted. About the customary time for her
+to return from school Peter started on foot down the short cut between
+his home and the Strong residence. He was following a footpath rounding
+the base of the mountain, crossing and recrossing the enthusiastic
+mountain stream as it speeded toward the valley, when a flash of color
+on the farther side of the brook attracted him. He stopped, then hastily
+sprang across the water, climbed a few yards, and, after skirting a
+heavy clump of bushes, looked at Linda sitting beside them--a most
+astonishing Linda, appearing small and humble, very much tucked away,
+unrestrained tears rolling down her cheeks, a wet handkerchief wadded
+in one hand, a packet of letters in her lap. A long instant they studied
+each other.
+
+"Am I intruding?" inquired Peter at last.
+
+Linda shook her head vigorously and gulped down a sob.
+
+"No, Peter," she sobbed, "I had come this far on my way to you when my
+courage gave out."
+
+Peter rearranged the immediate landscape and seated himself beside
+Linda.
+
+"Now stop distressing yourself," he said authoritatively. "You
+youngsters do take life so seriously. The only thing that could have
+happened to you worth your shedding a tear over can't possibly have
+happened; so stop this waste of good material. Tears are very precious
+things, Linda. They ought to be the most unusual things in life. Now
+tell me something. Were you coming to me about that matter that worried
+you the other evening?"
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+"No," she said, "I have turned that matter over where it belongs. I have
+nothing further to do with it. I'll confess to you I took a paper from
+among those that fell from Henry Anderson's pocket. It was not his. He
+had no right to have it. He couldn't possibly have come by it honorably
+or without knowing what it was. I took the liberty to put it where it
+belongs, or at least where it seemed to me that it belongs. That is all
+over."
+
+"Then something else has happened?" asked Peter. "Something connected
+with the package of letters in your lap?"
+
+Linda nodded vigorously.
+
+"Peter, I have done something perfectly awful," she confessed. "I never
+in this world meant to do it. I wouldn't have done it for anything. I
+have got myself into the dreadfullest mess, and I don't know how to get
+out. When I couldn't stand it another minute I started right to you,
+Peter, just like I'd have started to my father if I'd had him to go to."
+
+"I see," said Peter, deeply interested in the toe of his shoe. "You
+depended on my age and worldly experience and my unconcealed devotion to
+your interests, which is exactly what you should do, my dear. Now tell
+me. Dry your eyes and tell me, and whatever it is I'll fix it all right
+and happily for you. I'll swear to do it if you want me to."
+
+Then Linda raised her eyes to his face.
+
+"Oh, Peter, you dear!" she cried. "Peter, I'll just kneel and kiss your
+hands if you can fix this for me."
+
+Peter set his jaws and continued his meditations on shoe leather.
+
+"Make it snappy!" he said tersely. "The sooner your troubles are out of
+your system the better you'll feel. Whose letters are those, and why are
+you crying over them?"
+
+"Oh, Peter," quavered Linda, "you know how I love Marian. You have seen
+her and I have told you over and over."
+
+"Yes," said Peter soothingly, "I know."
+
+"I have told you how, after years of devotion to Marian, John Gilman let
+Eileen make a perfect rag of him and tie him into any kind of knot she
+chose. Peter, when Marian left here she had lost everything on earth but
+a little dab of money. She had lost a father who was fine enough to be
+my father's best friend. She had lost a mother who was fine enough to
+rear Marian to what she is. She had lost them in a horrible way that
+left her room for a million fancies and regrets: 'if I had done this,'
+or 'if I had done that,' or 'if I had taken another road.' And when she
+went away she knew definitely she had lost the first and only love of
+her heart; and I knew, because she was so sensitive and so fine, I knew,
+better than anybody living, how she COULD be hurt; and I thought if I
+could fix some scheme that would entertain her and take her mind off
+herself and make her feel appreciated only for a little while--I knew in
+all reason, Peter, when she got out in the world where men would see her
+and see how beautiful and fine she is, there would be somebody who would
+want her quickly. All the time I have thought that when she came back,
+YOU would want her. Peter, I fibbed when I said I was setting your
+brook for Louise Whiting. I was not. I don't know Louise Whiting. She is
+nothing to me. I was setting it for you and Marian. It was a WHITE head
+I saw among the iris marching down your creek bank, not a gold one,
+Peter."
+
+Peter licked his dry lips and found it impossible to look at Linda.
+
+"Straight ahead with it," he said gravely. "What did you do?"
+
+"Oh, I have done the awfullest thing," wailed Linda, "the most
+unforgivable thing!"
+
+She reached across and laid hold of the hand next her, and realizing
+that she needed it for strength and support, Peter gave it into her
+keeping.
+
+"Yes?" he questioned. "Get on with it, Linda. What was it you did?"
+
+"I had a typewriter: I could. I began writing her letters, the kind of
+letters that I thought would interest her and make her feel loved and
+appreciated."
+
+"You didn't sign my name to them, did you, Linda?" asked Peter in a dry,
+breathless voice.
+
+"No, Peter," said Linda, "I did not do that, I did worse. Oh, I did a
+whole lot worse!"
+
+"I don't understand," said Peter hoarsely.
+
+"I wanted to make them fine. I wanted to make them brilliant. I wanted
+to make them interesting. And of course I could not do it by myself. I
+am nothing but a copycat. I just quoted a lot of things I had heard you
+say; and I did worse than that, Peter. I watched the little whimsy lines
+around your mouth and I tried to interpret the perfectly lovely things
+they would make you say to a woman if you loved her and were building a
+dream house for her. And oh, Peter, it's too ghastly; I don't believe I
+can tell you."
+
+"This is pretty serious business, Linda," said Peter gravely. "Having
+gone this far you are in honor bound to finish. It would not be fair to
+leave me with half a truth. What is the result of this impersonation?"
+
+"Oh, Peter," sobbed Linda, breaking down again, "you're going to hate
+me; I know you're going to hate me and Marian's going to hate me; and I
+didn't mean a thing but the kindest thing in all the world."
+
+"Don't talk like that, Linda," said Peter. "If your friend is all you
+say she is, she is bound to understand. And as for me, I am not very
+likely to misjudge you. But be quick about it. What did you do, Linda?"
+
+"Why, I just wrote these letters that I am telling you about," said
+Linda, "and I said the things that I thought would comfort her and
+entertain her and help with her work; and these are the answers that
+she wrote me, and I don't think I realized till last night that she
+was truly attributing them to any one man, truly believing in them. Oh,
+Peter, I wasn't asleep a minute all last night, and for the first time I
+failed in my lessons today."
+
+"And what is the culmination, Linda?" urged Peter.
+
+"She liked the letters, Peter. They meant all I intended them to and
+they must have meant something I never could have imagined. And in San
+Francisco one of the firm where she studies--a very fine man she says he
+is, Peter; I can see that in every way he would be quite right for her;
+and I had a letter from her last night, and, Peter, he had asked her to
+marry him, to have a lifelong chance at work she's crazy about. He
+had offered her a beautiful home with everything that great wealth and
+culture and good taste could afford. He had offered her the mothering of
+his little daughter; and she refused him, Peter, refused him because she
+is in love, with all the love there is left in her disappointed, hurt
+heart, with the personality that these letters represent to her; and
+that personality is yours, Peter. I stole it from you. I copied it into
+those letters. I'm not straight. I'm not fair. I wasn't honest with her.
+I wasn't honest with you. I'll just have to take off front the top of
+the highest mountain or sink in the deepest place in the sea, Peter.
+I thought I was straight. I thought I was honorable I have made Donald
+believe that I was. If I have to tell him the truth about this he won't
+want to wear my flower any more. I shall know all the things that Marian
+has suffered, and a thousand times worse, because she was not to blame;
+she had nothing with which to reproach herself."
+
+Peter put an arm across Linda's shoulders and drew her up to him. For a
+long, bitter moment he thought deeply, and then he said hoarsely: "Now
+calm down, Linda. You're making an extremely high mountain out of an
+extremely shallow gopher hole. You haven't done anything irreparable.
+I see the whole situation. You are sure your friend has finally refused
+this offer she has had on account of these letters you have written?"
+
+Suddenly Linda relaxed. She leaned her warm young body against Peter.
+She laid her tired head on his shoulder. She slipped the top letter of
+the packet in her lap from under its band, opened it, and held it before
+him. Peter read it very deliberately, then he nodded in acquiescence.
+
+"It's all too evident," he said quietly, "that you have taught her that
+there is a man in this world more to her liking than John Gilman ever
+has been. When it came to materializing the man, Linda, what was your
+idea? Were you proposing to deliver me?"
+
+"I thought it would be suitable and you would be perfectly happy,"
+sobbed Linda, "and that way I could have both of you."
+
+"And Donald also?" asked Peter lightly.
+
+"Donald of course," assented Linda.
+
+And then she lifted her tear-spilling, wonderful eyes, wide open, to
+Peter's, and demanded: "But, oh Peter, I am so miserable I am almost
+dead. I have said you were a rock, and you are a rock. peter, can you
+get me out of this?"
+
+"Sure," said Peter grimly. "Merely a case of living up to your blue
+china, even if it happens to be in the form of hieroglyphics instead of
+baked pottery. Give me the letters, Linda. Give me a few days to study
+them. Exchange typewriters with me so I can have the same machine. Give
+me some of the paper on which you have been writing and the address you
+have been using, and I'll guarantee to get you out of this in some way
+that will leave you Donald, and your friendship with Marian quite as
+good as new."
+
+At that juncture Peter might have been kissed, but his neck was very
+stiff and his head was very high and his eyes were on a far-distant
+hilltop from which at that minute he could not seem to gather any
+particular help.
+
+"Would it be your idea," he said, "that by reading these letters I could
+gain sufficient knowledge of what has passed to go on with this?"
+
+"Of course you could," said Linda.
+
+Peter reached in his side pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief.
+He shook it from its folds and dried her eyes. Then he took her by her
+shoulders and set her up straight.
+
+"Now stop this nerve strain and this foolishness," he said tersely.
+"You have done a very wonderful thing for me. It is barely possible that
+Marian Thorne is not my dream woman, but we can't always have our dreams
+in this world, and if I could not have mine, truly and candidly, Linda,
+so far as I have lived my life, I would rather have Marian Thorne than
+any other woman I have ever met."
+
+Linda clapped her hands in delight.
+
+"Oh, goody goody, Peter!" she cried. "How joyous! Can it be possible
+that my bungling is coming out right for Marian and right for you?"
+
+"And right for you, Linda?" inquired Peter lightly.
+
+"Sure, right for me," said Linda eagerly. "Of course it's right for me
+when it's right for you and Marian. And since it's not my secret alone
+I don't think it would be quite honorable to tell Donald about it. What
+hurts Marian's heart or heals it is none of his business. He doesn't
+even know her."
+
+"All right then, Linda," said Peter, rising, "give me the letters and
+bring me the machine and the paper. Give me the joyous details and tell
+me when I am expected to send in my first letter in propria persona?"
+
+"Oh, Peter," cried Linda, beaming on him, "oh, Peter, you are a rock! I
+do put my trust in you."
+
+"Then God help me," said Peter, "for whatever happens, your trust in me
+shall not be betrayed, Linda."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. Katy Unburdens Her Mind
+
+Possibly because she wished to eliminate herself from the offices of
+Nicholson and Snow for a few days, possibly because her finely attuned
+nature felt the call, Marian Thorne boarded a train that carried her to
+Los Angeles. She stepped from it at ten o'clock in the morning, and by
+the streetcar route made her way to Lilac Valley. When she arrived she
+realized that she could not see Linda before, possibly, three in the
+afternoon. She entered a restaurant, had a small lunch box packed,
+and leaving her dressing case, she set off down the valley toward
+the mountains. She had need of their strength, their quiet and their
+healing. To the one particular spot where she had found comfort in Lilac
+Valley her feet led her. By paths of her own, much overgrown for want
+of recent usage, she passed through the cultivated fields, left the
+roadway, and began to climb. When she reached the stream flowing down
+the rugged hillside, she stopped to rest for a while, and her mind was
+in a tumult. In one minute she was seeing the bitterly disappointed face
+of a lonely, sensitive man whose first wound had been reopened by the
+making of another possibly quite as deep; and at the next her heart was
+throbbing because Linda had succeeded in transferring the living Peter
+to paper.
+
+The time had come when Marian felt that she would know the personality
+embodied in the letters she had been receiving; and in the past few
+days her mind had been fixing tenaciously upon Peter Morrison. And the
+feeling concerning which she had written Linda had taken possession of
+her. Wealth did not matter; position did not matter. Losing the love of
+a good man did not matter But the mind and the heart and the personality
+behind the letters she had been receiving did matter. She thought long
+and seriously When at last she arose she had arrived at the conclusion
+that she had done the right thing, no matter whether the wonderful
+letters she had received went on and offered her love or not, no matter
+about anything. She must merely live and do the best she could, until
+the writer of those letters chose to disclose himself and say what
+purpose he had in mind when he wrote them.
+
+So Marian followed her own path beside the creek until she neared its
+head, which was a big, gushing icy spring at the foot of the mountain
+keeping watch over the small plateau that in her heart she had thought
+of as hers for years. As she neared the location strange sounds began to
+reach her, voices of men, clanging of hammers, the rip of saws. A look
+of deep consternation overspread her face. She listened an instant and
+then began to run. When she broke through the rank foliage flourishing
+from the waters of the spring and looked out on the plateau what she saw
+was Peter Morrison's house in the process of being floored and shingled.
+For a minute Marian was physically ill. Her heart hurt until her hand
+crept to her side in an effort to soothe it. Before she asked the
+question of a man coming to the spring with a pail in his hand, she
+knew the answer. It was Peter Morrison's house. Marian sprang across the
+brook, climbed to the temporary roadway, and walked down in front of the
+building. She stood looking at it intently. It was in a rough stage, but
+much disguise is needed to prevent a mother from knowing her own child.
+Marian's dark eyes began to widen and to blaze. She walked up to the
+front of the house and found that rough flooring had been laid so that
+she could go over the first floor. When she had done this she left the
+back door a deeply indignant woman.
+
+"There is some connection," she told herself tersely, "between my lost
+sketch and this house, which is merely a left-to-right rehearsal of
+my plans; and it's the same plan with which Henry Anderson won the
+Nicholson and Snow prize money and the still more valuable honor of
+being the prize winner. What I want to know is how such a wrong may be
+righted, and what Peter Morrison has to do with it."
+
+Stepping from the back door, Marian followed the well-worn pathway
+that led to the garage, looking right and left for Peter, and she was
+wondering what she would say to him if she met him. She was thinking
+that perhaps she had better return to San Francisco and talk the matter
+over with Mr. Snow before she said anything to anyone else; by this time
+she had reached the garage and stood in its wide-open door. She looked
+in at the cot, left just as someone had arisen from it, at the row of
+clothing hanging on a rough wooden rack at the back, at the piled boxes,
+at the big table, knocked together from rough lumber, in the center,
+scattered and piled with books and magazines; and then her eyes fixed
+intently on a packet lying on the table beside a typewriter and a stack
+of paper and envelopes. She walked over and picked up the packet. As she
+had known the instant she saw them, they were her letters. She stood
+an instant holding them in her hand, a dazed expression on her face.
+Mechanically she reached out and laid her hands on the closed typewriter
+to steady herself. Something about it appealed to her as familiar.
+She looked at it closely, then she lifted the cover and examined the
+machine. It was the same machine that had stood for years in Doctor
+Strong's library, a machine upon which she had typed business letters
+for her own father, and sometimes she had copied lectures and book
+manuscript on it for Doctor Strong. Until his house was completed and
+his belongings arrived, Peter undoubtedly had borrowed it. Suddenly a
+wild desire to escape swept over Marian. Her first thought was of her
+feelings. She was angry, and justly so. In her heart she had begun to
+feel that the letters she was receiving were from Peter Morrison. Here
+was the proof.
+
+Could it be possible that in their one meeting Peter had decided that
+she was his dream woman, that in some way he had secured that rough
+sketch of her plans, and from them was preparing her dream house for
+her? The thought sped through her brain that he was something more
+than human to have secured those plans, to have found that secluded and
+choice location. For an instant she forgot the loss of the competition
+in trying to comprehend the wonder of finding her own particular house
+fitting her own particular location as naturally as one of its big
+boulders.
+
+She tried to replace the package of letters exactly as she had found
+them. On tiptoe she slipped back to the door and looked searchingly down
+the road, around, and as far as possible through the house. Then she
+gathered her skirts, stepped from the garage, and began the process
+of effacing herself on the mountain side From clump to clump of the
+thickest bushes, crouching below the sage and greasewood, pausing to
+rest behind lilac and elder, without regard for her traveling suit or
+her beautifully shod feet, Marian fled from her location. When at last
+she felt that she was completely hidden and at least a mile from the
+spot, she dropped panting on a boulder, brushing the debris from her
+skirts, lifting trembling hands to straighten her hat, and ruefully
+contemplating her shoes. Then she tried to think in a calm,
+dispassionate, and reasonable manner, but she found it a most difficult
+process. Her mind was not well ordered, neither was it at her
+command. It whirled and shot off at unexpected tangents and danced as
+irresponsibly as a grasshopper from one place to another. The flying
+leaps it took ranged from San Francisco to Lilac Valley, from her
+location upon which Peter Morrison was building her house, to Linda.
+Even John Gilman obtruded himself once more. At one minute she was
+experiencing a raging indignation against Henry Anderson. How had he
+secured her plan? At another she was trying to figure dispassionately
+what connection Peter Morrison could have had with the building of his
+house upon her plan. Every time Peter came into the equation her heart
+arose in his defense. In some way his share in the proceeding was all
+right. He had cared for her and he had done what he thought would please
+her. Therefore she must be pleased, although forced to admit to herself
+that she would have been infinitely more pleased to have built her own
+house in her own way.
+
+She was hungry to see Linda. She wanted Katherine O'Donovan to feed her
+and fuss over her and entertain her with her mellow Irish brogue; but if
+she went to them and disclosed her presence in the valley, Peter would
+know about it, and if he intended the building he was erecting as a
+wonderful surprise for her, then she must not spoil his joy. Plan in any
+way she could, Marian could see no course left to her other than to slip
+back to the station and return to San Francisco without meeting any
+of her friends. She hurriedly ate her lunch, again straightened her
+clothing, went to the restaurant for her traveling bag, and took the car
+for the station where she waited for a return train to San Francisco She
+bought a paper and tried to concentrate upon it in an effort to take her
+mind from her own problems so that, when she returned to them, she would
+be better able to think clearly, to reason justly, to act wisely.
+She was very glad when her train came and she was started on her way
+northward. At the first siding upon which it stopped to allow the
+passing of a south-bound limited, she was certain that as the cars
+flashed by, in one of them she saw Eugene Snow. She was so certain that
+when she reached the city she immediately called the office and asked
+for Mr. Snow only to be told that he had gone away for a day or two
+on business. After that Marian's thought was confused to the point of
+exasperation.
+
+It would be difficult to explain precisely the state of mind in which
+Linda, upon arriving at her home that afternoon, received from Katy the
+information that a man named Snow had been waiting an hour for her in
+the living room. Linda's appearance was that of a person so astonished
+that Katy sidled up to her giving strong evidence of being ready to
+bristle.
+
+"Ye know, lambie," she said with elaborate indifference, "ye aren't
+havin' to see anybody ye don't want to. If it's somebody intrudin'
+himself on ye, just say the word and I'll fire him; higher than
+Guilderoy's kite I'll be firin' him."
+
+"No, I must see him, Katy," said Linda quietly. "And have something
+specially nice for dinner. Very likely I'll take him to see Peter
+Morrison's house and possibly I'll ask him and Peter to dinner. He is
+a San Francisco architect from the firm where Marian takes her lessons,
+and it's business about Peter's house. I was surprised, that's all."
+
+Then Linda turned and laid a hand on each of Katy's hairy red arms.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan, old dear," she said, "if we do come back for
+dinner, concentrate on Mr. Snow and study him. Scrutinize, Katy! It's
+a bully word. Scrutinize closely. To add one more to our long lists of
+secrets, here's another. He's the man I told you about who has asked
+Marian to marry him, and Marian has refused him probably because she
+prefers somebody nearer home."
+
+Then Linda felt the tensing of every muscle in Katy's body. She saw the
+lift of her head, the incredulous, resentful look in her eyes. There was
+frank hostility in her tone.
+
+"Well, who is there nearer home that Marian knows?" she demanded
+belligerently.
+
+"Well, now, who would there be?" retorted Linda.
+
+"Ye ain't manin' John Gilman?" asked Katy.
+
+"No," said Linda, "I am not meaning John Gilman. You should know Marian
+well enough to know that."
+
+"Well, ye ought to know yourself well enough to know that they ain't
+anybody else around these diggin's that Marian Thorne's going to get,"
+said Katy.
+
+"I imagine Marian will get pretty much whom she wants," said Linda
+laughingly. "In your heart, Katy, you know that Marian need not have
+lost John Gilman if she had not deliberately let him go. If she had been
+willing to meet Eileen on her own ground and to play the game with
+her, it wouldn't have happened. Marian has more brains in a minute than
+Eileen has in a month."
+
+When Linda drew back the portiere and stepped into the living room
+Eugene Snow rose to meet her. What either of them expected it might
+be difficult to explain. Knowing so little of each other, it is very
+possible that they had no visualizations. What Snow saw was what
+everyone saw who looked at Linda--a girl arrestingly unusual. With
+Linda lay the advantage by far, since she had Marian's letters for a
+background. What she saw was a tall man, slender, and about him there
+was to Linda a strong appeal. As she looked into his eyes, she could
+feel the double hurt that Fate had dealt him. She thought she could
+fathom the fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building
+his chosen occupation. Instantly she liked him. With only one look deep
+into his eyes she was on his side. She stretched out both her hands and
+advanced.
+
+"Now isn't this the finest thing of you?" she said. "I am so glad that
+you came. I'll tell you word for word what happened here."
+
+"That will be fine," he said. "Which is your favorite chair?"
+
+"You know," she said, "that is a joke. I am so unfamiliar with this room
+that I haven't any favorite chair. I'll have to take the nearest, like
+Thoreau selected his piece of chicken."
+
+Then for a few minutes Linda talked frankly. She answered Eugene
+Snow's every question unhesitatingly and comprehensively. Together they
+ascended the stairs, and in the guest room she showed him the table
+at which she and Marian had studied the sketches of plans, and exactly
+where they had left them lying overnight.
+
+"The one thing I can't be explicit about," said Linda, "is how many
+sheets were there in the morning. We had stayed awake so late talking,
+that we overslept. I packed Marian's bag while she dressed. I snatched
+up what there were without realizing whether there were two sheets or
+three, laid them in the flat bottom of the case, and folded her clothing
+on top of them."
+
+"I see," said Mr. Snow comprehendingly. "Now let's experiment a little.
+Of course the window before that table was raised?"
+
+"Yes, it was," said Linda, "but every window in the house is screened."
+
+"And what about the door opening into the hall? Can you tell me whether
+it was closed or open?"
+
+"It was open," said Linda. "We left it slightly ajar to create a draft;
+the night was warm."
+
+"Is there anyone about the house," inquired Mr. Snow, "who could tell us
+certainly whether that window was screened that night?"
+
+"Of course," said Linda. "Our housekeeper, Katherine O'Donovan, would
+know. When we go down we'll ask her."
+
+On their return to the living room, for the first time in her life Linda
+rang for Katy. She hesitated an instant before she did it. It would be
+establishing a relationship that never before had existed between them.
+She always had gone to Katy as she would have, gone to her mother. She
+would have gone to her now, but she wanted Katy to make her appearance
+and give her information without the possibility of previous discussion.
+Katy answered the bell almost at once. Linda went to her side and
+reached her arm across her shoulders.
+
+"Katy," she said, "this is Mr. Eugene Snow of San Francisco He is
+interested in finding out exactly what became of that lost plan of
+Marian's that we have looked for so carefully. Put on your thinking cap,
+old dear, and try to answer accurately any question that Mr. Snow may
+wish to ask you."
+
+Katy looked expectantly at Eugene Snow.
+
+"In the meantime," said Linda, "I'll be excused and go bring round the
+Bear Cat."
+
+"I have only one question to ask you," said Mr. Snow. "Can you recall
+whether, for any reason, there was a screen out of the guest-room window
+directly in front of which the reading table was standing the night Miss
+Marian occupied the room before leaving for San Francisco?"
+
+"Sure there was," answered Katy instantly in her richest, mellowest
+brogue.
+
+She was taking the inventory she had been told to take. She was
+deciding, as instantly as Linda had done, that she liked this man.
+Years, appearance, everything about him appealed to Katy as being
+exactly right for Marian; and her cunning Irish mind was leaping and
+flying and tugging at the leash that thirty years of conventions had
+bound upon her.
+
+"Sure," she repeated, "the wildest santana that ever roared over us just
+caught that screen and landed it slam against the side of the garage,
+and it set inside for three days till I could get a workman to go up
+the outside and put it back. It had been out two days before the night
+Marian was here."
+
+"Did Miss Linda know about it?" asked Snow.
+
+"Not that I know of," said Katy. "She is a schoolgirl, you know, off
+early in the morning, back and up to her room, the busiest youngster the
+valley knows; and coin' a dale of good she is, too. It was Miss Eileen
+that heard the screen ripped out and told me it was gone. She's the one
+who looked after the housekapin' and paid the bills. She knew all about
+it. If 'twould be helpin' Miss Marian any about findin' them plans we've
+ransacked the premises for, I couldn't see any reason why Miss Eileen
+wouldn't tell ye the same as I'm tellin' ye, and her housekapin'
+accounts and her cheque book would show she paid the carpenter, if it's
+legal business you're wantin'."
+
+"Thank you, Katy," said Mr. Snow. "I hope nothing of that kind will
+occur. A great wrong has been perpetrated, but we must find some way
+to right it without involving such extremely nice young women in the
+annoyance of legal proceedings."
+
+Katy folded her arms and raised her head. All her share of the blarney
+of Ireland began to roll from the mellow tip of her tongue.
+
+"Now, the nice man ye are, to be seein' the beauty of them girls so
+quick," she said. "The good Lord airly in the mornin' of creation
+thought them out when He was jist fresh from rist, and the material was
+none shopworn. They ain't ladies like 'em anywhere else in the whole of
+California, and belave me, a many rale ladies have I seen in my time.
+Ye can jist make up your mind that Miss Linda is the broth of the earth.
+She is her father's own child and she is like him as two pase in the
+pod. And Marian growed beside her, and much of a hand I've had in her
+raisin' meself, and well I'm knowin' how fine she is and what a juel
+she'd be, set on any man's hearthstone. I'm wonderin'," said Katy
+challengingly, "if you're the Mr. Snow at whose place she is takin' her
+lessons, and if ye are, I'm wonderin' if ye ain't goin' to use the good
+judgment to set her, like the juel she would be, in the stone of your
+own hearth."
+
+Eugene Snow looked at Katy intently. He was not accustomed to discussing
+his affairs with household helpers, but he could not look at Katy
+without there remaining in his vision the forte of Linda standing beside
+her, a reassuring arm stretched across her shoulders, the manner in
+which she had presented her and then left her that she might be free
+to answer as she chose with out her young mistress even knowing exactly
+what was asked of her. Such faith and trust and love were unusual.
+
+"I might try to do that very thing," he said, "but, you know, a
+wonderful woman is an animated jewel. You can't manufacture a setting
+and put her in and tighten the clasps without her consent."
+
+"Then why don't you get it?" said Katy casually.
+
+Eugene Snow laughed ruefully.
+
+"But suppose," he said, "that the particular jewel you're discussing
+prefers to select her own setting, and mine does not please her."
+
+"Well, they's jist one thing," said Katy. Her heels left the floor
+involuntarily; she arose on her tiptoes; her shoulders came up, and
+her head lifted to a height it never had known before. "They's jist one
+thing," she said. "Aside from Miss Linda, who is my very own child that
+I have washed and I have combed and I have done for since she was a
+toddlin' four-year-old, they ain't no woman in this world I would go
+as far for as I would for Miss Marian; but I'm tellin' ye now, ye Mr.
+Eujane Snow, that they's one thing I don't lend no countenance to. I am
+sorry she has had the cold, cruel luck that she has, but I ain't sorry
+enough that I'm goin' to stand for her droppin' herself into the place
+where she doesn't belong. If the good Lord ain't give her the sense to
+see that you're jist the image of the man that would be jist exactly
+right for her, somebody had better be tellin' her so. Anyway, if Miss
+Linda is takin' ye up to the house that Mr. Pater Morrison is buildin'
+and the Pater man is there, I would advise ye to cast your most
+discernin' eye on that gintleman. Ye watch him jist one minute when he
+looks at the young missus and he thinks nobody ain't observing him, and
+ye'll see what ye'll see. If ye want Marian, ye jist go on and take her.
+I'm not carin' whether ye use a club or white vi'lets, but don't ye be
+lettin' Marian Thorne get no idea into her head that she is goin' to
+take Mr. Pater Morrison, because concernin' Pater I know what I know,
+and I ain't goin' to stand by and see things goin' wrong for want of
+spakin' up. Now if you're a wise man, ye don't nade nothing further said
+on the subject."
+
+Eugene Snow thought intently for a few moments. His vision centered on
+Katherine O'Donovan's face.
+
+"You're absolutely sure of this?" he said at last.
+
+"Jist as sure as the sun's sure, and the mountains, and the seasons come
+and go," said Katy with finality. "Watch him and you'll see it stickin'
+out all over him. I have picked him for me boss, and it's jist adorin'
+that man crature I am."
+
+"What about Miss Linda?" inquired Snow. "Is she adoring him?"
+
+"She ain't nothing but a ganglin' school kid, adorin' the spade with
+which she can shoot around that Bear Cat of hers, and race the canyons,
+and the rely lovely things she can strike on paper with her pencil and
+light up with her joyous colors. Her day and her hour ain't come, and
+the Pater man's that fine he won't lay a finger on her to wake her up
+when she has a year yet of her schoolin' before her. But in the manetime
+it's my job to stand guard as I'm standin' right now. I'm tellin' ye
+frank and fair. Ye go on and take Marian Thorne because ye ought to have
+her. If she's got any idea in her head that she's goin' to have Pater
+Morrison, she'll have to get it out."
+
+Eugene Snow held out his hand and started to the front door in answer to
+the growl of the Bear Cat. As he came down the steps and advanced to the
+car, Linda, with the quick eye that had been one of her special gifts as
+a birthright, noted a change in him. He seemed to have been keyed up
+and toned up. There was a different expression on his face. There was
+buoyancy in his step. There was a visible determination in his eye. He
+took the seat beside her and Linda started the car. She looked at him
+interrogatively.
+
+"Can you connect a heavy wind with the date of the lost plan?" he
+inquired.
+
+"There was a crack-a-jack a few days before," said Linda. "It blew over
+some trees in the lot next to us."
+
+"Exactly," said Snow; "and it plucked a screen from your guest-room
+window. Katy thinks that the cheque to the carpenter and the cost of the
+repairs will be in your sister's account books."
+
+"Um hm," nodded Linda. "Well, that simplifies matters, because Peter
+Morrison is going to tell you about a trip Henry Anderson made around
+our house the morning Marian left."
+
+"I think that is about all we need to know," said Mr. Snow conclusively.
+
+"I think so," said Linda, "but I want you to see Peter's house for
+yourself, since I understand that according to your contract the rights
+to reproduce these particular plans remained with you after you had paid
+prize money for them."
+
+"Most certainly," said Mr. Snow. "We should have that much to show for
+our share of the transaction."
+
+"It's a queer thing," said Linda. "You would have to know me a long
+time, and perhaps know under what conditions I have been reared in order
+to understand a feeling that I frequently have concerning people. I
+tobogganed down a sheer side of Multiflores Canyon one day without my
+path having been previously prepared, and I very nearly landed in the
+automobile that carried Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison on their first
+trip to Lilac Valley. I was much interested in preserving the integrity
+of my neck. I fervently hoped not to break more than a dozen of my
+legs and arms, and was forced to bring down intact the finest Cotyledon
+pulverulenta that Daddy or I had found in fourteen years of collecting
+in California. I am telling you all this that you may see why I
+might have been excused for not having been minutely observant of
+my surroundings when I landed. But what I did observe was a chilly,
+caterpillary sensation chasing up my spine the instant I met the eyes of
+Henry Anderson. In that instant I said to myself that I would not trust
+him, that I did not like him."
+
+"And what about his companion?" asked Eugene Snow lightly. "Oh, Peter?"
+said Linda. There was a caress in her pronunciation of the name. "Why,
+Peter is a rock. The instant I deposited my Cotyledon in a safe place I
+would have put my hand in Peter Morrison's and started around the world
+if he had asked me to go. There is only one Peter. You will recognize
+that the instant you meet him."
+
+"I am altogether willing to take your word for it," said Mr. Snow.
+
+"And there is one thing about this disagreeable business," said Linda.
+"It was not Peter's coat that had the plan in it. He knew nothing about
+it. He has had his full service of stiff war work, and he has been
+knocking around big cities in newspaper work, and now he has come home
+to Lilac Valley to 'set up his rest,' as in the hymn book, you know. He
+built his garage first and he is living in it because he so loves this
+house of his that he has to be present to watch it grow in minute
+detail. Once on a time I saw a great wizard walking along the sidewalk,
+and he looked exactly like any man. He might have been you so far as
+anything different from other men in his appearance w as concerned."
+
+Linda cut down the Bear Cat to its slowest speed.
+
+"What is on my mind is this," she said. "I don't think Peter could quite
+afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building.
+I think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him
+two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with
+him. Now can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid,
+underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt,
+how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is
+building with such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the
+Sea clinging to his back? Do you think, Mr. Eugene Snow, that you're
+enough of a wizard to examine this house and to satisfy yourself as to
+whether it's an infringement of your plans or not, without letting Peter
+know the things about it that would spoil it for him?"
+
+Eugene Snow reached across and closed a hand over the one of Linda's
+nearest him on the steering wheel.
+
+"You very decent kid, you," he said appreciatively. "I certainly am
+enough of a wizard to save your Peter man any disillusionment concerning
+his dream house."
+
+"Oh, but he is not my Peter man," said Linda. "We are only the best
+friends in the world. Really and truly, if you can keep a secret, he's
+Marian's."
+
+"Is he?" asked Mr. Snow interestedly. And then he added very casually,
+in the most offhand manner--he said it more to an orange orchard through
+which they were passing than he said it to Linda--"I have very grave
+doubts about that. I think there must be some slight complication that
+will have to be cleared up."
+
+Linda's heart gave a great jump of consternation.
+
+"Indeed no," she said emphatically. "I don't think he has just told
+Marian yet, but I am very sure that he cares for her more than for any
+other woman, and I am equally sure she cares for him; and nothing could
+be more suitable."
+
+"All right then," agreed Mr. Snow.
+
+Linda put the Bear Cat at the mountain, crept around the road, skirted
+the boulders, and stopped halfway to the garage. And there, in a low
+tone, she indicated to Mr. Snow where they had lunched, when she found
+the plans, how she had brought out the coat, where she had emptied the
+mouse nest. Then she stepped from the car and hallooed for Peter. Peter
+came hurrying from the garage, and Eugene Snow was swift in his mental
+inventory. It coincided exactly with Linda's. He would have been willing
+to join hands with Peter and start around the world, quite convinced
+of the fairness of the outcome, with no greater acquaintance than one
+intent look at Peter, one grip of his sure hand. After that he began to
+act on Katy's hint, and in a very short time he had convinced himself
+that she was right. Maybe Peter tried to absorb himself in the plans he
+was going over, in the house he was proud to show the great architect;
+but it seemed to the man he was entertaining that his glance scarcely
+left Linda, that he was so preoccupied with where she went and what she
+did that he was like a juggler keeping two mental balls in the air at
+the same time.
+
+It seemed to Peter a natural thing that, the architect being in the city
+on business, he should run out to call on Miss Thorne's dearest friend
+It seemed to him equally natural that Linda should bring him to see
+a house in which she was so kindly interesting herself. And just when
+Peter was most dexterous in his juggling, just when he was trying to
+explain the very wonderful step-saving' time-saving, rational kitchen
+arrangements and at the same time watch Linda on her course down to the
+spring, the architect halted him with a jerk. Eugene Snow stood very
+straight, his hands in his coat pockets, looking, Peter supposed, with
+interest at the arrangements of kitchen conveniences. His next terse
+sentence fairly staggered Peter. He looked him straight in the eye
+and inquired casually: "Chosen your dream woman to fit your house,
+Morrison?"
+
+Peter was too surprised to conceal his feelings. His jaws snapped
+together; a belligerent look sprang into his eyes.
+
+"I have had a good deal to do with houses," continued Mr. Snow. "They
+are my life work. I find that invariably they are built for a woman.
+Almost always they are built from her plans, and for her pleasure. It's
+a new house, a unique house, a wonderful house you're evolving here. It
+must be truly a wonderful woman you're dreaming about while you build
+it."
+
+That was a nasty little trap. With his years and worldly experience
+Peter should not have fallen into it; but all men are children when they
+are sick, heart sick or body sick, and Peter was a very sick man at that
+minute. He had been addressed in such a frank and casual manner. His own
+brain shot off at queer tangents and led him constantly into unexpected
+places. The narrow side lane that opened up came into view so suddenly
+that Peter, with the innocence of a four-year-old, turned with military
+precision at the suggestion and looked over the premises for the exact
+location of Linda. Eugene Snow had seen for himself the thing that Katy
+had told him he would see if he looked for it. Suddenly he held out his
+hand.
+
+"As man to man, Morrison, in this instance," he said in rather a hoarse,
+breathless voice, "don't you think it would be a good idea for you and
+me to assert our manhood, to manage our own affairs, to select our
+own wives if need be? If we really set ourselves to the job don't you
+believe we can work out our lives more to our liking than anyone else
+can plan for us? You get the idea, don't you, Morrison?"
+
+Peter was facing the kitchen sink but he did not see it. His brain was
+whirling. He did see Snow's point of view. He did realize his position.
+But what Mr. Snow knew of his affairs he could only guess. The one
+thing Mr. Snow could not know was that Linda frankly admitted her
+prepossession for her school chum, Donald Whiting, but in any event
+if Peter could not have Linda he would much prefer occupying his dream
+house alone. So he caught at the straw held out to him with both hands.
+
+"I get you," he said tersely. "It is not quite up to the mark of the
+manhood we like to think we possess to let our lives be engineered by
+a high school kid. Suppose we do just quietly and masterfully assert
+ourselves concerning our own affairs."
+
+"Suppose we do," said Snow with finality.
+
+Whereupon they shook hands with a grip that whitened their knuckles.
+
+Then they went back to Lilac Valley and had their dinner together, and
+Linda and Peter escorted Eugene Snow to his train and started him on his
+return trip to San Francisco feeling very much better. Peter would not
+allow Linda to drive him home at night, so he left her after the Bear
+Cat had been safely placed in the garage. As she stood on the walk
+beside him, strongly outlined in the moonlight, Peter studied Linda
+whimsically. He said it half laughingly, but there was something to
+think about in what he said:
+
+"I'm just picturing, Linda, what a nice old lady you will be by the time
+that high school kid of yours spends four years in college, one on the
+continent, and the Lord knows how many at mastering a profession."
+
+Linda looked at him with widened eyes.
+
+
+KATY UNBURDENS HER MIND
+
+"Why, what are you talking about, Peter? Are you moonstruck?" she
+inquired solicitously. "Donald's only a friend, you know. I love him
+because he is the nicest companion; but there is nothing for you to be
+silly about."
+
+Then Peter began to realize the truth. There wasn't anything for him to
+be concerned about. She had not the slightest notion what love meant,
+even as she announced that she loved Donald.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. Peter's Release
+
+Eugene Snow returned to San Francisco enthusiastic about Linda, while he
+would scarcely have known how to express his appreciation of Katherine
+O'Donovan. He had been served a delicious dinner, deftly and quietly,
+such food as men particularly like; but there had been no subservience.
+If Katherine O'Donovan had been waiting on her own table, serving her
+own friends she could not have managed with more pride. It was very
+evident that she loved service, that she loved the girl to whom she gave
+constant attention. He understood exactly what there was in her heart
+and why she felt as she did when he saw Linda and Peter together and
+heard their manner of speaking to each other, and made mental note
+of the many points of interest which seemed to exist between
+them. He returned to San Francisco with a good deal of a
+"See-the-conquering-hero-comes" mental attitude. He went directly to
+his office, pausing on the way for a box of candy and a bunch of Parma
+violets. His first act on reaching the office was to send for Miss
+Thorne. Marian came almost immediately, a worried look in her eyes. She
+sat in the big, cushioned chair that was offered her, and smiled faintly
+when the box was laid on her lap, topped with the violets. She looked at
+Eugene Snow with an "I-wish-you-wouldn't" expression on her face; but he
+smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+"Nothing," he said. "Picked them up on the way from the station. I made
+a hasty trip to that precious Lilac Valley of yours, and I must say it
+pales your representation. It is a wonderfully lovely spot."
+
+Marian settled back in the chair. She picked up the violets and ran an
+experienced finger around the stems until she found the pin with which
+she fastened them at her waist. Then as they occupied themselves making
+selections from the candy box he looked smilingly at Marian. Her eyes
+noted the change in him. He was neither disappointed nor sad. Something
+had happened in Lilac Valley that had changed his perspective.
+Womanlike, she began probing.
+
+"Glad you liked my valley," she said. "We are told that blue is a
+wonderful aura to surround a person, and it's equally wonderful when it
+surrounds a whole valley. With the blue sky and the blue walls and a few
+true-blue friends I have there, it's naturally a very dear spot to me."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Snow, "I can see that it is. I ran down on a business
+matter. I have been deeply puzzled and much perturbed over this prize
+contest. We have run these affairs once a year, sometimes oftener, for
+a long time, so I couldn't understand the peculiar thing about the
+similarity of the winning plans and your work this year. I have been
+holding up the prize money, because I did not feel that you were saying
+exactly what was in your heart, and I couldn't be altogether satisfied
+that everything was right. I went to Lilac Valley because I had a letter
+from your friend, Miss Linda Strong. There was an enclosure in it."
+
+He drew from his pocket the folded sheet and handed it to Marian. Her
+eyes were surprised, incredulous, as she opened the missing sheet
+from her plans, saw the extraneous lines drawn upon it and the minute
+figuring with which the margin was covered.
+
+"Linda found it at last!" she cried. "Where in this world did she get
+it, and whose work is this on it?"
+
+"She got it," said Eugene Snow, "when she undertook to clean Peter
+Morrison's workroom on an evening when she and her cook were having
+supper with him. She turned a coat belonging to his architect that hung
+with some of his clothing in Peter Morrison's garage. She was shaking
+the nest of a field mouse from one of the side pockets. Naturally this
+emptied all the pockets, and in gathering up their contents she came
+across that plan, which she recognized. She thought it was right to take
+it and very wisely felt that it was man's business, so she sent it to me
+with her explanations. I went to Lilac Valley because I wanted to judge
+for myself exactly what kind of young person she was. I wanted to see
+her environment. I wanted to see the house that she felt sure was being
+built from these plans. I wanted to satisfy myself of the stability
+of what I had to work on before I mentioned the matter to you or Henry
+Anderson."
+
+Marian sat holding the plan, listening absorbedly to what he was saying.
+
+"It's an ugly business," he said, "so ugly that there is no question
+whatever but that it can be settled very quietly and without any
+annoyance to you. I shall have to take the matter up with the board,
+but I have the details so worked out that I shall have no difficulty
+in arranging matters as I think best. There is no question whatever,
+Marian, but Anderson found that sketch on the west side of the Strong
+residence. When you left your plans lying on a table before a window in
+the Strong guestroom the night before you came to San Francisco you did
+not know that the santana which raged through the valley a day or two
+previously had stripped a screen from the window before which you left
+them. In opening your door to establish a draft before you went to
+bed you started one that carried your top drawing through the window.
+Waiting for Miss Strong the next morning, in making a circuit of
+the grounds Anderson found it and appropriated it to most excellent
+advantage. Miss Linda tells me that your study of architecture was
+discussed at the dinner table that night. He could not have helped
+realizing that any sheet of plans he found there must have been yours.
+If he could acquit his conscience of taking them and using them, he
+would still have to explain why he was ready to accept the first prize
+and the conditions imposed when he already had a house fairly well under
+construction from the plans he submitted in the contest. The rule is
+unbreakable that the plans must be original, must be unused, must be our
+sole property, if they take the prize."
+
+Marian was leaning forward, her eyes wide with interest, her breast
+agitated. She nodded in acquiescence. Eugene Snow reached across and
+helped himself to another piece of candy from the box on her knee. He
+looked at her speculatively and spoke quietly as if the matter were of
+no great importance.
+
+"Would it be agreeable, Marian, if the prize committee should announce
+that there were reasons as to why they were not satisfied, that they
+have decided to return all plans and call off the present contest,
+opening another in a few months in which interested parties may again
+submit their drawings? I will undertake swiftly and comprehensively to
+eliminate Henry Anderson from California. I would be willing to venture
+quite a sum that when I finish with the youngster he will see the
+beauty of going straight hereafter and the desirability of a change of
+atmosphere. He's a youngster. I hate to make the matter public, not
+only on account of involving you and your friends in such disagreeable
+business, but I am sorry for him. I would like to deal with him like the
+proverbial 'Dutch uncle,' then I would like to send him away to make a
+new start with the assurance that I am keeping close watch on him. Would
+you be satisfied if I handled the matter quietly and in my own way?
+Could you wait a few weeks for justice?"
+
+Marian drew a deep breath.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it would be wonderful if you could do that. But
+what about Peter Morrison? How much did he know concerning the plans,
+and what does he know about this?"
+
+"Nothing," said Mr. Snow. "That most unusual young friend of yours made
+me see the light very clearly concerning Peter Morrison. There is no
+necessity for him ever to know that the 'dream house,' as Miss Linda
+calls it, that he is building for his dream woman has any disagreeable
+history attached to it. He so loves the spot that he is living on it to
+watch that house in minutest detail. Miss Linda was fairly eloquent in
+the plea she made on his behalf. He strikes me as a very unusual person,
+and she appealed to me in the same way. There must be some scientific
+explanation concerning her that I don't just get, but I can see that
+she is most unusual when I watched them together and heard them talk of
+their plans for the house and the grounds and discussing illustrations
+that she is making for articles that he is writing, I saw how deep and
+wholesome was the friendship existing between them. I even heard that
+wonderful serving woman, whom they so familiarly speak of as 'Katy,'
+chiding Peter Morrison for allowing Linda to take her typewriter to
+him and do her own work with a pen. And because Miss Linda seems so
+greathearted and loving with her friends, I was rather glad to hear his
+explanation that they were merely changing machines for the time being
+for a very particular reason of their own."
+
+"Do you mean," asked Marian, "that you think there is anything more than
+casual friendship between Linda and Peter Morrison?"
+
+"Not on her part," answered Eugene Snow. "Anybody can see that she is
+a child deeply engrossed in all sorts of affairs uncommon for a girl of
+her age and position. Her nice perceptions, her wonderful loyalty to
+her friends, her loving thought for them, are manifest in everything she
+says or does. If she ever makes any mistakes they will be from the head,
+not from the heart. But for the other end of the equation I could speak
+authoritatively. Katy pointed out to me the fact that if I would watch
+Peter Morrison in Miss Linda's presence, I should see that he adored
+her. I did watch, and I did see that very thing. When I taxed him about
+building a dream house for a dream woman, his eyes crossed a plateau,
+leaped a brook, and started up the side of a mountain. They did not rest
+until they had found Linda."
+
+Marian sat so still that it seemed as if she were not even breathing.
+In view of what Katy had said, and his few words with Peter Morrison,
+Eugene Snow had felt justified in giving Marian a hint as to what was
+going on in Lilac Valley. Exactly what he had done he had no means of
+knowing. If he had known and had talked intentionally he could not have
+made clearer to Marian the thing which for months had puzzled her.
+She was aware that Eugene Snow was talking, that he was describing the
+dinner he had been served, the wonderful wild-flower garden that he had
+seen, how skillfully Linda drove the Bear Cat. She heard these things
+and dimly comprehended them but underneath, her brain was seizing
+upon one fact after another. They had exchanged typewriters. The poor,
+foolish little kid had known how her health was wracked, how she was
+suffering, how her pride would not let her stoop to Eileen's subterfuges
+and wage war with her implements for a man she did not want if her
+manner of living her everyday life did not appeal to him. Linda had
+known how lonely and heart hungry and disappointed she had gone away,
+and loyally she had tried to create an interest in life for her; and she
+had succeeded entirely too well. And then in a panic she must have
+gone to Peter Morrison and explained the situation; and Peter must
+have agreed to take over the correspondence. One by one things that had
+puzzled her about the letters and about the whole affair began to grow
+clear. She even saw how Linda, having friendly association with no man
+save Peter, would naturally use him for a model. The trouble was that,
+with her gift of penetration and insight and her facility with her pen,
+she had overdone the matter. She had not imitated Peter; she had BEEN
+Peter. Marian arose suddenly.
+
+She went home, locked the door, and one after another she read the
+letters that had piqued, amused, comforted, and finally intrigued her.
+They were brilliant letters, charming, appealing letters, and yet, with
+knowledge concerning them, Marian wondered how she could have failed to
+appreciate in the beginning that they were from Linda.
+
+"It goes to prove," she said at last, "how hungry the human heart is for
+love and sympathy. And that poor kid, what she must have suffered when
+she went to Peter for help! And if, as Mr. Snow thinks, he cares for
+her, how he must have suffered before he agreed to help her, as no doubt
+he did. What I have to do is to find some way out of the situation that
+will relieve Linda's anxiety and at least partially save my face. I
+shall have to take a few days to work it out. Luckily I haven't answered
+my last letter. When I find out what I really want to say then I will be
+very careful how I say it. I don't just exactly relish having my letters
+turned over to Peter Morrison, but possibly I can think of some way--I
+must think of some way--to make them feel that I have not been any more
+credulous than they."
+
+While she thought, both Linda and Peter were doing much thinking on the
+same subject. Linda's heart was full of gratitude to Peter for helping
+her out of her very disagreeable situation. Peter had not yet opened the
+packet of letters lying on his table He had a sickening distaste for the
+whole transaction. He had thought that he would wait until he received
+the first letter he was to answer. If it gave him sufficient foundation
+in itself for the answer, he would not be forced to search further. He
+had smoked many pipes on this decision. After the visit of Mr. Snow,
+Peter had seen a great light and had decided, from the mood and the
+attitude of that gentleman after his interview with Katy, that he very
+likely would be equal to any complication that might arise when he
+reached San Francisco. Mulling over the situation one day Peter said
+reflectively to the spring which was very busy talking to him: "I am
+morally certain that this matter has resolved itself into a situation
+that closely resembles the bootblack's apple: 'they ain't goin' to be
+any core.' I am reasonably certain that I never shall have a letter to
+answer. In a few days probably I shall be able to turn back that packet
+to Linda without having opened it."
+
+To make up for the perturbation which had resulted in failure in
+class and two weeks of work that represented her worst appearances in
+high-school history, Linda, her mind freed from the worry over Marian's
+plans, and her heart calmer over the fiasco in trying to comfort her,
+devoted herself absorbingly to her lessons and to the next magazine
+article that she must finish. She had decided that it was time to write
+on the subject of Indian confections. Her first spare minute she and
+Katy must busy themselves working out the most delicious cactus candy
+possible. Then they could try the mesquite candy. No doubt she could
+evolve a delicious gum from the mesquite and the incense plant. She knew
+she could from the willow milkweed; and under the head of "sweets" an
+appetizing jelly from manzanita. There were delightful drinks too, from
+the manzanita and the chia. And better than either, the lemonade berry
+would serve this purpose. She had not experimented to an authoritative
+extent with the desert pickles. And among drinks she might use the
+tea made from blue-eyed grass, brewed by the Indians for feverish
+conditions; and there was a whole world of interest to open up in
+differing seeds and berries, parched or boiled for food. And there were
+the seeds that were ground for mush, like the thistle sage, and the mock
+orange which was food and soap also, and the wild sunflowers that were
+parched for meal, and above all, the acorns. She could see that her
+problem was not going to be one of difficulty in securing sufficient
+material for her book; it would be how to find time to gather all these
+things, and put them through the various processes and combinations
+necessary to make edible dishes from I them. It would mean a long summer
+of interesting and absorbing I work for her and for Katy. Much of it
+could not be done until the I summer was far advanced and the seeds and
+the berries were I ripe. She could rely on Donald to help her search for
+the material. With only herself and Katy in the family they could give
+much of their time to the work.
+
+"Where Katy will rebel," said Linda to herself, "is when it comes to
+gathering sufficient seeds and parching them to make these meal and mush
+dishes. She will call it 'fiddlin' business.' She shall be propitiated
+with a new dress and a beautiful bonnet, and she shall go with me
+frequently to the fields. The old dear loves to ride. First thing I do
+I'll call at the bank again and have our affairs properly straightened
+and settled there in the light of the letter Daddy left me. Then I shall
+have money to get all the furniture and the rugs and things we truly
+need. I'll repaint the kitchen and get Katy some new cooking utensils to
+gladden her soul. And Saturday I must make my trip with Donald account
+for something worth while on the book."
+
+All these plans were feasible. What Linda had to do was to accomplish
+them, and this she proceeded to do in a swift and businesslike manner.
+She soon reached the place where the whole house with the exception
+of Eileen's suite had been gone over, freshened and refurnished to her
+liking. The guest-room furniture had been moved to her rejuvenated room.
+On the strength of her I returns from the book she had disposed of her
+furniture and was finding much girlish delight in occupying a beautiful
+room, daintily decorated, comfortably furnished with pieces of her own
+selection. As she and Katy stood looking over their work when everything
+was ready for her first night of occupancy Katy had said to her:
+
+"It's jist right and proper, lambie; it's jist the way it ought to be;
+and now say the word and let me clean out Eileen's suate and get it
+ready for Miss Marian, so if she would drop down unexpected she would
+find we was good as our word."
+
+"All right," said Linda.
+
+"And what am I to do with the stuff?" inquired Katy.
+
+"Katy, my dear," said Linda with a dry laugh, "you'll think I am
+foolish, but I have the queerest feeling concerning those things. I
+can't feel that Eileen has done with them; I can't feel that she
+will never want them again; I can't feel that they should go to some
+second-hand basement. Pack all of her clothing that you can manage in
+her trunk and put it in the garret, and what the trunk won't hold pack
+in a tight box and put that in the garret also. She hasn't written me
+a line; she has sent me no address; I don't know what to do; but, as I
+have said before, I am going to save the things at least a year and see
+whether some day Eileen won't think of something she wants to do with
+them. Clean the rooms and I will order Marian's things sent."
+
+According to these arrangements it was only a few days until Linda wrote
+Marian that her room was ready for her and that any time she desired to
+come and take possession she could test the lovingness of the welcome
+that awaited her by becoming intimately acquainted with it. Marian
+answered the letter immediately. She said that she was planning to come
+very soon to test that welcome. She longed for the quiet of the valley,
+for its cool, clean, wild air. She was very tired; she needed rest. She
+thought she would love the new home they were offering her. Then came
+two amazing paragraphs.
+
+The other day Dana and I went into one of the big cafes in the city to
+treat ourselves to a taste of the entertainment with which the people
+of wealth regale themselves. We had wandered in laughingly jesting about
+what we should order, and ran into Eileen in the company of her aunt and
+uncle and a very flashy and loudly dressed young man, evidently a new
+suitor of Eileen's. I don't think Eileen wanted to introduce us, and yet
+she acted like a person ravenous for news of her home and friends. She
+did introduce us, and immediately her ponderous uncle took possession of
+us. It seems that the man is a brother of Eileen's mother. Linda, he is
+big and gross, he is everything that a man of nice perceptions would not
+be, but he does love Eileen. He is trying conscientiously to please
+her. His wife is the kind of person who would marry that kind of man and
+think everything he said and did was right. And the suitor, my dear, was
+the kind of man who could endure that kind of people. Eileen was almost,
+if not quite, the loveliest thing I ever have seen. She was plain; she
+was simple; but it was the costly simplicity of extravagance. Ye gods!
+but she had pearls of the size she had always wanted. She tried with
+all her might to be herself, but she knows me well enough to know what
+I would think and what I would write to you concerning the conditions
+under which I met her. We were simply forced to lunch with them. We
+could only nibble at the too rich, too highly seasoned food set before
+us. And I noticed that Eileen nibbled also. She is not going to grow fat
+and waddle and redden her nose, but, my dear, back deep in her eyes and
+in the curve of her lips and in the tone of her voice there were such
+disappointment and discontent as I never have seen in any woman. She
+could not suppress them; she could not conceal them. There was nothing
+on earth she could do but sit quietly and endure. They delivered us at
+our respective offices, leaving both of us dates on which to visit them,
+but neither of us intends to call on them. Eileen's face was a tragedy
+when her uncle insisted on making the arrangements. I can at least spare
+her that.
+
+And now, my dear, life is growing so full and my time is so taken with
+my work at the office and with my widening friendships with Dana and
+her friends and with Mr. Snow, that I really feel I have not time to go
+farther with our anonymous correspondence. It is all I can do to find
+time to write you letters such as the one I am writing I have done my
+best to play up to what you expected of me and I think I have succeeded
+in fooling you quite as much as you have felt that you were fooling me.
+But, Linda dear, I want you always to know that I appreciate the spirit
+in which you began this thing. I know why you did it and I shall always
+love you a trifle more for your thought of me and your effort to tide
+over the very dark days you knew I would be facing in San Francisco.
+I think, dear friend of mine, that I have had my share of dark days.
+I think there is very beautiful sunlight ahead for me. And by and by I
+hope to come into happiness that maybe is even more than my share. I am
+coming to see you soon and then I will tell you all about it.
+
+There was more of the letter, but at that point Linda made one headlong
+rush for the Bear Cat. She took the curve on two wheels and almost ran
+into the mountain face behind the garage before she could slow down.
+Then she set the Cat screaming wildly for Peter. As he came up to the
+car she leaned toward him, shaking with excitement.
+
+"Peter," she cried, "have you opened that packet of letters yet?"
+
+"No," said Peter, "I have not."
+
+"Then give them to me quickly, Peter," said Linda.
+
+Peter rushed into the garage and brought out the packet. Linda caught it
+in both hands and dropped it in her lap.
+
+"Well, thank God," she said devoutly. "And, Peter, the joke's on me.
+Marian knew I was writing those letters all the time and she just
+pretended that she cared for them to make the game interesting for me.
+And when she had so many friends and so much to do, she hadn't time
+for them any longer; then she pretended that she was getting awfully in
+earnest in order to stop me, and she did stop me all right."
+
+Linda's face was a small panorama of conflicting emotions as she
+appealed to Peter.
+
+"Peter," she said in a quivering voice, "you can testify that she
+stopped me properly, can't you, Peter?"
+
+Peter tried to smile. He was older than Linda, and he was thinking
+swiftly, intently.
+
+"Yes, kid," he said with utmost corroboration, "yes, kid, she stopped
+you, but I can't see that it was necessary literally to scare the life
+out of you till she had you at the point where you were thinking of
+taking off from a mountain or into the sea. Did you really mean that,
+Linda?"
+
+Linda relaxed suddenly. She sank back into the deeply padded seat of the
+Bear Cat. A look of fright and entreaty swept into her dark eyes.
+
+"Yes, Peter, I did mean it," she said with finality. "I couldn't have
+lived if I had hurt Marian irreparably. She has been hurt so much
+already. And, Peter, it was awfully nice of you to wait about reading
+these letters. Even if she only did it for a joke, I think Marian would
+rather that you had not read them. Now I'll go back home and begin to
+work in earnest on the head piece of 'How to Grow Good Citizens.' And I
+quite agree with you, Peter, that the oath of allegiance, citizenship,
+and the title to a piece of real estate are the prime requisites. People
+have no business comma to our country to earn money that they intend to
+carry away to invest in the development and the strengthening of some
+other country that may some day be our worst enemy. I have not found out
+yet how to say it in a four-by-twelve-inch strip, but by the time I have
+read the article aloud to my skylight along about ten tonight I'll get
+an inspiration; I am sure I shall."
+
+"Of course you will," said Peter; "but don't worry about it, dear; don't
+lose sleep. Take things slower. Give time for a little more flesh to
+grow on your bones. And don't forget that while you're helping Donald to
+keep at the head of his classes it's your first job to keep at the head
+of your own."
+
+"Thank you," said Linda. "How is the dream coming?"
+
+"Beautifully," said Peter. "One of these days you're going to come
+rushing around the boulders and down the side of the building to find
+all this debris cleared away and the place for a lawn leveled. I am
+fighting down every possible avenue of expertise on the building in the
+effort to save money to make the brook run and the road wind where you
+have indicated that you want them to follow you."
+
+Linda looked at Peter while a queer, reflective light gathered in her
+eyes. At last she said soberly: "Well, I don't know, Peter, that you
+should make them so very personal to me as all that."
+
+"Why not?" asked Peter casually. "Since there is no one else, why not?"
+
+Linda released the clutch and started the car. She backed in front of
+the garage and turned. She was still thinking deeply as she stopped.
+Once again she extended a hand to Peter.
+
+"Thank you a thousand times for not reading these letters, Peter," she
+said. "I can't express how awfully fine I think it is of you. And if
+it's all right with you, perhaps there's not any real reason why you
+should not run that brook and drive that road the way I think they
+should go. Somebody is going to design them. Why shouldn't I, if it
+pleases you to have me?"
+
+"It pleases me very greatly," said Peter--"more than anything else I can
+think of in all the world at this minute."
+
+And then he did a thing that he had done once or twice before. He bent
+back Linda's fingers and left another kiss in the palm of her hand, and
+then he closed her fingers very tightly over it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI. The End of Donald's Contest
+
+The middle of the week Linda had told Katy that she intended stocking
+up the Bear Cat for three and that she would take her along on the next
+Saturday's trip to her canyon kitchen. It was a day upon which she had
+planned to gather greens, vegetables, and roots, and prepare a dinner
+wholly from the wild. She was fairly sure exactly where in nature she
+would find the materials she wanted, but she knew that the search would
+be long and tiring. It would be jolly to have Katy to help her prepare
+the lunch. It would please Katy immensely to be taken; and the original
+things she said in her quaint Irish brogue greatly amused Donald. The
+arrangement had been understood among them for some time, so they all
+started on their journey filled with happy expectations. They closed the
+house and the garage carefully. Linda looked over the equipment of the
+Bear Cat minutely making sure that her field axe, saw, knives, and her
+field glasses were in place. Because more food than usual was to be
+prepared in the kitchen they took along a nest of cooking vessels and a
+broiler. They found Donald waiting before either of them were ready, and
+in great glee, with much laughing and many jests they rolled down the
+valley in the early morning. They drove to the kitchen, spread their
+blankets, set up their table, and arranged the small circular opening
+for their day's occupancy. While Katy and Linda were busy with these
+affairs Donald took the axe and collected a big heap of wood. Then they
+left Katy to burn the wood and have a deep bed of coals ready while they
+started out to collect from the canyon walls, the foot of the mountains,
+and the near-by desert the materials they would use for their dinner.
+
+Just where the desert began to climb the mountain Linda had for a
+long time watched a big bed of amole. Donald used the shovel, she the
+hatchet, and soon they had brought to the surface such a quantity that
+Donald protested.
+
+"But I have two uses for them today," explained Linda. "They must serve
+for potatoes and they have to furnish our meat."
+
+"Oh, I get you," said Donald. "I have always been crazy to try that."
+
+So he began to dig again enthusiastically.
+
+"Now I'll tell you what I think we had better do," said Linda. "We will
+skirmish around this side of the mountain and find a very nice tender
+yucca shoot; and then we'll take these back to Katy and let her bury
+them in the ashes and keep up the fire while we forage for the remainder
+of our wild Indian feast."
+
+Presently they found a yucca head that Linda said was exactly right, a
+delicate pink, thicker than her wrist and two feet in length. With this
+and the amole they ran back to Katy. She knew how to prepare the amole
+for roasting. Linda gave her a few words of instruction concerning the
+yucca. Then from the interior of the Bear Cat she drew a tightly rolled
+section of wire window screening. Just where a deep, wide pool narrowed
+at a rocky defile they sank the screening, jammed it well to the bottom,
+fastened it tight at the sides, and against the current side of it they
+threw leaves, grass, chunks of moss, any debris they could gather that
+would make a temporary dam. Then, standing on one side with her field
+knife, Linda began to slice the remainder of the amole very thin and to
+throw it over the surface of the pool. On the other, Donald pounded
+the big, juicy bulbs to pulp and scattered it broadcast over the water.
+Linda instructed Katy to sit on the bank with a long-handled landing net
+and whenever a trout arose, to snatch it out as speedily as possible,
+being careful not to take more than they would require.
+
+Then the two youngsters, exhilarated with youth, with living, with
+the joy of friendship, with the lure of the valley, with the heady
+intoxication of the salt breeze and the gold of the sunshine, climbed
+into the Bear Cat and went rolling through the canyon and out to the
+valley on the far side. Here they gathered the tenderest heart shoots
+of the lupin until Linda said they had enough. Then to a particular spot
+that she knew on the desert they hurried for the enlarged stems of the
+desert trumpet which was to serve that day for an appetizer in the stead
+of pickles. Here, too, they filled a bucket from the heart of a big
+Bisnaga cactus as a basis for their drink. Among Katherine O'Donovan's
+cooking utensils there was a box of delicious cactus candy made from the
+preserved and sun-dried heart meat of this same fruit which was to serve
+as their confection. On the way back they stopped at the bridge and
+gathered cress for their salad. When they returned to Katy she had five
+fine trout lying in the shade, and with more experienced eyes and a more
+skillful hand Linda in a few minutes doubled this number. Then they tore
+out the dam, rinsed the screen and spread it over a rock to dry. While
+Donald scaled the fish Linda put the greens to cook, prepared the salad
+and set the table. Once, as he worked under her supervision, Linda said
+to Donald: "Now about bread, kid--there's not going to be any bread,
+because the Indians did not have it when they lived the way we are
+living today. When you reach the place where your left hand feels empty
+without a piece of bread in it, just butter up another amole and try
+it. It will serve the same purpose as bread, and be much better for the
+inner man."
+
+"If you would let me skin these fish," said Donald, "I could do it much
+faster and make a better job of it."
+
+"But you shouldn't skin them; you want the skin to hold the meat
+together when it begins to cook tender; and you should be able to peel
+it off and discard it if it burns or gets smoky in the cooking. It's a
+great concession to clean them as we do. The Indians cooked them in the
+altogether and ate the meat from the bones."
+
+"Oh my tummy!" said Donald. "I always thought there was some dark secret
+about the Indians."
+
+Linda sat on a rock opposite him and clasped her hands around her knees.
+She looked at him meditatively.
+
+"Did you?" she asked. "Suppose you revise that opinion. Our North
+American Indians in their original state were as fine as any peoples
+that ever have been discovered the round of the globe. My grandfather
+came into intimate contact with them in the early days, and he said that
+their religion, embracing the idea of a great spirit to whom they were
+responsible for their deeds here, and a happy hunting ground to which
+they went as a reward for decent living, was as fine as any religion
+that ever has been practiced by people of any nation. Immorality was
+unknown among them. Family ties were formed and they were binding They
+loved their children and reared them carefully. They were hardy and
+healthful. Until the introduction of whiskey and what we are pleased to
+term civilized methods of living, very few of them died save from war
+or old age. They were free; they were happy. The moping, lazy, diseased
+creature that you find sleeping in the sun around the reservations is a
+product of our civilization. Nice commentary on civilization, isn't it?"
+
+"For heaven's sake, Linda," said Donald, "don't start any big
+brainstorming trains of thought today! Grant me repose. I have
+overworked my brain for a few months past until I know only one thing
+for certain."
+
+"All right then, me lad, this is the time for the big secret," said
+Linda. "I just happened to be in the assembly room on some business
+of my own last Thursday afternoon when my sessions were over, and I
+overheard your professor in trigonometry tell a marl I did not know, who
+seemed to be a friend visiting him, that the son of Judge Whiting was
+doing the finest work that ever had been done in any of the Los Angeles
+high schools, and that undoubtedly you were going to graduate with
+higher honors than any other boy ever had from that school."
+
+Donald sat thinking this over. He absently lifted an elbow and wiped the
+tiny scales from his face with his shirt sleeve.
+
+"Young woman," he said solemnly, "them things what you're saying, are
+they 'cross your heart, honest to goodness, so help you,' truth, or are
+they the fruit of a perfervid imagination?"
+
+Linda shook her head vigorously.
+
+"De but', kid," she said, "de gospel but'. You have the Jap going
+properly. He can't stop you now. You have fought your good fight, and
+you have practically won it. All you have to do is to carry on till the
+middle of June, and you're It."
+
+"I wish Dad knew," said Donald in a low voice.
+
+"The Judge does know," said Linda heartily. "It wasn't fifteen minutes
+after I heard that till I had him on the telephone repeating it as
+fast as I could repeat. Come to think of it, haven't you noticed a
+particularly cocky set of his head and the corksome lightness about his
+heels during the past few days?"
+
+"By Jove, he has been happy about something!" said Donald. "And I
+noticed that Louise and the Mater were sort of cheery and making a
+specialty of the only son and brother."
+
+"Sure, brother, sure," said Linda. "Hurry up and scrape those fish and
+let's scamper down the canyon merely for the joy of flying with wings on
+our feet. You're It, young man, just It!"
+
+Donald was sitting on a boulder. On another in front of him he was
+operating on the trout. His hands were soiled; his hair was tousled;
+he was fairly well decorated with fine scales. He looked at Linda
+appealingly.
+
+"Am I 'It' with you, Linda?" he asked soberly.
+
+"Sure you are," said Linda. "You're the best friend I have."
+
+"Will you write to me when I go to college this fall?"
+
+"Why, you couldn't keep me from it," said Linda. "I'll have so many
+things to tell you. And when your first vacation comes we'll make it a
+hummer."
+
+"I know Dad won't let me come home for my holidays except for the
+midsummer ones," said Donald soberly. "It would take most of the time
+there would be of the short holidays to travel back and forth."
+
+"You will have to go very carefully about getting a start," said Linda,
+"and you should be careful to find the right kind of friends at the very
+start. Christmas and Thanksgiving boxes can always be sent on time to
+reach you. It won't be so long for you as for us; and by the time you
+have Oka Sayye beaten to ravelings you will have such a 'perfect habit'
+that you will start right in with the beating idea. That should keep you
+fairly busy, because most of the men you come up against will be beaters
+themselves."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Donald. "Are you going to start me to college with
+the idea that I have to keep up this beating habit? If I were to be one
+of fifty or a hundred, wouldn't that be good enough?"
+
+"Why, sure," said Linda, "if you will be satisfied with having me like
+fifty or a hundred as well as I do you."
+
+"Oh, damn!" said Donald angrily. "Do I have to keep up this top-crust
+business all my days?"
+
+Linda looked at him with a queer smile on her lips.
+
+"Not unless you want to, Donald," she said quietly; "not unless you
+think you would rather."
+
+Donald scraped a fish vigorously. Linda sat watching him. Presently the
+tense lines around his eyes vanished. A faint red crept up his neck
+and settled on his left cheek bone. A confused grin slowly widened his
+naturally wide mouth.
+
+"Then it's me for the top crust," he said conclusively.
+
+"Then it's me for you," answered Linda in equally as matter-of-fact
+tones; and rising, she gathered up the fish and carried them to Katy
+while Donald knelt beside the chilly stream and scoured his face and
+hands, after which Linda whipped away the scales with an improvised
+brush of willow twigs.
+
+It was such a wonderful day; it was such an unusual and delicious feast.
+Plump brook trout, fresh from icy water, delicately broiled over searing
+wood coals, are the finest of food. Through the meal to the point where
+Donald lay on his back at the far curve of the canyon wall, nibbling a
+piece of cactus candy, everything had been perfect. Nine months would
+be a long time to be gone, but Linda would wait for him, and she would
+write to him.
+
+He raised his head on his elbow and called across to her: "Say, Linda,
+how often will you write to me?"
+
+Linda answered promptly: "Every Saturday night. Saturday is our day.
+I'll tell you what has happened all the week. I'll tell you specially
+what a darned unprofitable day Saturday is when you're three thousand
+miles away."
+
+Bending over the canyon fireplace, her face red with heat and exertion,
+Katherine O'Donovan caught up her poker and beat up the fire until the
+ashes flew.
+
+"Easy, Katy, easy," cautioned Linda. "We may want to bury those coals
+and resurrect them to warm up what is left for supper."
+
+"We'll do no such thing," said Katy promptly. "What remains goes to feed
+the fish. Next time it's hungry ye are, we're goin' to hit it straight
+to Lilac Valley and fill ourselves with God's own bread and beefsteak
+and paraties. Don't ye think we're goin' to be atin' these haythen
+messes twice in one day."
+
+To herself she was saying: "The sooner I get you home to Pater Morrison,
+missy, the better I'll be satisfied."
+
+Once she stood erect, her hands at her belt, her elbows widespread,
+and with narrowed eyes watched the youngsters. Her lips were closed so
+tightly they wrinkled curiously as she turned back to the fireplace.
+
+"Nayther one of them fool kids has come to yet," she said to herself,
+"and a mighty good thing it is that they haven't."
+
+Linda was looking speculatively at Donald as he lay stretched on the
+Indian blanket at the base of the cliff. And then, because she was for
+ever busy with Nature, her eyes strayed above him up the side of the
+cliff, noting the vegetation, the scarred rocks, the sheer beauty of the
+canyon wall until they reached the top. Then, for no reason at all,
+she sat looking steadily at a huge boulder overhanging the edge of the
+cliff, and she was wondering how many ages it had hung there and how
+many more it would hang, poised almost in air, when a tiny pebble at its
+base loosened and came rattling and bounding down the canyon face. Every
+nerve in Linda tensed. She opened her mouth, but not a sound came. For a
+breathless second she was paralyzed. Then she shrieked wildly: "Donald,
+Donald, roll under the ledge! Quick, quick!"
+
+She turned to Katy.
+
+"Back, Katy, back!" she screamed. "That boulder is loose; it's coming
+down!"
+
+For months Donald Whiting had obeyed Linda implicitly and instantly. He
+had moved with almost invisible speed at her warning many times before.
+Sometimes it had been a venomous snake, sometimes a yucca bayonet,
+sometimes poison vines, again unsafe footing--in each case instant
+obedience had been the rule. He did hot "question why" at her warning;
+he instantly did as he was told. He, too, had noticed the falling
+pebble. With all the agility of which he was capable he rolled under
+the narrow projecting ledge above him. Katherine O'Donovan was a good
+soldier also. She whirled and ran to the roadway. She had barely reached
+it when, with a grinding crash, down came the huge boulder, carrying
+bushes, smaller rocks, sand, and debris with it. On account of its
+weight it fell straight, struck heavily, and buried itself in the earth
+exactly on the spot upon which Donald had been lying. Linda raised
+terrified eyes to the top of the wall. For one instant a dark object
+peered over it and then drew back. Without thought for herself Linda
+rushed to the boulder, and kneeling, tried to see back of it.
+
+"Donald!" she cried, "Donald, are you all right?"
+
+"Guess I am, unless it hit one foot pretty hard. Feels fast."
+
+"Can you get out?" she cried, beginning to tear with her hands at the
+stone and the bushes where she thought his head would be.
+
+"I'm fast; but I'm all right," he panted. "Why the devil did that thing
+hang there for ages, and then come down on me today?"
+
+"Yes, why did it?" gasped Linda. "Donald, I must leave you a minute.
+I've got to know if I saw a head peer over just as that stone came
+down."
+
+"Be careful what you do!" he cried after her.
+
+Linda sprang to her feet and rushed to the car. She caught out the field
+classes and threw the strap over her head as she raced to the far side
+of the fireplace where the walls were not so sheer. Katherine O'Donovan
+promptly seized the axe, caught its carrying strap lying beside it,
+thrust the handle through, swung it over her own head, dropped it
+between her shoulders, and ripping off her dress skirt she started up
+the cliff after Linda. Linda was climbing so swiftly and so absorbedly
+that she reached the top before she heard a sound behind her. Then she
+turned with a white face, and her mouth dropped open as she saw Katy
+three fourths of the way up the cliff. For one second she was again
+stiff with terror, then, feeling she could do nothing, she stepped back
+out of sight and waited a second until Katy's red head and redder face
+appeared over the edge. Realizing that her authority was of no avail,
+that Katy would follow her no matter where she went or what she did, and
+with no time to argue, Linda simply called to her encouragingly: "Follow
+where I go; take your time; hang tight, old dear, it's dangerous!"
+
+She started around the side of the mountain, heading almost straight
+upward, traveling as swiftly and as noiselessly as possible. Over big
+boulders, on precarious footing, clinging to bushes, they made their way
+until they reached a place that seemed to be sheer above them; certainly
+it was for hundreds of feet below On a point of rock screened by
+overhanging bushes Linda paused until Katy overtook her.
+
+"We are about stalled," she panted. "Find a good footing and stay where
+you are. I'm going to climb out on these bushes and see if I can get a
+view of the mountain side."
+
+Advancing a few yards, Linda braced herself, drew around her glasses,
+and began searching the side of the mountain opposite her and below as
+far as she could range with the glasses. At last she gave up.
+
+"Must have gone the other way," she said to Katy. "I'll crawl back to
+you. We'll go after help and get Donald out. There will be time enough
+to examine the cliff afterward; but I am just as sure now as I will be
+when it is examined that that stone was purposely loosened to a degree
+where a slight push would drop it. As Donald says, there's no reason
+why it should hang there for centuries and fall on him today. Shut your
+eyes, old dear, and back up. We must go to Donald. I rather think it's
+on one of his feet from what he said. Let me take one more good look."
+
+At that minute from high on the mountain above them a shower of sand and
+pebbles came rattling down. Linda gave Katy one terrified look.
+
+"My God!" she panted. "He's coming down right above us!"
+
+Just how Linda recrossed the bushes and reached Katy she did not know.
+She motioned for her to make her way back as they had come. Katy planted
+her feet squarely upon the rock. Her lower jaw shot out; her eyes were
+aflame. She stood perfectly still with the exception of motioning Linda
+to crowd back under the bushes, and again Linda realized that she had
+no authority; as she had done from childhood when Katy was in earnest,
+Linda obeyed her. She had barely reached the overhanging bushes,
+crouched under them, and straightened herself, when a small avalanche
+came showering down, and a minute later a pair of feet were level with
+her head. Then screened by the bushes, she could have reached out and
+touched Oka Sayye. As his feet found a solid resting place on the ledge
+on which Linda and Katy stood, and while he was still clinging to the
+bushes, Katherine O'Donovan advanced upon him. He had felt that his feet
+were firm, let go his hold, and turned, when he faced the infuriated
+Irishwoman. She had pulled the strap from around her neck, slipped the
+axe from it, and with a strong thrust she planted the head of it against
+Oka Sayye's chest so hard that she almost fell forward. The Jap plunged
+backward among the bushes, the roots of which had supported Linda
+while she used the glasses. Then he fell, sliding among them, snatching
+wildly. Linda gripped the overhanging growth behind which she had been
+screened, and leaned forward.
+
+"He has a hold; he is coming back up, Katy!" she cried.
+
+Katy took another step forward. She looked over the cliff down an
+appalling depth of hundreds of feet. Deliberately she raised the axe,
+circled it round her head and brought it down upon that particular
+branch to which Oka Sayye was clinging. She cut it through, and the axe
+rang upon the stone wall behind it. As she swayed forward Linda reached
+out, gripped Katy and pulled her back.
+
+"Get him?" she asked tersely, as if she were speaking of a rat or a
+rattlesnake.
+
+Katy sank back limply against the wall. Linda slowly turned her around,
+and as she faced the rock, "Squeeze tight against it shut your eyes, and
+keep a stiff upper lip," she cautioned. "I'm going to work around you; I
+want to be ahead of you."
+
+She squeezed past Katy, secured the axe and hung it round her own neck.
+She cautioned Katy to keep her eyes shut and follow where she led her,
+then they started on their way back. Linda did not attempt to descend
+the sheer wall by which they had climbed, but making a detour she went
+lower, and in a very short time they were back in the kitchen. Linda
+rushed to the boulder and knelt again, but she could get no response to
+her questions. Evidently Donald's foot was caught and he was unconscious
+from the pain. Squeezing as close as she could, she thrust her arm under
+the ledge until she could feel his head. Then she went to the other
+side, and there she could see that his right foot was pinned under the
+rock. She looked at Katy reassuringly, then she took off the axe and
+handed it to her.
+
+"He's alive," she said. "Can't kill a healthy youngster to have a
+crushed foot. You stand guard until I take the Bear Cat and bring help.
+It's not far to where I can find people."
+
+At full speed Linda put the Cat through the stream and out of the canyon
+until she reached cultivated land, where she found a man who would
+gather other men and start to the rescue. She ran on until she found a
+house with a telephone. There she called Judge Whiting, telling him to
+bring an ambulance and a surgeon, giving him explicit directions as
+to where to come, and assuring him that Donald could not possibly be
+seriously hurt. She found time to urge, also, that before starting he
+set in motion any precautions he had taken for Donald's protection. She
+told him where she thought what remained of Oka Sayye could be found.
+And then, as naturally and as methodically as she had done all the rest,
+she called Peter Morrison and told him that she was in trouble and where
+he could find her.
+
+And because Peter had many miles less distance to travel than the others
+she had summoned, he arrived first. He found Linda and Katy had burrowed
+under the stone until they had made an opening into which the broken
+foot might sink so that the pain of the pressure would be relieved.
+Before the rock, with picks and shovels, half a dozen sympathetic
+farmers from ranches and cultivated land at the mouth of the canyon were
+digging furiously to make an opening undermining the boulder so that it
+could be easily tipped forward. Donald was conscious and they had been
+passing water to him and encouraging him with the report that his father
+and a good surgeon would be there very soon. Katherine O'Donovan had
+crouched at one side of the boulder, supporting the hurt foot. She was
+breathing heavily and her usually red face was a ghastly green. Linda
+had helped her to resume the skirt of her dress. At the other side of
+the rock the girl was reaching to where she could touch Donald's head
+or reassuringly grip the hand that he could extend to her. Peter seized
+Linda's axe and began hewing at the earth and rock in order to help in
+the speedy removal of the huge boulder. Soon Judge Whiting, accompanied
+by Doctor Fleming, the city's greatest surgeon, came caring into the
+canyon and stopped on the roadway when he saw the party. The Judge
+sprang from the car, leaped the stream, and started toward them. In an
+effort to free his son before his arrival, all the men braced themselves
+against the face of the cliff and pushed with their combined strength.
+The boulder dropped forward into the trench they had dug for it enough
+to allow Peter to crowd his body between it and the cliff and lift
+Donald's head and shoulders. Linda instantly ran around the boulder,
+pushed her way in, and carefully lifting Donald's feet, she managed to
+work the lithe slenderness of her body through the opening, so that they
+carried Donald out and laid him down in the open. He was considerably
+dazed and shaken, cruelly hurt, but proved himself a game youngster of
+the right mettle. He raised himself to a sitting posture, managing a
+rather stiff-lipped smile for his father and Linda. The surgeon
+instantly began cutting to reach the hurt foot, while Peter Morrison
+supported the boy's head and shoulders on one side, his father on the
+other.
+
+An exclamation of dismay broke from the surgeon's lips. He looked at
+Judge Whiting and nodded slightly. The men immediately picked up Donald
+and carried him to the ambulance. Katherine O'Donovan sat down suddenly
+and buried her face in the skirt of her dress. Linda laid a reassuring
+hand on her shoulder.
+
+"Don't, Katy," she said. "Keep up your nerve; you're all right, old
+dear. Donald's fine. That doesn't mean anything except that his foot
+is broken, so he won't be able, and it won't be necessary for him,
+to endure the pain of setting it in a cast without an anesthetic; and
+Doctor Fleming can work much better where he has every convenience. It's
+all right."
+
+The surgeon climbed into the ambulance and they started on an emergency
+run to the hospital. As the car turned and swept down the canyon, for
+no reason that she could have explained, Linda began to shake until her
+teeth clicked. Peter Morrison sprang back across the brook, and running
+to her side, he put his arm around her and with one hand he pressed her
+head against his shoulder, covering her face.
+
+"Steady, Linda," he said quietly, "steady. You know that he is all
+right. It will only be a question of a short confinement."
+
+Linda made a brave effort to control herself. She leaned against Peter
+and held out both her hands.
+
+"I'm all right," she chattered. "Give me a minute."
+
+Judge Whiting came to them.
+
+"I am getting away immediately," he said. "I must reach Louise and
+Mother before they get word of this. Doctor Fleming will take care of
+Donald all right. What happened, Linda? Can you tell me?"
+
+Linda opened her lips and tried to speak, but she was too breathless,
+too full of excitement, to be coherent. To her amazement Katherine
+O'Donovan scrambled to her feet, lifted her head and faced the Judge.
+She pointed to the fireplace.
+
+"I was right there, busy with me cookie' utensils," she said, "Miss
+Linda was a-sittin, on that exact spot, they jist havin finished atin'
+some of her haythen messes; and the lad was lyin, square where the
+boulder struck, on the Indian blanket, atin' a pace of cactus candy. And
+jist one pebble came rattlin' down, but Miss Linda happened to be
+lookin', and she scramed to the b'y to be rollin' under where ye found
+him; so he gave a flop or two, and it's well that he took his orders
+without waitin' to ask the raison for them, for if he had, at the
+prisint minute he would be about as thick as a shate of writing paper.
+The thing dropped clear and straight and drove itself into the earth and
+stone below it, as ye see."
+
+Katherine O'Donovan paused.
+
+"Yes," said the Judge. "Anything else?"
+
+"Miss Linda got to him and she made sure he had brathin' space and he
+wasn't hurt bad, and then she told him he had got to stand it, because,
+sittin' where she did, she faced the cliff and she thought she had seen
+someone. She took the telescope and started climbin', and I took the axe
+and I started climbin' after her."
+
+Katy broke down and emitted a weird Irish howl. Linda instantly braced
+herself, threw her arms around Katy, and drew her head to her shoulder.
+She looked at Judge Whiting and began to talk.
+
+"I can show you where she followed me, straight up the face of the
+canyon, almost," she said. "And she never had tried to climb a canyon
+side for a yard, either, but she came up and over after me, like a cat.
+And up there on a small ledge Oka Sayye came down directly above us. I
+couldn't be mistaken. I saw him plainly. I know him by sight as well as
+I do any of you. We heard the stones coming down before him, and we knew
+someone was going to be on us who was desperate enough to kill. When he
+touched our level and turned to follow the ledge we were on, I pushed
+him over."
+
+Katy shook off Linda's protecting arm and straightened suddenly.
+
+"Why, ye domned little fool, ye!" she screamed. "Ye never told a lie
+before in all your days! Judge Whiting, I had the axe round me neck by
+the climbin' strap, and I got it in me fingers when we heard the crature
+comin', and against his chist I set it, and I gave him a shove that sint
+him over. Like a cat he was a-clingin' and climbin', and when I saw him
+comin' up on us with that awful face of his, I jist swung the axe like I
+do when I'm rejoocin' a pace of eucalyptus to fireplace size, and whack!
+I took the branch supportin' him, and a dome' good axe I spoiled din'
+it."
+
+Katy folded her arms, lifted her chin higher than it ever had been
+before, and glared defiance at the Judge.
+
+"Now go on," she said, "and decide what ye'll do to me for it."
+
+The Judge reached over and took both Katherine O'Donovan's hands in a
+firm grip.
+
+"You brave woman!" he said. "If it lay in my power, I would give you the
+Carnegie Medal. In any event I will see that you have a good bungalow
+with plenty of shamrock on each side of your front path, and a fair
+income to keep you comfortable when the rheumatic days are upon you."
+
+"I am no over-feeder," said Katy proudly. "I'm daily exercisin' me
+muscles enough to kape them young. The rheumatism I'll not have. And
+nayther will I have the house nor the income. I've saved me money; I've
+an income of me own."
+
+"And as for the bungalow," interrupted Linda, "Katherine, as I have
+mentioned frequently before is my father, and my mother, and my whole
+family, and her front door is mine."
+
+"Sure," said Katy proudly. "When these two fine people before you set
+up their hearthstone, a-swapin' it I'll be, and carin' for their
+youngsters; but, Judge, I would like a bit of the shamrock. Ye might be
+sendin' me a start of that, if it would plase Your Honor."
+
+Judge Whiting looked intently at Katherine O'Donovan. And then, as if
+they had been on the witness stand, he looked searchingly at Linda. But
+Linda was too perturbed, too accustomed to Katy's extravagant nonsense
+even to notice the purport of what she had said. Then the Judge turned
+his attention to Peter Morrison and realized that at least one of the
+parties to Katherine's proposed hearthstone had understood and heartily
+endorsed her proposal.
+
+"I will have to be going. The boy and his mother will need me," he said.
+"I will see all of you later."
+
+Then he sprang across the brook and sent his car roaring down the canyon
+after the ambulance.
+
+Once more Katy sank to the ground. Linda looked at her as she buried her
+face and began to wail.
+
+"Peter," she said quietly, "hunt our belongings and pack them in the
+Bear Cat the best you can. Excuse us for a few minutes. We must act this
+out of our systems."
+
+Gravely she sat down beside Katy, laid her head on her shoulder, and
+began to cry very nearly as energetically as Katy herself. And that was
+the one thing which was most effective in restoring Katy's nerves. Tears
+were such an unaccustomed thing with Linda that Katy controlled herself
+speedily so that she might be better able to serve the girl. In a few
+minutes Katy had reduced her emotions to a dry sniffle. She lifted her
+head, groped for her pocket, and being unable to find it for the very
+good reason that she was sitting upon it, she used her gingham hem as
+a handkerchief. Once she had risen to the physical effort of wiping her
+eyes, she regained calmness rapidly. The last time she applied the
+hem she looked at Peter, but addressed the Almighty in resigned tones:
+"There, Lord, I guess that will do."
+
+In a few minutes she was searching the kitchen, making sure that no
+knives, spoons, or cooking utensils were lost. Missing her support,
+Linda sat erect and endeavored to follow Katy's example. Her eyes
+met Peter's and when she saw that his shoulders were shaking, a dry,
+hysterical laugh possessed her.
+
+"Yes, Katy," she panted, "that WILL do, and remember the tears we are
+shedding are over Donald's broken foot, and because this may interfere
+with his work, though I don't think it will for long."
+
+"When I cry," said Katy tersely, "I cry because I feel like it. I wasn't
+wapin' over the snake that'd plan a death like that for anyone"--Katy
+waved toward the boulder--"and nayther was I wastin' me tears over the
+fut of a kid bein' jommed up a trifle."
+
+"Well, then, Katy," asked Linda tremulously, "why were you crying?"
+
+"Well, there's times," said Katy judicially, "when me spirits tell me I
+would be the better for lettin' off a wee bit of stame, and one of them
+times havin' arrived, I jist bowed me head to it, as is in accordance
+with the makings of me. Far be it from me to be flyin' in the face of
+Providence and sayin' I won't, when all me interior disposhion says to
+me: 'Ye will!'"
+
+"And now, Linda," said Peter, "can you tell us why you were crying?"
+
+"Why, I think," said Linda, "that Katy has explained sufficiently for
+both of us. It was merely time for us to howl after such fearful nerve
+strain, so we howled."
+
+"Well, that's all right," said Peter. "Now I'll tell you something. If
+you had gone away in that ambulance to an anesthetic and an operation,
+no wildcat that ever indulged in a hunger hunt through this canyon could
+have put up a howl equal to the one that I would have sent up."
+
+"Peter," said Linda, "there is nothing funny about this; it's no tame
+for jest. But do men have nerves? Would you really?"
+
+"Of course I would," said Peter.
+
+"No, you wouldn't," contradicted Linda. "You just say that because you
+want to comfort us for having broken down, instead of trying to tease us
+as most men would."
+
+"He would, too!" said Katy, starting to the Bear Cat with a load of
+utensils. "Now come on; let's go home and be gettin' craned up and ready
+for what's goin' to happen to us. Will they be jailin' us, belike, Miss
+Linda?"
+
+Linda looked at Peter questioningly.
+
+"No," he said quietly. "It is very probable that the matter never will
+be mentioned to you again, unless Judge Whiting gets hold of some clue
+that he wishes to use as an argument against matured Japs being admitted
+in the same high-school classes with our clean, decent, young Americans.
+They stopped that in the grades several years ago, I am told."
+
+Before they could start back to Lilac Valley a car stopped in the canyon
+and a couple of men introducing themselves as having come from Judge
+Whiting interviewed Katy and Linda exhaustively. Then Linda pointed out
+to them an easier but much longer route by which they might reach the
+top of the canyon to examine the spot from which the boulder had fallen.
+She showed them where she and Katy had ascended, and told them where
+they would be likely to find Oka Sayye.
+
+When it came to a question of really starting, Linda looked with
+appealing eyes at Peter.
+
+"Peter," she said, "could we fix it any way so you could drive Katy and
+me home? For the first time since I have begun driving this spring I
+don't feel equal to keeping the road."
+
+"Of course," said Peter. "I'll take your car to the nearest farmhouse
+and leave it, then I'll take you and Katy in my car."
+
+Late that evening Judge Whiting came to Lilac Valley with his wife and
+daughter to tell Linda that the top of the cliff gave every evidence
+of the stone having been loosened previously, so that a slight
+impetus would send it crashing down at the time when Donald lay in his
+accustomed place directly in the line of its fall. His detectives had
+found the location of the encounter and they had gone to the bottom of
+the cliff, a thousand feet below, but they had not been able to find any
+trace of Oka Sayye. Somewhere in waiting there had been confederates who
+had removed what remained of him. On the way home Mrs. Whiting said to
+her husband: "Judge, are you very sure that what the cook said to you
+this afternoon about Miss Strong and Mr. Morrison is true?"
+
+"I am only sure of its truth so far as he is concerned," replied the
+Judge. "What he thought about Linda was evident. I am very sorry. She is
+a mighty fine girl and I think Donald is very much interested in her."
+
+"Yes, I think so, too," said Donald's mother. "Interested; but he has
+not even a case of first love. He is interested for the same reason you
+would be or I would be, because she is intellectually so stimulating.
+And you have to take into consideration the fact that in two or three
+years more she will be ready for marriage and a home of her own, and
+Donald will still be in school with his worldly experience and his
+business education not yet begun. The best thing that can happen to
+Donald is just to let his infatuation for her die a natural death, with
+the quiet assistance of his family."
+
+The Judge's face reddened slightly.
+
+"Well, I would like mighty well to have her in the family," he said.
+"She's a corking fine girl. She would make a fine mother of fine men. I
+haven't a doubt but that with the power of his personality and the power
+of his pen and the lure of propinquity, Peter Morrison will win her, but
+I hate it. It's the best chance the boy ever will have."
+
+ And then Louise spoke up softly.
+
+"Donald hasn't any chance, Dad," she said quietly, "and he never did
+have. I have met Peter Morrison myself and I would be only too glad if
+I thought he was devoted to me. I'll grant that Linda Strong is a fine
+girl, but when she wakes up to the worth of Peter Morrison and to a
+realization of what other women would be glad to be to him, she will
+merely reach out and lay possessive hands upon what already belongs to
+her."
+
+It was a curious thing that such occurrences as the death of Oka Sayye
+and the injury to Donald could take place and no one know about them.
+Yet the papers were silent on the subject and so were the courts. Linda
+and Katy were fully protected. The confederates of Oka Sayye for reasons
+of their own preferred to keep very quiet.
+
+By Monday Donald, with his foot in a plaster cast, was on a side veranda
+of his home with a table beside him strewn with books and papers. An
+agreement had been made that his professors should call and hear his
+recitations for a few days until by the aid of a crutch and a cane he
+could resume his place in school. Linda went to visit him exactly as she
+would have gone to see Marian in like circumstances. She succeeded in
+making all of the Whiting family her very devoted friends.
+
+One evening, after he had been hobbling about for over a week, Linda and
+Peter called to spend the evening, and a very gay and enjoyable evening
+it was. And yet when it was over and they had gone away together Donald
+appeared worried and deeply thoughtful. When his mother came to his room
+to see if the foot was unduly painful or there was anything she could do
+to make him more comfortable, he looked at her belligerently.
+
+"Mother," he said, "I don't like Peter Morrison being so much with my
+girl."
+
+Mrs. Whiting stood very still. She thought very fast. Should she
+postpone it or should she let the boy take all of his hurts together?
+Her heart ached for him and yet she felt that she knew what life had in
+store for him concerning Linda. So she sat on the edge of the bed and
+began to talk quietly, plainly, reasonably. She tried to explain nature
+and human nature and what she thought the laws of probability were in
+the case. Donald lay silent. He said nothing until she had finished all
+she had to say, and then he announced triumphantly: "You're all wrong.
+That is what would happen if Linda were a girl like any of the other
+girls in her class, or like Louise. But she has promised that she would
+write to me every Saturday night and she has said that she thinks more
+of me than of any of the other boys."
+
+"Donald dear," said Mrs. Whiting, "you're not 'in love' with Linda
+yourself, and neither is she with you. By the time you are ready to
+marry and settle down in life, Linda in all probability will be married
+and be the mother of two or three babies."
+
+"Yes, like fun she will," said Donald roughly.
+
+"Have you asked her whether she loves you?" inquired Mrs. Whiting.
+
+"Oh, that 'love' business," said Donald, "it makes me tired! Linda and
+I never did any mushing around. We had things of some importance to talk
+about and to do."
+
+A bit of pain in Mrs. Whiting's heart eased. It was difficult to keep
+her lips quiet and even.
+
+"You haven't asked her to marry you, then?" she said soberly. "Oh good
+Lord," cried Donald, "'marry!' How could I marry anyone when I haven't
+even graduated from high school and with college and all that to come?"
+
+"That is what I have been trying to tell you," said his mother evenly.
+"I don't believe you have been thinking about marriage and I am
+absolutely certain that Linda has not, but she is going to be made to
+think about it long before you will be in such financial position that
+you dare. That is the reason I am suggesting that you think about these
+things seriously and question yourself as to whether you would be doing
+the fair thing by Linda if you tried to tie her up in an arrangement
+that would ask her to wait six or eight years yet before you would be
+ready."
+
+"Well, I can get around faster than that," said Donald belligerently.
+
+"Of course you can," agreed his mother. "I made that estimate fully a
+year too long. But even in seven years Linda could do an awful lot of
+waiting; and there are some very wonderful girls that will be coming up
+six or seven years from now here at home. You know that hereafter all
+the girls in the world are going to be very much more Linda's kind of
+girls than they have been heretofore. The girls who have lived through
+the war and who have been intimate with its sorrow and its suffering
+and its terrible results to humanity, are not going to be such heedless,
+thoughtless, not nearly such selfish, girls as the world has known in
+the decade just past. And there is going to be more outdoor life,
+more nature study. There are going to be stronger bodies, better food,
+better-cared-for young people; and every year educational advantages are
+going to be greater. If you can bring yourself to think about giving up
+the idea of there ever existing any extremely personal thing between you
+and Linda, I am very sure I could guarantee to introduce you to a girl
+who would be quite her counterpart, and undoubtedly we could meet one
+who would be handsomer."
+
+Donald punched his pillow viciously.
+
+"That's nice talk," he said, "and it may be true talk. But in the first
+place I wish that Peter Morrison would let my girl alone, and in the
+second place I don't care if there are a thousand just as nice girls
+or even better-looking girls than Linda, though any girl would be going
+some if she were nicer and better looking than Linda. But I am telling
+you that when my foot gets better I am going to Lilac Valley and tell
+him where to head in, and I'll punch his head if he doesn't do it
+promptly."
+
+"Of course you will," said his mother reassuringly; "and I'll go with
+you and we'll see to it that he attends strictly to his own affairs."
+
+Donald burst out laughing, exactly as his mother in her heart had hoped
+that he would.
+
+"Yes, I've got a hand-painted picture of myself starting to Lilac Valley
+to fight a man who is butting in with my girl, and taking my mother
+along to help me beat him up," he said.
+
+Mrs. Whiting put her arms around her boy, kissed him tenderly, and
+smoothed his hair, and then turned out the lights and slipped from the
+room. But in the clear moonlight as she closed the door she could see
+that a boyish grin was twisting his lips, and she went down to tell the
+Judge that he need not worry. If his boy were irreparably hurt anywhere,
+it was in his foot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest
+
+The following weeks were very happy for Linda. When the cast was removed
+from Donald's foot and it was found that a year or two of care would
+put him even on the athletic fields and the dancing floor again, she was
+greatly relieved.
+
+She lacked words in which to express her joy that Marian was rapidly
+coming into happiness. She was so very busy with her school work, with
+doing all she could to help Donald with his, with her "Jane Meredith"
+articles, with hunting and working out material for her book, that she
+never had many minutes at a time for introspection. When she did have
+a few she sometimes pondered deeply as to whether Marian had been
+altogether sincere in the last letter she had written her in their
+correspondence, but she was so delighted in the outcome that if she did
+at times have the same doubt in a fleeting form that had not been in
+the least fleeting with Peter Morrison, she dismissed it as rapidly as
+possible. When things were so very good as they were at that time, why
+try to improve them?
+
+One evening as she came from school, thinking that she would take Katy
+for a short run in the Bear Cat before dinner, she noticed a red head
+prominent in the front yard as she neared home. When she turned in at
+the front walk and crossed the lawn she would have been willing to wager
+quite a sum that Katy had been crying.
+
+"Why, old dear," said Linda, putting her arms around her, "if anything
+has gone wrong with you I will certainly take to the warpath, instanter.
+I can't even imagine what could be troubling you." Linda lowered her
+voice. "Nothing has come up about Oka Sayye?"
+
+Katy shook her head.
+
+"I thought not," said Linda. "Judge Whiting promised me that what use he
+made of that should be man's business and exploited wholly for the
+sake of California and her people. He said we shouldn't be involved. I
+haven't been worried about it even, although I am willing to go upon
+the stand and tell the whole story if it will be any help toward putting
+right what is at present a great wrong to California."
+
+"Yes, so would I," said Katy. "I'm not worryin' meself about the little
+baste any more than I would if it had been a mad dog foaming up that
+cliff at ye."
+
+"Then what is it?" asked Linda. "Tell me this minute."
+
+"I dunno what in the world you're going to think," said Katy "I dunno
+what in the world you're going to do."
+
+Her face was so distressed that Linda's nimble brain flew to a
+conclusion. She tightened her arm across Katy's shoulder.
+
+"By Jove, Katy!" she said breathlessly. "Is Eileen in the house?"
+
+Katy nodded.
+
+"Has she been to see John and made things right with him?"
+
+Katy nodded again.
+
+"He's in there with her waitin' for ye," she said.
+
+It was a stunned Linda who slowly dropped her arm, stood erect, and
+lifted her head very high. She thought intently.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me," she said, "that you have been CRYING over
+her?"
+
+Katy held out both hands.
+
+"Linda," she said, "she always was such a pretty thing, and her ma
+didn't raise her to have the sense of a peewee. If your pa had been let
+take her outdoors and grow her in the sun and the air, she would have
+been bigger and broader, an' there would have been the truth of God's
+sunshine an' the glory of His rain about her. Ye know, Linda, that she
+didn't ever have a common decent chance. It was curls that couldn't be
+shook out and a nose that dassen't be sunburned and shoes that mustn't
+be scuffed and a dress that shouldn't be mussed, from the day she was
+born. Ye couldn't jist honest say she had ever had a FAIR chance, now
+could ye?"
+
+"No," said Linda conclusively, "no, Katherine O'Donovan, you could not.
+But what are we up against? Does she want to come back? Does she want to
+stay here again?"
+
+"I think she would like to," said Katy. "You go in and see her for
+yourself, lambie, before ye come to any decision."
+
+"You don't mean," said Linda in a marveling tone, "that she has been
+homesick, that she has come back to us because she would like to be with
+us again?"
+
+"You go and see her for yourself; and if you don't say she is the
+worst beat out and the tiredest mortal that ye have ever seen you'll be
+surprisin' me. My God, Linda, they ain't nothin' in bein' rich if it can
+do to a girl what has been done to Eileen!"
+
+"Oh, well," said Linda impatiently, "don't condemn all money because
+Eileen has not found happiness with it. The trouble has been that
+Eileen's only chance to be rich came to her through the wrong kind of
+people."
+
+"Well, will ye jist tell me, then," said Katy, "how it happened that
+Eileen's ma was a sister to that great beef of a man, which same is hard
+on self-rayspectin' beef; pork would come nearer."
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I'll tell you. Eileen's mother had a big streak of
+the same coarseness and the same vulgarity in HER nature, or she could
+not have reared Eileen as she did. She probably had been sent to school
+and had better advantages than the boy through a designing mother of
+her own. Her first husband must have been a man who greatly refined and
+educated her. We can't ever get away from the fact that Daddy believed
+in her and loved her."
+
+"Yes," said Katy, "but he was a fooled man. She wasn't what we thought
+she was. Many's the time I've stood injustice about the accounts and
+household management because I wouldn't be wakin' him up to what he was
+bound to for life."
+
+"That doesn't help us," said Linda. "I must go in and face them."
+
+She handed her books to Katy, and went into the living room She
+concentrated on John Gilman first, and a wee qualm of disgust crept
+through her soul when she saw that after weeks of suffering he was once
+more ready to devote himself to Eileen. Linda marveled at the power a
+woman could hold over a man that would force him to compromise with his
+intellect, his education and environment. Then she turned her attention
+to Eileen, and the shock she received was informing. She studied her an
+instant incredulously, then she went to her and held out her hand.
+
+"How do you do?" she said as cordially as was possible to her. "This is
+unexpected."
+
+Her mind was working rapidly, yet she could not recall ever having seen
+a woman quite so beautiful as Eileen. She was very certain that the
+color on her cheeks was ebbing and rising with excitement; it was no
+longer so deep as to be stationary. She was very certain that her eyes
+had not been darkened as to lids or waxed as to lashes. Her hair was
+beautifully dressed in sweeping waves with scarcely any artificial work
+upon it. Her dress was extremely tasteful and very expensive. There
+was no simper on her lips, nothing superficial. She was only a tired,
+homesick girl. As Linda looked at her she understood why Katy had cried
+over her. She felt tears beginning to rise in her own heart. She put
+both arms protectingly around Eileen.
+
+"Why, you poor little thing," she said wonderingly, "was it so damn' bad
+as all that?"
+
+Eileen stood straight. She held herself rigidly. She merely nodded. Then
+after a second she said: "Worse than anything you could imagine, Linda.
+Being rich with people who have grown rich by accident is a dreadful
+experience."
+
+"So I have always imagined," said Linda. And then in her usual downright
+way she asked: "Why did you come, Eileen? Is there anything you wanted
+of me?"
+
+Eileen hesitated. It was not in Linda's heart to be mean.
+
+"Homesick, little sister?" she asked lightly "Do you want to come here
+while you're getting ready to make a home for John? Is that it?"
+
+Then Eileen swayed forward suddenly, buried her face in Linda's breast,
+and for the first time in her life Linda saw and heard her cry, not from
+selfishness, not from anger, not from greed, but as an ordinary human
+being cries when the heart is so full that nature relieves itself with
+tears. Linda closed her arms around her and smiled over her head at John
+Gilman.
+
+"Finish all of it before you stop," she advised. "It's all right. You
+come straight home. You didn't leave me any word, and I didn't know what
+to do with your things, but I couldn't feel that you would want to give
+up such beautiful things that you had so enjoyed. We had planned for
+Marian to spend her summer vacation here so I put her things in your
+suite and I had moved mine into the guest room, but I have had my room
+done over and the guest room things are in there, and every scrap of
+yours is carefully put away. If that will do, you are perfectly welcome
+to it."
+
+Eileen wiped her eyes.
+
+"Anything," she sobbed. "I'd rather have Katy's room than be shamed and
+humiliated and hurt any further. Linda, I would almost like you to
+know my Aunt Callie, because you will never understand about her if you
+don't. Her favorite pastime was to tell everyone we met how much the
+things I wore cost her."
+
+Linda released Eileen with a slight shake.
+
+"Cheer up!" she said. "We'll all have a gorgeous time together. I
+haven't the slightest ambition to know more than that about your Aunt
+Callie. If my brain really had been acting properly I would never have
+dismantled your room. I would have known that you could not endure her,
+and that you would come home just as you should. It's all right, John,
+make yourself comfortable. I don't know what Katy has for dinner but she
+can always find enough for an extra couple. Come Eileen, I'll help you
+to settle. Where is your luggage?"
+
+"I brought back, Linda, just what I have on," said Eileen. "I will begin
+again where I left off. I realize that I am not entitled to anything
+further from the Strong estate, but Uncle was so unhappy and John says
+it's all right--really I am the only blood heir to all they have; I
+might as well take a comfortable allowance from it. I am to go to see
+them a few days of every month. I can endure that when I know I have
+John and you to come back to."
+
+When Eileen had been installed in Linda's old room Linda went down to
+the kitchen, shut the door behind her, and leaning against it, laid her
+hand over her mouth to suppress a low laugh.
+
+"Katy," she said, "I've been and gone and done it; I have put the
+perfect lady in my old room. That will be a test of her sincerity--even
+dainty and pretty as it is since it's been done over. If she is sincere
+enough to spend the summer getting ready to marry John Gilman--why that
+is all right, old girl. We can stand it, can't we?"
+
+"Yes," said Katy, "it's one of them infernal nuisances but we can
+stand it. I'm thinkin', from the looks of John Gilman and his manner of
+spakin', that it ain't goin' to be but a very short time that he'll be
+waitin'."
+
+"Katy," said Linda, "isn't this the most entertaining world? Doesn't it
+produce the most lightning-like changes, and don't the most unexpected
+things happen? Sort of dazes me. I had planned to take a little run with
+you and the Cat. Since we are having--no, I mustn't say guests--since
+John and Eileen have come home, I'll have to give up that plan until
+after dinner, and then we'll go and take counsel with our souls and see
+if we can figure out how we are going to solve this equation; and if you
+don t know what an equation is, old dear heart, it's me with a war-club
+and you with a shillalah and Eileen between us, and be 'damned' to us if
+we can't make an average, ordinary, decent human being out of her. Pin
+an apron on her in the morning, Katy, and hand her a dust cloth and tell
+her to industrialize. We will help her with her trousseau, but she SHALL
+help us with the work."
+
+"Ye know, lambie," whispered Katy suddenly, "this is a burnin' shame.
+The one thing I DIDN'T think about is that book of yours. What about
+it?"
+
+"I scarcely know," said Linda; "it's difficult to say. Of course we
+can't carry out the plans we had made to work here, exactly as we had
+intended, with Eileen in the house preparing to be married. But she
+tells me that her uncle has made her a generous allowance, so probably
+it's environment and love she is needing much more than help. It is
+barely possible, Katy, that after I have watched her a few days, if
+I decide she is in genuine, sincere, heart-whole earnest, I might
+introduce her and John to my friend, 'Jane.' It is probable that if I
+did, Eileen would not expect me to help her, and at the same time she
+wouldn't feel that I was acting indifferently because I did not. We'll
+wait awhile, Katy, and see whether we skid before we put on the chains."
+
+"What about Marian?" inquired Katy.
+
+"I don't know," said Linda thoughtfully. "If Marian is big enough to
+come here and spend the summer under the same roof with Eileen and John
+Gilman, and have a really restful, enjoyable time out of it, she is
+bigger than I am. Come up to the garret; I think Eileen has brought no
+more with her than she took away. We'll bring her trunk down, put it
+in her room and lay the keys on top. Don't begin by treating her as a
+visitor; treat her as if she were truly my sister. Tell her what you
+want and how you want it, exactly as you tell me and as I tell you. If
+you see even a suspicion of any of the former objectionable tendencies
+popping up, let's check them quick and hard, Katy."
+
+For a week Linda watched Eileen closely. At the end of that time she was
+sincere in her conviction that Eileen had been severely chastened. When
+she came in contact with Peter Morrison or any other man they met she
+was not immediately artificial. She had learned to be as natural with
+men as with other women. There were no pretty postures, no softened
+vocal modulations, no childish nonsense on subjects upon which
+the average child of these days displays the knowledge of the
+past-generation grandmother. When they visited Peter Morrison's house it
+was easy to see that Eileen was interested, more interested than any
+of them ever before had seen her in any subject outside of clothing and
+jewels. Her conduct in the Strong home had been irreproachable. She had
+cared for her own room, quietly undertaken the duties of dusting and
+arranging the rooms and cutting and bringing in flowers. She had gone to
+the kitchen and wiped dishes and asked to be taught how to cook things
+of which John was particularly fond. She had been reasonable in the
+amount of time she had spent on her shopping, and had repeatedly gone to
+Linda and shown interest in her concerns. The result was that Linda at
+once displayed the same interest in anything pertaining to Eileen.
+
+One afternoon Linda came home unusually early. She called for Eileen,
+told her to tie on her sunshade and be ready for a short ride. Almost
+immediately she brought around the Bear Cat and when they were seated
+side by side headed it toward the canyon. She stopped at the usual
+resting place, and together she and Eileen walked down the light-dappled
+road bed. She pointed out things to Eileen, telling her what they were,
+to what uses they could be put, while at the same time narrowly watching
+her. To her amazement she found that Eileen was interested, that she was
+noticing things for herself, asking what they were. She wanted to know
+the names of the singing birds. When a big bird trailed a waving shadow
+in front of her Linda explained how she might distinguish an eagle from
+a hawk, a hawk from a vulture, a sea bird from those of the land. When
+they reached the bridge Linda climbed down the embankment to gather
+cress. She was moved to protest when Eileen followed and without saying
+a word began to assist her, but she restrained herself, for it suddenly
+occurred to her that it would be an excellent thing for Eileen to think
+more of what she was doing and why she was doing it than about whether
+she would wet her feet or muddy her fingers. So the protest became an
+explanation that it was rather late for cress: the leaves toughened when
+it bloomed and were too peppery. The only way it could be used agreeably
+was to work along the edges and select the small tender shoots that had
+not yet matured to the flowering point. When they had an armload they
+went back to the car, and without any explanation Linda drove into
+Los Angeles and stopped at the residence of Judge Whiting, not telling
+Eileen where she was.
+
+"Friends of mine," said Linda lightly as she stepped from the car.
+"Fond of cress salad with their dinner. They prepare it after the Jane
+Meredith recipe to which you called my attention, in Everybody's Home
+last winter. Come along with me."
+
+Eileen stepped from the car and followed. Linda led the way round the
+sidewalk to where her quick ear had located voices on the side lawn.
+She stopped at the kitchen door, handed in the cress, exchanged a few
+laughing words with the cook, and then presented herself at the door of
+the summerhouse. Inside, his books and papers spread over a worktable,
+sat Donald Whiting. One side of him his mother was busy darning his
+socks; on the other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk
+and small squares of gaily colored linen. Linda entered with exactly
+the same self-possession that characterized her at home. She shook hands
+with Mrs. Whiting, Mary Louise, and Donald, and then she said quietly:
+"Eileen and I were gathering cress and we stopped to leave you some
+for your dinner." With this explanation she introduced Eileen to Mrs.
+Whiting. Mary Louise immediately sprang up and recalled their meeting at
+Riverside. Donald remembered a meeting he did not mention. It was only a
+few minutes until Linda was seated beside Donald, interesting herself
+in his lessons. Eileen begged to be shown the pretty handkerchiefs that
+Mary Louise was making. An hour later Linda refused an invitation to
+dinner because Katy would be expecting them. When she arose to go,
+Eileen was carrying a small square of blue-green linen. Carefully pinned
+to it was a patch of white with a spray of delicate flowers outlined
+upon it, and a skein of pink silk thread. She had been initiated into
+the thrillingly absorbing feminine accomplishment of making sport
+handkerchiefs. When they left Eileen was included naturally, casually,
+spontaneously, in their invitation to Linda to run in any time she
+would. Mary Louise had said she would ride out with Donald in few days
+and see how the handkerchiefs were coming on, and more instruction and
+different stitches and patterns were necessary, she would love to
+teach them. So Linda realized that Mary Louise had been told about the
+trousseau. She knew, even lacking as she was in feminine sophistication,
+that there were two open roads to the heart of a woman. One is a wedding
+and the other is a baby. The lure of either is irresistible.
+
+As the Bear Cat glided back to Lilac Valley, Eileen sat silent. For ten
+years she had coveted the entree to the Whiting home perhaps more than
+any other in the city. Merely by being simple and natural, by living her
+life as life presented itself each day, Linda with no effort whatever
+had made possible to Eileen the thing she so deeply craved. Eileen was
+learning a new lesson each day--some days many of them--but none
+was more amazing more simple, or struck deeper into her awakened
+consciousness. As she gazed with far-seeing eye on the blue walls of the
+valley Eileen was taking a mental inventory of her former self. One by
+one she was arraigning all the old tricks she had used in her trade of
+getting on in the world. One by one she was discarding them in favor of
+honesty, unaffectedness, and wholesome enjoyment.
+
+Because of these things Linda came home the next afternoon and left a
+bundle on Eileen's bed before she made her way to her own room to busy
+herself with a head piece for Peter's latest article. She had taken down
+the wasp picture and while she had not destroyed it she had turned the
+key of a very substantial lock upon it. She was hard at work when she
+heard steps on the stairs. When Eileen entered, Linda smiled quizzically
+and then broke into an unaffected ejaculation.
+
+"Ripping!" she cried. "Why, Eileen, you're perfectly topping."
+
+Eileen's face flamed with delight. She was a challenging little figure.
+None of them was accustomed to her when she represented anything more
+substantial than curls and ruffles.
+
+Linda reached for the telephone, called Gilman, and asked him if he
+could go to the beach for supper that evening. He immediately replied
+that he would. Then she called Peter Morrison and asked him the same
+question and when Peter answered affirmatively she told him to bring
+his car. Then she hastily put on her own field clothes and ran to the
+kitchen to fill the lunch box. To Katy's delight Linda told her there
+would be room for her and that she needed her.
+
+It was evening and the sun was moving slowly toward the horizon when
+they stopped the cars and went down on the white sands of Santa Monica
+Bay. Eileen had been complimented until she was in a glow of delight.
+She did not notice that in piling things out of the car for their beach
+supper Linda had handed her a shovel and the blackened iron legs of a
+broiler. Everyone was loaded promiscuously as they took up their march
+down to as near the water's edge as the sands were dry. Peter and John
+gathered driftwood. Linda improvised two cooking places, one behind a
+rock for herself, the other under the little outdoor stove for Katy.
+Eileen was instructed as to how to set up the beach table, spread the
+blankets beside it, and place the food upon it. While Katy made coffee
+and toasted biscuit Linda was busy introducing her party to brigand
+beefsteak upon four long steel skewers. The day had been warm. The light
+salt breeze from the sea was like a benediction. Friendly gulls gathered
+on the white sands around them. Cunning little sea chickens worked in
+accord with the tide: when the waves advanced they rose above them on
+wing; when they retreated they scampered over the wet sand, hunting any
+small particles of food that might have been carried in. Out over the
+water big brown pelicans went slowly fanning homeward; and white sea
+swallows drew wonderful pictures on the blue night sky with the tips of
+their wings. For a few minutes at the reddest point of its setting the
+sun painted a marvelous picture in a bank of white clouds. These piled
+up like a great rosy castle, and down the sky roadway before it came a
+long procession of armored knights, red in the sun glow and riding huge
+red horses. Then the colors mixed and faded and a long red bridge for a
+short time spanned the water, ending at their feet. The gulls hunted
+the last scrap thrown them and went home. The swallows sought their high
+cliffs. The insidiously alluring perfume of sand verbena rose like
+altar incense around them. Gilman spread a blanket, piled the beach fire
+higher, and sitting beside Eileen, he drew her head to his shoulder
+and put his arm around her. Possibly he could have been happier in a
+careless way if he had never suffered. It is very probable that the
+poignant depth of exquisite happiness he felt in that hour never would
+have come to him had he not lost Eileen and found her again so much
+more worth loving. Linda wandered down the beach until she reached the
+lighthouse rocks. She climbed on a high one and sat watching the sea as
+it sprayed just below. Peter Morrison followed her.
+
+"May I come up?" he asked.
+
+"Surely," said Linda, "this belongs to the Lord; it isn't mine."
+
+So Peter climbed up and sat beside her.
+
+"How did the landscape appeal to you when you left the campfire?"
+inquired Linda.
+
+"I should think the night cry might very well be Eight o'clock and all's
+well," answered Peter.
+
+"'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world?'" Linda put it in the
+form of a question.
+
+"It seems to be for John and Eileen," said Peter.
+
+"It is for a number of people," said Linda. "I had a letter from Marian
+today. I had written her to ask if she would come to us for the summer,
+in spite of the change in our plans; but Mr. Snow has made some plans of
+his own. He is a very astute individual. He wanted Marian to marry him
+at once and she would not, so he took her for a short visit to see his
+daughter at her grandmother's home in the northern part of the state.
+Marian fell deeply in love with his little girl, and of course those
+people found Marian charming, just as right-minded people would
+find her. When she saw how the little girl missed her father and how
+difficult it was for him to leave her, and when she saw how she would be
+loved and appreciated in that fine family, she changed her mind. Peter,
+we are going to be invited to San Francisco to see them married very
+shortly. Are you glad or sorry?"
+
+"I am very glad," said Peter heartily. "I make no concealment of my
+admiration for Miss Thorne but I am very glad indeed that it is not her
+head that is to complete the decoration when you start the iris marching
+down my creek banks."
+
+"Well, that's all right," said Linda. "Of course you should have
+something to say about whose head finished that picture. I can't
+contract to do more than set the iris. The thing about this I dread is
+that Marian and Eugene are going to live in San Francisco, and I did so
+want her to make her home in Lilac Valley."
+
+"That's too bad," said Peter sympathetically. "I know how you appreciate
+her, how deeply you love her. Do you think the valley will ever be right
+for you without her, Linda?"
+
+"It will have to be," said Linda. "I've had to go on without Father,
+you know. If greater happiness seems to be in store for Marian in San
+Francisco, all I can do is to efface myself and say 'Amen.' When the
+world is all right for Marian, it is about as near all right as it
+can be for me. And did you ever see much more sincerely and clearly
+contented people than John and Eileen are at the present minute?"
+
+Peter looked at Linda whimsically. He lowered his voice as if a sea
+urchin might hear and tattle.
+
+"What did you do about the wasp, Linda?" he whispered.
+
+"I delicately erased the stinger, fluffed up a ruffle, and put the
+sketch under lock and key. I should have started a fire with it, but
+couldn't quite bring myself to let it go, yet."
+
+"Is she going to hold out?" asked Peter.
+
+"She'll hold out or get her neck wrung," said Linda. "I truly think she
+has been redeemed. She has been born again. She has a new heart and a
+new soul and a new impulse and a right conception of life. Why, Peter,
+she has even got a new body. Her face is not the same."
+
+"She is much handsomer," said Peter.
+
+"Isn't she?" cried Linda enthusiastically. "And doesn't having a soul
+and doesn't thinking about essential things make the most remarkable
+difference in her? It is worth going through a fiery furnace to come out
+new like that. I called her Abednego the other day, but she didn't know
+what I meant."
+
+Then they sat silent and watched the sea for a long time.  By and by the
+night air grew chill. Peter slipped from the rock and went up the beach
+and came back with an Indian blanket. He put it very carefully around
+Linda's shoulders, and when he went to resume his seat beside her he
+found one of her arms stretching it with a blanket corner for him. So he
+sat down beside her and drew the corner over his shoulder; and because
+his right arm was very much in his way, and it would have been very
+disagreeable if Linda had slipped from the rock and fallen into the
+cold, salt, unsympathetic Pacific at nine o'clock at night--merely to
+dispose of the arm comfortably and to ensure her security, Peter put it
+around Linda and drew her up beside him very close. Linda did not seem
+to notice. She sat quietly looking at the Pacific and thinking her own
+thoughts. When the fog became damp and chill, she said they must be
+going, and so they went back to their cars and drove home through the
+sheer wonder of the moonlight, through the perfume of the orange
+orchards, hearing the night song of the mockingbirds.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris
+
+A few days later Linda and Peter went to San Francisco and helped
+celebrate the marriage of Marian and Eugene Snow. They left Marian in a
+home carefully designed to insure every comfort and convenience she ever
+had planned, furnished in accordance with her desires. Both Linda and
+Peter were charmed with little Deborah Snow; she was a beautiful and an
+appealing child.
+
+"It seems to me," said Linda, on the train going home, "that Marian will
+get more out of life, she will love deeper, she will work harder, she
+will climb higher in her profession than she would have done if she had
+married John. It is difficult sometimes, when things are happening, to
+realize that they are for the best, but I really believe this thing has
+been for the level best. I think Marian is going to be a bigger woman in
+San Francisco than she ever would have been in Lilac Valley. With that
+thought I must reconcile myself."
+
+"And what about John?" asked Peter. "Is he going to be a bigger man with
+Eileen than he would have been with Marian?"
+
+"No," said Linda, "he is not. He didn't do right and he'll have penalty
+to pay. Eileen is developing into a lovable and truly beautiful woman,
+but she has not the intellect, nor the education, nor the impulse to
+stimulate a man's mental processes and make him outdo himself the way
+Marian will. John will probably never know it, but he will have to do
+his own stimulating; he will have to vision life for himself. He will
+have to find his high hill and climb it with Eileen riding securely on
+his shoulders. It isn't really the pleasantest thing in the world, it
+isn't truly the thing I wanted to do this summer--helping them out--but
+it has seemed to be the work at hand, the thing Daddy probably would
+have wanted me to do, so it's up to me to do all I can for them, just
+as I did all I could for Donald. One thing I shall always be delighted
+about. With my own ears I heard the pronouncement: Donald had the Jap
+beaten; he was at the head of his class before Oka Sayye was eliminated.
+The Jap knew it. His only chance lay in getting rid of his rival. Donald
+can take the excellent record he has made in this race to start on this
+fall when he commences another battle against some other man's brain for
+top honors in his college."
+
+"Will he start with the idea that he wants to be an honor man?"
+
+Linda laughed outright.
+
+"I think," she said, "his idea was that if he were one of fifty or one
+hundred leading men it would be sufficient, but I insisted that if he
+wanted to be first with me, he would have to be first in his school
+work."
+
+"I see," said Peter. "Linda, have you definitely decided that when you
+come to your home-making hour, Donald is the man with whom you want to
+spend the remainder of your life?"
+
+"Oh, good gracious!" said Linda. "Who's talking about 'homes' and
+'spending the remainder of lives'? Donald and I are school friends, and
+we are good companions. You're as bad as Eileen. She's always trying
+to suggest things that nobody else ever thought of, and now Katy's
+beginning it too."
+
+"Sapheads, all!" said Peter. "Well, allow me to congratulate you on
+having given Donald his spurs. I think it's a very fine thing for him
+to start to college with the honor idea in his head. What about your
+Saturday excursions?"
+
+"They have died an unnatural death," said Linda. "Don and I fought for
+them, but the Judge and Mrs. Whiting and Mary Louise were terrified
+for fear a bone might slip in Don's foot, or some revengeful friend or
+relative of Oka Sayye lie in wait for us. They won't hear of our going
+any more. I go every Saturday and take Donald for a very careful drive
+over a smooth road with the Bear Cat cursing our rate of speed all the
+way. All the fun's spoiled for all three of us."
+
+"Think I would be any good as a substitute when it comes to field work?"
+inquired Peter casually. "I have looked at your desert garden so much I
+would know a Cotyledon if I saw it. I believe I could learn."
+
+"You wouldn't have time to bother," objected Linda. "You're a man, with
+a man's business to transact in the world. You have to hustle and earn
+money to pay for the bridge and changing the brook."
+
+"But I had money to pay for the brook and the bridge before I agreed to
+them," said Peter.
+
+"Well, then," said Linda, "you should begin to hunt old mahogany and
+rugs."
+
+"I hadn't intended to," said Peter; "if they are to be old, I won't have
+to do more than to ship them. In storage in Virginia there are some very
+wonderful old mahogany and rosewood and rugs and bric-a-brac enough to
+furnish the house I am building. The stuff belonged to a little old aunt
+of mine who left it to me in her will, and it was with those things
+in mind that I began my house. The plans and finishing will fit that
+furniture beautifully."
+
+"Why, you lucky individual!" said Linda. "Nowhere in the world is there
+more beautiful furniture than in some of those old homes in Virginia.
+There are old Flemish and Dutch and British and Italian pieces that
+came into this country on early sailing vessels for the aristocrats. You
+don't mean that kind of stuff, do you, Peter?"
+
+"That is precisely the kind of stuff I do mean," answered Peter.
+
+"Why Peter, if you have furniture like that," cried Linda, "then all you
+need is Mary Louise."
+
+"Linda," said Peter soberly, "you are trespassing on delicate ground
+again. You selected one wife for me and your plan didn't work. When that
+furniture arrives and is installed I'll set about inducing the lady of
+my dreams to come and occupy my dream house, in my own way. I never did
+give you that job. It was merely assumed on your part."
+
+"So it was," said Linda. "But you know I could set that iris and run
+that brook with more enthusiasm if I knew the lady who was to walk
+beside it."
+
+"You do," said Peter. "You know her better than anyone else, even better
+than I. Put that in your mental pipe and smoke it!"
+
+"Saints preserve us!" cried Linda. "I believe the man is planning to
+take Katy away from me."
+
+"Not FROM you," said Peter, "WITH you."
+
+"Let me know about it before you do it," said Linda with a careless
+laugh.
+
+"That's what I'm doing right now," said Peter.
+
+"And I'm going to school," said Linda.
+
+"Of course," said Peter, "but that won't last forever."
+
+Linda entered enthusiastically upon the triple task of getting Donald in
+a proper frame of mind to start to college with the ambition to do good
+work, of marrying off Eileen and John Gilman, and of giving her best
+brain and heart to Jane Meredith. When the time came, Donald was ready
+to enter college comfortable and happy, willing to wait and see what
+life had in store for him as he lived it.
+
+When she was sure of Eileen past any reasonable doubt Linda took her and
+John to her workroom one evening and showed them her book contract and
+the material she had ready, and gave them the best idea she could
+of what yet remained to be done. She was not prepared for their
+wholehearted praise, for their delight and appreciation.
+
+Alone, they took counsel as to how they could best help her, and decided
+that to be married at once and take a long trip abroad would be the best
+way. That would leave Linda to work in quiet and with no interruption
+to distract her attention. They could make their home arrangements when
+they returned.
+
+When they had gone Linda worked persistently, but her book was not
+completed and the publishers were hurrying her when the fall term
+of school opened. By the time the final chapter with its exquisite
+illustration had been sent in, the first ones were coming back in proof,
+and with the proof came the materialized form of Linda's design for her
+cover, and there was no Marian to consult about it. Linda worked until
+she was confused. Then she piled the material in the Bear Cat and headed
+up Lilac Valley. As she came around the curve and turned from the public
+road she saw that for the first time she might cross her bridge; it was
+waiting for her. She heard the rejoicing of the water as it fell from
+stone to stone where it dipped under the road, and as she swung across
+the bridge she saw that she might drive over the completed road which
+had been finished in her weeks of absence. The windows told another
+story. Peter's furniture had come and he had been placing it without
+telling her. She found the front door standing wide open, so she walked
+in. With her bundle on her arm she made her way to Peter's workroom.
+When he looked up and saw her standing in his door he sprang to his feet
+and came to meet her.
+
+"Peter," she said, "I've taken on more work than I can possibly finish
+on time, and I'm the lonesomest person in California today."
+
+"I doubt that," said Peter gravely. "If you are any lonesomer than I am
+you must prove it."
+
+"I have proved it," said Linda quietly. "If you had been as lonesome as
+I am you would have come to me. As it is, I have come to you."
+
+"I see," said Peter rather breathlessly. "What have you there, Linda?
+Why did you come?"
+
+"I came for two reasons," said Linda. "I want to ask you about this
+stuff. Several times this summer you have heard talk about Jane Meredith
+and the Everybody's Home articles. Ever read any of them, Peter?"
+
+"Yes," said Peter, "I read all of them. Interested in home stuff these
+days myself."
+
+"Well," said Linda, dumping her armload before Peter, "there's the proof
+and there's the illustration and there's the cover design for a book to
+be made from that stuff. Peter, make your best boy and say 'pleased to
+meet you' to Jane Meredith."
+
+Peter secured both of Linda's hands and held them. First he looked at
+her, then he looked at the material she had piled down in front of him.
+
+"Never again," said Peter in a small voice, "will I credit myself with
+any deep discernment, any keen penetration. How I could have read that
+matter and looked at those pictures and not seen you in and through
+and over them is a thing I can't imagine. It's great, Linda, absolutely
+great! Of course I will help you any way in the world I can. And what
+else was it you wanted? You said two things."
+
+"Oh, the other doesn't amount to much," said Linda. "I only wanted the
+comfort of knowing whether, as soon as I graduate, I may take Katy and
+come home, Peter."
+
+From previous experience with Linda, Peter had learned that a girl
+reared by men is not as other women. He had supposed the other thing
+concerning which she had wanted to appeal to him was on par with her
+desire for sympathy and help concerning her book. At her question, with
+her eyes frankly meeting his, Peter for an instant felt lightheaded. He
+almost dodged, he was so sweepingly taken unawares. Linda was waiting
+and his brain was not working. He tried to smile, but he knew she would
+not recognize as natural the expression of that whirling moment. She saw
+his hesitation.
+
+"Of course, if you don't want us, Peter--"
+
+Peter found his voice promptly. Only his God knew how much he wanted
+Linda, but there were conditions that a man of Peter's soul-fiber
+could not endure. More than life he wanted her, but he did not want
+her asleep. He did not want to risk her awakening to a spoiled life and
+disappointed hopes.
+
+"But you remember that I told you coming home from San Francisco that
+you knew the Lady of my Iris better than anyone else, and that I was
+planning to take Katy, not from you, but with you."
+
+"Of course I remember," said Linda. "That is why when Marian and Eileen
+and Donald and all my world went past and left me standing desolate, and
+my work piled up until I couldn't see my way, I just started right out
+to ask you if you would help me with the proof. Of course I knew you
+would be glad to do that and I thought if you really meant in your
+heart that I was the one to complete your iris procession, it would be a
+comfort to me during the hard work and the lonesome days to have it put
+in two-syllable English. Marian said that was the only real way--"
+
+"And Marian is eminently correct. You will have to give me an ordinary
+lifetime, Linda, in which to try to make you understand exactly what
+this means to me. Perhaps I'll even have to invent new words in which to
+express myself."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Linda. "It means a lot to me too. I can't
+tell you how much I think of you. That first day, as soon as I put down
+the Cotyledon safely and tucked in my blouse, I would have put my hand
+in yours and started around the world, if you had asked me to. I have
+the very highest esteem for you, Peter."
+
+"Esteem, yes," said Peter slowly. "But Linda-girl, isn't the sort of
+alliance I am asking you to enter with me usually based on something a
+good bit stronger than 'esteem'?"
+
+"Yes, I think it is," said Linda. "But you needn't worry. I only wanted
+the comfort of knowing that I was not utterly alone again, save for
+Katy. I'll stick to my book and to my fight for Senior honors all
+right."
+
+Peter was blinking his eyes and fighting to breathe evenly. When he
+could speak he said as smoothly as possible: "Of course, Linda. I'll
+do your proof for you and you may put all your time on class honors.
+It merely occurred to me to wonder whether you realized the full and
+ultimate significance of what we are saying; exactly what it means to me
+and to you."
+
+ "Possibly not, Peter," said Linda, smiling on him with utter
+confidence. "Everyone says I am my father's daughter, and Father didn't
+live to coach me on being your iris decoration, as a woman would; but,
+Peter, when the time comes, I have every confidence in your ability to
+teach me what you would like me to know yourself. Don't you agree with
+me, Peter?"
+
+Making an effort to control himself Peter gathered up the material Linda
+had brought and taking her arm he said casually: "I thoroughly agree
+with you, dear. You are sanely and health fully and beautifully right.
+Now let's go and take Katy into our confidence, and then you shall show
+me your ideas before I begin work on your proof. And after this, instead
+of you coming to me I shall always come to you whenever you can spare a
+minute for me."
+
+Linda nodded acquiescence.
+
+"Of course! That would be best," she said. "Peter, you are so
+satisfyingly satisfactory."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Her Father's Daughter, by Gene Stratton-Porter
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@@ -0,0 +1,15078 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Her Father's Daughter, by Porter
+#7 in our series by Gene Stratton-Porter
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER
+by
+GENE STRATTON-PORTER
+  
+Contents
+
+     I."What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?"
+    II. Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
+   III. The House of Dreams
+    IV. Linda Starts a Revolution
+     V. The Smoke of Battle
+    VI. Jane Meredith
+   VII. Trying Yucca
+  VIII. The Bear Cat
+    IX. One Hundred Per Cent Plus
+     X. Katy to the Rescue
+    XI. Assisting Providence
+   XII. The Lay of the Land
+  XIII. Leavening the Bread of Life
+   XIV. Saturday's Child
+    XV. Linda's Hearthstone
+   XVI. Producing the Evidence
+  XVII. A Rock and a Flame
+ XVIII. Spanish Iris
+   XIX. The Official Bug-Catcher
+    XX. The Cap Sheaf
+   XXI. Shifting the Responsibility
+  XXII. The End of Marian's Contest
+ XXIII. The Day of Jubilee
+  XXIV. Linda's First Party
+   XXV. Buena Moza
+  XXVI. A Mouse Nest
+ XXVII. The Straight and Narrow
+XXVIII. Putting It Up to Peter
+  XXIX. Katy Unburdens Her Mind
+   XXX. Peter's Release
+  XXXI. The End of Donald's Contest
+ XXXII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest
+XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris
+
+
+
+List of Characters
+
+LINDA STRONG, Her Father's Daughter
+DR. ALEXANDER STRONG, a Great Nerve Specialist
+MRS. STRONG, His Wife
+EILEEN STRONG, Having
+Social Aspirations
+MR. AND MRS. THORNE, Neighbors of the Strongs
+MARIAN THORNE, a Dreamer of Houses
+JOHN GILMAN, a Man of Law
+PETER MORRISON, an Author
+HENRY ANDERSON, an Architect
+DONALD WHITING, a High School Senior
+MARY LOUISE WHITING, His Sister
+JUDGE AND MRS. WHITING, a Man of Law and a Woman of Culture
+KATHERINE O' DONOVAN, the Strong Cook
+OKA SAYYE, a High School Senior
+JAMES HEITMAN, Accidentally Rich
+MRS. CAROLINE HEITMAN, His Wife
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.  "What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?"
+
+"What makes you wear such funny shoes?"
+
+Linda Strong thrust forward a foot and critically examined the
+narrow vamp, the projecting sole, the broad, low heel of her
+well-worn brown calfskin shoe.  Then her glance lifted to the
+face of Donald Whiting, one of the most brilliant and popular
+seniors of the high school.  Her eyes narrowed in a manner
+habitual to her when thinking intently.
+
+"Never you mind my shoes," she said deliberately.  "Kindly fix
+your attention on my head piece.  When you see me allowing any
+Jap in my class to make higher grades than I do, then I give you
+leave to say anything you please concerning my head."
+
+An angry red rushed to the boy's face.  It was an irritating fact
+that in the senior class of that particular Los Angeles high
+school a Japanese boy stood at the head.  This was embarrassing
+to every senior.
+
+"I say," said Donald Whiting, "I call that a mean thrust."
+
+"I have a particular reason," said Linda.
+
+"And I have 'a particular reason'," said Donald, "for being
+interested in your shoes."
+
+Linda laughed suddenly.  When Linda laughed, which was very
+seldom, those within hearing turned to look at her.  Hers was not
+a laugh that can be achieved.  There were a few high places on
+the peak of Linda's soul, and on one of them homed a small flock
+of  notes of rapture; notes as sweet as the voice of the
+white-banded mockingbird of Argentina.
+
+"How surprising!" exclaimed Linda.  "We have been attending the
+same school for three years; now, you stop me suddenly to tell me
+that you are interested in the shape of my shoes."
+
+"I have been watching them all the time," said Donald.  'Can't
+understand why any girl wants to be so  different.  Why don't you
+dress your hair the same as the other girls and wear the same
+kind of clothes and shoes?"
+
+"Now look here," interposed Linda "You are flying the track.I
+am willing to justify my shoes, if I can, but here you go
+including my dress and a big psychological problem, as well; but
+I think perhaps the why of the shoes will explain the remainder. 
+Does the name 'Alexander Strong' mean anything to you?"
+
+"The great nerve specialist?" asked Donald.
+
+"Yes," said Linda.  "The man who was the author of half-dozen
+books that have been translated into many foreign tongue' and
+are used as authorities all over the world.  He happened to be
+my father There are two children in our family.  I have a sister
+four years older than I am who is exactly like Mother,
+and she and Mother were inseparable.  I am exactly like
+Father; because we understood each other, and because
+both of us always new, although we never mentioned it;
+that Mother preferred my sister Eileen to me, Father tried
+to make it up to me, so from the time I can remember I was at
+his heels.  It never bothered him to have me playing around in
+the library while he was writing his most complicated treatise. 
+I have waited in his car half a day at a time, playing or
+reading, while he watched a patient or delivered a lecture at
+some medical college.  His mental relaxation was to hike or to
+motor to the sea, to the mountains, to the canyons or the
+desert, and he very seldom went without me even on long trips
+when he was fishing or hunting with other men.  There was not
+much to know concerning a woman's frame or he psychology that
+Father did not know, so there were two reason why he selected my 
+footwear as he did.  One was because he be believed high heels
+and pointed toes an outrage against the nervous province, and
+the other was that I could not possibly have kept pace with him
+except in shoes like these.  No doubt, they are the same kind I
+shall wear all my life, for walking.  You  probably don't know
+it, but my home lies near the middle of Lilac Valley and I walk
+over a mile each morning and evening  to and from the cars.  Does
+this sufficiently explain my shoes?"
+
+"I should think you'd feel queer," said Donald.
+
+"I suspect I would if I had time to brood over it," Linda
+replied, "but I haven't.  I must hustle to get to school on time
+in the morning.  It's nearly or quite dark before I reach home in
+the evening.  My father believed in having a good time.  He had
+superb health, so he spent most of what he made as it came to
+him.  He counted on a long life.  It never occurred to him that a
+little piece of machinery going wrong would plunge him into
+Eternity in a second."
+
+"Oh, I remember!" cried the boy.
+
+Linda's face paled slightly.
+
+"Yes," she said, "it happened four years ago and I haven't gotten
+away from the horror of it yet, enough ever to step inside of a
+motor car; but I am going to get over that one of these days. 
+Brakes are not all defective, and one must take one's risks."
+
+"You just bet I would," said Donald.  "Motoring is one of the
+greatest pleasures of modern life.  I'll wager it makes some of
+the gay old boys, like Marcus Aurelius for example, want to turn
+over in their graves when they see us flying along the roads of
+California the way we do."
+
+"What I was getting at," said Linda, "was a word of reply to the
+remainder of your indictment against me.  Dad's income stopped
+with him, and household expenses went on, and war came, so there
+isn't enough money to dress two of us as most of the high school
+girls are dressed.  Eileen is so much older that it's her turn
+first, and I must say she is not at all backward about exercising
+her rights.  I think that will have to suffice for the question 
+of dress but you may be sure that I am capable of wearing the
+loveliest dress imaginable, that would be  for a school girl, if
+I had it to wear."
+
+"Ah, there's the little 'fly in your ointment'--'dress that would
+be suitable.' I bet in your heart you think the dresses that half
+the girls in high school are wearing are NOT SUITABLE!"
+
+"Commendable perspicacity, O learned senior," said Linda, "and
+amazingly true.  In the few short years I had with Daddy I
+acquired a fixed idea as to what kind of dress is suitable and
+sufficiently durable to wear while walking my daily two miles.  I
+can't seem to become reconciled to the custom of dressing the
+same for school as for a party.  You get my idea?"
+
+"I get it all right enough," said Donald, "but I must think
+awhile before I decide whether I agree with you.  Why should you
+be right, and hundreds of other girls be wrong?"
+
+"I'll wager your mother would agree with me," suggested Linda.
+
+"Did yours?" asked Donald.
+
+"Halfway," answered Linda.  "She agreed with me for me, but not
+for Eileen."
+
+"And not for my sister," said Donald.  "She wears the very
+foxiest clothes that Father can afford to pay for, and when she
+was going to school she wore them without the least regard as to
+whether she was going to school or to a tea party or a matinee. 
+For that matter she frequently went to all three the same day.
+
+"And that brings us straight to the point concerning you," said
+Linda.
+
+"Sure enough!" said Donald.  "There is me to be considered! What
+is it you have against me?"
+
+Linda looked at him meditatively.
+
+"You SEEM exceptionally strong," she said.  "No doubt are good in
+athletics.  Your head looks all right; it indicates brains.  What
+I want to know is why in the world you don't us them."
+
+"What are you getting at, anyway?" asked Donald, with more than a
+hint of asperity m his voice.  
+
+"I am getting at the fact," said Linda, "that a boy as big as you
+and as strong as you and with as good brain and your opportunity
+has allowed a little brown Jap to cross the Pacific Ocean and a
+totally strange country to learn a language foreign to him, and,
+and, with the same books and the same chances, to beat you at
+your own game.  You and every other boy in your classes ought to
+thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.  Before I would let a Jap,
+either boy or girl, lead in my class, I would give up going to
+school and go out and see if I could beat him growing lettuce and
+spinach."
+
+"It's all very well to talk," said Donald hotly.
+
+"And it's better to make good what you say," broke in Linda, with
+equal heat.  "There are half a dozen Japs in my classes but no
+one of them is leading, you will notice, if I do wear peculiar
+shoes."
+
+"Well, you would be going some if you beat the leading Jap in the
+senior class," said Donald.
+
+"Then I would go some," said Linda.  "I'd beat him, or I'd go
+straight up trying.  You could do it if you'd make up your mind
+to.  The trouble with you is that you're wasting your brain on
+speeding an automobile, on dances, and all sorts of foolishness
+that is not doing you any good in any particular way.  Bet you
+are developing nerves smoking cigarettes.  You are not
+concentrating.  Oka Sayye is not thinking of a thing except the
+triumph of proving  to California that he is head man in one of
+the Los Angeles high schools.  That's what I have got against
+you, and every other white boy in your class, and in the long run
+it stacks up bigger than your arraignment of my shoes."
+
+"Oh, darn your shoes!" cried Donald hotly.  "Forget 'em! I've got
+to move on or I'll be late for trigonometry, but I don't know
+when I've had such a tidy little fight with a girl, and I don't
+enjoy feeling that I have been worsted.  I propose another
+session.  May I come out to Lilac Valley Saturday afternoon and
+flay you alive to pay up for my present humiliation?""
+
+"Why, if your mother happened to be motoring that way and would
+care to call, I think that would be fine," said Linda.
+
+"Well, for the Lord's sake!" exclaimed the irate senior.  "Can't
+a fellow come and fight with you without being refereed by his
+mother?  Shall I bring Father too?"
+
+"I only thought," said Linda quietly, "that you would like your
+mother to see the home and environment of any girl whose
+acquaintance you made, but the fight we have coming will in all
+probability be such a pitched battle that when I go over the top,
+you won't ever care to follow me and start another issue on the
+other side.  You're dying right now to ask why I wear my hair in
+braids down my back instead of in cootie coops over my ears."
+
+"I don't give a hang," said Donald ungallantly, "as to how you ;
+wear your hair, but I am coming Saturday to fight, and I don't
+think Mother will take any greater interest in the matter than to
+know that I am going to do battle with a daughter of Doctor I
+Strong."
+
+"That is a very nice compliment to my daddy, thank you, said
+Linda, turning away and proceeding in the direction of her own
+classrooms.  There was a brilliant sparkle in her eyes and she
+sang in a muffled voice, yet distinctly enough to be heard:
+
+"The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes,
+And you may wear them if you choose."
+
+"By gracious! She's no fool," he said to himself.  In three
+minutes' unpremeditated talk the "Junior Freak," as he mentally
+denominated her, had managed to irritate him, to puncture his
+pride, to entertain and amuse him.
+
+"I wonder--" he said as he went his way; and all day he kept on
+wondering, when he was not studying harder than ever before in
+all his life.
+
+That night Linda walked slowly along the road toward home.  She
+was not seeing the broad stretch of Lilac Valley, on every hand
+green with spring, odorous with citrus and wild bloom, blue
+walled with lacy lilacs veiling the mountain face on either side;
+and she was not thinking of her plain, well-worn dress or her
+common-sense shoes.  What she was thinking was of every flaying,
+scathing, solidly based argument she could produce the following
+Saturday to spur Donald Whiting in some way to surpass Oka Sayye. 
+His chance remark that morning, as they stood near each other
+waiting a few minutes in the hall, had ended in his asking to
+come to see her, and she decided as she walked homeward that his
+first visit in all probability would be his last, since she had
+not time to spare for boys, when she had so many different
+interests involved; but she did decide very finely in her own
+mind that the would make that visit a memorable one for him.
+
+In arriving at this decision her mind traveled a number of
+devious roads.  The thought that she had been criticized did not
+annoy her as to the kind of criticism, but she did resent the
+quality of truth about it.  She was right in following the rules
+her father had laid down for her health and physical well-being,
+but was it right that she should wear shoes scuffed, resoled, and
+even patched, when there was money enough for Eileen to have many
+pairs of expensive laced boots, walking shoes, and fancy
+slippers?  She was sure she was right in wearing dresses suitable
+for school, but was it right that she must wear them until they
+were sunfaded, stained, and disreputable?  Was it right that
+Eileen should occupy their father and mother's suite, redecorated
+and daintily furnished according to her own taste, to keep the
+parts of the house that she cared to use decorated with flowers
+and beautifully appointed, while Linda must lock herself in a
+small stuffy bedroom room, dingy and none too comfortable, when
+in deference to her pride she wished to work in secret until she
+learned whether she could succeed.
+
+Then she began thinking, and decided that the only available
+place in the house for her use was the billiard room.  She made
+up her mind that she would demand the sole right to this big
+attic room.  She would sell the table and use the money to buy
+herself a suitable worktable and a rug.  She would demand that
+Eileen produce enough money for better clothing for her, and then
+she remembered what she had said to Donald Whiting about
+conquering her horror for a motor car.  Linda turned in at the
+walk leading to her home, but she passed the front entrance and
+followed around to the side.  As she went she could hear voices
+in the living room and she knew that Eileen was entertaining some 
+of her many friends; for Eileen was that peculiar creature known
+as a social butterfly.  Each day of her life friends came; or
+Eileen went--mostly the latter, for Eileen had a knack of
+management and she so managed her friends that, without their
+realizing it, they entertained her many times while she
+entertained them once.  Linda went to the kitchen, Laid her books
+and package of mail on the table, and, walking over to the stove,
+she proceeded deliberately and heartily to kiss the cook.
+
+"Katy, me darlin'," she said, "look upon your only child.  Do you
+notice a 'lean and hungry look' on her classic features?"
+
+Katy turned adoring eyes to the young girl.
+
+"It's growing so fast ye are, childie," she said.  "It's only a
+little while to dinner, and there's company tonight, so hadn't ye
+better wait and not spoil your appetite with piecing?"
+
+"Is there going to be anything 'jarvis'?" inquired Linda.
+
+'"I'd say there is," said Katy.  "John Gilman is here and two
+friends of Eileen's.  It's a near banquet, lassie."
+
+"Then I'll  wait," said Linda.  "I want the keys to the garage."
+
+Katy handed them to her and Linda went down the back walk beneath
+an arch of tropical foliage, between blazing walls of brilliant 
+flower faces, unlocked the garage, and stood looking at her
+father's runabout.
+
+In the revolution that had taken place in their home after the
+passing of their father and mother, Eileen had dominated the
+situation and done as she pleased, with the exception of two
+instances.  Linda had shown both temper and determination at the
+proposal to dismantle the library and dispose of the cars.  She
+had told Eileen that she might take the touring car and do as she
+pleased with it.  For her share she wanted her father's roadster,
+and she meant to have it.  She took the same firm stand
+concerning the Library.  With the rest of the house Eileen might
+do as she would.  The library was to remain absolutely untouched
+and what it contained was Linda's.  To this Eileen had agreed,
+but so far Linda had been content merely to possess her property.
+
+Lately, driven by the feeling that she must find a way in which
+she could earn money, she had been secretly working on some plans
+that she hoped might soon yield her small returns.  As for the
+roadster, she as well as Eileen had been horror-stricken when the
+car containing their father and mother and their adjoining
+neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Thorne, driven by Marian Thorne, the
+playmate and companion from childhood of the Strong girls, had
+become uncontrollable and plunged down the mountain in a disaster
+that had left only Marian, protected by the steering gear, alive. 
+They had simply by mutual agreement begun using the street cars
+when they wanted to reach the city.
+
+Linda stood looking at the roadster, jacked up and tucked under a
+heavy canvas tent that she and her father had used on their
+hunting and fishing trips.  After a long time she laid strong
+hands on the canvas and dragged it to one side.  She looked the
+car over carefully and then, her face very white and her hands
+trembling, she climbed into it and slowly and mechanically went
+through the motions of starting it.  For another intent period
+she sat with her hands on the steering gear, staring straight
+ahead, and then she said slowly:  "Something has got to be done. 
+It's not going to be very agreeable, but I am going to do it. 
+Eileen:  has had things all her own way long enough.  I am
+getting such a big girl I ought to have a few things in my life
+as I want them.  Something must be done."
+
+Then Linda proceeded to do something.  What she did was to lean
+forward, rest her head upon the steering wheel and fight to keep
+down deep, pitiful sobbing until her whole slender body twisted
+in the effort.
+
+She was yielding to a breaking up after four years of endurance,
+for the greater part in silence.  As the months of the past year
+had rolled their deliberate way, Linda had begun to realize that
+the course her elder sister had taken was wholly unfair to her,
+and slowly a tumult of revolt was growing in her soul.  Without a
+doubt the culmination had resulted from her few minutes' talk
+with Donald Whiting in the hall that morning.  It had started
+Linda to thinking deeply, and the more deeply she thought the
+clearly she saw the situation.  Linda was a loyal soul and her
+heart was  honest.  She was quite willing that Eileen should : 
+exercise her rights as head of the family, that she should take
+the precedence to which she was entitled by her four years'
+seniority, that she should spend the money which accrued monthly
+from their father's estate as she saw fit, up to a certain point. 
+That point was where things ceased to be fair or to be just.  If
+there had been money to do no more for Eileen than had been done
+for Linda, it would not have been in Linda's heart to utter a
+complaint.  She could have worn scuffed shoes and old dresses,
+and gone her way with her proud young head held very high and a
+jest on her lips; but when her mind really fastened on the
+problem and she began to reason, she could not feel that Eileen
+was just to her or that she was fair in her administration of the
+money which should have been divided more nearly equally between
+them, after the household expenses had been paid.  Once rebellion
+burned in her heart the flames leaped rapidly, and Linda began to
+remember a thousand small things that she had scarcely noted at
+the time of their occurrence.
+
+She was leaning on the steering wheel, tired with nerve strain,
+when she heard Katy calling her, and realized that she was needed
+in the kitchen.  As a matter of economy Eileen, after her
+parents' passing, had dismissed the housemaid, and when there
+were guests before whom she wished to make a nice appearance
+Linda had been impressed either to wait on the table or to help
+in the kitchen in order that Katy might attend the dining room,
+so Linda understood what was wanted when Katy called her.  She
+ran her fingers over the steering wheel, worn bright by the touch
+of her father's and her own hands, and with the buoyancy of
+youth, found comfort.  Once more she mechanically went through
+the motions of starting the car, then she stepped down, closed
+the door, and stood an instant thinking.
+
+"You're four years behind the times," she said slowly.  "No doubt
+there's a newer and a better model; I suspect the tires are
+rotten, but the last day I drove you for Daddy you purred like a
+kitten, and ran like a clock, and if you were cleaned and oiled
+and put in proper shape, there's no reason in the world why I
+should not drive you again, as I have driven you hundreds of
+miles when Daddy was tired or when he wanted to teach me the
+rules of good motoring, and the laws of the road.  I can do it
+all right.  I have got to do it, but it will be some time before
+I'll care to tackle the mountains."
+
+Leaving the cover on the floor, she locked the door and returned
+to the kitchen.
+
+"All right, Katy, what is the programme?" she inquired as lightly
+as she could.
+
+Katy had been cook in the Strong family ever since they had 
+moved to Lilac Valley.  She had obeyed Mrs. Strong and Eileen. 
+She had worshiped the Doctor  and Linda It always had been patent
+to her eyes that Mrs. Strong was extremely partial to Eileen, so
+Katy had joined forces with the Doctor in surreptitiously doing
+everything her warm Irish heart prompted to prevent Linda from
+feeling neglected.  Her quick eyes saw the traces of tears on
+Linda's face, and she instantly knew that the trip the girl had
+made to the garage was in some way connected with some belongings
+of her father's, so she said:  "I am serving tonight but I want
+you to keep things smoking hot and to have them dished up ready
+for me so that everything will go smoothly."
+
+"What would happen," inquired Linda, "if everything did NOT go
+smoothly?  Katy, do you think the roof would blow straight up if
+I had MY way about something, just for a change?"
+
+"No, I think the roof would stay right where it belongs," said
+Katy with a chuckle, "but I do think its staying there would not
+be because Miss Eileen wanted it to."
+
+"Well," said Linda deliberately, "we won't waste any time on
+thinking We are going to have some positive knowledge on the
+subject pretty immediately.  I don't feel equal to starting any
+domestic santana today, but the forces are gathering and the blow
+is coming soon.  To that I have firmly made up my mind."  
+
+"It's not the least mite I'm blaming you, honey," said Katy.
+
+"Ye've got to  be such a big girl that it's only fair things in
+this house should go a good  deal different."
+
+"Is Marian to be here?" asked Linda as she stood beside the stove
+peering  into pans and kettles.
+
+"Miss Eileen didn't say," replied Katy.  
+
+Linda's eyes reddened suddenly.  She slammed down a lid with 
+vicious emphasis.
+
+"That is another deal Eileen's engineered," she said, "that is
+just about as wrong as anything possibly can be.  What makes me
+the maddest about it is that John Gilman will let Eileen take him
+by the nose and lead him around like a ringed calf.  Where is his
+common sense?  Where is his perception?  Where is his honor?"
+
+"Now wait, dearie," said Katy soothingly, "wait.  John Gilman is
+a mighty fine man.  Ye know how your father loved him and trusted
+him and gave him charge of all his business affairs.  Ye mustn't
+go so far as to be insinuating that he is lacking in honor."
+
+"No," said Linda, "that was not fair.  I don't in the least know
+that he ever ASKED Marian to marry him; but I do know that as
+long as he was a struggling, threadbare young lawyer Marian was
+welcome to him, and they had grand times together.  The minute he
+won the big Bailey suit and came into public notice and his
+practice increased until he was independent, that minute Eileen
+began to take notice, and it looks to me now as if she very
+nearly had him."
+
+"And so far as I can see," said Katy, "Miss Marian is taking it
+without a struggle.  She is not lifting a finger or making a move
+to win him back."
+
+"Of course she isn't!" said Linda indignantly.  "If she thought
+he preferred some other girl to her, she would merely say:  'If
+John has discovered that he likes Eileen the better, why, that is
+all right; but there wouldn't be anything to prevent seeing
+Eileen take John from hurting like the deuce.  Did you ever lose
+a man you loved, Katy?"
+
+"That I did not!" said Katy emphatically.  "We didn't do any four
+or five years' philanderin' to see if a man 'could make good'
+when I was a youngster.  When a girl and her laddie stood up to
+each other and looked each other straight in the eye and had the
+great understanding, there weren't no question of whether he
+could do for her what her father and mither had been doing, nor
+of how much he had to earn before they would be able to begin
+life together.  They just caught hands and hot-footed it to the
+praste and told him to read the banns the next Sunday, and when
+the law allowed they was man and wife and taking what life had
+for them the way it came, and together.  All this philanderin'
+that young folks do nowadays is just pure nonsense, and waste of
+time."
+
+"Sure!" laughed Linda.  "When my brave comes along with his
+blanket I'll just step under, and then if anybody tries to take
+my man I'll have the right to go on the warpath and have a
+scalping party that would be some satisfaction to the soul."
+
+Then they served the dinner, and when the guests had left the
+dining room, Katy closed the doors, and brought on the delicacies
+she had hidden for Linda and patted and cajoled her while she ate
+like any healthy, hungry young creature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
+
+"'Ave, atque vale!' Cotyledon!"
+
+Linda slid down the side of the canyon with the deftness of the
+expert.  At the first available crevice she thrust in her Alpine
+stick, and bracing herself, gained a footing.  Then she turned
+and by use of her fingers and toes worked her way back to the
+plan, she had passed.  She was familiar with many members of she
+family, but such a fine specimen she seldom had found and she
+could not recall having seen it in all of her botanies.  Opposite
+the plant she worked out a footing, drove her stick deep at the
+base of a rock to brace herself, and from the knapsack on her
+back took a sketchbook and pencil and began rapidly copying the
+thick fleshy leaves of the flattened rosette, sitting securely at
+the edge of a rock.  She worked swiftly and with breathless
+interest.  When she had finished the flower she began sketching
+in the moss-covered face of the boulder against which it grew,
+and other bits of vegetation near.
+
+"I think, Coty," she said, "it is very probable that I can come a
+few simoleons with you.  You are becoming better looking ever
+minute."
+
+For a touch of color she margined one side of her drawing with a
+little spray of Pentstemon whose bright tubular flower the canyon
+knew as "hummingbird's dinner horn."  That gave, her the idea of
+introducing a touch of living interest, so bearing down upon the
+flowers from the upper right-hand corner of her drawing she
+deftly sketched in a ruby-throated hummingbird, and across the
+bottom of the sheet the lace of a few leaves of fern.  Then she
+returned the drawing and pencil to her knapsack, and making sure
+of her footing, worked her way forward.  With her long slender
+fingers she began teasing the plant loose from the rock and the
+surrounding soil.  The roots penetrated deeper than she had
+supposed and in her interest she forgot her precarious footing
+and pulled hard.  The plant gave way unexpectedly, and losing her
+balance, Linda plunged down the side of the canyon catching
+wildly at shrubs and bushes and bruising herself severely on
+stones, finally landing in a sitting posture on the road that
+traversed the canyon.
+
+She was not seriously hurt, but she did not present a picturesque
+figure as she sprawled in the road, her booted feet thrust
+straight before her, one of her long black braids caught on a
+bush at her back, her blouse pulled above her breeches, the
+contents of her knapsack decorating the canyon side and the road
+around her; but high in one hand, without break or blemish, she
+triumphantly held aloft the rare Cotyledon.  She shrugged her
+shoulders, wiggled her toes, and moved her arms to assure herself
+that no bones were broken; then she glanced at her drawings and
+the fruits of her day's collecting scattered on the roadside
+around her.  She was in the act of rising when a motor car
+containing two young men shot around a curve of the canyon,
+swerved to avoid running over her, and stopped as abruptly as
+possible.
+
+"It's a girl!" cried the driver, and both men sprang to the road
+and hurried to Linda's assistance.  Her dark cheeks were red with
+mortification, but she managed to recover her feet and tuck in
+her blouse before they reached her
+
+"We heard you coming down," said the elder of the young men, "and
+we thought you might be a bear.  Are you sure you're not hurt?"
+
+Linda stood before them, a lithe slender figure, vivid with youth
+and vitality.
+
+"I am able to stand," she said, "so of course I haven't broken
+any bones.  I think I am fairly well battered, but you will
+please  to observe that there isn't a scratch on Cotyledon, and I
+brought  her down--at least I think it's she--from the edge of
+that boulder away up there.  Isn't she a beauty?  Only notice the
+delicate frosty 'bloom' on her leaves!"
+
+"I should prefer," said the younger of the men, to know  whether
+you have any broken bones."
+
+"I'm sure I am all right," answered Linda.  "I have falling  down
+mountains reduced to an exact science.  I'll bet you couldn't
+slide that far and bring down Coty without a scratch.' "Well,
+which is the more precious," said the young man.  "Yourself or
+the  specimen?"
+
+"Why, the specimen!" answered Linda in impatience.  "California
+is full of girls; but this is the finest Cotyledon of this family 
+I have ever seen.  Don't mistake this for any common stonecrop. 
+It looks to me like an Echeveria.  I know what I mean to do with
+the picture I have made of her, and I know exactly where she is
+going to grow from this day on."
+
+"Is there any way we can help you?" inquired the elder of  the
+two men.
+
+For the first time Linda glanced at him, and her impression   was
+that he was decidedly attractive.
+
+"No, thank you!" she answered briskly.  "I am going to climb back
+up to the boulder and collect the belongings I spilled on the 
+way down.  Then I am going to carry Coty to the car line in a
+kind of triumphal  march, because she is the rarest find that I
+have ever made.  I hope you have no dark  designs on Coty,
+because this is 'what the owner had to do to redeem her.'"
+
+Linda indicated her trail down the canyon side, brushed soil and
+twigs from her  trousers, turned her straight young back,
+carefully set down her specimen, and by the aid of her recovered
+stick began  expertly making her way up the canyon side.  "Here,
+let me do that," offered the younger man.  "You rest   until I
+collect your  belongings."  Linda glanced back over her shoulder. 
+"Thanks," she said.  "I have a mental inventory of all the
+pencils and knives and  trowels I must find.  You might overlook
+the most important part of my  paraphernalia; and really I am not
+damaged.  I'm merely hurt.  Good-bye!"
+
+Linda started back up the side of the canyon, leaving the young
+men to enter their car and drive away.  For a minute both of them
+stood watching her.
+
+"What will girls be wearing and doing next?" asked the elder of
+the two as he started his car.
+
+"What would you have a girl wear when she is occupied with
+coasting down canyons?" said his friend.  "And as for what she is
+doing, it's probable that every high-school girl in Los Angeles
+has a botanical collection to make before she graduates."
+
+"I see!" said the man driving.  "She is only a high-school kid, ,
+but did you notice that she is going to make an extremely
+attractive young woman?"
+
+"Yes, I noticed just that; I noticed it very particularly,"
+answered the younger man.  "And I noticed also that she either
+doesn't know it, or doesn't give a flip."
+
+  Linda collected her belongings, straightened her hair and
+clothing, and, with her knapsack in place, and leaning rather on
+heavily on her walking stick, made her way down the road to the
+abutment of a small rustic bridge where she stopped to rest.  The
+stream at her feet was noisy and icy cold.  It rushed through
+narrow defiles in the rock, beat itself to foam against the faces
+a of the big stones, fell over jutting cliffs, spread in
+whispering pools, wound back and forth across the road at its
+will, singing every foot of its downward way and watering beds of
+crisp, cool miners' lettuce, great ferns, and heliotrope,
+climbing clematis, soil and blue-eyed grass.  All along its
+length grew willows, and in a few places white-bodied sycamores. 
+Everywhere over the walls red above it that vegetation could find
+a footing grew mosses, vines, flowers, and shrubs.  On the
+shadiest side homed most of the ferns and the Cotyledon.  In the
+sun, larkspur, lupin, and monkey flower; everywhere wild rose,
+holly, mahogany, gooseberry, and bayoneted yucca all
+intermingling in a curtain of variegated greens, brocaded with
+flower arabesques of vivid red, white, yellow, and blue.  Canyon
+wrens and vireos sang as they nested.  The air was clear, cool,
+and salty from the near-by sea.  Myriad leaf shadows danced on
+the black roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed
+the wavering image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea
+swallow.  Linda studied the canyon with intent eyes, but bruised
+flesh pleaded, so reluctantly she arose, shouldered her
+belongings, and slowly followed the road out to the car line that
+passed through Lilac Valley, still carefully bearing in triumph
+the precious Cotyledon.  An hour later she entered the driveway
+of her home.  She stopped to set her plant carefully in the wild
+garden she and her father had worked all her life at collecting,
+then followed the back porch and kitchen route.
+
+"Whatever have ye been doing to yourself, honey?" cried Katy.
+
+"I came a cropper down Multiflores Canyon where it is so steep
+that it leans the other way.  I pretty well pulverized myself for
+a pulverulent, Katy, which is a poor joke."
+
+"Now ain't that just my luck!" wailed Katy, snatching a cake
+cutter and beginning hurriedly to stamp out little cakes from the
+dough before her.
+
+"Well, I don't understand in exactly what way," said Linda,
+absently rubbing her elbows and her knees.  "Seems to me it's my
+promontories that have been knocked off, not yours, Katy."
+
+"Yes, and ain't it just like ye," said Katy, "to be coming in
+late, and all banged up when Miss Eileen has got sudden notice
+that there is going to be company again and I have an especial
+dinner to serve, and never in the world can I manage if ye don't
+help me !"
+
+"Why, who is coming now?" asked Linda, seating herself on the
+nearest chair and beginning to unfasten her boots slowly.
+
+"Well, first of all, there is Mr. Gilman, of course."
+
+"'Of course,'" conceded Linda.  "If he tried to get past our
+house, Eileen is perfectly capable of setting it on fire to stop
+him.  She's got him 'vamped' properly."
+
+"Oh I don't know that ye should say just that," said Katy "Eileen
+is a mighty pretty girl, and she is SOME manager."
+
+"You can stake your hilarious life she is," said Linda, viciously
+kicking a boot to the center of the kitchen.  "She can manage to
+go downtown for lunch and be invited out to dinner thirteen times
+a week, and leave us at home to eat bread and milk, bread heavily
+stressed.  She can manage to get every cent of the income from
+the property in her fingers, and a great big girl like me has to
+go to high school looking so tacky that even the boys are
+beginning to comment on it.  Manage, I'll say she can manage, not
+to mention managing to snake John Gilman right out of Marian's
+fingers.  I doubt if Marian fully realizes yet that she's lost
+her man; and I happen to know that she just plain loved John!"
+
+The second boot landed beside the first, then Linda picked them
+both up and started toward the back hall.
+
+"Honey, are ye too bad hurt to help me any?" asked Katy, as she
+passed her.
+
+"Of course not," said Linda.  "Give me a few minutes to take a
+bath and step into my clothes and then I'll be on the job."
+
+With a black scowl on her face, Linda climbed the dingy back
+stairway in her stocking-feet.  At the head of the stairs she
+paused one minute, glanced at the gloom of her end of the house,
+then she turned and walked to the front of the hall where there
+were potted ferns, dainty white curtains, and bright rugs.  The
+door of the guest room stood open and she could see that it was
+filled with fresh flowers and ready for occupancy.  The door of
+her sister's room was slightly ajar and she pushed it open and
+stood looking inside.  In her state of disarray she made a
+shocking contrast to the flowerlike figure busy before a dressing
+table.  Linda  was dark, narrow, rawboned, overgrown in height,
+and forthright of disposition.  Eileen was a tiny woman,
+delicately moulded, exquisitely colored, and one of the most
+perfectly successful tendrils from the original clinging vine in
+her intercourse with men, and with such women as would tolerate
+the clinging-vine idea in the present forthright days.  With a
+strand of softly curled hair in one hand and a fancy pin in the
+other, Eileen turned a disapproving look upon her sister.
+
+"What's the great idea?" demanded Linda shortly.
+
+"Oh, it's perfectly splendid," answered Eileen.  "John Gilman's 
+best friend is motoring around here looking for a location to
+build a home.  He is an author and young and good looking and not
+married, and he thinks he would like to settle somewhere near Los
+Angeles.  Of course John would love to have him in Lilac Valley
+because he hopes to build a home here some day for himself.  His
+name is Peter Morrison and John says that his articles and
+stories have horse sense, logic, and humor, and he is making a
+lot of money."  
+
+"Then God help John Gilman, if he thinks now that he is in love
+with you," said Linda dryly.
+
+Eileen arched her eyebrows, thinned to a hair line, and her lips
+drew together in disapproval.
+
+"What I can't understand," she said, "is how you can be so
+unspeakably vulgar, Linda."
+
+Linda laughed sharply.
+
+"And this Peter Morrison and John are our guests for dinner?"
+
+"Yes," said Eileen.  "I am going to show them this valley inside
+and out.  I'm so glad it's spring.  We're at our very best.  It
+would be perfectly wonderful to have an author for a neighbor,
+and he must be going to build a real house, because he has his
+architect with him; and John says that while he is young, he has
+done several awfully good houses.  He has seen a couple of them
+in in San Francisco."
+
+Linda shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Up the flue goes Marian's chance of drawing the plans for John
+Gilman's house," she said.  "I have heard him say a dozen times
+he would not build a house unless Marian made the plans."
+
+Eileen deftly placed the strand of hair and set the jewelled pin
+with precision.
+
+"Just possibly things have changed slightly," she suggested.
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I observe that they have.  Marian has sold
+the home she adored.  She is leaving friends she loved and
+trusted, and who were particularly bound to her by a common grief
+without realizing exactly how it is happening.  She certainly
+must know that you have taken her lover, and I have not a doubt
+but that is the reason she has discovered she can no longer work
+at home, that she must sell her property and spend the money
+cooped up in a city, to study her profession further."
+
+"Linda," said Eileen, her face pale with anger, "you are
+positively insufferable.  Will you leave my room and close the
+door after you?"
+
+"Well, Katy has just informed me," said Linda, "that this dinner
+party doesn't come off without my valued assistance, and before I
+agree to assist, I'll know ONE thing.  Are you proposing to
+entertain these three men yourself, or have you asked Marian?"
+
+Eileen indicated an open note lying on her dressing table.
+
+"I did not know they were coming until an hour ago," she said. 
+"_I_ barely had time to fill the vases and dust, and then I ran
+up to dress so that there would be someone presentable when they
+arrive."
+
+"All right then, we'll agree that this is a surprise party, but
+if John Gilman has told you so much about them, you must have
+been expecting them, and in a measure prepared for them at any
+time.  Haven't you talked it over with Marian, and told her that
+you would want her when they came?"
+
+Eileen was extremely busy with another wave of hair.  She turned
+her back and her voice was not quite steady as she answered. 
+"Ever since Marian got this 'going to the city to study' idea in
+her head I have scarcely seen her.  She had an awful job to empty
+the house, and pack such things as she wants to keep, and she is
+working overtime on a very special plan that she thinks maybe
+she'll submit in a prize competition offered by a big firm of San
+Francisco architects, so I have scarcely seen her for six weeks."
+
+"And you never once went over to help her with her work, or to
+encourage her or to comfort her?  You can't think Marian can
+leave this valley and not be almost heartbroken," said Linda. 
+"You just make me almost wonder at you.  When you think of the
+kind of friends that Marian Thorne's father and mother, and our
+father and mother were, and how we children were reared together,
+and the good times we have had in these two houses--and then the
+awful day when the car went over the cliff, and how Marian clung
+to us and tried to comfort us, when her own health was broken--
+and Marian's the same Marian she has always been, only nicer
+every day--how you can sit there and say you have scarcely seen
+her in six of the hardest weeks of her life, certainly surprises
+me.  I'll tell you this:  I told Katy I would help her, but I
+won't do it if you don't go over and make Marian come tonight."
+
+Eileen turned to her sister and looked at her keenly.  Linda's
+brow was sullen, and her jaw set.
+
+"A bed would look mighty good to me and I will go and get into
+mine this minute if you don't say you will go and ask her, in
+such a way that she comes," she threatened.
+
+Eileen hesitated a second and then said:  "All right, since you
+make such a point of it I will ask her."
+
+"Very well," said Linda.  "Then I'll help Katy the very best I
+can."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  The House of Dreams
+
+In less than an hour, Linda was in the kitchen, dressed in an old
+green skirt and an orange blouse.  Katy pinned one of her aprons
+on the girl and told her that her first job was to set the table.
+
+"And Miss Eileen has given most particular orders that I use the
+very best of everything.  Lay the table for four, and you are to
+be extremely careful in serving not to spill the soup."
+
+Linda stood very quietly for a second, her heavy black brows
+drawn together in deep thought.
+
+"When did Eileen issue these instructions?" she inquired.
+
+"Not five minutes ago," said Katy.  "She just left me kitchen and
+I'll say I never saw her lookin' such a perfect picture.  That
+new dress of hers is the most becoming one she has ever had."
+
+Almost unconsciously, Linda's hand reached to the front of her
+well-worn blouse, and she glanced downward at her skirt and
+shoes.
+
+"Um-hm," she said meditatively, "another new dress for Eileen,
+which means that I will get nothing until next month's allowance
+comes in, if I do then.  The table set for four, which,
+interpreted, signifies that she has asked Marian in such a way
+that Marian won't come.  And the caution as to care with the soup
+means that I am to serve my father's table like a paid waitress. 
+Katy, I have run for over three years on Eileen's schedule, but
+this past year I am beginning to use my brains and I am reaching
+the place of self-assertion.  That programme won't do, Katy. 
+It's got to be completely revised.  You just watch me and see how
+I follow those instructions."
+
+Then Linda marched out of the kitchen door and started across the
+lawn in the direction of a big brown house dimly outlined through
+widely spreading branches of ancient live oaks, palm, and bamboo
+thickets.  She entered the house without knocking and in the hall
+uttered a low penetrating whistle.  It was instantly answered
+from upstairs.  Linda began climbing, and met Marian at the top.
+
+"Why, Marian," she cried, "I had no idea you were so far along. 
+The house is actually empty."
+
+"Practically everything went yesterday," answered Marian.  "Those
+things of Father's and Mother's and my own that I wish to keep I
+have put in storage, and the remainder went to James's Auction
+Rooms.  The house is sold, and I am leaving in the morning."
+
+"Then that explains," questioned Linda, "why you refused Eileen's
+invitation to dinner tonight?"
+
+"On the contrary," answered Marian, "an invitation to dinner
+tonight would be particularly and peculiarly acceptable to me,
+since the kitchen is barren as the remainder of the house, and I
+was intending to slip over when your room was lighted to ask if I
+might spend the night with you."
+
+Linda suddenly gathered her friend in her arms and held her
+tight.
+
+"Well, thank heaven that you felt sufficiently sure of me to come
+to me when you needed me.  Of course you shall spend the night
+with me; and I must have been mistaken in thinking Eileen had
+been here.  She probably will come any minute.  There are guests
+for the night.  John is bringing that writer friend of his.  Of
+course you know about him.  It's Peter Morrison."
+
+Marian nodded her head.  "Of course! John has always talked of
+him.  He had some extremely clever articles in The Post lately."
+
+"Well, he is one," said Linda, "and an architect who is touring
+with him is two; they are looking for a location to build a house
+for the writer.  You can see that it would be a particularly
+attractive feather in our cap if he would endorse our valley
+sufficiently to home in it.  So Eileen has invited them to sample
+our brand of entertainment, and in the morning no doubt she will
+be delighted to accompany them and show them all the beautiful
+spots not yet preempted."
+
+"Oh, heavens," cried Marian, "I'm glad I never showed her my
+spot!"
+
+"Well, if you are particular about wanting a certain place I
+sincerely hope you did not," said Linda.
+
+"I am sure I never did," answered Marian.  "I so love one spot
+that I have been most secretive about it.  I am certain I never
+went further than to say there was a place on which I would love
+to build for myself the house of my dreams.  I have just about
+finished getting that home on paper, and I truly have high hopes
+that I may stand at least a fair chance of winning with it the
+prize Nicholson and Snow are offering.  That is one of the
+reasons why I am hurrying on my way to San Francisco much sooner
+than I had expected to go.  I haven't a suitable dinner dress
+because my trunks have gone, but among such old friends it won't
+matter.  I have one fussy blouse in my bag, and I'll be over as
+soon as I can see to closing up the house and dressing."
+
+Linda hurried home, and going to the dining room, she laid the
+table for six in a deft and artistic manner.  She filled a basket
+with beautiful flowers of her own growing for a centerpiece, and
+carefully followed Eileen's instruction to use the best of
+everything.  When she had finished she went to the kitchen.
+
+"Katy," she said, "take a look at my handiwork."
+
+"It's just lovely," said Katy heartily.
+
+"I quite agree with you," answered Linda, "and now in pursuance
+of a recently arrived at decision, I have resigned, vamoosed,
+quit, dead stopped being waitress for Eileen.  I was seventeen my
+last birthday.  Hereafter when there are guests I sit at my
+father's table, and you will have to do the best you can with
+serving, Katy."
+
+"And it's just exactly right ye are," said Katy.  "I'll do my
+best, and if that's not good enough, Miss Eileen knows what she
+can do."
+
+"Now listen to you," laughed Linda.  "Katy, you couldn't be
+driven to leave me, by anything on this earth that Eileen could
+do; you know you couldn't."
+
+Katy chuckled quietly.  "Sure, I wouldn't be leaving ye, lambie,"
+she said.  "We'll get everything ready, and I can serve I six as
+nicely as anyone.  But you're not forgetting that Miss Eileen
+said most explicit to lay the table for FOUR?'
+
+"I am not forgetting," said Linda.  "For Eileen's sake I am I
+sorry to say that her ship is on the shoals.  She is not going to
+have clear sailing with little sister Linda any longer.  This is
+the year of woman's rights, you know, Katy, and I am beginning to
+realize that my rights have been badly infringed upon for lo
+these many years.  If Eileen chooses to make a scene before
+guests, that is strictly up to Eileen.  Now what is it you want
+me to do?"
+
+Katy directed and Linda worked swiftly.  Soon they heard a motor
+stop, and laughing voices told them that the guests had arrived.
+
+"Now I wonder," said Linda, "whether Marian is here yet."
+
+At that minute Marian appeared at the kitchen door.
+
+"Linda," she said breathlessly, "I am feeling queer about this. 
+Eileen hasn't been over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Linda casually.  "The folks have
+come, and she was only waiting to make them a bit at home before
+she ran after you."
+
+Marian hesitated.
+
+"She was not allowing me much time to dress."
+
+"That's 'cause she knew you did not need it," retorted Linda. 
+"The more you fuss up, the less handsome you are, and you never
+owned anything in your life so becoming as that old red blouse. 
+So farewell, Katy, we're due to burst into high society tonight. 
+We're going to help Eileen vamp a lawyer, and an author, and an
+architect, one apiece.  Which do you prefer, Marian?"
+
+"I'll take the architect," said Marian.  "We should have
+something in  common since I am going to be a great architect
+myself one of these  days."
+
+"Why, that is too bad," said Linda.  "I'll have to rearrange the
+table if you insist, because I took him, and left you the author,
+and it was for love of you I did it.  I truly wanted him myself,
+all the time."
+
+They stopped in the dining room and Marian praised Linda's work
+in laying the table; and then, together they entered the living
+room.
+
+At the moment of their entrance, Eileen was talking animatedly
+about the beauties of the valley as a location for a happy home. 
+When she saw the two girls she paused, the color swiftly faded
+from her face, and Linda, who was watching to see what would
+happen, noticed the effort she made at self-control, but she was
+very sure that their guests did not.
+
+It never occurred to Linda that anyone would consider good looks
+in connection with her overgrown, rawboned frame and lean face,
+but she was accustomed to seeing people admire Marian, for Marian
+was a perfectly modeled woman with peach bloom cheeks, deep, dark
+eyes, her face framed in a waving mass of hair whose whiteness
+dated from the day that the brakes of her car failed and she
+plunged down the mountain with her father beside her, and her
+mother and Doctor and Mrs. Strong in the back seat.  Ten days
+afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin white. 
+Now it framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos. 
+"Striking" was perhaps the one adjective which would best
+describe her.
+
+John Gilman came hastily to greet them.  Linda, after a swift
+glance at Eileen, turned astonished eyes on their guests.  For
+one second she looked at the elder of them, then at the younger. 
+There was no recognition in her eyes, and there was a decided
+negative in a swift movement of her head.  Both men understood
+that she did not wish them to mention that they ever had seen her
+previously.  For an instant there was a strained situation. 
+Eileen was white with anger.  John Gilman was looking straight at
+Marian, and in his soul he must have wondered if he had been wise
+in neglecting her for Eileen.  Peter Morrison and his architect,
+Henry Anderson, had two things to think about.  One was the
+stunning beauty of Marian Thorne as she paused in the doorway,
+the light misting her white hair and deepening the tints of her
+red waist The other was why the young girl facing them had
+forbidden them to reveal that two hours before they had seen her
+in the canyon.  Katy, the efficient life-saver of the Strong
+family, announced dinner, and Linda drew back the curtains and
+led the way to the dining room, saying when they had arrived:  "I
+didn't have time in my hour's notice to make elaborate place
+cards as I should have liked to do, so these little pen sketches
+will have to serve."
+
+To cover his embarrassment and to satisfy his legal mind, John
+Gilman turned to Linda, asking:  "Why 'an hour'?  I told Eileen a
+week ago I was expecting the boys today."
+
+"But that does not prove that Eileen mentioned it to me,"
+answered Linda quietly; "so you must find your places from the
+cards I could prepare in a hurry."
+
+This same preparation of cards at the round table placed Eileen
+between the architect and the author, Marian between the author
+and John Gilman, and Linda between Gilman and the architect,
+which added one more tiny gale to the storm of fury that was
+raging in the breast of white-faced Eileen.  The situation was so
+strained that without fully understanding it, Marian, who was
+several years older than either of the Strong sisters, knew that
+although she was tired to the point of exhaustion she should
+muster what reserve force she could to the end of making the
+dinner party particularly attractive, because she was deeply
+interested i n drawing to the valley every suitable home seeker
+it was possible to locate there.  It was the unwritten law of the
+valley that whenever a home seeker passed through, every soul who
+belonged exerted the strongest influence to prove that the stars
+hung lower and shone bigger and in bluer heavens than anywhere
+else on earth; that nowhere could be found air to equal the
+energizing salt breezes from the sea, snow chilled, perfumed with
+almond and orange; that the sun shone brighter more days in the
+year, and the soil produced a greater variety of vegetables and
+fruits than any other spot of the same size on God's wonderful
+footstool.  This could be done with unanimity and enthusiasm by
+every resident of Lilac Valley for the very simple reason that it
+was the truth.  The valley stood with its steep sides raying blue
+from myriad wild lilacs; olives and oranges sloped down to the
+flat floor, where cultivated ranches and gardens were so screened
+by eucalyptus and pepper trees, palm and live oak, myriads of
+roses of every color and variety, and gaudy plants gathered there
+from the entire girth of the tropical world, that to the traveler
+on the highway trees and flowers predominated.  The greatest
+treasure of the valley was the enthusiastic stream of icy
+mountain water that wandered through the near-by canyon and
+followed the length of the valley on its singing, chuckling way
+to the ocean.  All the residents of Lilac Valley had to do to
+entrance strangers with the location was to show any one of a
+dozen vantage points, and let visitors test for themselves the
+quality of the sunshine and air, and study the picture made by
+the broad stretch of intensively cultivated valley, walled on
+either side by mountains whose highest peaks were often
+cloud-draped and for ever shifting their delicate pastel shades
+from gray to blue, from lavender to purple, from tawny yellow to
+sepia, under the play of the sun and clouds.
+
+They had not been seated three minutes before Linda realized from
+her knowledge of Eileen that the shock had been too great, if
+such a thing might be said of so resourceful a creature as
+Eileen.  Evidently she was going to sulk in the hope that this
+would prove that any party was a failure at which she did not
+exert herself to be gracious.  It had not been in Linda's heart
+to do more than sit quietly in the place belonging by right to
+her, but when she realized what was going to happen, she sent
+Marian one swift appealing glance, and then desperately plunged
+into conversation to cover Eileen's defection.
+
+"I have been told," she said, addressing the author, "that you
+are looking for a home in California.  Is this true, or is it
+merely that every good Californian hopes this will happen when
+any distinguished Easterner comes our way?"
+
+"I can scarcely answer you," said Peter Morrison, "because my
+ideas on the subject are still slightly nebulous, but I am only
+too willing to see them become concrete."
+
+"You have struck exactly the right place," said Linda.  "We have
+concrete by the wagon load in this valley and we are perfectly
+willing to donate the amount required to materialize your ideas. 
+Do you dream of a whole ranch or only a nest?"
+
+"Well, the fact is," answered Peter Morrison with a most
+attractive drawl in his slow speech, "the fact is the dimensions
+of my dream must fit my purse.  Ever since I finished college I
+have been in newspaper work and I have lived in an apartment in
+New York except while I was abroad.  When I came back my paper
+sent me to San Francisco and from there I motored down to see for
+myself if the wonderful things that are written about Los Angeles
+County are true."
+
+"That is not much of a compliment to us," said Linda slowly. 
+"How do you think we would dare write them if they were not
+true?"
+
+This caused such a laugh that everyone felt much easier.  Marian
+turned her dark eyes toward Peter Morrison.
+
+"Linda and I are busy people," she said.  "We waste little time
+in indirections, so I hope it's not out of the way for me to ask
+straightforwardly if you are truly in earnest, about wanting a
+home in Lilac Valley?"
+
+"Then I'll have to answer you," said Peter, "that I have an
+attractive part of the 'makin's' and I am in deadly earnest about
+wanting a home somewhere.  I am sick in my soul of narrow
+apartments and wheels and the rush and roar of the city.  There
+was a time when I ate and drank it.  It was the very breath of
+life to me.  I charged on Broadway like a caterpillar tank
+charging in battle; but it is very remarkable how quickly one
+changes in this world.  I have had some success in my work, and
+the higher I go, the better work I feel I can do in a quiet place
+and among less enervating surroundings.  John and I were in
+college together, roommates, and no doubt he has told you that we
+graduated with the same class.  He has found his location here
+and I would particularly enjoy having a home near him.  They tell
+me there are well-trained servants to look after a house and care
+for a bachelor, so I truly feel that if I can find a location I
+would like, and if Henry can plan me a house, and I can stretch
+my purse to cover the investment, that there is a very large
+possibility that somewhere within twenty miles of Los Angeles I
+may find the home of my dreams."
+
+"One would almost expect," said Marian, "that a writer would say
+something more original.  This valley is filled with people who
+came here saying precisely what you have said; and the lure of
+the land won them and here they are, shameless boosters of
+California."
+
+"Why shameless?" inquired Henry Anderson.
+
+"Because California so verifies the wildest statement that can be
+made concerning her that one may go the limit of imagination
+without shame," laughed Marian.  "I try in all my dealings to
+stick to the straight and narrow path."
+
+"Oh, kid, don't stick to the straight and narrow," broke in
+Linda, "there's no scenery."
+
+Eileen laid down her fork and stared in white-lipped amazement at
+the two girls, but she was utterly incapable of forgetting
+herself and her neatly arranged plans to have the three
+cultivated and attractive young men all to herself for the
+evening.  She realized too, from the satisfaction betrayed in the
+glances these men were exchanging among each other, the ease with
+which they sat, and the gusto with which they ate the food Katy
+was deftly serving them, that something was happening which never
+had happened at the Strong table since she had presided as its
+head, her sole endeavor having been to flatter her guests or to
+extract flattery for herself from them.
+
+"That is what makes this valley so adorable," said Marian when at
+last she could make herself heard.  "It is neither straight nor
+narrow.  The wing of a white sea swallow never swept a lovelier
+curve on the breast of the ocean than the line of this valley. 
+My mother was the dearest little woman, and she used to say that
+this valley was outlined by a gracious gesture from the hand of
+God in the dawn of Creation."
+
+Peter Morrison deliberately turned in his chair, his eyes intent
+on Marian's earnest face.
+
+"You almost make me want to say, in the language of an old hymn I
+used to hear my mother sing, 'Here will I set up my rest.' With
+such a name as Lilac Valley and with such a thought in the heart
+concerning it, I scarcely feel that there is any use in looking
+further.  How about it, Henry?  Doesn't it sound conclusive to
+you?"
+
+"It certainly does," answered Henry Anderson, "and from what I
+could see as we drove in, it looks as well as it sounds."
+
+Peter Morrison turned to his friend.
+
+"Gilman," he said, "you're a lawyer; you should know the things
+I'd like to.  Are there desirable homesites still to be found in
+the valley, and does the inflation of land at the present minute
+put it out of my reach?"
+
+"Well, that is on a par with the average question asked a
+lawyer," answered Gilman, "but part of it I can answer definitely
+and at once.  I think every acre of land suitable for garden or
+field cultivation is taken.  I doubt if there is much of the
+orchard land higher up remaining and what there is would command
+a rather stiff price; but if you would be content with some small
+plateau at the base of a mountain where you could set any sort of
+a house and have--say two or three acres, mostly of sage and
+boulders and greasewood and yucca around it "
+
+"Why in this world are you talking about stones and sage and
+greasewood?" cried Linda.  "Next thing they'll be asking about
+mountain lions and rattlesnakes."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Gilman, "I fear none of us has
+remembered to present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist.  She got
+her start from her father, who was one of the greatest nerve
+specialists the world ever has known.  She knows every inch of
+the mountains, the canyons and the desert.  She always says that
+she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe, while her father hunted
+the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland.  What should 1
+have said when describing a suitable homesite for Peter, Linda?"
+
+"You should have assumed that immediately, Peter,"--Linda lifted
+her eyes to Morrison's face with a sparkle of gay challenge, and
+by way of apology interjected--"I am only a kid, you know, so I
+may call John's friend Peter--you should have assumed that sage
+and greasewood would simply have vanished from any home location
+chosen by Peter, leaving it all lacy blue with lilac, and misty
+white with lemonade bush, and lovely gold with monkey flower, and
+purple with lupin, and painted blood red with broad strokes of
+Indian paint brush, and beautifully lighted with feathery flames
+from Our Lord's Candles, and perfumy as altar incense with wild
+almond."
+
+"Oh, my soul," said Peter Morrison.  "Good people, I have
+located.  I have come to stay.  I would like three acres but I
+could exist with two; an acre would seem an estate to me, and my
+ideas of a house, Henry, are shriveling.  I did have a dream of
+something that must have been precious near a home.  There might
+have been an evanescent hint of flitting draperies and
+inexperienced feet in it, but for the sake of living and working
+in such a location as Miss Linda describes, I would gladly cut my
+residence to a workroom and a sleeping room and kitchen."
+
+"Won't do," said Linda.  "A house is not a house in California
+without a furnace and a bathroom.  We are cold as blue blazes
+here when the sun goes down and the salty fog creeps up from the
+sea, and the icy mist rolls down from the mountains to chill our
+bones; and when it has not rained for six months at a stretch,
+your own private swimming pool is a comfort.  This to add
+verisimilitude to what everyone else in Lilac Valley is going to
+tell you."
+
+"I hadn't thought I would need a fire," said Peter, "and I was
+depending on the ocean for my bathtub.  I am particularly fond of
+a salt rub."
+
+So far, Eileen had not deigned to enter the conversation.  It was
+all so human, so far from her ideas of entertaining that the
+disapproval on her lips was not sufficiently veiled to be
+invisible, and
+
+John Gilman, glancing in her direction, realized that he was
+having the best time he had ever had in the Strong household
+since the passing of his friends, Doctor and Mrs. Strong, vaguely
+wondered why.  And it occurred to him that Linda and Marian were
+dominating the party.  He said the most irritating thing possible
+in the circumstances:  "I am afraid you are not feeling well this
+evening, Eileen."
+
+Eileen laughed shortly.
+
+"The one perfect thing about me," she said with closely cut
+precision, "is my health.  I haven't the faintest notion what it
+means to be ill.  I am merely waiting for the conversation to
+take a I turn where I can join in it intelligently."
+
+"Why, bless the child!" exclaimed Linda.  "Can't you talk
+intelligently about a suitable location for a home?  On what
+subject is a woman supposed to be intelligent if she is not at
+her best on the theme of home.  If you really are not interested
+you had better begin to polish up, because it appeals to me that
+the world goes just so far in one direction, and then it whirls
+to the right-about and goes equally as far in the opposite
+direction.  If Daddy were living I think he would say we have
+reached the limit with apartment house homes minus fireplaces,
+with restaurant dining minus a blessing, with jazz music minus
+melody, with jazz dancing minus grace, with national progress
+minus cradles."
+
+"Linda!" cried Eileen indignantly.
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Linda.  "Do I get the shillalah for that? 
+Weren't all of us rocked in cradles?  I think that the pendulum
+has swung far and it is time to swing back to where one man and
+one woman choose any little spot on God's footstool, build a nest
+and plan their lives in accord with personal desire and
+inclination instead of aping their neighbors."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Henry Anderson.  "Miss Linda, if you see any
+suitable spot, and you think I would serve for a bug-catcher,
+won't you please stake the location?"
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," said Linda.  "Would it be the
+old case of 'I furnish the bread and you furnish the water'?"
+
+"No," said Peter Morrison, "it would not.  Henry is doing mighty
+well.  I guarantee that he would furnish a cow that would produce
+real cream."
+
+"How joyous!" said Linda.  "I feel quite competent to manage the
+bread question.  We'll call that settled then.  When I next cast
+an appraising eye over my beloved valley, I shan't select the
+choicest spot in it for Peter Morrison to write a book in; and I
+want to warn you people when you go hunting to keep a mile away
+from Marian's plot.  She has had her location staked from
+childhood and has worked on her dream house until she has it all
+ready to put the ice in the chest and scratch the match for the
+living room fire-logs.  The one thing she won't ever tell is
+where her location is, but wherever it is, Peter Morrison, don't
+you dare take it."
+
+"I wouldn't for the world," said Peter Morrison gravely.  "If
+Miss Thorne will tell me even on which side of the valley her
+location lies, I will agree to stay on the other side."
+
+"Well there is one thing you can depend upon," said the
+irrepressible Linda before Marian had time to speak.  "It is sure
+to be on the sunny side.  Every living soul in California is
+looking for a place in the sun."
+
+"Then I will make a note of it," said Peter Morrison.  "But isn't
+there enough sun in all this lovely valley that I may have a
+place in it too?"
+
+"You go straight ahead and select any location you like," said
+Marian.  "I give you the freedom of the valley.  There's not one
+chance in ten thousand that you would find or see anything
+attractive about the one secluded spot I have always hoped I
+might some day own.  '
+
+"This is not fooling, then?" asked Peter Morrison.  "You truly
+have a place selected where you would like to live?"
+
+"She truly has the spot selected and she truly has the house on
+paper and it truly is a house of dreams," said Linda.  "I dream
+about it myself.  When she builds it and lives in it awhile and
+finds out all the things that are wrong with it, then I am going
+to build one like it, only I shall eliminate all the mistakes she
+has made."
+
+"I have often wondered," said Henry Anderson, "if such a thing
+ever happened as that people built a house and lived in it, say
+ten years, and did not find one single thing about it that they
+would change if they had it to build over again.  I never have
+heard of such a case.  Have any of you?"
+
+"I am sure no one has," said John Gilman meditatively, "and it's
+a queer thing.  I can't see why people don't plan a house the way
+they want it before they build."
+
+Marian turned to him--the same Marian he had fallen in love with
+when they were children.
+
+"Mightn't it be," she asked, "that it is due to changing
+conditions caused by the rapid development of science and
+invention?  If one had built the most perfect house possible five
+years ago and learned today that infinitely superior lighting and
+heating l and living facilities could be installed at much less
+expense and far greater convenience, don't you think that one
+would want to change?  Isn't life a series of changes?  Mustn't
+one be changing constantly to keep abreast of one's day and age?"
+
+"Why, surely," answered Gilman, "and no doubt therein lies at
+least part of the answer to Anderson's question."
+
+"And then," added Marian, "things happen in families.  Sometimes
+more babies than they expect come to newly married people and
+they require more room."
+
+"My goodness, yes!" broke in Linda.  "Just look at Sylvia
+Townsend--twins to begin with."
+
+"Linda!" breathed Eileen, aghast.
+
+"So glad you like my name, dear," murmured Linda sweetly.
+
+"And then," continued Marian, "changes come to other people as
+they have to me.  I can't say that I had any fault to find with
+either the comforts or the conveniences of Hawthorne House until
+Daddy and Mother were swept from it at one cruel sweep; and after
+that it was nothing to me but a haunted house, and I don't feel
+that I can be blamed for wanting to leave it.  I will be glad to
+know that there are people living in it who won't see a big
+strong figure meditatively smoking before the fireplace and a
+gray dove of a woman sitting on the arm of his chair.  I will be
+glad, if Fate is kind to me and people like my houses, to come
+back to the valley when I can afford to and build myself a home
+that has no past--a place, in fact, where I can furnish my own
+ghost, and if I meet myself on the stairs then I won't be shocked
+by me.
+
+"I don't think there is a soul in the valley who blames you for
+selling your home and going, Marian," said Linda soberly.  "I
+think it would be foolish if you did not."
+
+The return to the living room brought no change.  Eileen pouted
+while Linda and Marian thoroughly enjoyed themselves and gave the
+guests a most entertaining evening.  So disgruntled was Eileen,
+when the young men had gone, that she immediately went to her
+room, leaving Linda and Marian to close the house and make their
+own arrangements for the night.  Whereupon Linda deliberately led
+Marian to the carefully dusted and flower-garnished guest room
+and installed her with every comfort and convenience that the
+house afforded.  Then bringing her brushes from her own room, she
+and Marian made themselves comfortable, visiting far into the
+night.
+
+"I wonder," said Linda.  "if Peter Morrison will go to a real
+estate man in the morning and look over the locations remaining
+in Lilac Valley."
+
+"Yes, I think he will," said Marian conclusively.
+
+"It seems to me," said Linda, "that we did a whole lot of talking
+about homes tonight; which reminds me, Marian, in packing have
+you put in your plans?  Have you got your last draft with you?"
+
+"No," answered Marian, "it's in one of the cases.  I haven't
+anything but two or three pencil sketches from which I drew the
+final plans as I now think I'll submit them for the contest. 
+Wouldn't it be a tall feather in my cap, Linda, if by any chance
+l I should win that prize?"
+
+"It would be more than a feather," said Linda.  "It would be a
+whole cap, and a coat to wear with it, and a dress to match the
+coat, and slippers to match the dress, and so forth just like
+'The House That Jack Built.' Have you those sketches, Marian?"
+
+Opening her case, Marian slid from underneath the garments folded
+in it, several sheets on which were roughly penciled sketches of
+the exterior of a house--on the reverse, the upstairs and
+downstairs floor plans; and sitting down, she explained these to
+Linda.  Then she left them lying on a table, waiting to be
+returned to her case before she replaced her clothes in the
+morning.  Both girls were fast asleep when a mischievous wind
+slipped down the valley, and lightly lifting the top sheet,
+carried it through the window, across the garden, and dropped it
+at the foot of a honey-dripping loquat.
+
+Because they had talked until late in the night of Marian's plans
+and prospects in the city, of Peter Morrison's proposed residence
+in the valley, of how lonely Linda would be without Marian, of
+everything concerning their lives except the change in Eileen and
+John Gilman, the two girls slept until late in the morning, so
+that there were but a few minutes remaining in which Marian might
+dress, have a hasty breakfast and make her train.  In helping
+her, it fell to Linda to pack Marian's case.  She put the
+drawings she found on the table in the bottom, the clothing and
+brushes on top of them, and closing the case, carried it herself
+until she delivered it into the porter's hands as Marian boarded
+her train.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  Linda Starts a Revolution
+
+The last glimpse Marian Thorne had of Linda was as she stood
+alone, waving her hand, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, her
+final word cheery and encouraging.  Marian smiled and waved in
+return until the train bore her away.  Then she sat down wearily
+and stared unseeingly from a window.  Life did such very dreadful
+things to people.  Her girlhood had been so happy.  Then came the
+day of the Black Shadow, but in her blackest hour she had not
+felt alone.  She had supposed she was leaning on John Gilman as
+securely as she had leaned on her father.  She had learned, with
+the loss of her father, that one cannot be sure of anything in
+this world least of all of human life.  Yet in her darkest days
+she had depended on John Gilman.  She had every reason to believe
+that it was for her that he struggled daily to gain a footing in
+his chosen profession.  When success came, when there was no
+reason that Marian could see why they might not have begun life
+together, there had come a subtle change in John, and that change
+had developed so rapidly that in a few weeks' time, she was
+forced to admit that the companionship and loving attentions that
+once had been all hers were now all Eileen's.
+
+She sat in the train, steadily carrying her mile after mile
+farther from her home, and tried to think what had happened and
+how and why it had happened.  She could not feel that she had
+been wrong in her estimate of John Gilman.  Her valuation of him
+had 
+
+been taught her by her father and mother and by Doctor and Mrs.
+Strong  and by John Gilman himself.  Dating from the time that
+Doctor Strong  had purchased the property and built a home in
+Lilac Valley beside  Hawthorne House, Marian had admired Eileen
+and had loved her.  She  was several years older than the
+beautiful girl she had grown up beside.  Age had not mattered;
+Eileen's beauty had not mattered.  Marian was  good looking
+herself.
+
+She always had known that Eileen had imposed upon her and was
+selfish with her, but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully
+maneuvered, her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted
+that Marian in retrospection felt that perhaps she was
+responsible for at least a small part of it.  She never had been
+able to see the inner workings of Eileen's heart.  She was not
+capable of understanding that when John Gilman was poor and
+struggling Eileen had ignored him.  It had not occurred to Marian
+that when the success for which he struggled began to come
+generously, Eileen would begin to covet the man she had
+previously disdained.  She had always striven to find friends
+among people of wealth and distinction.  How was Marian to know
+that when John began to achieve wealth and distinction, Eileen
+would covet him also?
+
+Marian could not know that Eileen had studied her harder than she
+ever studied any book, that she had deliberately set herself to
+make the most of every defect or idiosyncrasy in Marian, at the
+same time offering herself as a charming substitute.  Marian was
+prepared to be the mental, the spiritual, and the physical mate
+of a man.
+
+Eileen was not prepared to be in truth and honor any of these. 
+She was prepared to make any emergency of life subservient to her
+own selfish desires.  She was prepared to use any man with whom
+she came in contact for the furtherance of any whim that at the
+hour possessed her.  What she wanted was unbridled personal
+liberty, unlimited financial resources.
+
+Marian, almost numbed with physical fatigue and weeks of mental
+strain, came repeatedly against the dead wall of ignorance when
+she tried to fathom the change that had taken place between
+herself and John Gilman and between herself and Eileen.  Daniel
+Thorne was an older man than Doctor Strong.  He had accumulated
+more property.  Marian had sufficient means at her command to
+make it unnecessary for her to acquire a profession or work for
+her living, but she had always been interested in and loved to
+plan houses and help her friends with buildings they were
+erecting.  When the silence and the loneliness of her empty home
+enveloped her, she had begun, at first as a distraction, to work
+on the drawings for a home that an architect had made for one of
+her neighbors.  She had been able to suggest so many comforts and
+conveniences, and so to revise these plans that, at first in a
+desultory way, later in real earnest, she had begun to draw plans
+for houses.  Then, being of methodical habit and mathematical
+mind, she began scaling up the plans and figuring on the cost of
+building, and so she had worked until she felt that she was
+evolving homes that could be built for the same amount of money
+and lived in with more comfort and convenience than the homes
+that many of her friends were having planned for them by
+architects of the city.
+
+To one spot in the valley she had gone from childhood as a secret
+place in which to dream and study.  She had loved that retreat
+until it had become a living passion with her.  The more John
+Gilman neglected her, the more she concentrated upon her plans,
+and when the hour came in which she realized what she had lost
+and what Eileen had won, she reached the decision to sell her
+home, go to the city, and study until she knew whether she really
+could succeed at her chosen profession.
+
+Then she would come back to the valley, buy the spot she coveted,
+build the house of which she dreamed, and in it she would spend
+the remainder of her life making homes for the women who knew how
+to hold the love of men.  When she reached the city she had
+decided that if one could not have the best in life, one must be
+content with the next best, and for her the next best would be
+homes for other people, since she might not materialize the home
+she had dreamed for John Gilman and herself.  She had not wanted
+to leave the valley.  She had not wanted to lose John Gilman. 
+She had not wanted to part with the home she had been reared in. 
+Yet all of these things seemed to have been forced upon her.  All
+Marian knew to do was to square her shoulders, take a deep
+breath, put regrets behind her, and move steadily toward the best
+future she could devise for herself.
+
+She carried letters of introduction to the San Francisco
+architects, Nicholson and Snow, who had offered a prize for the
+best house that could be built in a reasonable time for fifteen
+thousand dollars.  She meant to offer her plans in this
+competition.  Through friends she had secured a comfortable place
+in which to live and work.  She need undergo no hardships in
+searching for a home, in clothing herself, in paying for
+instruction in the course in architecture she meant to pursue.
+
+Concerning Linda she could not resist a feeling of exultation. 
+Linda was one of the friends in Lilac Valley about whom Marian
+could think wholeheartedly and lovingly.  Sometimes she had been
+on the point of making a suggestion to Linda, and then she had
+contented herself with waiting in the thought that very soon
+there must come to the girl a proper sense of her position and
+her rights.  The experience of the previous night taught Marian
+that Linda had arrived.  She would no longer be the compliant
+little sister who would run Eileen's errands, wait upon her
+guests and wear disreputable clothing.  When Linda reached a
+point where she was capable of the performance of the previous
+night, Marian knew that she would proceed to live up to her blue
+china in every ramification of life.  She did not know exactly
+how Linda would follow up the assertion of her rights that she
+had made, but she did know that in some way she would follow it
+up, because Linda was a very close reproduction of her father.
+
+She had been almost constantly with him during his life, very
+much alone since his death.  She was a busy young person.  From
+Marian's windows she had watched the business of carrying on the
+wild-flower garden that Linda and her father had begun.  What the
+occupation was that kept the light burning in Linda's room far
+into the night Marian did not know.  For a long time she had
+supposed that her studies were difficult for her, and when she
+had asked Linda if it were not possible for her to prepare her
+lessons without so many hours of midnight study she had caught
+the stare of frank amazement with which the girl regarded her and
+in that surprised, almost grieved look she had realized that very
+probably a daughter of Alexander Strong, who resembled him as
+Linda resembled him, would not be compelled to overwork to master
+the prescribed course of any city high school.  What Linda was
+doing during those midnight hours Marian did not know, but she
+did know that she was not wrestling with mathematics and
+languages--at least not all of the time.  So Marian knowing
+Linda's gift with a pencil, had come to the conclusion that she
+was drawing pictures; but circumstantial evidence was all she had
+as a basis for her conviction.  Linda went her way silently and
+alone.  She was acquainted with everyone living in Lilac Valley,
+frank and friendly with all of them; aside from Marian she had no
+intimate friend.  Not another girl in the valley cared to follow
+Linda's pursuits or to cultivate the acquaintance of the
+breeched, booted girl, constantly devoting herself to outdoor
+study with her father during his lifetime, afterward alone.
+
+For an instant after Marian had boarded her train Linda stood
+looking at it, her heart so heavy that it pained acutely.  She
+had not said one word to make Marian feel that she did not want
+her to go.  Not once had she put forward the argument that
+Marian's going would leave her to depend entirely for human
+sympathy upon the cook, and her guardian, also administrator of
+the Strong estate, John Gilman.  So long as he was Marian's
+friend Linda had admired John Gilman.  She had gone to him for
+some measure of the companionship she had missed in losing her
+father.  Since Gilman had allowed himself to be captivated by
+Eileen, Linda had harbored a feeling concerning him almost of
+contempt.  Linda was so familiar with every move that Eileen
+made, so thoroughly understood that there was a motive back of
+her every action, that she could not see why John Gilman, having
+known her from childhood, should not understand her also.
+
+She had decided that the time had come when she would force
+Eileen to give her an allowance, however small, for her own
+personal expenses, that she must in some way manage to be clothed
+so that she was not a matter of comment even among the boys of
+her school, and she could see no reason why the absolute personal
+liberty she always had enjoyed so long as she disappeared when
+Eileen did not want her and appeared when she did, should not
+extend to her own convenience as well as Eileen's.
+
+Life was a busy affair for Linda.  She had not time to watch
+Marian's train from sight.  She must hurry to the nearest street
+car and make all possible haste or she would be late for her
+classes.  Throughout the day she worked with the deepest
+concentration, but she could not keep down the knowledge that
+Eileen would have things to say, possibly things to do, when they
+met that evening, for Eileen was capable of disconcerting
+hysteria.  Previously Linda had remained stubbornly silent during
+any tirade in which Eileen chose to indulge.  She had allowed
+herself to be nagged into doing many things that she despised,
+because she would not assert herself against apparent injustice. 
+But since she had come fully to realize the results of Eileen's
+course of action for Marian and for herself, she was deliberately
+arriving at the conclusion that hereafter she would speak when
+she had a defense, and she would make it her business to let the
+sun shine on any dark spot that she discovered in Eileen.
+
+Linda knew that if John Gilman were well acquainted with Eileen,
+he could not come any nearer to loving her than she did.  Such an
+idea as loving Eileen never had entered Linda's thoughts.  To
+Linda, Eileen was not lovable.  That she should be expected to
+love her because they had the same parents and lived in the same
+home seemed absurd.  She was slightly disappointed, on reaching
+home, to find that Eileen was not there.
+
+"Will the lady of the house dine with us this evening?  she asked
+as she stood eating an apple in the kitchen.
+
+"She didn't say," answered Katy.  "Have ye had it out about last
+night yet?"
+
+"No," answered Linda.  "That is why I was asking about her.  I
+want to clear the atmosphere before I make my new start in life."
+
+"Now, don't ye be going too far, lambie," cautioned Katy "Ye
+young things make such an awful serious business of life these
+days.  In your scramble to wring artificial joy out of it you
+miss all the natural joy the good God provided ye."
+
+"It seems to me, Katy," said Linda slowly, "that you should put
+that statement the other way round.  It seems that life makes a
+mighty serious business for us young things, and it seems to me
+that if we don't get the right start and have a proper foundation
+life Is going to be spoiled for us.  One life is all I've got to
+live in this world, and I would like it to be the interesting and
+the beautiful kind of life that Father lived."
+
+Linda dropped to a chair.
+
+"Katy," she said, leaning forward and looking intently into the
+earnest face of the woman before her, "Katy, I have been thinking
+an awful lot lately.  There is a question you could answer for me
+if you wanted to."
+
+"Well, I don't see any raison," said Katy, "why I shouldn't
+answer ye any question ye'd be asking me."
+
+Linda's eyes narrowed as they did habitually in deep thought She
+was looking past Katy down the sunlit spaces of the wild garden
+that was her dearest possession, and then her eyes strayed higher
+to where the blue walls that shut in Lilac Valley ranged their
+peaks against the sky.  "Katy," she said, scarcely above her
+breath, "was Mother like Eileen?"
+
+Katy stiffened.  Her red face paled slightly.  She turned her
+back and  slowly slid into the oven the pie she was carrying. 
+She closed the door  with more force than was necessary and then
+turned and deliberately  studied Linda from the top of her
+shining black head to the tip of her  shoe.
+
+"Some," she said tersely.
+
+"Yes, I know 'some'," said Linda, "but you know I was too young
+to pay much attention, and Daddy managed always to make me so
+happy that I never realized until he was gone that he not only
+had been my father but my mother as well.  You know what I mean,
+Katy."
+
+"Yes," said Katy deliberately, "I know what ye mean, lambie,  and
+I'll tell ye the truth as far as I know it.  She managed your 
+father, she pampered him, but she deceived him every day, just 
+about little things.  She always made the household accounts
+bigger  than they were, and used the extra money for Miss Eileen
+and  herself--things like that.  I'm thinkin' he never knew it. 
+I'm  thinking he loved her deeply and trusted her complete.  I
+know  what ye're getting at.  She was not enough like Eileen to
+make him  unhappy with her.  He might have been if he had known
+all there  was to know, but for his own sake I was not the one to
+give her  away, though she constantly made him think that I was
+extravagant and  wasteful in me work."Linda's eyes came back from
+the mountains and met Katy's  straightly.
+
+"Katy," she said, "did you ever see sisters as different as
+Eileen  and I are?"
+
+"No, I don't think I ever did," said Katy.
+
+"It puzzles me," said Linda slowly.  "The more I think about  it,
+the less I can understand why, if we are sisters, we would not 
+accidentally resemble each other a tiny bit in some way, and I 
+must say I can't see that we do physically or mentally."
+
+"No," said Katy, "ye were just as different as ye are now when  I
+came to this house new and ye were both little things."
+
+"And we are going to be as different and to keep on growing  more
+different every day of our lives, because red war breaks  out the
+minute Eileen comes home.  I haven't a notion what she will say
+to me for what I did last night and what I am going to do  in the
+future, but I have a definite idea as to what I am going to  say
+to her."
+
+"Now, easy; ye go easy, lambie," cautioned Katy.
+
+"I wouldn't regret it," said Linda, "if I took Eileen by the
+shoulders and shook her  till I shook the rouge off her cheek,
+and the  brilliantine off her hair, and a million mean little
+subterfuges out of her soul.  You know Eileen is lovely when she
+is natural, and  if she would be straight-off-the-bat square, I
+would be proud to be her sister.  As it is, I have my doubts,
+even about this sister business."
+
+"Why, Linda, child, ye are just plain crazy," said Katy.  "What
+kind of notions are you getting into your head?"
+
+"I hear the front door," said Linda, "and I am going to march
+straight to battle.  She's going up the front stairs.  I did mean
+to short-cut up the back, but, come to think of it, I have served
+my apprenticeship on the back stairs.  I believe I'll ascend the
+front myself.  Good-bye, darlin', wish me luck."
+
+Linda swung Katy around, hugged her tight, and dropped a  kiss on
+the top of her faithful head.
+
+"Ye just stick right up for your rights," Katy advised her. 
+"Ye're a great big girl.  'Tain't going to be long till ye're
+eighteen.  But mind your old Katy about going too far.  If ye
+lose your temper and cat-spit, it won't get ye anywhere.  The
+fellow that keeps the coolest can always do the best headwork."
+
+"I get you," said Linda, "and that is good advice for which I
+thank you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  The Smoke of Battle
+
+Then Linda walked down the hall, climbed the front stairs, and
+presented herself at Eileen's door, there to receive one of the
+severest shocks of her young life.  Eileen had tossed her hat and
+fur upon a couch, seated herself at her dressing table, and was
+studying her hair in the effort to decide whether she could fluff
+it up sufficiently to serve for the evening or whether she must
+take it down and redress it.  At Linda's step in the doorway she
+turned a smiling face upon her and cried:  "Hello, little sister,
+come in and tell me the news."
+
+Linda stopped as if dazed.  The wonderment in which she looked at
+Eileen was stamped all over her.  A surprised braid of hair hung
+over one of her shoulders.  Her hands were surprised, and the
+skirt of her dress, and her shoes flatly set on the floor.
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" she ejaculated, and then walked to where
+she could face Eileen, and seated herself without making any
+attempt to conceal her amazement.
+
+"Linda," said Eileen sweetly, "you would stand far better chance
+of being popular and making a host of friends if you would not be
+so coarse.  I am quite sure you never heard Mama or me use such
+an expression."
+
+For one long instant Linda was too amazed to speak.  Then she
+recovered herself.
+
+"Look here, Eileen, you needn't try any 'perfect lady' business
+on me," she said shortly.  "Do you think I have forgotten the
+extent of your vocabulary when the curling iron gets too hot or
+you fail to receive an invitation to the Bachelors' Ball?"
+
+Linda never had been capable of understanding Eileen.  At that
+minute she could not know that Eileen had been facing facts
+through the long hours of the night and all through the day, and
+that she had reached the decision that for the future her only
+hope of working Linda to her will was to conciliate her, to
+ignore the previous night, to try to put their relationship upon
+the old basis by pretending that there never had been a break. 
+She laughed softly.
+
+"On rare occasions, I grant it.  Of course a little swear slips
+out sometimes.  What I am trying to point out is that you do too
+much of it."
+
+"How did you ever get the idea," said Linda, "that I wanted to be
+popular and have hosts of friends?  What would I do with them if
+I had them?"
+
+"Why, use them, my child, use them," answered Eileen promptly.
+
+"Let's cut this," said Linda tersely.  "I am not your child.  I'm
+getting to the place where I have serious doubt as to whether I
+am your sister or not.  If I am, it's not my fault, and the same
+clay never made two objects quite so different.  I came up here
+to fight, and I'm going to see it through.  I'm on the warpath,
+so you may take your club and proceed to battle."
+
+"What have we to fight about?" inquired Eileen.
+
+"Every single thing that you have done that was unfair to me all
+my life," said Linda.  "Since all of it has been deliberate you
+probably know more about the details than I do, so I'll just
+content myself with telling you that for the future, last night
+marked a change in the relations between us.  I am going to be
+eighteen before so very long, and I have ceased to be your maid
+or your waitress or your dupe.  You are not going to work me one
+single time when I have got brains to see through your schemes
+after this.  Hereafter I take my place in my father's house and
+at my father's table on an equality with you."
+
+Eileen looked at Linda steadily, trying to see to the depths of
+her soul.  She saw enough to convince her that the young creature
+in front of her was in earnest.
+
+"Hm," she said, "have I been so busy that I have failed to notice
+what a great girl you are getting?"
+
+"Busy!" scoffed Linda.  "Tell that to Katy.  It's a kumquat!"
+
+"Perhaps you are too big," continued Eileen, "to be asked to wait
+on the table any more."
+
+"I certainly am," retorted Linda, "and I am also too big to wear
+such shoes or such a dress as I have on at the present min.  ute. 
+I know all about the war and the inflation of prices and the
+reduction in income, but I know also that if there is enough to
+run the house, and dress you, and furnish you such a suite of
+rooms as you're enjoying right now, there is enough to furnish me
+suitable clothes, a comfortable bedroom and a place where I can
+leave my work without putting away everything I am doing each
+time I step from the room.  I told you four years ago that you
+might take the touring car and do what you pleased with it.  I
+have never asked what you did or what you got out of it, so I'll
+thank you to observe equal silence about anything I choose to do
+now with the runabout, which I reserved for myself.  I told you
+to take this suite, and this is the first time that I have ever
+mentioned to you what you spent on it."
+
+Linda waved an inclusive hand toward the fully equipped, dainty
+dressing table, over rugs of pale blue, and beautifully decorated
+walls, including the sleeping room and bath adjoining.
+
+"So now I'll ask you to keep off while I do what I please about
+the library and the billiard room.  I'll try to get along without
+much money in doing what I desire there, but I must have some new
+clothes.  I want money to buy me a pair of new shoes for school. 
+I want a pair of pumps suitable for evenings when there are
+guests to dinner.  I want a couple of attractive school dresses. 
+This old serge is getting too hot and too worn for common
+decency.  And I also want a couple of dresses something like you
+are wearing, for afternoons and evenings."
+
+Eileen stared aghast at Linda.
+
+"Where," she inquired politely, "is the money for all this to
+come from?"
+
+"Eileen," said Linda in a low tense voice, "I have reached the
+place where even the BOYS of the high school are twitting me
+about how I am dressed, and that is the limit.  I have stood it
+for three years from the girls.  I am an adept in pretending that
+I don't see, and I don't hear.  I have got to the point where I
+am perfectly capable of walking into your wardrobe and taking out
+enough of the clothes there and selling them at a second-hand
+store to buy me what I require to dress me just plainly and
+decently.  So take warning.  I don't know where you are going to
+get the money, but you are going to get it.  If you would welcome
+a suggestion from me, come home only half the times you dine
+yourself and your girl friends at tearooms and cafes in the city,
+and you will save my share that way.  I am going to give you a
+chance to total your budget, and then I demand one half of the
+income from Father's estate above household expenses; and if I
+don't get it, on the day I am eighteen I shall go to John Gilman
+and say to him what I have said to you, and I shall go to the
+bank and demand that a division be made there, and that a
+separate bank book be started for me."
+
+Linda's amazement on entering the room had been worthy of note. 
+Eileen's at the present minute was beyond description. 
+Dumbfounded was a colorless word to describe her state of mind.
+
+"You don't mean that," she gasped in a quivering voice when at
+last she could speak.
+
+"I can see, Eileen, that you are taken unawares," said Linda.  "I
+have had four long years to work up to this hour.  Hasn't it even
+dawned on you that this worm was ever going to turn?  You know
+exquisite moths and butterflies evolve in the canyons from very
+unprepossessing and lowly living worms.  You are spending your
+life on the butterfly stunt.  Have I been such a weak worm that
+it hasn't ever occurred to you that I might want to try a plain,
+everyday pair of wings sometime myself ?"
+
+Eileen's face was an ugly red, her hands were shaking, her voice
+was unnatural, but she controlled her temper.
+
+"Of course," she said, "I have always known that the time would
+come, after you finished school and were of a proper age, when
+you would want to enter society."
+
+"No, you never knew anything of the kind," said Linda bluntly,
+"because I have not the slightest ambition to enter society
+either now or then.  All I am asking is to enter the high school
+in a commonly decent, suitable dress; to enter our dining room as
+a daughter; to enter a workroom decently equipped for my
+convenience.  You needn't be surprised if you hear some changes
+going on in the billiard room and see some changes going on in
+the library.  And if I feel that I can muster the nerve to drive
+the runabout, it's my car, it's up to me."
+
+"Linda!" wailed Eileen, "how can you think of such a thing?  You
+wouldn't dare."
+
+"Because I haven't dared till the present is no reason why I
+should deprive myself of every single pleasure in life," said
+Linda.  "You spend your days doing exactly what you please;
+driving that runabout for Father was my one soul-satisfying
+diversion.  Why shouldn't I do the thing I love most, if I can
+muster the nerve?"
+
+Linda arose, and walking over to a table, picked up a magazine
+lying among some small packages that Eileen evidently had placed
+there on entering her room.
+
+"Are you subscribing to this?" she asked.
+
+She turned in her hands and leafed through the pages of a most
+attractive magazine, Everybody's Home.  It was devoted to poetry,
+good fiction, and everything concerning home life from beef to
+biscuits, and from rugs to roses.
+
+"I saw it on a newsstand," said Eileen.  "I was at lunch with
+some girls who had a copy and they were talking about some
+articles by somebody named something--Meredith, I think it was
+--Jane Meredith, maybe she's a Californian, and she is advocating
+the queer idea that we go back to nature by trying modern cooking
+on the food the aborigines ate.  If we find it good then she
+recommends that we specialize on the growing of these native
+vegetables for home use and for export--as a new industry."
+
+"I see," said Linda.  "Out-Burbanking Burbank, as it were."  
+
+"No, not that," said Eileen.  "She is not proposing to evolve new
+forms.  She is proposing to show us how to make delicious dishes
+for luncheon or dinner from wild things now going to waste.  What
+the girls said was so interesting that I thought I'd get a copy
+and if I see anything good I'll turn it over to Katy."
+
+"And where's Katy going to get the wild vegetables?" asked Linda
+sceptically.
+
+"Why you might have some of them in your wild garden, or you
+could easily find enough to try--all the prowling the canyons you
+do ought to result in something."
+
+"So it should," said Linda.  "I quite agree with you.  Did I
+understand you to say that I should be ready to go to the bank
+with you to arrange about my income next week?"
+
+Again the color deepened in Eileen's face, again she made a
+visible effort at self-control.
+
+"Oh, Linda," she said, "what is the use of being so hard?  You
+will make them think at the bank that I have not treated you
+fairly."
+
+"_I_?"said Linda, "_I_ will make them think?  Don't you think it
+is YOU who will make them think?  Will you kindly answer my
+question?"
+
+"If I show you the books," said Eileen, "if I divide what is left
+after the bills are paid so that you say yourself that it is
+fair, what more can you ask?"
+
+Linda hesitated.
+
+"What I ought to do is exactly what I have said I would do," she
+said tersely, "but if you are going to put it on that basis I
+have no desire to hurt you or humiliate you in public.  If you do
+that, I can't see that I have any reason to complain, so we'll
+call it a bargain and we'll say no more about it until the first
+of the month, unless the spirit moves you, after taking a good
+square look at me, to produce some shoes and a school dress
+instanter."
+
+"I'll see what I can do," answered Eileen.
+
+"All right then," said Linda.  "See you at dinner."
+
+She went to her own room, slipped off her school dress, brushed
+her hair, and put on the skirt and blouse she had worn the
+previous evening, these being the only extra clothing she
+possessed.  As she straightened her hair she looked at herself
+intently.
+
+"My, aren't you coming on!" she said to the figure in the glass. 
+"Dressing for dinner! First thing you know you'll be a perfect
+lady."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  Jane Meredith
+
+When Eileen came down to dinner that evening Linda understood at 
+a glance that an effort was to be made to efface thoroughly from 
+the mind of John Gilman all memory of the Eileen of the previous
+evening.  She had decided on redressing her hair, while she wore
+one of her most becoming and attractive gowns.  To Linda and Katy
+during the dinner she was simply charming.  Having said what she
+wanted to say and received the assurance she desired, Linda
+accepted her advances cordially and displayed such charming
+proclivities herself that Eileen began covertly to watch her, and
+as she watched there slowly grew in her brain the conviction that
+something had happened to Linda.  At once she began studying
+deeply in an effort to learn what it might be.  There were three
+paramount things in Eileen's cosmos that could happen to a girl: 
+She could have lovely clothing.  Linda did not have it.  She
+could have money and influential friends.  Since Marian's going
+Linda had practically no friend; she was merely acquainted with
+almost everyone living in Lilac Valley.  She could have a lover. 
+Linda had none.  But stay! Eileen's thought halted at the
+suggestion.  Maybe she had! She had been left completely, to her
+own devices when she was not wanted about the house.  She had
+been mingling with hundreds of boys and girls in high school. 
+She might have met some man repeatedly on the street cars, going
+to and from school.  In school she might have attracted the son
+of some wealthy and influential family; which was the only kind
+of son Eileen chose to consider in connection with Linda. 
+Through Eileen's brain ran bits of the conversation of the
+previous evening.  She recalled that the men she had intended
+should spend the evening waiting on her and paying her pretty
+compliments had spent it eating like hungry men, laughing and
+jesting with Linda and Marian, giving every evidence of a
+satisfaction with their entertainment that never had been evinced
+with the best brand of attractions she had to offer.
+
+Eileen was willing to concede that Marian Thorne had been a
+beautiful girl, and she had known, previous to the disaster, that
+it was quite as likely that any man might admire Marian's
+flashing dark beauty as her blonde loveliness.  Between them then
+it would have been merely a question of taste on the part of the
+man.  Since Marian's dark head had turned ashen, Eileen had
+simply eliminated her at one sweep.  That white hair would brand
+Marian anywhere as an old woman.  Very likely no man ever would
+want to marry her.  Eileen was sure she would not want to if she
+were a man.  No wonder John Gilman had ceased to be attracted by
+a girl's face with a grandmother setting.
+
+As for Linda, Eileen never had considered her at all except as a
+convenience to serve her own purposes.  Last night she had
+learned that Linda had a brain, that she had wit, that she could
+say things to which men of the world listened with interest.  She
+began to watch Linda.  She appraised with deepest envy the dark
+hair curling naturally on her temples.  She wondered how hair
+that curled naturally could be so thick and heavy, and she
+thought what a crown of glory would adorn Linda's head when the
+day came to coil those long dark braids around it and fasten them
+with flashing pins.  She drew some satisfaction from the
+sunburned face and lean figure before her, but it was not
+satisfaction of soul-sustaining quality.  There was beginning to
+be something disquieting about Linda.  A roundness was creeping
+over her lean frame; a glow was beginning to color her lips and
+cheek bones; a dewy look could be surprised in her dark eyes
+occasionally.  She had the effect of a creature with something
+yeasty bottled inside it that was beginning to ferment and might
+effervesce at any minute.  Eileen had been so surprised the
+previous evening and again before dinner, that she made up her
+mind that hereafter one might expect almost anything from Linda. 
+She would no longer follow a suggestion unless the suggestion
+accorded with her sense of right and justice.  It was barely
+possible that it might be required to please her inclinations. 
+Eileen's mind worked with unbelievable swiftness.  She tore at
+her subject like a vulture tearing at a feast, and like a vulture
+she reached the vitals swiftly.  She prefaced her question with a
+dry laugh.  Then she leaned forward and asked softly:  "Linda,
+dear, why haven't you told me?"
+
+Linda's eyes were so clear and honest as they met Eileen's that
+she almost hesitated.
+
+"A little more explicit, please," said the girl quietly.
+
+"WHO IS HE?" asked Eileen abruptly.
+
+"Oh, I haven't narrowed to an individual," said Linda largely
+"You have noticed a flock of boys following me from school and
+hanging around the front door?  I have such hosts to choose from
+that it's going to take a particularly splendid knight on a snow-
+white charger--I think 'charger' is the proper word--to capture
+my young affections."
+
+Eileen was satisfied.  There wasn't any he.  She might for a
+short time yet cut Linda's finances to the extreme limit. 
+Whenever a man appeared on the horizon she would be forced to
+make a division at least approaching equality.
+
+Linda followed Eileen to the living room and sat down with a book
+until John Gilman arrived.  She had a desire to study him for a
+few minutes.  She was going to write Marian a letter that night. 
+She wanted to know if she could honestly tell her that Gilman
+appeared lonely and seemed to miss her.  Katy had no chance to
+answer the bell when it rang.  Eileen was in the hall.  Linda
+could not tell what was happening from the murmur of voices. 
+Presently John and Eileen entered the room, and as Linda greeted
+him she did have the impression that he appeared unusually
+thoughtful and worried.  She sat for half an hour, taking slight
+part in the conversation.  Then she excused herself and went to
+her room, and as she went she knew that she could not honestly
+write Marian what she had hoped, for in thirty minutes by the
+clock Eileen's blandishments had worked, and John Gilman was
+looking at her as if she were the most exquisite and desirable
+creature in existence.
+
+Slowly Linda climbed the stairs and entered her room.  She slid
+the bolt of her door behind her, turned on the lights, unlocked a
+drawer, and taking from it a heap of materials she scattered them
+over a small table, and picking up her pencil, she sat gazing at
+the sheet before her for some time.  Then slowly she began
+writing:
+
+It appeals to me that, far as modern civilization has gone in
+culinary efforts, we have not nearly reached the limits available
+to us as I pointed out last month.  We consider ourselves capable
+of preparing and producing elaborate banquets, yet at no time are
+we approaching anything even to compare in lavishness and
+delicacy with the days of Lucullus.  We are not feasting on baked
+swans, peacock tongues and drinking our pearls.  I am not
+recommending that we should revive the indulgence of such lavish
+and useless expenditure, but I would suggest that if we tire with
+the sameness of our culinary efforts, we at least try some of the
+new dishes described in this department, established for the sole
+purpose of their introduction.  In so doing we accomplish a
+multiple purpose.  We enlarge the resources of the southwest.  We
+tease stale appetites with a new tang.  We offer the world
+something different, yet native to us.  We use modern methods on
+Indian material and the results are most surprising.  In trying
+these dishes I would remind you that few of us cared for oysters,
+olives, celery--almost any fruit or vegetable one could mention
+on first trial.  Try several times and be sure you prepare dishes
+exactly right before condemning them as either fad or fancy. 
+These are very real, nourishing and delicious foods that are
+being offered you.  Here is a salad that would have intrigued the
+palate of Lucullus, himself.  If you do not believe me, try it. 
+The vegetable is slightly known by a few native mountaineers and
+ranchers.  Botanists carried it abroad where under the name of
+winter-purslane it is used in France and England for greens or
+salad, while remaining practically unknown at home.  Boiled and
+seasoned as spinach it makes equally good greens.  But it is in
+salad that it stands pre-eminent.
+
+Go to any canyon--I shall not reveal the name of my particular
+canyon--and locate a bed of miner's lettuce (Montia perfoliata). 
+Growing in rank beds beside a cold, clean stream, you will find
+these pulpy, exquisitely shaped, pungent round leaves from the
+center of which lifts a tiny head of misty white lace, sending up
+a palate-teasing, spicy perfume.  The crisp, pinkish stems snap
+in the fingers.  Be sure that you wash the leaves carefully so
+that no lurking germs cling to them.  Fill your salad bowl with
+the crisp leaves, from which the flowerhead has been plucked. 
+For dressing, dice a teacup of the most delicious bacon you can
+obtain and fry it to a crisp brown together with a small sliced
+onion.  Add to the fat two tablespoons of sugar, half a teaspoon
+of mustard; salt will scarcely be necessary the bacon will
+furnish that.  Blend the fat, sugar, and mustard, and pour in a
+measure of the best apple vinegar, diluted to taste.  Bring this
+mixture to the boiling point, and when it has cooled slightly
+pour it over the lettuce leaves, lightly turning with a silver
+fork.  Garnish the edge of the dish with a deep border of the
+fresh leaves bearing their lace of white bloom intact, around the
+edge of the bowl, and sprinkle on top the sifted yolks of two
+hard-boiled eggs, heaping the diced whites in the center.
+
+Linda paused and read.  this over carefully.
+
+"That is all right," she said.  "I couldn't make that much
+better."
+
+She made a few corrections here and there, and picking up a
+colored pencil, she deftly sketched in a head piece of delicate
+sprays of miners' lettuce tipped at differing angles, fringy
+white with bloom.  Below she printed:  "A delicious Indian salad. 
+The second of a series of new dishes to be offered made from
+materials used by the Indians.  Compounded and tested in her own
+diet kitchen by the author."
+
+Swiftly she sketched a tail piece representing a table top upon
+which sat a tempting-looking big salad bowl filled with fresh
+green leaves, rimmed with a row of delicate white flowers, from
+which you could almost scent a teasing delicate fragrance
+arising; and beneath, in a clear, firm hand, she stroked in the
+name, Jane Meredith.  She went over her work carefully, then laid
+it flat on a piece of cardboard, shoved it into an envelope,
+directed it to the editor of Everybody's Home, laid it inside her
+geometry, and wrote her letter to Marian before going to bed.
+
+In the morning on her way to the street car she gaily waved to a
+passing automobile going down Lilac Valley, in which sat John
+Gilman and Peter Morrison and his architect, and as they were
+driving in the direction from which she had come, Linda very
+rightly surmised that they were going to pick up Eileen and make
+a tour of the valley, looking for available building locations;
+and she wondered why Eileen had not told her that they were
+coming.  Linda had been right about the destination of the car. 
+It turned in at the Strong driveway and stopped at the door. 
+John Gilman went to ring the bell and learn if Eileen were ready. 
+Peter followed him.  Henry Anderson stepped from the car and
+wandered over the lawn, looking at the astonishing array of
+bushes, vines, flowers, and trees.
+
+From one to another he went, fingering the waxy leaves, studying
+the brilliant flower faces.  Finally turning a corner and
+crossing the wild garden, to which he paid slight attention, he
+started down the other side of the house.  Here an almost
+overpowering odor greeted his nostrils, and he went over to a
+large tree covered with rough, dark green, almost brownish,
+lance-shaped leaves, each branch terminating in a heavy spray of
+yellowish-green flowers, whose odor was of cloying sweetness. 
+The bees were buzzing over it.  It was not a tree with which he
+was familiar, and stepping back, he looked at it carefully.  Then
+at its base, wind-driven into a crevice between the roots, his
+attention was attracted to a crumpled sheet of paper, upon which
+he could see lines that would have attracted the attention of any
+architect.  He went forward instantly, picked up the sheet, and
+straightening it out he stood looking at it.
+
+"Holy smoke!" he breathed softly.  "What a find!"
+
+He looked at the reverse of the sheet, his face becoming more
+intent every minute.  When he heard Peter Morrison's voice
+calling him he hastily thrust the paper into his coat pocket; but
+he had gone only a few steps when he stopped, glanced keenly over
+the house and lawn, turned his back, and taking the sheet from
+his pocket, he smoothed it out, folded it carefully, and put it
+in an inside pocket.  Then he joined the party.
+
+At once they set out to examine the available locations that yet
+remained in Lilac Valley.  Nature provided them a wonderful day
+of snappy sunshine and heady sea air.  Spring favored them with
+lilac walls at their bluest, broken here and there with the rose-
+misted white mahogany.  The violet nightshade was beginning to
+add deeper color to the hills in the sunniest wild spots.  The
+panicles of mahonia bloom were showing their gold color.  Wild
+flowers were lifting leaves of feather and lace everywhere, and
+most agreeable on the cool morning air was a faint breath of
+California sage.  Up one side of the valley, weaving in and out,
+up and down, over the foothills they worked their way.  They
+stopped for dinner at one of the beautiful big hotels,
+practically filled with Eastern tourists.  Eileen never had known
+a prouder moment than when she took her place at the head of the
+table and presided over the dinner which was served to three most
+attractive specimens of physical manhood, each of whom was
+unusually well endowed with brain, all flattering her with the
+most devoted attention.  This triumph she achieved in a dining
+room seating hundreds of people, its mirror-lined walls
+reflecting her exquisite image from many angles, to the click of
+silver, and the running accompaniment of many voices.  What she
+had expected to accomplish in her own dining room had come to her
+before a large audience, in which, she had no doubt, there were
+many envious women.  Eileen rayed loveliness like a Mariposa
+lily, and purred in utter contentment like a deftly stroked
+kitten.
+
+When they parted in the evening Peter Morrison had memoranda of
+three locations that he wished to consider.  That he might not
+seem to be unduly influenced or to be giving the remainder of Los
+Angeles County its just due, he proposed to motor around for a
+week before reaching an ultimate decision, but in his heart he
+already had decided that somewhere near Los Angeles he would
+build his home, and as yet he had seen nothing nearly so
+attractive as Lilac Valley.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  Trying Yucca
+
+On her way to school that morning Linda stopped at the post
+office and pasted the required amount of stamps upon the package
+that she was mailing to New York.  She hurried from her last
+class that afternoon to the city directory to find the street and
+number of James Brothers, figuring that the firm with whom Marian
+dealt would be the proper people for her to consult.  She had no
+difficulty in finding the place for which she was searching, and
+she was rather agreeably impressed with the men to whom she
+talked.  She made arrangements with their buyer to call at her
+home in Lilac Valley at nine o'clock the following Saturday
+morning to appraise the articles with which she wished to part.
+
+Then she went to one of the leading book stores of the city and
+made inquiries which guided her to a reliable second-hand book
+dealer, and she arranged to be ready to receive his
+representative at ten o'clock on Saturday.
+
+Reaching home she took a note book and pencil, and studied the
+billiard room and the library, making a list of the furniture
+which she did not actually need.  After that she began on the
+library shelves, listing such medical works as were of a
+technical nature.  Books of fiction, history, art, and biography,
+and those books written by her father she did not include.  She
+found that she had a long task which would occupy several
+evenings.  Her mind was methodical and she had been with her
+father through sufficient business transactions to understand
+that in order to drive a good bargain she must know how many
+volumes she had to offer and the importance of their authors as
+medical authorities; she should also know the exact condition of
+each set of books.  Since she had made up her mind to let them
+go, and she knew the value of many of the big, leather-bound
+volumes, she determined that she would not sell them until she
+could secure the highest possible price for them.
+
+Two months previously she would have consulted John Gilman and
+asked him to arrange the transaction for her.  Since he had
+allowed himself to be duped so easily--or at least it had seemed
+easy to Linda; for, much as she knew of Eileen, she could not
+possibly know the weeks of secret plotting, the plans for
+unexpected meetings, the trumped-up business problems necessary
+to discuss, the deliberate flaunting of her physical charms
+before him, all of which had made his conquest extremely hard for
+Eileen, but Linda, seeing only results, had thought it
+contemptibly easy--she would not ask John Gilman anything.  She
+would go ahead on the basis of her agreement with Eileen and do
+the best she could alone.
+
+She counted on Saturday to dispose of the furniture.  The books
+might go at her leisure.  Then the first of the week she could
+select such furniture as she desired in order to arrange the
+billiard room for her study.  If she had a suitable place in
+which to work in seclusion, there need be no hurry about the
+library.  She conscientiously prepared all the lessons required
+in her school course for the next day and then, stacking her
+books, she again unlocked the drawer opened the previous evening,
+and taking from it the same materials, set to work.  She wrote:
+
+Botanists have failed to mention that there is any connection
+between asparagus, originally a product of salt marshes, and
+Yucca, a product of the alkaline desert.  Very probably there is
+no botanical relationship, but these two plants are alike in
+flavor.  From the alkaline, sunbeaten desert where the bayonet
+plant thrusts up a tender bloom head six inches in height, it
+slowly increases in stature as it travels across country more
+frequently rain washed, and winds its way beside mountain streams
+to where in more fertile soil and the same sunshine it develops
+magnificent specimens from ten to fifteen and more feet in
+height.  The plant grows a number of years before it decides to
+flower.  When it reaches maturity it throws up a bloom stem as
+tender as the delicate head of asparagus, thick as one's upper
+arm, and running to twice one's height.  This bloom stem in its
+early stages is colored the pale pink of asparagus, with faint
+touches of yellow, and hints of blue.  At maturity it breaks into
+a gorgeous head of lavender-tinted, creamy pendent flowers
+covering the upper third of its height, billowing out slightly in
+the center, so that from a distance the waxen torch takes on very
+much the appearance of a flaming candle.  For this reason, in
+Mexico, where the plant flourishes in even greater abundance than
+in California, with the exquisite poetry common to the tongue and
+heart of the Spaniard, Yucca Whipplei has been commonly named
+"Our Lord's Candle."  At the most delicate time of their growth
+these candlesticks were roasted and eaten by the Indians.  Based
+upon this knowledge, I would recommend two dishes, almost equally
+delicious, which may be pre.  pared from this plant.
+
+Take the most succulent young bloom stems when they have exactly
+the appearance of an asparagus head at its moment of delicious
+perfection.  With a sharp knife, cut them in circles an inch in
+depth.  Arrange these in a shallow porcelain baking dish,
+sprinkle with salt, dot them with butter, add enough water to
+keep them from sticking and burning.  Bake until thoroughly
+tender.  Use a pancake turner to slide the rings to a hot
+platter, and garnish with circles of hard-boiled egg.  This you
+will find an extremely delicate and appetizing dish.
+
+The second recipe I would offer is to treat this vegetable
+precisely as you would creamed asparagus.  Cut the stalks in
+six-inch lengths, quarter them to facilitate cooking and
+handling, and boil in salted water.  Drain, arrange in a hot
+dish, and pour over a carefully made cream sauce.  I might add
+that one stalk would furnish sufficient material for several
+families.  This dish should be popular in southwestern states
+where the plant grows profusely; and to cultivate these plants
+for shipping to Eastern markets would be quite as feasible as the
+shipping of asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes, or lettuce.
+
+I have found both these dishes peculiarly appetizing, but I
+should be sorry if, in introducing Yucca as a food, I became
+instrumental in the extermination of this universal and
+wonderfully beautiful plant.  For this reason I have hesitated
+about including Yucca among these articles; but when I see the
+bloom destroyed ruthlessly by thousands who cut it to decorate
+touring automobiles and fruit and vegetable stands beside the
+highways, who carry it from its native location and stick it in
+the parching sun of the seashore as a temporary shelter, I feel
+that the bloom stems might as well be used for food as to be so
+ruthlessly wasted.
+
+The plant is hardy in the extreme, growing in the most
+unfavorable places, clinging tenaciously to sheer mountain and
+canyon walls.  After blooming and seeding the plant seems to have
+thrown every particle of nourishment it contains into its
+development, it dries out and dies (the spongy wood is made into
+pincushions for the art stores); but from the roots there spring
+a number of young plants, which, after a few years of growth,
+mature and repeat their life cycle, while other young plants
+develop from the widely scattered seeds.  The Spaniards at times
+call the plant Quiota.  This word seems to be derived from
+quiotl, which is the Aztec name for Agave, from which plant a
+drink not unlike beer is produced, and suggests the possibility
+that there might have been a time when the succulent flower stem
+of the Yucca furnished drink as well as food for the Indians.
+
+After carefully re-reading and making several minor corrections,
+Linda picked up her pencil, and across the top of a sheet of
+heavy paper sketched the peaks of a chain of mountains.  Across
+the base she drew a stretch of desert floor, bristling with the
+thorns of many different cacti brilliant with their gold, pink,
+and red bloom, intermingled with fine grasses and desert flower
+faces.
+
+At the left she painstakingly drew a huge plant of yucca with a
+perfect circle of bayonets, from the center of which uprose the
+gigantic flower stem the length of her page, and on the misty
+bloom of the flaming tongue she worked quite as late as Marian
+Thorne had ever seen a light burning in her window.  When she had
+finished her drawing she studied it carefully a long time, adding
+a touch here and there, and then she said softly:  "There, Daddy,
+I feel that even you would think that a faithful reproduction
+Tomorrow night I'll paint it."  
+
+John Gilman saw the light from Linda's window when he brought
+Eileen home that night, and when he left he glanced that way
+again, and was surprised to see the room still lighted, and the
+young figure bending over a worktable.  He stood very still for a
+few minutes, wondering what could keep Linda awake so far into
+the night, and while his thoughts were upon her he wondered, too,
+why she did not care to have beautiful clothes such as Eileen
+wore; and then he went further and wondered why, when she could
+be as entertaining as she had been the night she joined them at
+dinner, she did not make her appearance oftener; and then,
+because the mind is a queer thing, and he had wondered about a
+given state of affairs, he went a step further, and wondered
+whether the explanation lay in Linda's inclinations or in
+Eileen's management, and then his thought fastened tenaciously
+upon the subject of Eileen's management.
+
+He was a patient man.  He had allowed his reason and better
+judgment to be swayed by Eileen's exquisite beauty and her
+blandishments.  He did not regret having discovered before it was
+too late that Marian Thorne was not the girl he had thought her. 
+He wanted a wife cut after the clinging-vine pattern.  He wanted
+to be the dominating figure in his home.  It had not taken Eileen
+long to teach him that Marian was self-assertive and would do a
+large share of dominating herself.  He had thought that he was
+perfectly satisfied and very happy with Eileen; yet that day he
+repeatedly had felt piqued and annoyed with her.  She had openly
+cajoled and flirted with Henry Anderson past a point which was
+agreeable for any man to see his sweetheart go with another man
+With Peter Morrison she had been unspeakably charming in a manner
+with which John was very familiar.
+
+He turned up his coat collar, thrust his hands in his pockets,
+and swore softly.  Looking straight ahead of him, he should have
+seen a stretch of level sidewalk, bordered on one hand by lacy,
+tropical foliage, on the other, by sheets of level green lawn,
+broken everywhere by the uprising boles of great trees, clumps of
+rare vines, and rows of darkened homes, attractive in
+architectural
+
+_,
+
+design' vine covered, hushed for the night.  What he really saw
+was a small plateau, sun illumined, at the foot of a mountain
+across the valley, where the lilac wall was the bluest, where the
+sun shone slightly more golden than anywhere else in the valley,
+where huge live oaks outstretched rugged arms, where the air had
+a tang of salt, a tinge of sage, an odor of orange, shot through
+with snowy coolness, thrilled with bird song, and the laughing
+chuckle of a big spring breaking from the foot of the mountain. 
+They had left the road and followed a narrow, screened path by
+which they came unexpectedly into this opening.  They had stood
+upon it in wordless enchantment, looking down the slope beneath
+it, across the peace of the valley, to the blue ranges beyond.
+
+"Just where are we?" Peter Morrison had asked at last.
+
+John Gilman had been looking at a view which included Eileen. 
+She lifted her face, flushed and exquisite, to Peter Morrison and
+answered in a breathless undertone, yet John had distinctly heard
+her:
+
+"How wonderful it would be if we were at your house.  Oh, I envy
+the woman who shares this with you !"
+
+It had not been anything in particular, yet all day it had teased
+John Gilman's sensibilities.  He felt ashamed of himself for not
+being more enthusiastic as he searched records and helped to
+locate the owner of that particular spot.  To John, there was a
+new tone in Peter's voice, a possessive light in his eyes as he
+studied the location, and made excursions in several directions,
+to fix in his mind the exact position of the land.
+
+He had indicated what he considered the topographical location
+for a house--stood on it facing the valley, and stepped the
+distance suitably far away to set a garage and figured on a short
+private road down to the highway.  He very plainly was deeply
+prepossessed with a location John Gilman blamed himself for not
+having found first.  Certainly nature had here grown and walled a
+dream garden in which to set a house of dreams.  So, past
+midnight, Gilman stood in the sunshine, looking at the face 
+of the girl he had asked to marry him and who had said that she
+would; and a small doubt crept into his heart, and a feeling that
+perhaps life might be different for him if Peter Morrison decided
+to come to Lilac Valley to build his home.  Then the sunlight
+faded, night closed in, but as he went his homeward way John
+Gilman was thinking, thinking deeply and not at all happily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.  The Bear Cat
+
+"Friday's child is loving and giving,
+But Saturday's child must work for a living,"
+
+Linda was chanting happily as she entered the kitchen early
+Saturday morning.
+
+"Katy, me blessing," she said gaily, "did I ever point out to you
+the interesting fact that I was born on Saturday?  And a devilish
+piece of luck it was, for I have been hustling ever since.  It's
+bad enough to have been born on Monday and spoiled wash day, but
+I call Saturday the vanishing point, the end of the extreme
+limit."
+
+Katy laughed, and, as always, turned adoring eyes on Linda.
+
+"I am not needing ye, lambie," she said.  "Is it big business in
+the canyon ye're having today?  Shall I be ready to be cooking up
+one of them God-forsaken Red Indian messes for ye when ye come
+back?"
+
+Linda held up a warning finger.
+
+"Hiss, Katy," she said.  "That is a dark secret.  Don't you be
+forgetting yourself and saying anything like that before anyone,
+or I would be ruined entirely."
+
+"Well, I did think when ye began it," said Katy, "that of all the
+wild foolishness ye and your pa had ever gone through with, that
+was the worst, but that last mess ye worked out was so tasty to
+the tongue that I thought of it a lot, and I'm kind o' hankering
+for more."
+
+Linda caught Katy and swung her around the kitchen in a wild  war
+dance.  Her gayest laugh bubbled clear from the joy peak of her
+soul.
+
+"Katy," she said, "if you had lain awake all night trying to say
+something that would particularly please me, you couldn't have
+done better.  That was a quaint little phrase and a true little
+phrase, and I know a little spot that it will fit exactly.  What
+am I doing today?  Well, several things, Katy.  First, anything
+you need about the house.  Next, I am going to empty the billiard
+room and sell some of the excess furniture of the library, and
+with the returns I am going to buy me a rug and a table and some
+tools to work with, so I won't have to clutter up my bedroom with
+my lessons and things I bring in that I want to save.  And then I
+am going to sell the technical stuff from the library and use
+that money where it will be of greatest advantage to me.  And
+then, Katy, I am going to manicure the Bear Cat and I am going to
+drive it again."
+
+Linda hesitated.  Katy stood very still, thinking intently, but
+finally she said:  "That's all right; ye have got good common
+sense; your nerves are steady; your pa drilled ye fine.  Many's
+the time he has bragged to me behind your back what a fine little
+driver he was making of ye.  I don't know a girl of your age
+anywhere that has less enjoyment than ye.  If it would be giving
+ye any happiness to be driving that car, ye just go ahead and
+drive it, lambie, but ye promise me here and now that ye will be
+mortal careful.  In all my days I don't think I have seen a
+meaner-looking little baste of a car."
+
+"Of course I'll be careful, Katy," said Linda.  "That car was not
+bought for its beauty.  Its primal object in this world was to
+arrive.  Gee, how we shot curves, and coasted down the canyons,
+and gassed up on the level when some poor soul went batty from
+nerve strain! The truth is, Katy, that you can't drive very
+slowly.  You have got to go the speed for which it was built. 
+But I have had my training.  I won't forget.  I adore that car,
+Katy, and I don't know how I have ever kept my fingers off it
+this long.  Today it gets a bath and a facial treatment, and when
+1 have thought up some way to meet my big problem, you're going
+to have a ride, Katy, that will quite uplift your soul.  We'll go
+scooting through the canyons, and whizzing around the mountains,
+and roaring along the beach, as slick as a white sea swallow."
+
+"Now, easy, lambie, easy," said Katy.  "Ye're planning to speed
+that thing before ye've got it off the jacks."
+
+"No, that was mere talk," said Linda.  "But, Katy, this is my
+great day.  I feel in my bones that I shall have enough money by
+night to get me some new tires, which I must have before I can
+start out in safety."
+
+"Of course ye must, honey.  I would just be tickled to pieces to
+let ye have what ye need."
+
+Linda slid her hand across Katy's lips and gathered her close in
+her arms.
+
+"You blessed old darling," she said.  "Of course you would, but I
+don't need it, Katy.  I can sit on the floor to work, if I must,
+and instead of taking the money from the billiard table to buy a
+worktable, I can buy tires with that.  But here's another thing I
+want to tell you, Katy.  This afternoon a male biped is coming to
+this house, and he's not coming to see Eileen.  His name is
+Donald Whiting, and when he tells you it is, and stands very
+straight and takes off his hat, and looks you in the eye and
+says, 'Calling on Miss Linda Strong,' walk him into the living
+room, Katy, and seat him in the best chair and put a book beside
+him and the morning paper; and don't you forget to do it with a
+flourish.  He is nothing but a high-school kid, but he's the
+first boy that ever in all my days asked to come to see me so
+it's a big event; and I wish to my soul I had something decent to
+wear."
+
+"Well, with all the clothes in this house," said Katy; and then
+she stopped and shut her lips tight and looked at Linda with
+belligerent Irish eyes.
+
+"I know it," nodded Linda in acquiescence; "I know what you
+think; but never mind.  Eileen has agreed to make me a fair
+allowance the first of the month, and if that isn't sufficient, I
+may possibly figure up some way to do some extra work that will
+bring me a few honest pennies, so I can fuss up enough to look
+feminine at times, Katy.  In the meantime, farewell, oh, my
+belovedest.  Call me at half-past eight, so I will be ready for
+business at nine."
+
+Then Linda went to the garage and began operations.  She turned
+the hose on the car and washed the dust from it carefully.  Then
+she dried it with the chamois skins as she often had done before. 
+She carefully examined the cushioning, and finding it dry and
+hard, she gave it a bath of olive oil and wiped and manipulated
+it.  She cleaned the engine with extreme care.  At one minute she
+was running to Katy for kerosene to pour through the engine to
+loosen the carbon.  At another she was telephoning for the
+delivery of oil, gasoline, and batteries for which she had no
+money to pay, so she charged them to Eileen, ordering the bill to
+be sent on the first of the month.  It seemed to her that she had
+only a good start when Katy came after her.
+
+The business of appraising the furniture was short, and Linda was
+well satisfied with the price she was offered for it.  After the
+man had gone she showed Katy the pieces she had marked to dispose
+of, and told her when they would be called for.  She ate a few
+bites of lunch while waiting for the book man, and the results of
+her business with him quite delighted Linda.  She had not known
+that the value of books had risen with the price of everything
+else.  The man with whom she dealt had known her father.  He had
+appreciated the strain in her nature which made her suggest that
+he should number and appraise the books, but she must be allowed
+time to go through each volume in order to remove any scraps of
+paper or memoranda which her father so frequently left in books
+to which he was referring.  He had figured carefully and he had
+made Linda a far higher price than could have been secured by a
+man.  As the girl went back to her absorbing task in the garage,
+she could see her way clear to the comforts and conveniences and
+the material that she needed for her work.  When .she reached the
+car she patted it as if it had been a living creature.
+
+"Cheer up, nice old thing," she said gaily.  "I know how to get
+new tires for you, and you shall drink all the gasoline and oil
+your tummy can hold.  Now let me see.  What must I do next?  I
+must get you off your jacks; and oh, my gracious  there are the
+grease cups, and that's a nasty job, but it must be done; and
+what is the use of Saturday if I can't do it?  Daddy often did."
+
+Linda began work in utter absorption.  She succeeded in getting
+the car off the jacks.  She was lying on her back under it,
+filling some of the most inaccessible grease cups, and she was
+softly singing as she worked:
+
+"The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes--"
+
+At that minute Donald Whiting swung down the street, turned in at
+the Strong residence, and rang the bell.  Eileen was coming down
+the stairs, dressed for the street.  She had inquired for Linda,
+and Katy had told her that she thought Miss Linda had decided to
+begin using her car, and that she was in the garage working on
+it.  To Eileen's credit it may be said that she had not been told
+that a caller was expected.  Linda never before had had a caller
+and, as always, Eileen was absorbed in her own concerns.  Had she
+got the rouge a trifle brighter on one cheek than on the other? 
+Was the powder evenly distributed?  Would the veil hold the
+handmade curls in exactly the proper place?  When the bell rang
+her one thought might have been that some of her friends were
+calling for her.  She opened the door, and when she learned that
+Linda was being asked for, it is possible that she mistook the
+clean, interesting, and well-dressed youngster standing before
+her for a mechanic.  What she said was:  "Linda's working on her
+car.  Go around to the left and you will find her in the garage,
+and for heaven's sake, get it right before you let her start out,
+for we've had enough horror in this family from motor accidents."
+
+Then she closed the door before him and stood buttoning her
+gloves; a wicked and malicious smile spreading over her face.
+
+"Just possibly," she said, "that youngster is from a garage, but
+if he is, he's the best imitation of the real thing that I have
+seen in these chaotic days."
+
+Donald Whiting stopped at the garage door and looked in, before
+Linda had finished her grease cups, and in time to be informed
+that he might wear common-sense shoes if he chose.  At his step,
+Linda rolled her black head on the cement floor and raised her
+eyes.  She dropped the grease cup, and her face reddened deeply.
+
+"Oh, my Lord!" she gasped breathlessly.  "I forgot to tell Katy
+when to call me!"
+
+In that instant she also forgot that the stress of the previous
+four years had accustomed men to seeing women do any kind of work
+in any kind of costume; but soon Linda realized that Donald
+Whiting was not paying any particular attention either to her or
+to her occupation.  He was leaning forward, gazing at the car
+with positively an enraptured expression on his eager young face.
+
+"Shades of Jehu!" he cried.  "It's a Bear Cat!"
+
+Linda felt around her head for the grease cup.
+
+"Why, sure it's a Bear Cat," she said with the calmness of
+complete recovery.  "And it's just about ready to start for its
+very own cave in the canyon."
+
+Donald Whiting pitched his hat upon the seat, shook off his coat,
+and sent it flying after the hat.  Then he began unbuttoning and
+turning back his sleeves.
+
+"Here, let me do that," he said authoritatively.  "Gee! I have
+never yet ridden in a Bear Cat.  Take me with you, will you,
+Linda?"
+
+"Sure," said Linda, pressing the grease into the cup with a
+little paddle and holding it up to see if she had it well filled. 
+"Sure, but there's no use in you getting into this mess, because
+I have only got two more.  You look over the engine.  Did you
+ever grind valves, and do you think these need it?"
+
+"Why, they don't need it," said Donald, "if they were all right
+when it was jacked up."
+
+"Well, they were," said Linda.  "It was running like a watch when
+it went to sleep.  But do we dare take it out on these tires?"
+
+"How long has it been?" asked Donald, busy at the engine.
+
+"All of four years," answered Linda.
+
+Donald whistled softly and started a circuit of the car, kicking
+the tires and feeling them.
+
+"Have you filled them?" he asked.
+
+"No," said Linda.  "I did not want to start the engine until I
+had finished everything else."
+
+"All right," he said, "I'll look at the valves first and then, if
+it is all ready, there ought to be a garage near that we can run
+to carefully, and get tuned up."
+
+"There is," said Linda.  "There is one only a few blocks down the
+street where Dad always had anything done that he did not want to
+do himself."
+
+"That's that, then," said Donald.
+
+Linda crawled from under the car and stood up, wiping her hands
+on a bit of waste.
+
+"Do you know what tires cost now?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"They have 'em at the garage," answered Donald, "and if I were
+you, I wouldn't get a set; I would get two.  I would-put them on
+the rear wheels.  You might be surprised at how long some of
+these will last.  Anyway, that would be the thing to do."
+
+"Of course," said Linda, in a relieved tone.  "That would be the
+thing to do."
+
+"Now," she said, "I must be excused a few minutes till I clean up
+so I am fit to go on the streets.  I hope you won't think I
+forgot you were coming."  
+
+
+
+Donald laughed drily.
+
+"When 'shoes' was the first word I heard," he said, "I did not
+for a minute think you had forgotten."
+
+"No, I didn't forget," said Linda.  "What I did do was to become
+so excited about cleaning up the car that I let time go faster
+than I thought it could.  That was what made me late."
+
+"Well, forget it!" said Donald.  "Run along and jump into
+something, and let us get our tires and try Kitty out."
+
+Linda reached up and released the brakes.  She stepped to one
+side of the car and laid her hands on it.
+
+"Let us run it down opposite the kitchen door," she said, "then
+you go around to the front, and I'll let you in, and you can read
+something a few minutes till I make myself presentable."
+
+"Oh, I'll stay out here and look around the yard and go over the
+car again," said the boy.  "What a bunch of stuff you have got
+growing here; I don't believe I ever saw half of it before." 
+"It's Daddy's and my collection," said Linda.  "Some day I'll
+show you some of the things, and tell you how we got them, and
+why they are rare.  Today I just naturally can't wait a minute
+until I try my car."
+
+"Is it really yours?" asked Donald enviously.
+
+"Yes," said Linda.  "It's about the only thing on earth that is
+peculiarly and particularly mine.  I haven't a doubt there are
+improved models, but Daddy had driven this car only about nine
+months.  It was going smooth as velvet, and there's no reason why
+it should not keep it up, though I suspect that by this time
+there are later models that could outrun it."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said the boy.  "It looks like some little old
+car to me.  I bet it can just skate."
+
+"I know it can," said Linda, "if I haven't neglected something. 
+We'll start carefully, and we'll have the inspector at the
+salesrooms look it over."
+
+Then Linda entered the kitchen door to find Katy with everything
+edible that the house afforded spread before her on the table.
+
+"Why, Katy, what are you doing?" she asked.
+
+"I was makin' ready," explained Katy, "to fix ye the same kind of
+lunch I would for Miss Eileen.  Will ye have it under the live
+oak, or in the living room?"
+
+"Neither," said Linda.  "Come upstairs with me, and in the
+storeroom you'll find the lunch case and the thermos bottles
+
+and don't stint yourself, Katy.  This is a rare occasion.  It
+never happened before.  Probably it will never happen again. 
+Let's make it high altitude while we are at it."
+
+"I'll do my very best with what I happen to have," said Katy;
+"but I warn you right now I am making a good big hole in the
+Sunday dinner."
+
+"I don't give two whoops," said Linda, "if there isn't any Sunday
+dinner.  In memory of hundreds of times that we have eaten bread
+and milk, make it a banquet, Katy, and we'll eat bread and milk
+tomorrow."
+
+Then she took the stairway at a bound, and ran to her room.  Ln a
+very short time she emerged, clad in a clean blouse and breeches'
+her climbing boots, her black hair freshly brushed and braided.
+
+"I ought to have something," said Linda, "to shade my eyes.  i
+The glare's hard on them facing the sun."
+
+Going down the hall she came to the storeroom, opened a drawer'
+and picked out a fine black felt Alpine hat that had belonged to
+her father.  She carried it back to her room and, standing at the
+glass, tried it on, pulling it down on one side, turning it up at
+the other, and striking a deep cleft across the crown.  She
+looked at herself intently for a minute, and then she reached up
+and deliberately loosened the hair at her temples.
+
+"Not half bad, all things considered, Linda," she said.  "But,
+oh, how you do need a tich of color."
+
+She ran down the hall and opened the door to Eileen's room, and
+going to her chiffonier, pulled out a drawer containing an array
+of gloves, veils, and ribbons.  At the bottom of the ribbon
+stack, her eye caught the gleam of color for which she was
+searching, and she deftly slipped out a narrow scarf of Roman
+stripes with a deep black fringe at the end.  Sitting down, she
+fitted the hat over her knee, picked up the dressing-table
+scissors,and ripped off the band.  In its place she fitted the
+ribbon, pinning it securely and knotting the ends so that the
+fringe reached her shoulder.  Then she tried the hat again.  The
+result was blissfully satisfactory.  The flash of orange, the
+blaze of red, the gleam of green, were what she needed.
+
+"Thank you very much, sister mine," she said, "I know you I would
+be perfectly delighted to loan me this."  
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.  One Hundred Per Cent Plus
+
+Then she went downstairs and walked into the kitchen, prepared
+for what she would see, by what she heard as she approached.
+
+With Katy's apron tied around his waist, Donald Whiting was
+occupied in squeezing orange, lemon, and pineapple juice over a
+cake of ice in a big bowl, preparatory to the compounding of
+Katy's most delicious brand of fruit punch.  Without a word,
+Linda stepped to the bread board and began slicing the bread and
+building sandwiches, while Katy hurried her preparations for
+filling the lunch box.  A few minutes later Katy packed them in
+the car, kissed Linda good-bye, and repeatedly cautioned Donald
+to make her be careful.
+
+As the car rolled down the driveway and into the street, Donald
+looked appraisingly at the girl beside him.
+
+"Is it the prevailing custom in Lilac Valley for young ladies to
+kiss the cook?" inquired Donald laughingly.
+
+"Now, you just hush," said Linda.  "Katy is NOT the cook, alone. 
+Katy's my father, and my mother, and my family, and my best
+friend--"
+
+"Stop right there," interposed Donald.  "That is quite enough for
+any human to be.  Katy's a multitude.  She came out to the car
+with the canteen, and when I offered to help her, without any
+'polly foxin',' she just said:  'Sure.  Come in and make yourself
+useful.' So I went, and I am expecting amazing results from the
+job she gave me."
+
+"Come to think of it," said Linda, "I have small experience with
+anybody's cooking except Katy's and my own, but so far as I know,
+she can't very well be beaten."
+
+Carefully she headed the car into the garage adjoining the
+salesrooms.  There she had an ovation.  The manager and several
+of the men remembered her.  The whole force clustered around the
+Bear Cat and began to examine it, and comment on it, and Linda
+climbed out and asked to have the carburetor adjusted, while the
+mechanic put on a pair of tires.  When everything was
+satisfactory, she backed to the street, and after a few blocks of
+experimental driving, she headed for the Automobile Club to
+arrange for her license and then turned straight toward
+Multiflores Canyon, but she did not fail to call Donald Whiting's
+attention to every beauty of Lilac Valley as they passed through. 
+When they had reached a long level stretch of roadway leading to
+the canyon, Linda glanced obliquely at the boy beside her.
+
+"It all comes back as natural as breathing," she said.  "I
+couldn't forget it any more than I could forget how to walk, or
+to swim.  Sit tight.  I am going to step on the gas for a bit,
+just for old sake's sake."
+
+"That's all right," said Donald, taking off his hat and giving
+his head a toss so that the wind might have full play through his
+hair.  "But remember our tires are not safe.  Better not go the
+limit until we get rid of these old ones, and have a new set all
+around."
+
+Linda settled back in her seat, took a firm grip on the wheel,
+and started down the broad, smooth highway, gradually increasing
+the speed.  The color rushed to her cheeks.  Her eyes were
+gleaming.
+
+"Listen to it purr!" she cried to Donald.  "If you hear it begin
+to growl, tell me."
+
+And then for a few minutes they rode like birds on the path of
+the wind.  When they approached the entrance to the canyon,
+gradually Linda slowed down.  She turned an exultant flashing
+face to Donald Whiting.  
+
+"That was a whizzer," said the boy.  "I'll tell you I don't know
+what I'd give to have a car like this for my very own.  I'll bet
+not another girl in Los Angeles has a car that can go like that."
+
+"And I don't believe I have any business with it," said Linda;
+"but since circumstances make it mine, I am going to keep it and
+I am going to drive it."
+
+"Of course you are," said Donald emphatically.  "Don't YoU ever
+let anybody fool you out of this car, because if they wanted to,
+it would be just because they are jealous to think they haven't
+one that will go as fast."
+
+"There's not the slightest possibility of my giving it up so long
+as I can make the engine turn over," she said.  "I told you how
+Father always took me around with him, and there's nothing in
+this world I am so sure of as I am sure that I am spoiled for a
+house cat.  I have probably less feminine sophistication than any
+girl of my age in the world, and I probably know more about
+camping and fishing and the scientific why and wherefore of all
+outdoors than most of them.  I just naturally had such a heavenly
+time with Daddy that it never has hurt my feelings to be left out
+of any dance or party that ever was given.  The one thing that
+has hurt is the isolation.  Since I lost Daddy I haven't anyone
+but Katy.  Sometimes, when I see a couple of nice, interesting
+girls visiting with their heads together, a great feeling of envy
+wells up in my soul, and I wish with all my heart that I had such
+a friend."
+
+"Ever try to make one?" asked Donald.  "There are mighty fine
+girls in the high school."
+
+"I have seen several that I thought I would like to be friends
+with," said Linda, "but I am so lacking in feminine graces that I
+haven't known how to make advances, in the first place, and I
+haven't had the courage, in the second."
+
+"I wish my sister were not so much older than you," said Donald.
+
+"How old is your sister?" inquired Linda.
+
+"She will be twenty-three next birthday," said Donald; "and of
+all the nice girls you ever saw, she is the queen."
+
+"Yes," she assented, "I am sure I have heard your sister
+mentioned.  But didn't you tell me she had been reared for
+society?"
+
+"No, I did not," said Donald emphatically.  "I told you Mother j
+believed in dressing her as the majority of other girls were
+dressed, but I didn't say she had been reared for society.  She
+has been reared with an eye single to making a well-dressed,
+cultured, and gracious woman."
+
+"I call that fine," said Linda.  "Makes me envious of you.  Now
+forget everything except your eyes and tell me what you see. 
+Have you ever been here before?"
+
+"I have been through a few times before, but seems to me I |
+never saw it looking quite so pretty."
+
+Linda drove carefully, but presently Donald uttered an
+exclamation as she swerved from the road and started down what
+appeared to be quite a steep embankment and headed straight for
+the stream.
+
+"Sit tight," she said tersely.  "The Bear Cat just loves its
+cave.  It knows where it is going."
+
+She broke through a group of young willows and ran the car ! into
+a tiny plateau, walled in a circle by the sheer sides of the !
+canyon reaching upward almost out of sight, topped with great
+jagged overhanging boulders.  Crowded to one side, she stopped
+the car and sat quietly, smiling at Donald Whiting.
+
+"How about it?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+The boy looked around him, carefully examining the canyon walls,
+and then at the level, odorous floor where one could not step
+without crushing tiny flowers of white, cerise, blue, and yellow. 
+Big ferns grew along the walls, here and there "Our Lord's
+Candles" lifted high torches not yet lighted, the ambitious
+
+
+
+mountain stream skipped and circled and fell over its rocky bed,
+while many canyon wrens were singing.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "that anyone driving along here at an
+ordinary rate of speed would see that car?"
+
+"No," said Donald, getting her idea, "I don't believe they
+would."  
+
+
+
+"All right, then," said Linda.  "Toe up even and I'll race YoU to
+the third curve where you see the big white sycamore."
+
+Donald had a fleeting impression of a flash of khaki, a gleam of
+red, and a wave of black as they started.  He ran with all the
+speed he had ever attained at a track meet.  He ran with all his
+might.  He ran until his sides strained and his breath came
+short; but the creature beside him was not running; she was
+flying; and long before they neared the sycamore he knew he was
+beaten, so he laughingly cried to her to stop it.  Linda turned
+to him panting and laughing.
+
+"I make that dash every time I come to the canyon, to keep my
+muscle up, but this is the first time I have had anyone to race
+with in a long time."
+
+Then together they slowly walked down the smooth black floor
+between the canyon walls.  As they crossed a small bridge Linda
+leaned over and looked down.
+
+"Anyone at your house care about 'nose twister'?" she asked
+lightly.
+
+"Why, isn't that watercress?" asked Donald.
+
+"Sure it is," said Linda.  "Anyone at your house like it?"
+
+"Every one of us," answered Donald.  "We're all batty about cress
+salad--and, say, that reminds me of something! If you know so
+much about this canyon and everything in it, is there any place
+in it where a fellow could find a plant, a kind of salad lettuce,
+that the Indians used to use?"
+
+"Might be," said Linda carelessly.  "For why?"
+
+"Haven't you heard of the big sensation that is being made in
+feminine circles by the new department in Everybody's Home?"
+inquired Donald.  "Mother and Mary Louise were discussing it the
+other day at lunch, and they said that some of the recipes for
+dishes to be made from stuff the Indians used sounded delicious. 
+One reminded them of cress, and when we saw the cress I wondered
+if I could get them some of the other."
+
+"Might," said Linda drily, "if you could give me a pretty good
+idea of what it is that you want."
+
+"When you know cress, it's queer that you wouldn't know other
+things in your own particular canyon," said Donald.
+
+Linda realized that she had overdone her disinterestedness a
+trifle.
+
+"I suspect it's miners' lettuce you want," she said.  "Of course
+I know where there's some, but you will want it as fresh as
+possible if you take any, so we'll finish our day first and
+gather it the last thing before we leave."
+
+How it started neither of them noticed, but they had not gone far
+before they were climbing the walls and hanging to precarious
+footings.  Her cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant, her lips
+laughing, Linda was showing Donald thrifty specimens of that
+Cotyledon known as "old hen and chickens," telling him of the
+rare Echeveria of the same family, and her plunge down the canyon
+side while trying to uproot it, exulting that she had brought
+down the plant without a rift in the exquisite bloom on its
+leaves.
+
+Linda told about her fall, and the two men who had passed at that
+instant, and how she had met them later, and who they were, and
+what they were doing.  Then Donald climbed high for a bunch of
+larkspur, and Linda showed him how to turn his back to the canyon
+wall and come down with the least possible damage to his person
+and clothing.  When at last both of them were tired they went
+back to the car.  Linda spread an old Indian blanket over the
+least flower-grown spot she could select, brought out the thermos
+bottles and lunch case, and served their lunch.  With a glass of
+fruit punch in one hand and a lettuce sandwich in the other,
+Donald smiled at Linda.
+
+"I'll agree about Katy.  She knows how," he said appreciatively.
+
+"Katy is more than a cook," said Linda quietly.  "She is a human
+being.  She has the biggest, kindest heart.  When anybody's sick
+or in trouble she's the greatest help.  She is honest; she has
+principles; she is intelligent.  In her spare time she reads good
+books and magazines.  She knows what is going on in the world. 
+She can talk intelligently on almost any subject.  It's no
+disgrace to be a cook.  If it were, Katy would be unspeakable. 
+Fact is, at  the present minute there's no one in all the world
+so dear to me as Katy.  I always talk Irish with her."
+
+"Well, I call that rough on your sister," said Donald.
+
+"Maybe it is," conceded Linda.  "I suspect a lady wouldn't have i
+said that, but Eileen and I are so different.  She never has made
+the slightest effort to prove herself lovable to me, and so I
+have never learned to love her.  Which reminds me--how did you
+happen to come to the garage?"
+
+"The very beautiful young lady who opened the door mistook me for
+a mechanic.  She told me I would find you working on your car and
+for goodness' sake to see that it was in proper condition before
+you drove it."
+
+Linda looked at him with wide, surprised eyes in which a trace of
+indignation was plainly discernible.
+
+"Now listen to me," she said deliberately.  "Eileen is a most
+sophisticated young lady.  If she saw you, she never in this
+world, thought you were a mechanic sent from a garage presenting
+yourself at our front door."  
+
+"There might have been a spark of malice in the big blue-gray I
+eyes that carefully appraised me," said Donald.
+
+"Your choice of words is good," said Linda, refilling the punch
+glass.  "'Appraise' fits Eileen like her glove.  She appraises
+every thing on a monetary basis, and when she can't figure that
+it's going to be worth an appreciable number of dollars and cents
+to her--'to the garage wid it,' as Katy would say."
+
+When they had finished their lunch Linda began packing the box
+and Donald sat watching her.
+
+"At this point," said Linda, "Daddy always smoked.  Do you
+smoke?"
+
+There was a hint of deeper color in the boy's cheeks.
+
+"I did smoke an occasional cigarette," he said lightly, "up to
+the day, not a thousand years ago, when a very emphatic young
+lady who should have known, insinuated that it was bad for the
+nerves, and going on the presumption that she knew, I haven't
+smoked a cigarette since and I'm not going to until I find out
+whether I can do better work without them."
+
+Linda folded napkins and packed away accessories thoughtfully. 
+Then she looked into the boy's eyes.
+
+"Now we reach the point of our being here together," she said. 
+"It's time to fight, and I am sorry we didn't go at it gas and
+bomb
+
+ �' the minute we met.  You're so different from what I thought
+you were.  If anyone had told me a week ago that you would take
+off your coat and mess with my automobile engine, or wear Katy's
+apron and squeeze lemons in our kitchen I would have looked
+
+! him over for Daddy's high sign of hysteria, at least.  It's too
+bad to
+
+ I have such a good time as I have had this afternoon, and then
+end with a fight."
+
+I"That's nothing," said Donald.  "You couldn't have had as
+
+| good a time as I have had.  You're like another boy.  A fellow
+can be just a fellow with you, and somehow you make everything
+you touch mean something it never meant before.  You have made me
+feel that I would be about twice the man I am if I had spent the
+time I have wasted in plain jazzing around, hunting Cotyledon or
+trap-door spiders' nests."
+
+"I get you," said Linda.  "It's the difference between a girl
+reared in an atmosphere of georgette and rouge, and one who has
+grown up in the canyons with the oaks and sycamores.  One is
+natural and the other is artificial.  Most boys prefer the
+artificial."
+
+"I thought I did myself," said Donald, "but today has taught me
+that I don't.  I think, Linda, that you would make the finest
+friend a fellow ever had.  I firmly and finally decline to fight
+with you; but for God's sake, Linda, tell me how I can beat that
+little cocoanut-headed Jap."
+
+Linda slammed down the lid to the lunch box.  Her voice was
+smooth and even but there was battle in her eyes and she answered
+decisively:  "Well, you can't beat him calling him names.  There
+is only one way on God's footstool that you can beat him.  You
+can't beat him legislating against him.  You can't beat him
+boycotting him.  You can't beat him with any tricks.  He is as
+sly as a cat and he has got a whole bag full of tricks of his
+own, and he has proved right here in Los Angeles that he has got
+a brain that is hard to beat.  All you can do, and be a man
+commendable to your own soul, is to take his subject and put your
+brain on it to such purpose that you cut pigeon wings around him. 
+What are you studying in your classes, anyway?"
+
+"Trigonometry, Rhetoric, Ancient History, Astronomy," answered
+Donald.
+
+"And is your course the same as his?" inquired Linda.
+
+"Strangely enough it is," answered Donald.  "We have been in the
+same classes all through high school.  I think the little monkey-
+-"
+
+"Man, you mean," interposed Linda.
+
+"'Man,'" conceded Donald.  "Has waited until I selected my course
+all the way through, and then he has announced what he would
+take.  He probably figured that I had somebody with brains back
+of the course I selected, and that whatever I studied would be
+suitable for him."
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said Linda.  "They are quick; oh! they
+are quick; and they know from their cradles what it is that they
+have in the backs of their heads.  We are not going to beat them
+driving them to Mexico or to Canada, or letting them monopolize
+China.  That is merely temporizing.  That is giving them fertile
+soil on which to take the best of their own and the level best of
+ours, and by amalgamating the two, build higher than we ever
+have.  There is just one way in all this world that we can beat
+Eastern civilization and all that it intends to do to us
+eventually.  The white man has dominated by his color so far in
+the history of the world, but it is written in the Books that
+when the men of color acquire our culture and combine it with
+their own methods of living and rate of production, they are
+going to bring forth greater numbers, better equipped for the
+battle of life, than we are.  When they have got our last secret,
+constructive or scientific, they will take it, and living in a
+way that we would not, reproducing in numbers we don't, they will
+beat us at any game we start, if we don't take warning while we
+are in the ascendancy, and keep there."
+
+"Well, there is something to think about," said Donald Whiting,
+staring past Linda at the side of the canyon as if he had seen
+the same handwriting on the wall that dismayed Belshazzar at the
+feast that preceded his downfall.
+
+"I see what you're getting at," he said.  "I had thought that
+there might be some way to circumvent him."
+
+"There is!" broke in Linda hastily.  "There is.  You can beat
+him, but you have got to beat him in an honorable way and in a
+way that is open to him as it is to you."
+
+"I'll do anything in the world if you will only tell me how,"
+said Donald.  "Maybe you think it isn't grinding me and
+humiliating me properly.  Maybe you think Father and Mother
+haven't warned me.  Maybe you think Mary Louise isn't secretly
+ashamed of me.  How can I beat him, Linda?"
+
+Linda's eyes were narrowed to a mere line.  She was staring at
+the wall back of Donald as if she hoped that Heaven would
+intercede in her favor and write thereon a line that she might
+translate to the boy's benefit.
+
+"I have been watching pretty sharply," she said.  "Take them as a
+race, as a unit--of course there are exceptions, there always are
+--but the great body of them are mechanical.  They are imitative. 
+They are not developing anything great of their own in their own
+country.  They are spreading all over the world and carrying home
+sewing machines and threshing machines and automobiles and
+cantilever bridges and submarines and aeroplanes--anything from
+eggbeaters to telescopes.  They are not creating one single
+thing.  They are not missing imitating everything that the white
+man can do anywhere else on earth.  They are just like the
+Germans so far as that is concerned."
+
+"I get that, all right enough," said Donald.  "Now go on.  What
+is your deduction?  How the devil am I to beat the best?  He is
+perfect, right straight along in everything."
+
+The red in Linda's cheeks deepened.  Her eyes opened their
+widest.  She leaned forward, and with her closed fist, pounded
+the blanket before him.
+
+"Then, by gracious," she said sternly, "you have got to do
+something new.  You have got to be perfect, PLUS."
+
+"'Perfect, plus?'" gasped Donald.  
+
+"Yes, sir!" said Linda emphatically.  "You have got to be
+perfect, plus.  If he can take his little mechanical brain and
+work a thing out till he has got it absolutely right, you have
+got to go further than that and discover something pertaining to
+it not hitherto thought of and start something NEW.  I tell you
+you must use your brains.  You should be more than an imitator. 
+You must be a creator!"
+
+Donald started up and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Well, some job I call that," he said.  "Who do you think I am,
+the Almighty?"
+
+"No," said Linda quietly, "you are not.  You are merely His son,
+created in His own image, like Him, according to the Book, and
+you have got to your advantage the benefit of all that has been
+learned down the ages.  We have got to take up each subject in
+your course, and to find some different books treating this same
+subject.  We have got to get at it from a new angle.  We must dig
+into higher authorities.  We have got to coach you till, when you
+reach the highest note possible for the parrot, you can go ahead
+and embellish it with a few mocking-bird flourishes.  All Oka
+Sayye knows how to do is to learn the lesson in his book
+perfectly, and he is 100 per cent.  I have told you what you must
+do to add the plus, and you can do it if you are the boy I take
+you for.  People have talked about the 'yellow peril' till it's
+got to be a meaningless phrase.  Somebody must wake up to the
+realization that it's the deadliest peril that ever has menaced
+white civilization.  Why shouldn't you have your hand in such
+wonderful work?"
+
+"Linda," said the boy breathlessly, "do you realize that you have
+been saying 'we'?  Can you help me?  Will you help me?"
+
+"No," said Linda, "I didn't realize that I had said 'we.' I
+didn't mean two people, just you and me.  I meant all the white
+boys and girls of the high school and the city and the state and
+the whole world.  If we are going to combat the 'yellow peril' we
+must combine against it.  We have got to curb our appetites and
+train our brains and enlarge our hearts till we are something
+bigger and finer and numerically greater than this yellow peril. 
+We can't take it and pick it up and push it into the sea.  We are
+not Germans and we are not Turks.  I never wanted anything in all
+this world worse than I want to see you graduate ahead of Oka
+Sayye.  And then I want to see the white boys and girls of Canada
+and of England and of Norway and Sweden and Australia, and of the
+whole world doing exactly what I am recommending that you do in
+your class and what I am doing personally in my own.  I have had
+Japs in my classes ever since I have been in school, but Father
+always told me to study them, to play the game fairly, but to
+BEAT them in some way, in some fair way, to beat them at the game
+they are undertaking."
+
+"Well, there is one thing you don't take into consideration,"
+said Donald.  "All of us did not happen to be fathered by
+Alexander Strong.  Maybe we haven't all got your brains."
+
+"Oh, posher!" said Linda.  "I know of a case where a little
+Indian was picked up from a tribal battlefield in South America
+and brought to this country and put into our schools, and there
+was nothing that any white pupil in the school could do that he
+couldn't, so long as it was imitative work.  You have got to be
+constructive.  You have got to work out some way to get ahead of
+them; and if you will take the history of the white races and go
+over their great achievements in mechanics, science, art,
+literature--anything you choose--when a white man is
+constructive, when he does create, he can simply cut circles
+around the colored races.  The thing is to get the boys and girls
+of today to understand what is going on in the world, what they
+must do as their share in making the world safe for their
+grandchildren.  Life is a struggle.  It always has been.  It
+always will be.  There is no better study than to go into the
+canyons or the deserts and efface yourself and watch life.  It's
+an all-day process of the stronger annihilating the weaker.  The
+one inexorable thing in the world is Nature.  The eagle dominates
+the hawk; the hawk, the falcon; the falcon, the raven; and so on
+down to the place where the hummingbird drives the moth from his
+particular trumpet flower.  The big snake swallows the little
+one.  The big bear appropriates the desirable cave."  
+
+"And is that what you are recommending people to do?"
+
+"No," said Linda, "it is not.  That is wild.  We go a step ahead
+of the wild, or we ourselves become wild.  We have brains, and
+with our brains we must do in a scientific way what Nature does
+with tooth and claw.  In other words, and to be concrete, put
+these things in the car while I fold the blanket.  We'll gather
+our miners' lettuce and then we'll go home and search Daddy's
+library and see if there is anything bearing in a higher way on
+any subject you are taking, so that you can get from it some new
+ideas, some different angle, some higher light, something that
+will end in speedily prefacing Oka Sayye's perfect with your
+pluperfect!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.  Katy to the Rescue
+
+Linda delivered Donald Whiting at his door with an armload of
+books and a bundle of miners' lettuce and then drove to her home
+in Lilac Valley--in the eye of the beholder on the floor-level
+macadam road; in her own eye she scarcely grazed it.  The smooth,
+easy motion of the car, the softly purring engine were thrilling. 
+The speed at which she was going was like having wings on her
+body.  The mental stimulus she had experienced in concentrating
+her brain on Donald Whiting's problem had stimulated her
+imagination.  The radiant color of spring; the chilled, perfumed,
+golden air; the sure sense of having found a friend, had ruffled
+the plumes of her spirit.  On the home road Donald had plainly
+indicated that he would enjoy spending the morrow with her, and
+she had advised him to take the books she had provided and lock
+himself in his room and sweat out some information about Monday's
+lessons which would at least arrest his professor's attention,
+and lead his mind to the fact that something was beginning to
+happen.  And then she had laughingly added:  "Tomorrow is Katy's
+turn.  I told the old dear I would take her as soon as I felt the
+car was safe.  Every day she does many things that she hopes will
+give me pleasure.  This is one thing I can do that I know will
+delight her."
+
+"Next Saturday, then?" questioned Donald.  And Linda nodded.  
+
+
+
+"Sure thing.  I'll be thinking up some place extra interesting. 
+Come in the morning if you want, and we'll take a lunch and go
+for the day.  Which do you like best, mountains or canyons or
+desert or sea?"
+
+"I like it best wherever what you're interested in takes you,"
+said Donald simply.
+
+"All right, then," answered Linda, "we'll combine business and
+pleasure."
+
+So they parted with another meeting arranged.
+
+When she reached home she found Katy tearfully rejoicing, plainly
+revealing how intensely anxious she had been.  But when Linda
+told her that the old tires had held, that the car ran
+wonderfully, that everything was perfectly safe, that she drove
+as unconsciously as she breathed, and that tomorrow Katy was to
+go for a long ride, her joy was incoherent.
+
+Linda laughed.  She patted Katy and started down the hallway,
+when she called back:  "What is this package?"
+
+"A delivery boy left it special only a few minutes ago.  Must be
+something Miss Eileen bought and thought she would want tomorrow,
+and then afterward she got this invitation and went on as she
+was."
+
+Linda stood gazing at the box.  It did look so suspiciously like
+a dress box.
+
+"Katy," she said, "I have just about got an irresistible impulse
+to peep.  I was telling Eileen last night of a dress I saw that I
+thought perfect.  It suited me better than any other dress I ever
+did see.  It was at 'The Mode.' This box is from 'The Mode.'
+Could there be a possibility that she sent it up specially for
+me?"
+
+"I think she would put your name on it if she meant it for ye,"
+said Katy.
+
+"One peep would show me whether it is my dress or not," said
+Linda, "and peep I'm going to."
+
+She began untying the string.
+
+"There's one thing," said Katy, "Miss Eileen's sizes would never
+fit ye."
+
+"Might," conceded Linda.  "I am taller than she is, but I could
+
+wear her waists if I wanted to, and she always alters her skirts
+herself to save the fees.  Glory be! This is my dress, and
+there's a petticoat and stockings to match it.  Why, the nice old
+thing! I suggested hard enough, but in my heart I hardly thought
+she would do it.  Oh, dear, now if I only had some shoes, and a
+hat."
+
+Linda was standing holding the jacket in one hand, the stockings
+in the other, her face flaming.  Katy drew herself to full
+height.  She reached over and picked the things from Linda's
+fingers.
+
+"If ye know that is your dress, lambie," she said
+authoritatively, "ye go right out and get into that car and run
+to town and buy ye a pair of shoes."
+
+"But I have no credit anywhere and I have no money, yet," said
+Linda.
+
+"Well, I have," said Katy, "and this time ye're going to stop
+your stubbornness and take enough to get ye what you need.  Ye go
+to the best store in Los Angeles and come back here with a pair
+of shoes that just match those stockings, and ye go fast, before
+the stores close.  If ye've got to speed a little, do it in the
+country and do it judacious."
+
+"Katy, you're arriving!" cried Linda.  "'Judicious speeding' is
+one thing I learned better than any other lesson about driving a
+motor car.  Three fourths of the driving Father and I did we were
+speeding judiciously."
+
+Katy held the skirt to Linda's waist.
+
+"Well, maybe it's a little shorter than any you have been
+wearing, but it ain't as short as Eileen and all the rest of the
+girls your age have them, so that's all right, honey.  Slip on
+your coat."
+
+Katy's fingers were shaking as she lifted the jacket and Linda
+slipped into it.
+
+"Oh, Lord," she groaned, "ye can't be wearing that! The sleeves
+don't come much below your elbows."
+
+"You will please to observe," said Linda, "that they are flowing
+sleeves and they are not intended to come below the elbows; but
+it's a piece of luck I tried it on, for it reminds me that it's a
+jacket suit and I must have a blouse.  When you get the shoe
+money, make it enough for a blouse--two blouses, Katy, one for
+school and one to fuss up in a little."
+
+Without stopping to change her clothing, Linda ran to the garage
+and hurried back to the city.  It was less than an hour's run,
+but she made it in ample time to park her car and buy the shoes. 
+She selected a pair of low oxfords of beautiful color, matching
+the stockings.  Then she hurried to one of the big drygoods
+stores and bought the two waists and an inexpensive straw hat
+that would harmonize with the suit; a hat small enough to stick,
+in the wind, with brim enough to shade her eyes.  In about two
+hours she was back with Katy and they were in her room trying on
+the new clothing.
+
+"It dumbfounds me," said Linda, "to have Eileen do this for me."
+
+She had put on the shoes and stockings, a plain georgette blouse
+of a soft, brownish wood-gray, with a bit of heavy brown silk
+embroidery decorating the front, and the jacket.  The dress was
+of silky changeable tricolette, the skirt plain.  Where a fold
+lifted and was strongly lighted, it was an exquisite silver-gray;
+where a shadow fell deeply it was gray-brown.  The coat reached
+half way to the knees.  It had a rippling skirt with a row of
+brown embroidery around it, a deep belt with double buttoning at
+the waistline, and collar and sleeves in a more elaborate pattern
+of the same embroidery as the skirt.  Linda perched the hat on
+her head, pulled it down securely, and faced Katy.
+
+"Now then!" she challenged.
+
+"And it's a perfect dress!" said Katy proudly, "and you're just
+the colleen to wear it.  My, but I wisht your father could be
+seeing ye the now."
+
+With almost reverent hands Linda removed the clothing and laid it
+away.  Then she read a letter from Marian that was waiting for
+her, telling Katy scraps of it in running comment as she scanned
+the sheets.
+
+"She likes her boarding place.  There are nice people in it.  She
+has got a wonderful view from the windows of her room.  She is
+making friends.  She thinks one of the men at Nicholson and
+Snow's is just fine; he is helping her all he can, on the course
+she is taking.  And she wants us to look carefully everywhere for
+any scrap of paper along the hedge or around the shrubbery on the
+north side of the house.  One of her three sheets of plans is
+missing.  I don't see where in the world it could have gone,
+Katy."
+
+Katy spread out her hands in despair.
+
+"There was not a scrap of a sheet of paper in the room when I
+cleaned it," she said, "not a scrap.  And if I had seen a sheet
+flying around the yard I would have picked it up.  She just must
+be mistaken about having lost it here.  She must have opened her
+case on the train and lost it there."
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+"I put that stuff in the case myself," she said, "and the clothes
+on top of it, and she wouldn't have any reason for taking those
+things out on the train.  I can't understand, but she did have
+three rough sketches.  She had her heart set on winning that
+prize and it would be a great help to her, and certainly it was
+the most comprehensive and convenient plan for a house of that
+class that I ever have seen.  If I ever have a house, she is
+going to plan it, even if she doesn't get to plan John Gilman's
+as he always used to say that she should.  And by the way, Katy,
+isn't it kind of funny for Eileen to go away over Sunday when
+it's his only holiday?"
+
+"Oh, she'll telephone him," said Katy, "and very like, he'll go
+down, or maybe he is with her.  Ye needn't waste any sympathy on
+him.  Eileen will take care that she has him so long as she
+thinks she wants him."
+
+Later it developed that Eileen had secured the invitation because
+she was able to produce three most eligible men.  Not only was
+John Gilman with the party, but Peter Morrison and Henry
+
+
+
+Anderson were there as well.  It was in the nature of a hastily
+arranged celebration, because the deal for three acres of land
+that Peter Morrison most coveted on the small plateau, mountain
+walled, in Lilac Valley, was in escrow.  He had made a payment on
+it.  Anderson was working on his plans.  Contractors had been
+engaged, and on Monday work would begin.  The house was to be 
+
+
+
+built as soon as possible, and Peter Morrison had arranged that
+the garage was to be built first.  This he meant to occupy as a
+residence so that he could be on hand to superintend the
+construction of the new home and to protect, as far as possible,
+the natural beauty and the natural growth of the location.
+
+Early Sunday morning Linda and Katy, with a full lunch box and a
+full gasoline tank, slid from the driveway and rolled down the
+main street of Lilac Valley toward the desert.
+
+"We'll switch over and strike San Fernando Road," said Linda,
+"and I'll scout around Sunland a bit and see if I can find
+anything that will furnish material for another new dish."
+
+That day was wonderful for Katy.  She trotted after Linda over
+sandy desert reaches, along the seashore, up mountain trails, and
+through canyons connected by long stretches of motoring that was
+more like flying than riding.  She was tired but happy when she
+went to bed.  Monday morning she was an interested spectator as
+Linda dressed for school.
+
+"Sure, and hasn't the old chrysalis opened up and let out the
+nicest little lady-bird moth, Katy?' inquired Linda as she
+smoothed her gray-gold skirts.  "I think myself that this dress
+is a trifle too good for school.  When I get my allowance next
+week I think I'll buy me a cloth skirt and a couple of wash
+waists and save this for better; but it really was good of Eileen
+to take so much pains and send it to me, when she was busy
+planning a trip."
+
+Katy watched Linda go, and she noted the new light in her eyes,
+the new lift of her head, and the proud sureness of her step, and
+she wondered if a new dress could do all that for a girl, she
+scarcely believed that it could.  And, too, she had very serious
+doubts about the dress.  She kept thinking of it during the day,
+and when Eileen came, in the middle of the afternoon, at the
+first words on her lips:  "Has my dress come?" Katy felt a wave
+of illness surge through her.  She looked at Eileen so helplessly
+that that astute reader of human nature immediately Suspected
+something.
+
+"I sent it special," she said, "because I didn't know at the time
+that I was going to Riverside and I wanted to work on it.  Isn't
+it here yet?"
+
+Then Katy prepared to do battle for the child of her heart.
+
+"Was the dress ye ordered sent the one Miss Linda was telling ye
+about?" she asked tersely.
+
+"Yes, it was," said Eileen.  "Linda has got mighty good taste. 
+Any dress she admired was sure to be right.  She said there was a
+beautiful dress at 'The Mode'.  I went and looked, and sure
+enough there was, a perfect beauty."
+
+"But she wanted the dress for herself," said Katy.
+
+"It was not a suitable dress for school," said Eileen.
+
+"Well, it strikes me," said Katy, "that it was just the spittin'
+image of fifty dresses I've seen ye wear to school.
+
+"What do you know about it?" demanded Eileen.
+
+"I know just this," said Katy with determination.  "Ye've had one
+new dress in the last few days and you're not needin' another. 
+The blessed Virgin only knows when Miss Linda's had a dress.  She
+thought ye'd done yourself proud and sent it for her, and she put
+it on, and a becoming and a proper thing it was too! I advanced
+her the money myself and sent her to get some shoes to match it
+since she had her car fixed and could go in a hurry.  A beautiful
+dress it is, and on her back this minute it is !"
+
+Eileen was speechless with anger.  Her face was a sickly white
+and the rouge spots on her cheeks stood a glaring admission
+
+"Do you mean to tell me--" she gasped.
+
+"Not again," said the daughter of Erin firmly, "because I have
+already told ye wance.  Linda's gone like a rag bag since the
+Lord knows when.  She had a right to the dress, and she thought
+it was hers, and she took it.  And if ye ever want any more
+respect or obedience or love from the kiddie, ye better never let
+her know that ye didn't intend it for her, for nothing was ever
+quite so fair and right as that she should have it; and while
+you're about it you'd better go straight to the store and get her
+what she is needin' to go with it, or better still, ye had better
+give her a fair share of  the money of which there used to be
+such a plenty, and let her get her things herself, for she's that
+tasty nobody can beat her when she's got anything to do with."
+
+Eileen turned on Katy in a gust of fury.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan," she said shrilly, "pack your trunk and see
+how quick you can get out of this house.  I have stood your
+insolence for years, and I won't endure it a minute longer!"
+
+Katy folded her red arms and lifted her red chin, and a
+steel-blue light flashed from her steel-gray eyes.
+
+"Humph!" she said, "I'll do nothing of the sort.  I ain't working
+for ye and I never have been no more than I ever worked for your
+mother.  Every lick I ever done in this house I done for Linda
+and Doctor Strong and for nobody else.  Half of this house and
+everything in it belongs to Linda, and it's a mortal short time
+till she's of age to claim it.  Whichever is her half, that half
+I'll be staying in, and if ye manage so as she's got nothing to
+pay me, I'll take care of her without pay till the day comes when
+she can take care of me.  Go to wid ye, ye triflin', lazy,
+self-possessed creature.  Ten years I have itched to tell ye what
+I thought of ye, and now ye know it."
+
+As Katy's rage increased, Eileen became intimidated.  Like every
+extremely selfish person she was a coward in her soul.
+
+"If you refuse to go on my orders," she said, "I'll have John
+Gilman issue his."
+
+Then Katy set her left hand on her left hip, her lower jaw shot
+past the upper, her doubled right fist shook precious near the
+tip of Eileen's exquisite little nose.
+
+"I'm darin' ye," she shouted.  "I'm just darin' ye to send John
+Gilman in the sound of my voice.  If ye do, I'll tell him every
+mean and selfish thing ye've done to me poor lambie since the day
+of the Black Shadow.  Send him to me?  Holy Mither, I wish ye
+would! If ever I get my chance at him, don't ye think I won't be
+tellin' him what he has lost, and what he has got?  And as for
+taking orders from him, I am taking my orders from the person I
+am working for, and as I told ye before, that's Miss Linda.  Be
+off wid ye, and primp up while I get my supper, and mind ye
+this,, if ye tell Miss Linda ye didn't mean that gown for her and
+spoil the happy day she has had, I won't wait for ye to send John
+Gilman to me; I'll march straight to him.  Put that in your
+cigarette and smoke it! Think I've lost me nose as well as me
+sense?"
+
+Then Katy started a triumphal march to the kitchen and cooled
+down by the well-known process of slamming pots and pans for half
+an hour.  Soon her Irish sense of humor came to her rescue.
+
+"Now, don't I hear myself telling Miss Linda a few days ago to
+kape her temper, and to kape cool, and to go aisy.  Look at the
+aise of me when I got started.  By gracious, wasn't I just
+itching to wallop her?"
+
+Then every art that Katy possessed was bent to the consummation
+of preparing a particularly delicious dinner for the night.
+
+Linda came in softly humming something to herself about the kind
+of shoes that you might wear if you chose.  She had entered the
+high school that morning with an unusually brilliant color.  Two
+or three girls, who never had noticed her before, had nodded to
+her that morning, and one or two had said:  "What a pretty dress
+you have!" She had caught the flash of approval in the eyes of
+Donald Whiting, and she had noted the flourish with which he
+raised his hat when he saw her at a distance, and she knew what
+he meant when he held up a book, past the covers of which she
+could see protruding a thick fold of white paper.  He had
+foresworn whatever pleasure he might have thought of for Sunday. 
+He had prepared notes on some subject that he thought would
+further him.  The lift of his head, the flourish of his hat, and
+the book all told Linda that he had struggled and that he felt
+the struggle had brought an exhilarating degree of success.  That
+had made the day particularly bright for Linda.  She had gone
+home with a feeling of uplift and exultation in her heart.  As
+she closed the front door she cried up the stairway:  "Eileen,
+are you there?" 
+
+"Yes," answered a rather sulky voice from above.
+
+Linda ascended, two steps at a bound.
+
+"Thank you over and over, old thing!" she cried as she raced down
+the hallway.  "Behold me! I never did have a more becoming dress,
+and Katy loaned me money, till my income begins, to get shoes and
+a little scuff hat to go with it.  Aren't I spiffy?"
+
+She pirouetted in the doorway.  Eileen gripped the brush she was
+wielding, tight.
+
+"You have good taste," she said.  "It's a pretty dress, but
+You're always howling about things being suitable.  Do you call
+that suitable for school?"
+
+"It certainly is an innovation for me," said Linda, "but there
+are dozens of dresses of the same material, only different cut
+and colors in the high school today.  As soon as I get my money
+I'll buy a skirt and some blouses so I won't have to wear this
+all the time; but I surely do thank you very much, and I surely
+have had a lovely day.  Did you have a nice time at Riverside?"
+
+Eileen slammed down the brush and turned almost a distorted face
+to Linda.  She had temper to vent.  In the hour's reflection
+previous to Linda's coming, she realized that she had reached the
+limit with Katy.  If she antagonized her by word or look, she
+would go to John Gilman, and Eileen dared not risk what she would
+say.
+
+"No, I did not have a lovely time," she said.  "I furnished the
+men for the party and I expected to have a grand time, but the
+first thing we did was to run into that inflated egotist calling
+herself Mary Louise Whiting, and like a fool, Janie Brunson
+introduced her to Peter Morrison.  I had paired him with Janie on
+purpose to keep my eye on him."
+
+Linda tried hard but she could not suppress a chuckle:  "Of
+course you would!" she murmured softly.
+
+Eileen turned her back.  That had been her first confidence to
+Linda.  She was so aggrieved at that moment that she could have
+told unanswering walls her tribulations.  It would have been
+better if she had done so.  She might have been able to construe
+silence as sympathy.  Linda's laughter she knew exactly how to
+interpret.  "Served you right," was what it meant.
+
+"I hadn't the least notion you would take an interest in anything
+concerning me," she said.  "People can talk all they please about
+Mary Louise Whiting being a perfect lady but she is a perfect
+beast.  I have met her repeatedly and she has always ignored me,
+and yesterday she singled out for her special attention the most
+desirable man in my party--"
+
+"'Most desirable,'" breathed Linda.  "Poor John! I see his second
+fiasco.  Lavender crystals, please!"
+
+Eileen caught her lip in mortification.  She had not intended to
+say what she thought.
+
+"Well, you can't claim," she hurried on to cover her confusion,
+"that it was not an ill-bred, common trick for her to take
+possession of a man of my party, and utterly ignore me.  She has
+everything on earth that I want; she treats me like a dog, and
+she could give me a glorious time by merely nodding her head."
+
+"I am quite sure you are mistaken," said Linda.  "From what I've
+heard of her, she wouldn't mistreat anyone.  Very probably what
+she does is merely to feel that she is not acquainted with you. 
+You have an unfortunate way, Eileen, of defeating your own ends. 
+If you wanted to attract Mary Louise Whiting, you missed the best
+chance you ever could have had, at three o'clock Saturday
+afternoon, when you maliciously treated her only brother as you
+would a mechanic, ordered him to our garage, and shut our door in
+his face."
+
+Eileen turned to Linda.  Her mouth fell open.  A ghastly greenish
+white flooded her face.
+
+"What do you mean?" she gasped.
+
+"I mean," said Linda, "that Donald Whiting was calling on me, and
+you purposely sent him to the garage."
+
+Crash down among the vanities of Eileen's dressing table went her
+lovely head, and she broke into deep and violent sobs.  Linda
+stood looking at her a second, slowly shaking her head.  Then she
+turned and went to her room.
+
+Later in the evening she remembered the Roman scarf and told
+Eileen of what she had done, and she was unprepared for Eileen's
+reply:  "That scarf always was too brilliant for me.  You're
+welcome to it if you want it."
+
+"Thank you," said Linda gravely, "I want it very much indeed."  
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.  Assisting Providence
+
+Linda went to the library to see to what state of emptiness it
+had been reduced by the removal of several pieces of furniture
+she had ordered taken away that day.  As she stood on the
+threshold looking over the room as usual, a throb of loving
+appreciation of Katy swept through her heart.  Katy had been
+there before her.  The room had been freshly swept and dusted,
+the rugs had been relaid, the furniture rearranged skilfully, and
+the table stood at the best angle to be lighted either by day or
+night.  On the table and the mantel stood big bowls of lovely
+fresh flowers.  Linda was quite certain that anyone entering the
+room for the first time would have felt it completely furnished,
+and she doubted if even Marian would notice the missing pieces. 
+Cheered in her heart, she ran up to the billiard room, and there
+again Katy had preceded her.  The windows were shining.  The
+walls and floor had been cleaned.  Everything was in readiness
+for the new furniture.  Her heart full of gratitude, Linda went
+to her room, prepared her lessons for the next day, and then drew
+out her writing materials to answer Marian's letter.  She wrote:
+
+I have an acute attack of enlargement of the heart.  So many
+things have happened since your leaving.  But first I must tell
+you about your sketch.  We just know you did not leave it here. 
+Katy says there was not a scrap in our bedroom when she cleaned
+it; and as she knows you make plans and how precious they are to
+you, I guarantee she would have saved it if she had found
+anything looking like a parallelogram on a piece of paper.  And I
+have very nearly combed the lawn, not only the north side, but
+the west, south, and east; and then I broke the laws and went
+over to your house and crawled through a basement window and
+worked my way up, and I have hunted every room in it, but there
+is nothing there.  You must have lost that sketch after you
+reached San Francisco.  I hope to all that's peaceful you did not
+lay it down in the offices of Nicholson and Snow, or where you
+take your lessons.  I know nothing about architecture, but I do
+know something about comfort in a home, and I thought that was
+the most comfortable and convenient-looking house I ever had
+seen.
+
+Now I'll go on and tell you all the news, and I don't know which
+is the bigger piece to burst on you first.  Would you be more
+interested in knowing that Peter Morrison has bought three acres
+on the other side of the valley from us and up quite a way, or in
+the astonishing fact that I have a new dress, a perfect love of a
+dress, really too good for school?  You know there was blood in
+my eye when you left, and I didn't wait long to start action.  I
+have managed to put the fear of God into Eileen's heart so that
+she has agreed to a reasonable allowance for me from the first of
+next month; but she must have felt at least one small wave of
+contrition when I told her about a peculiarly enticing dress I
+had seen at The Mode.  She sent it up right away, and Katy,
+blessed be her loving footprints, loaned me money to buy a blouse
+and some shoes to match, so I went to school today looking very
+like the Great General Average, minus rouge, lipstick, hairdress,
+and French heels.
+
+I do hope you will approve of two things I have done.
+
+Then Linda recounted the emptying of the billiard room, the
+inroads in the library, the listing of the technical books, and
+what she proposed to do with the money.  And then, her face
+slightly pale and her fingers slightly trembling, she wrote:
+
+And, Marian dear, I hope you won't be angry with me when I tell
+you that I have put the Bear Cat into commission and driven it
+three times already.  It is running like the feline it is, and I
+am being as careful as I can.  I know exactly how you will feel. 
+It is the same feeling that has held me all these months, when I
+wouldn't even let myself think of it.  But something happened at
+school one day,  Marian.  You know the Whitings?  Mary Louise
+Whiting's brother is in the senior class.  He is a six-footer,
+and while he is not handsome he is going to be a real man when he
+is fully developed, and steadied down to work.  One day last week
+he made it his business to stop me in the hall and twit me about
+my shoes, and incidentally to ask me why I didn't dress like the
+other girls; and some way it came rougher than if it had been one
+of the girls.  The more I thought about it the more wronged I
+felt, so I ended in a young revolution that is to bring me an
+income, a suitable place to work in and has brought me such a
+pretty dress.  I think it has brought Eileen to a sense of at
+least partial justice about money, and it brought me back the
+Bear Cat.  You know the proudest moment of my life was when
+Father would let me drive the little beast, and it all came back
+as natural as breathing.  Please don't worry, Marian.  Nothing
+shall happen, I promise you.
+
+It won't be necessary to tell you that Katy is her darling old
+self, loyal and steadfast as the sun, and quite as necessary and
+as comforting to me.  And I have a couple of other interests in
+life that are going to--I won't say make up for your absence,
+because nothing could do that--but they are going to give me
+something interesting to think about, something agreeable to work
+at, while you are gone.  But, oh, Marian, do hurry.  Work all day
+and part of the night.  Be Saturday's child yourself if you must,
+just so you get home quick, and where your white head makes a
+beacon light for the truest, lovingest pal you will ever have,
+
+                                                 LINDA.
+
+Linda laid down the pen, slid down in her chair, and looked from
+the window across the valley, and she wondered if in her view lay
+the location that had been purchased by Peter Morrison.  She
+glanced back at her letter and sat looking at the closing lines
+and the signature.
+
+"Much good that will do her," she commented.  "When a woman loves
+a man and loves him with all her heart, as Marian loved John, and
+when she loses him, not because she has done a single unworthy
+thing herself, but because he is so rubber spined that he will
+let another woman successfully intrigue him, a lot of comfort she
+is going to get from the love of a schoolgirl!"
+
+Linda's eyes strayed to the window again, and traveled down to
+the city and up the coast, all the way to San Francisco, and out
+of the thousands of homes there they pictured a small, neat room,
+full of Marian's belongings, and Marian herself bending over a
+worktable, absorbed in the final draft of her precious plans. 
+Linda could see Marian as plainly as she ever had seen her, but
+she let her imagination run, and she fancied that when Marian was
+among strangers and where no one knew of John Gilman's defection,
+that hers might be a very heavy heart, that hers might be a very
+sad face.  Then she went to planning.  She had been desolate,
+heart hungry, and isolated herself.  First she had endured, then
+she had fought; the dawn of a new life was breaking over her
+hill.  She had found work she was eager to do.  She could put the
+best of her brain, the skill of her fingers, the creative impulse
+of her heart, into it.
+
+She was almost sure that she had found a friend.  She had a
+feeling that when the coming Saturday had been lived Donald
+Whiting would be her friend.  He would want her advice and her
+help in his work.  She would want his companionship and the
+stimulus of his mind, in hers.  What Linda had craved was a dear
+friend among the girls, but no girl had offered her friendship. 
+This boy had, so she would accept what the gods of time and
+circumstance provided.  It was a very wonderful thing that had
+happened to her.  Now why could not something equally wonderful
+happen to Marian?  Linda wrinkled her brows and thought deeply.
+
+"It's the worst thing in all this world to work and work with
+nobody to know about it and nobody to care," thought Linda. 
+"Marian could break a record if she thought John Gilman cared now
+as he used to.  It's almost a necessary element to her success. 
+If he doesn't care, she ought to be made to feel that somebody
+cares.  This thing of standing alone, since I have found a
+friend, appeals to me as almost insupportable.  Let me think."
+
+It was not long until she had worked out a scheme for putting an
+interest in Marian's life and giving her something for which to
+work, until a more vital reality supplanted it.  The result was
+that she took some paper, went down to the library, and opening
+the typewriter, wrote a letter.  She read it over, making many
+changes and corrections, and then she copied it carefully.  When
+she came to addressing it she was uncertain, but at last she hit
+upon a scheme of sending it in the care of Nicholson and Snow
+because Marian had told her that she meant to enter their contest
+immediately she reached San Francisco, and she would have left
+them her address.  On the last reading of the letter she had
+written, she decided that it was a manly, straightforward
+production, which should interest and attract any girl.  But how
+was she to sign it?  After thinking deeply for a long time, she
+wrote "Philip Sanders, General Delivery," and below she added a
+postscript:
+
+To save you the trouble of inquiring among your friends as to who
+Philip Sanders is, I might as well tell you in the beginning that
+he isn't.  He is merely an assumption under which I shall hide my
+personality until you let me know whether it is possible that you
+could become even slightly interested in me, as a small return
+for the very deep and wholesome interest abiding in my heart for
+you.
+
+"Abiding," said Linda aloud.  "It seems to me that there is
+nothing in all the world quite so fine as a word.  Isn't
+'abiding' a good word?  Doesn't it mean a lot?  Where could you
+find one other word that means being with you and also means
+comforting you and loving you and sympathizing with you and
+surrounding you with firm walls and a cushioned floor and a
+starry roof?  I love that word.  I hope it impresses Marian with
+all its wonderful meaning."
+
+She went back to her room, put both letters into her Geometry,
+and in the morning mailed them.  She stood a long time hesitating
+with the typewritten letter in her hand, but finally dropped it
+in the letter box also.
+
+"It will just be something," she said, "to make her think that
+some man appreciates her lovely face and doesn't care if her hair
+is white, and sees how steadfast and fine she is."
+
+And then she slowly repeated, " 'steadfast,' that is another fine
+word.  It has pearls and rubies all over it."
+
+After school that evening she visited James Brothers' and was
+paid the full amount of the appraisement of her furniture.  Then
+she went to an art store and laid in a full supply of the
+materials she needed for the work she was trying to do.  Her
+fingers were trembling as she handled the boxes of water colors
+and selected the brushes and pencils for her work, and sheets of
+drawing paper upon which she could do herself justice.  When the
+transaction was finished, she had a few dollars remaining.  As
+she put them in her pocket she said softly:
+
+"That's gasoline.  Poor Katy! I'm glad she doesn't need her
+money, because she is going to have to wait for the allowance or
+the sale of the books or on Jane Meredith.  But it's only a few
+days now, so that'll be all right."  
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.  The Lay of the Land
+
+Linda entered the street car for her daily ride to Lilac Valley. 
+She noticed Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson sitting beside each
+other, deeply engrossed in a drawing.  She had been accustomed to
+ride in the open section of the car as she liked the fresh air. 
+She had a fleeting thought of entering the body of the car and
+sitting where they would see her; and then a perverse spirit in
+Linda's heart said to her:
+
+"That is precisely what Eileen would do.  You sit where you
+belong."
+
+Whereupon Linda dropped into the first vacant seat she could
+reach, but it was only a few moments before Peter Morrison,
+looking up from the plans he was studying, saw her, and lifting
+his hat, beckoned her to come and sit with him.  They made room
+for her between them and spreading the paper across her lap, all
+three of them began to discuss the plans for the foundation for
+Peter's house.  Anderson had roughly outlined the grounds,
+sketching in the trees that were to be saved, the spring, and the
+most available route for reaching the road.  The discussion was
+as to where the road should logically enter the grounds, and
+where the garage should stand.
+
+"Which reminds me," said Linda--"haven't you your car with you? 
+Or was that a hired one you were touring in?"
+
+"Mine," said Peter Morrison, "but we toured so far, it's in the
+shop for a general overhauling today."
+
+"That being the case," said Linda, "walk home with me and I'll
+take you to your place in mine and bring you back to the cars, if
+you only want to stay an hour or two."
+
+"Why, that would be fine," said Peter.  "You didn't mention, the
+other evening, that you had a car."
+
+"No," said Linda, "I had been trying to keep cars out of my
+thought for a long time, but I could endure it no longer the
+other day, so I got mine out and tuned it up.  If you don't mind
+stacking up a bit, three can ride in it very comfortably."
+
+That was the way it happened that Linda walked home after school
+that afternoon between Peter Morrison and his architect, brought
+out the Bear Cat, and drove them to Peter's location.
+
+All that day, workmen had been busy under the management of a
+well-instructed foreman, removing trees and bushes and stones and
+clearing the spot that had been selected for the garage and
+approximately for the house.
+
+The soft brownish gray of Linda's dress was exactly the color to
+intensify the darker brown of her eyes.  There was a fluctuating
+red in her olive cheeks, a brilliant red framing her even white
+teeth.  Once dressed so that she was satisfied with the results,
+Linda immediately forgot her clothes, and plunged into Morrison's
+plans.
+
+"Peter," she said gravely, with Peter perfectly cognizant of the
+twinkle in her dark eyes, "Peter, you may save money in a
+straight-line road, but you're going to sin against your soul if
+you build it.  You'll have to economize in some other way, and
+run your road around the base of those boulders, then come in
+straight to the line here, and then you should swing again and
+run out on this point, where guests can have one bewildering
+glimpse of the length of our blue valley, and then whip them
+around this clump of perfumy lilac and elders, run them to your
+side entrance, and then scoot the car back to the garage.  I
+think you should place the front of your house about here." 
+Linda indicated where.  "So long as you're buying a place like
+this you don't want to miss one single thing; and you do want to
+make the very most possible out of every beauty you have.  And
+you mustn't fail to open up and widen the runway from that
+energetic, enthusiastic spring.  Carry it across your road, sure. 
+It will cost you another little something for a safe bridge, but
+there's nothing so artistic as a bridge with a cold stream
+running under it.  And think what a joyful time I'll have,
+gathering specimens for you of every pretty water plant that
+grows in my particular canyon.  Any time when you're busy in your
+library and you hear my car puffing up the incline and around the
+corner and rattling across the bridge, you'll know that I am down
+here giving you a start of watercress and miners' lettuce and
+every lovely thing you could mention that likes to be nibbled or
+loved-up, while it dabbles its toes in the water."
+
+Peter Morrison looked at Linda reflectively.  He looked for such
+a long moment that Henry Anderson reached a nebulous conclusion. 
+"Fine!" he cried.  "Every one of those suggestions is valuable to
+an inexperienced man.  Morrison, shan't I make a note of them?"
+
+"Yes, Henry, you shall," said Peter.  "I am going to push this
+thing as fast as possible, so far as building the garage is
+concerned and getting settled in it.  After that I don't care if
+I live on this spot until we know each other by the inch, before
+I begin building my home.  At the present minute it appeals to me
+that 'home' is about the best word in the language of any nation. 
+I have a feeling that what I build here is going to be my home,
+very possibly the only one I shall ever have.  We must find the
+spot on which the Lord intended that a house should grow on this
+hillside, and then we must build that house so that it has a room
+suitable for a workshop in which I may strive, under the best
+conditions possible, to get my share of the joy of life and to
+earn the money that I shall require to support me and entertain
+my friends; and that sounds about as selfish as anything possibly
+could.  It seems to be mostly 'me' and 'mine,' and it's not the
+real truth concerning this house.  I don't believe there is a
+healthy, normal man living who has not his dream.  I have no
+hesitation whatever in admitting that I have mine.  This house
+must be two things.  It has got to be a concrete workshop for me,
+and it has got to be an abstract abiding place for a dream.  It's
+rather difficult to build a dream house for a dream lady, so I
+don't know what kind of a fist I am going to make of it."
+
+Linda sat down on a boulder and contemplated her shoes for a
+minute.  Then she raised her ever-shifting, eager, young eyes to
+Peter, and it seemed to him as he looked into them that there
+were little gold lights flickering at the bottom of their
+darkness.
+
+"Why, that's just as easy," she said.  "A home is merely a home. 
+It includes a front porch and a back porch and a fireplace and a
+bathtub and an ice chest and a view and a garden around it; all
+the rest is incidental.  If you have more money, you have more
+incidentals.  If you don't have so much, you use your imagination
+and think you have just as much on less."
+
+"Now, I wonder," said Peter, "when I find my dream lady, if she
+will have an elastic imagination."
+
+"Haven't you found her yet?" asked Linda casually.
+
+"No," said Peter, "I haven't found her, and unfortunately she
+hasn't found me.  I have had a strenuous time getting my start in
+life.  It's mostly a rush from one point of interest to another,
+dropping at any wayside station for refreshment and the use of a
+writing table.  Occasionally I have seen a vision that I have
+wanted to follow, but I never have had time.  So far, the lady of
+this house is even more of a dream than the house."
+
+"Oh, well, don't worry," said Linda comfortingly.  "The world is
+full of the nicest girls.  When you get ready for a gracious lady
+I'll find you one that will have an India-rubber imagination and
+a great big loving heart and Indian-hemp apron strings so that
+half a dozen babies can swing from them."
+
+Morrison turned to Henry Anderson.
+
+"You hear, Henry?" he said.  "I'm destined to have a large
+family.  You must curtail your plans for the workroom and make
+that big room back of it into a nursery."
+
+"Well, what I am going to do," said Henry Anderson, "is to build
+a place suitable for your needs.  If any dream woman comes to it,
+she will have to fit herself to her environment."
+
+Linda frowned.
+
+"Now, that isn't a bit nice of you," she said, "and I don't
+believe Peter will pay the slightest attention to you.  He'll let
+me make you build a lovely room for the love of his heart, and a
+great big bright nursery on the sunny side for his small people."
+
+"I never believed," said Henry Anderson, "in counting your
+chickens before they are hatched.  There are a couple of acres
+around Peter's house, and he can build an addition as his needs
+increase."
+
+"Messy idea," said Linda promptly.  "Thing to do, when you build
+a house, is to build it the way you want it for the remainder of
+your life, so you don't have to tear up the scenery every few
+years, dragging in lumber for expansion.  And I'll tell you
+another thing.  If the homemakers of this country don't get the
+idea into their heads pretty soon that they are not going to be
+able to hold their own with the rest of the world, with no
+children, or one child in the family, there's a sad day of
+reckoning coming.  With the records at the patent office open to
+the world, you can't claim that the brain of the white man is not
+constructive.  You can look at our records and compare them with
+those of countries ages and ages older than we are, which never
+discovered the beauties of a Dover egg-beater or a washing
+machine or a churn or a railroad or a steamboat or a bridge.  We
+are head and shoulders above other nations in invention, and just
+as fast as possible, we are falling behind in the birth rate. 
+The red man and the yellow man and the brown man and the black
+man can look at our egg-beaters and washing machines and bridges
+and big guns, and go home and copy them; and use them while
+rearing even bigger families than they have now.  If every home
+in Lilac Valley had at least six sturdy boys and girls growing up
+in it with the proper love of country and the proper realization
+of the white man's right to supremacy, and if all the world now
+occupied by white men could make an equal record, where would be
+the talk of the yellow peril?  There wouldn't be any yellow
+peril.  You see what I mean?"
+
+Linda lifted her frank eyes to Peter Morrison.
+
+"Yes, young woman," said Peter gravely, "I see what you mean, but
+this is the first time I ever heard a high-school kid propound
+such ideas.  Where did you get them?"
+
+"Got them in Multiflores Canyon from my father to start with,"
+said Linda, "but recently I have been thinking, because there is
+a boy in high school who is making a great fight for a better
+scholarship record than a Jap in his class.  I brood over it 
+every spare minute, day or night, and when I say my prayers I
+implore high Heaven to send him an idea or to send me one that I
+can pass on to him, that will help him to beat that Jap."
+
+"I see," said Peter Morrison.  "We'll have to take time to talk
+this over.  It's barely possible I might be able to suggest
+something."
+
+"You let that kid fight his own battles," said Henry Anderson
+roughly.  "He's no proper bug-catcher.  I feel it in my bones."
+
+For the first time, Linda's joy laugh rang over Peter Morrison's
+possession.
+
+"I don't know about that," she said gaily.  "He's a wide-awake
+specimen; he has led his class for four years when the Jap didn't
+get ahead of him.  But, all foolishness aside, take my word for
+it, Peter, you'll be sorry if you don't build this house big
+enough for your dream lady and for all the little dreams that may
+spring from her heart."
+
+"Nightmares, you mean," said Henry Anderson.  "I can't imagine a
+bunch of kids muddying up this spring and breaking the bushes and
+using slingshots on the birds."
+
+"Yes," said Linda with scathing sarcasm, "and wouldn't our
+government be tickled to death to have a clear spring and a
+perfect bush and a singing bird, if it needed six men to go over
+the top to handle a regiment of Japanese!"
+
+Then Peter Morrison laughed.
+
+"Well, your estimate is too low, Linda," he said in his nicest
+drawling tone of voice.  "Believe me, one U.  S.  kid will never
+march in a whole regiment of Japanese.  They won't lay down their
+guns and walk to surrender as bunches of Germans did.  Nobody
+need ever think that.  They are as good fighters as they are
+imitators.  There's nothing for you to do, Henry, but to take  to
+heart what Miss Linda has said.  Plan the house with a suite for
+a dream lady, and a dining room, a sleeping porch and a nursery
+big enough for the six children allotted to me."
+
+"You're not really in earnest?" asked Henry Anderson in doubting
+astonishment.
+
+"I am in the deepest kind of earnest," said Peter Morrison. 
+"What Miss Linda says is true.  As a nation, our people are
+pampering themselves and living for their own pleasures.  They
+won't take the trouble or endure the pain required to bear and to
+rear children; and the day is rolling toward us, with every turn
+of the planet one day closer, when we are going to be outnumbered
+by a combination of peoples who can take our own tricks and beat
+us with them.  We must pass along the good word that the one
+thing America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES AND
+HEARTS BIG ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our
+grandfathers, when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child
+in the family, and if you didn't have a dozen you weren't doing
+your manifest duty."
+
+"Well, if that is the way you see the light, we must enlarge this
+house.  As designed, it included every feminine convenience
+anyway.  But when I build my house I am going to build it for
+myself."
+
+"Then don't talk any more about being my bug-catcher," said Linda
+promptly, "because when I build my house it's going to be a nest
+that will hold six at the very least.  My heart is perfectly set
+on a brood of six."
+
+Linda was quite unaware that the two men were studying her
+closely, but if she had known what was going on in their minds
+she would have had nothing to regret, because both of them found
+her very attractive, and both of them were wondering how anything
+so superficial as Eileen could be of the same blood as Linda.
+
+"Are we keeping you too late?" inquired Peter.
+
+"No," said Linda, "I am as interested as I can be.  Finish
+everything you want to do before we go.  I hope you're going to
+let me come over often and watch you with your building.  Maybe I
+can get an idea for some things I want to do.  Eileen and I have
+our house divided by a Mason and Dixon line.  On her side is
+Mother's suite, the dining room, the living room and the front
+door.  On mine there's the garage and the kitchen and Katy's
+bedroom and mine and the library and the billiard room.  At the
+present minute I am interested in adapting the library to my
+requirements instead of Father's, and I am emptying the billiard
+room and furnishing it to make a workroom.  I have a small talent
+with a brush and pencil, and I need some bare walls to tack my
+prints on to dry, and I need numerous places for all the things I
+am always dragging in from the desert and the canyons; and since
+I have the Bear Cat running, what I have been doing in that line
+with a knapsack won't be worthy of mention."
+
+"How did it come," inquired Henry Anderson, "that you had that
+car jacked up so long?"
+
+"Why, hasn't anybody told you," asked Linda, "about our day of
+the Black Shadow?"
+
+"John Gilman wrote me when it happened," said Peter softly, "but
+I don't believe it has been mentioned before Henry.  You tell
+him."
+
+Linda turned to Henry Anderson, and with trembling lips and
+paling cheeks, in a few brief sentences she gave him the details. 
+Then she said to Peter Morrison in a low voice:  "And that is the
+why of Marian Thorne's white head.  Anybody tell you that?"
+
+"That white head puzzled me beyond anything I ever saw," he said. 
+"I meant to ask John about it.  He used to talk to me and write
+to me often about her, and lately he hasn't; when I came I saw
+the reason, and so you see I felt reticent on the subject."
+
+"Well, there's nothing the matter with my tongue," said Linda. 
+"It's loose at both ends.  Marian was an expert driver.  She
+drove with the same calm judgment and precision and graceful
+skill that she does everything else, but the curve was steep and
+something in the brakes was defective.  It broke with a snap and
+there was not a thing she could do.  Enough was left of the
+remains of the car to prove that.  Ten days afterward her head
+was almost as white as snow.  Before that it was as dark as mine. 
+But her body is just as young and her heart is just as young and
+her face is even more beautiful.  I do think that a white crown
+makes her lovelier than she was before.  I have known Marian ever
+since I can remember, and I don't know one thing about her that I
+could not look you straight in the eye and tell you all about. 
+There is not a subterfuge or an evasion or a small mean deceit in
+her soul.  She is the brainiest woman and the biggest woman I
+know."
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said Peter Morrison.  "And while you
+are talking about nice women, we met a mighty fine one at
+Riverside on Sunday.  Her name is Mary Louise Whiting.  Do you
+know her?"
+
+"Not personally," said Linda.  "I don't recall that I ever saw
+her.  I know her brother, Donald.  He is the high-school boy who
+is having the wrestle with the Jap."
+
+"I liked her too," said Henry Anderson.  "And by the way, Miss
+Linda, haven't bug-catchers any reputation at all as nest
+builders?  Is it true that among feathered creatures the hen
+builds the home?"
+
+"No, it's not," said Linda promptly.  "Male birds make a splendid
+record carrying nest material.  What is true is that in the
+majority of cases the female does the building."
+
+"Well, what I am getting at," said Henry Anderson, "is this.  Is
+there anything I can do to help you with that billiard room that
+you're going to convert to a workroom?  What do you lack in it
+that you would like to have?  Do you need more light or air, or a
+fireplace, or what?  When you take us to the station, suppose you
+drive us past your house and give me a look at that room and let
+me think over it a day or two.  I might be able to make some
+suggestion that would help you."
+
+"Now that is positively sweet of you," said Linda.  "I never
+thought of such a thing as either comfort or convenience.  I
+thought I had to take that room as it stands and do the best I
+could with it, but since you mention it, it's barely possible
+that more air might be agreeable and also more light, and if
+there could be a small fireplace built in front of the chimney
+where it goes up from the library fireplace, it certainly would
+be a comfort, and it would add something to the room that nothing
+else could.
+
+"No workroom really has a soul if you can't smell smoke and see
+red when you go to it at night."
+
+"You little outdoor heathen," laughed Peter Morrison.  "One would
+think you were an Indian."
+
+"I am a fairly good Indian," said Linda.  "I have been scouting
+around with my father a good many years.  How about it, Peter? 
+Does the road go crooked?"
+
+"Yes," said Peter, "the road goes crooked."
+
+"Does the bed of the spring curve and sweep across the lawn and
+drop off to the original stream below the tree-tobacco clump
+there?"
+
+"If you say so, it does," said Peter.
+
+"Including the bridge?" inquired Linda.
+
+"Including the bridge," said Peter.  "I'll have to burn some
+midnight oil, but I can visualize the bridge."
+
+"And is this house where you 'set up your rest,' as you so
+beautifully said the other night at dinner, going to lay its
+corner stone and grow to its roof a selfish house, or is it going
+to be generous enough for a gracious lady and a flight of little
+footsteps?"
+
+Peter Morrison took off his hat.  He turned his face toward the
+length of Lilac Valley and stood, very tall and straight, looking
+far away before him.  Presently he looked down at Linda.
+
+"Even so," he said softly.  "My shoulders are broad enough; I
+have a brain; and I am not afraid to work.  If my heart is not
+quite big enough yet, I see very clearly how it can be made to
+expand."
+
+"I have been told," said Linda in a low voice, "that Mary Louise
+Whiting is a perfect darling."  
+
+Peter looked at her from the top of her black head to the tips of
+her brown shoes.  He could have counted the freckles bridging her
+nose.  The sunburn on her cheeks was very visible; there was
+something arresting in the depth of her eyes, the curve of her
+lips, the lithe slenderness of her young body; she gave the
+effect of something smoldering inside that would leap at a
+breath.
+
+"I was not thinking of Miss Whiting," he said soberly.
+
+Henry Anderson was watching.  Now he turned his back and 
+commenced talking about plans, but in his heart he said:  "So
+that's the lay of the land.  You've got to hustle yourself,
+Henry, or you won't have the ghost of a show."
+
+Later, when they motored down the valley and stopped at the
+Strong residence, Peter refused to be monopolized by Eileen.  He
+climbed the two flights of stairs with Henry Anderson and Linda
+and exhausted his fund of suggestions as to what could be done to
+that empty billiard room to make an attractive study of it. 
+Linda listened quietly to all their suggestions, and then she
+said:
+
+"It would be fine to have another window, and a small skylight
+would be a dream, and as for the fireplace you mention, I can't
+even conceive how great it would be to have that; but my purse is
+much more limited than Peter's, and while I have my school work
+to do every day, my earning capacity is nearly negligible.  I can
+only pick up a bit here and there with my brush and pencil --
+place cards and Easter cards and valentines, and once or twice
+magazine covers, and little things like that.  I don't see my way
+clear to lumber and glass and bricks and chimney pieces."
+
+Peter looked at Henry, and Henry looked at Peter, and a male high
+sign, ancient as day, passed between them.
+
+"Easiest thing in the world," said Peter.  "It's as sure as
+shooting that when my three or four fireplaces, which Henry's
+present plans call for, are built, there is going to be all the
+material left that can be used in a light tiny fireplace such as
+could be built on a third floor, and when the figuring for the
+house is done it could very easily include the cutting of a
+skylight and an extra window or two here, and getting the
+material in with my stuff, it would cost you almost nothing."
+
+Linda's eyes opened wide and dewy with surprise and pleasure.
+
+"Why, you two perfectly nice men!" she said.  "I haven't felt as
+I do this minute since I lost Daddy.  It's wonderful to be taken
+care of.  It's better than cream puffs with almond flavoring."
+
+Henry Anderson looked at Linda keenly.
+
+"You're the darndest kid!" he said.  "One minute you're smacking
+your lips over cream puffs, and the next you're going to the
+bottom of the yellow peril.  I never before saw your combination
+in one girl.  What's the explanation?" For the second time that
+evening Linda's specialty in rapture floated free.
+
+"Bunch all the component parts into the one paramount fact that I
+am Saturday's child," she said, "so I am constantly on the job of
+working for a living, and then add to that the fact that I was
+reared by a nerve specialist."
+
+Then they went downstairs, and the men refused both Eileen's and
+Linda's invitation to remain for dinner.  When they had gone
+Eileen turned to Linda with a discontented and aggrieved face.
+
+"In the name of all that's holy, what are you doing or planning
+to do?" she demanded.
+
+"Not anything that will cost you a penny beyond my natural
+rights," said Linda quietly.
+
+"That is not answering my question," said Eileen.  "You're not of
+age and you're still under the authority of a guardian.  If you
+can't answer me, possibly you can him.  Shall I send John Gilman
+to ask what I want to know of you?"
+
+"When did I ever ask you any questions about what you chose to
+do?" asked Linda.  "I am merely following the example that you
+have previously set me.  John Gilman and I used to be great
+friends.  It might help both of us to have a family reunion. 
+Send him by all means."
+
+"You used to take pride," suggested Eileen, "in leading your
+class."
+
+"And has anyone told you that I am not leading my class at the
+present minute?" asked Linda.
+
+"No," said Eileen, "but what I want to point out to you is that
+the minute you start running with the boys you will quit leading
+your class."
+
+"Don't you believe it," said Linda quietly.  "I'm not built that
+way.  I shan't concentrate on any boy to the exclusion of
+chemistry and geometry, never fear it."
+
+Then she thoughtfully ascended the stairs and went to work.
+
+Eileen went to her room and sat down to think; and the more she
+thought, the deeper grew her anger and chagrin; and to the
+indifference that always had existed in her heart concerning
+Linda was added in that moment a new element.  She was jealous of
+her.  How did it come that a lanky, gangling kid in her tees had
+been paid a visit by the son of possibly the most cultured and
+influential family of the city, people of prestige, comfortable
+wealth, and unlimited popularity?  For four years she had
+struggled to gain an entrance in some way into Louise Whiting's
+intimate circle of friends, and she had ended by shutting the
+door on the only son of the family.  And why had she ever allowed
+Linda to keep the runabout?  It was not proper that a young girl
+should own a high powered car like that.  It was not proper that
+she should drive it and go racing around the country, heaven knew
+where, and with heaven knew whom.  Eileen bit her lip until it
+almost bled.  Her eyes were hateful and her hands were nervous as
+she reviewed the past week.  She might think any mean thing that
+a mean brain could conjure up, but when she calmed down to facts
+she had to admit that there was not a reason in the world why
+Linda should not drive the car she had driven for her father, or
+why she should not take with her Donald Whiting or Peter Morrison
+or Henry Anderson.  The thing that rankled was that the car
+belonged to Linda.  The touring car which she might have owned
+and driven, had she so desired, lay in an extremely slender
+string of pearls around her neck at that instant.  She reflected
+that if she had kept her car and made herself sufficiently hardy
+to drive it, she might have been the one to have taken Peter
+Morrison to his home location and to have had many opportunities
+for being with him.
+
+"I've been a fool," said Eileen, tugging at the pearls viciously. 
+"They are nothing but a little bit of a string that looks as if I
+were trying to do something and couldn't, at best.  What I've got
+to do is to think more of myself.  I've got to plan some way to
+prevent Linda from being too popular until I really get my mind
+made up as to what I want to do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.  Leavening the Bread of Life
+
+"'A house that is divided against itself cannot stand,'" quoted
+Linda.  "I must keep in mind what Eileen said, not that there is
+the slightest danger, but to fall behind in my grades is a thing
+that simply must not happen.  If it be true that Peter and Henry
+can so easily and so cheaply add a few improvements in my
+workroom in connection with Peter's building, I can see no reason
+why they shouldn't do it, so long as I pay for it.  I haven't a
+doubt but that there will be something I can do for Peter, before
+he finishes his building, that he would greatly appreciate,
+while, since I'm handy with my pencil, I MIGHT be able to make a
+few head and tail pieces for some of his articles that would make
+them more attractive.  I don't want to use any friend of mine:  I
+don't want to feel that I am not giving quite as much as I get,
+but I think I see my way clear, between me and the Bear Cat, to
+pay for all the favors I would receive in altering my study.
+
+"First thing I do I must go through Father's books and get the
+money for them, so I'll know my limitation when I come to select
+furniture.  And I don't know that I am going to be so terribly
+modest when it comes to naming the sum with which I'll be
+satisfied for my allowance.  Possibly I shall exercise my age-old
+prerogative and change my mind; I may just say 'half' right out
+loud and stick to it.  And there's another thing.  Since the
+editor of Everybody's Home has started my department and promised
+that  if it goes well he will give it to me permanently, I can
+certainly depend on something from that.  He has used my
+Introduction and two instalments now.  I should think it might be
+fair to talk payments pretty soon.  He should give me fifty
+dollars for a recipe with its perfectly good natural history and
+embellished with my own vegetable and floral decorations.
+
+"In the meantime I think I might buy my worktable and possibly an
+easel, so I can have real room to spread out my new material and
+see how it would feel to do one drawing completely unhampered. 
+I'll order the table tonight, and then I'll begin on the books,
+because I must have Saturday free; and I must be thinking about
+the most attractive and interesting place I can take Donald to. 
+I just have to keep him interested until he gets going of his own
+accord, because he shall beat Oka Sayye.  I wouldn't let Donald
+say it but I don't mind saying myself to myself with no one
+present except myself that in all my life I have never seen
+anything so masklike as the stolid little square head on that
+Jap.  I have never seen anything I dislike more than the oily,
+stiff, black hair standing up on it like menacing bristles.  I
+have never had but one straight look deep into his eyes, but in
+that look I saw the only thing that ever frightened me in looking
+into a man's eyes in my whole life.  And there is one thing that
+I have to remember to caution Donald about.  He must carry on
+this contest in a perfectly open, fair, and aboveboard way, and
+he simply must not antagonize Oka Sayye.  There are so many of
+the Japs.  They all look so much alike, and there's a blood
+brotherhood between them that will make them protect each other
+to the death against any white man.  It wouldn't be safe for
+Donald to make Oka Sayye hate him.  He had far better try to make
+him his friend and put a spirit of honest rivalry into his heart;
+but come to think of it, there wasn't anything like that in my
+one look into Oka Sayye's eyes.  I don't know what it was, but
+whatever it was it was something repulsive."
+
+With this thought in her mind Linda walked slowly as she
+approached the high school the next time.  Far down the street,
+over the walks and across the grounds, her eyes were searching
+eagerly for the tall slender figure of Donald Whiting.  She did
+not see him in the morning, but at noon she encountered him in
+the hall.
+
+"Looking for you," he cried gaily when he saw her.  "I've got my
+pry in on Trig.  The professor's interested.  Dad fished out an
+old Trig that he used when he was a boy and I have some new
+angles that will keep my esteemed rival stirring up his gray
+matter for some little time."
+
+"Good for you! Joyous congratulations! You've got the idea!"
+cried Linda.  "Go to it! Start something all along the line, but
+make it something founded on brains and reason and common sense. 
+But, Donald, I was watching for you.  I wanted to say a word."
+
+Donald Whiting bent toward her.  The faintest suspicion of a
+tinge of color crept into his cheeks.
+
+"That's fine," he said.  "What was it you wanted?"
+
+"Only this," she said in almost a breathless whisper.  "There is
+nothing in California I am afraid of except a Jap, and I am
+afraid of them, not potentially, not on account of what all of us
+know they are planning in the backs of their heads for the
+future, but right here and now, personally and physically.  Don't
+antagonize Oka Sayye.  Don't be too precipitate about what you're
+trying to do.  Try to make it appear that you're developing ideas
+for the interest and edification of the whole class.  Don't incur
+his personal enmity.  Use tact."
+
+"You think I am afraid of that little jiu-jitsu?', he scoffed. 
+"I can lick him with one hand."  
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said Linda, measuring his height and
+apparent strength and fitness.  "I haven't a doubt of it.  But
+let me ask you this confidentially:  Have you got a friend who
+would slip in and stab him in the back in case you were in an
+encounter and he was getting the better of you?"
+
+Donald Whiting's eyes widened.  He looked at Linda amazed.
+
+"Wouldn't that be going rather far?" he asked.  "I think I have
+some fairly good friends among the fellows, but I don't know just
+whom I would want to ask to do me that small favor."
+
+"That is precisely the point," cried Linda.  "You haven't a 
+friend you would ask; and you haven't a friend who would do it,
+if you did.  But don't believe for one second that Oka Sayye
+hasn't half a dozen who would make away with you at an unexpected
+time and in a secluded place, and vanish, if it would in any way
+further Oka Sayye's ambition, or help establish the supremacy of
+the Japanese in California."
+
+"Um-hm," said Donald Whiting.
+
+He was looking far past Linda and now his eyes were narrowed in
+thought.  "I believe you're RIGHT about it."
+
+"I've thought of you so often since I tried to spur you to beat
+Oka Sayye," said Linda.  "I feel a sort of responsibility for
+you.  It's to the honor and glory of all California, and the
+United States, and the white race everywhere for you to beat him,
+but if any harm should come to you I would always feel that I
+shouldn't have urged it."
+
+"Now that's foolishness," said Donald earnestly.  "If I am such a
+dub that I didn't have the ambition to think up some way to beat
+a Jap myself, no matter what happens you shouldn't regret having
+been the one to point out to me my manifest duty.  Dad is a
+Harvard man, you know, and that is where he's going to send me,
+and in talking about it the other night I told him about you, and
+what you had said to me.  He's the greatest old scout, and was
+mightily interested.  He went at once and opened a box of books
+in the garret and dug out some stuff that will be a big help to
+me.  He's going to keep posted and see what he can do; he said
+even worse things to me than you did; so you needn't feel that
+you have any responsibility; besides that, it's not proved yet
+that I can beat Oka Sayye."
+
+"Yes, it is!" said Linda, sending a straight level gaze deep into
+his eyes.  "Yes, it is! Whenever a white man makes up his mind
+what he's going to do, and puts his brain to work, he beats any
+man, of any other color.  Sure you're going to beat him."
+
+"Fat chance I have not to," said Donald, laughing ruefully.  "If
+I don't beat him I am disgraced at home, and with you; before I
+try very long in this highly specialized effort I am making,
+every professor in the high school and every member of my class
+is bound to become aware of what is going on.  You're mighty
+right about it.  I have got to beat him or disgrace myself right
+at the beginning of my nice young career."
+
+"Of course you'll beat him," said Linda.
+
+"At what hour did you say I should come, Saturday?"
+
+"Oh, come with the lark for all I care," said Linda.  "Early
+morning in the desert is a mystery and a miracle, and the larks
+have been there just long enough to get their voices properly
+tuned for their purest notes."
+
+Then she turned and hurried away.  Her first leisure minute after
+reaching home she went to the library wearing one of Katy's big
+aprons, and carrying a brush and duster.  Beginning at one end of
+each shelf, she took down the volumes she intended to sell,
+carefully dusted them, wiped their covers, and the place on which
+they had stood, and then opened and leafed through them so that
+no scrap of paper containing any notes or memoranda of possible
+value should be overlooked.  It was while handling these volumes
+that Linda shifted several of the books written by her father, to
+separate them from those with which she meant to part.  She had
+grown so accustomed to opening each book she handled and looking
+through it, that she mechanically opened the first one she picked
+up and from among its leaves there fell a scrap of loose paper. 
+She picked it up and found it was a letter from the publishers of
+the book.  Linda's eyes widened suddenly as she read:
+
+MY DEAR STRONG:
+
+Sending you a line of congratulations.  You have gone to the head
+of the list of "best sellers" among medical works, and the cheque
+I draw you for the past six months' royalties will be
+considerably larger than that which goes to your most esteemed
+contemporary on your chosen subject.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+The signature was that of Frederic Dickman, the editor of one of
+the biggest publishing houses of the country.  
+
+"Hm," she said to herself softly.  "Now that is a queer thing. 
+That letter was written nearly five years ago.  I don't know why
+I never thought of royalties since Daddy went.  I frequently
+heard him mention them before.  I suppose they're being paid to
+John Gilman as administrator, or to the Consolidated Bank, and
+cared for with Father's other business.  There's no reason why
+these books should not keep on selling.  There are probably the
+same number of young men, if not a greater number, studying
+medicine every year.  I wonder now, about these royalties.  I
+must do some thinking."
+
+Then Linda began to examine books more carefully than before. 
+The letter she carried with her when she went to her room; but
+she made a point of being on the lawn that evening when John
+Gilman came, and after talking to him a few minutes, she said
+very casually:  "John, as Father's administrator, does a royalty
+from his medical books come to you?"
+
+"No," said Gilman.  "It is paid to his bank."
+
+"I don't suppose," said Linda casually, "it would amount to
+enough to keep one in shoes these inflated days."
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that," said John testily.  "I have seen a
+few of those cheques in your Father's time.  You should be able
+to keep fairly well supplied with shoes."
+
+"So I should," said Linda drily.  "So I should."
+
+Then she led him to the back of the house and talked the incident
+out of his mind as cleverly as possible by giving him an
+intensive botanical study of Cotyledon.  But she could not
+interest him quite so deeply as she had hoped, for presently he
+said:  "Eileen tells me that you're parting with some of the
+books."
+
+"Only technical ones for which I could have no possible use,"
+said Linda.  "I need clothes, and have found that had I a proper
+place to work in and proper tools to work with, I could earn
+quite a bit with my brush and pencil, and so I am trying to get
+enough money together to fit up the billiard room for a workroom,
+since nobody uses it for anything else."
+
+"I see," said John Gilman.  "I suppose running a house is
+extremely expensive these days, but even so the income from your
+estate should be sufficient to dress a schoolgirl and provide for
+anything you would want in the way of furnishing a workroom."
+
+"That's what I have always thought myself," said Linda; "but
+Eileen doesn't agree with me, and she handles the money.  When
+the first of the month comes, we are planning to go over things
+together, and she is going to make me a proper allowance."
+
+"That is exactly as it should be," said Gilman.  "I never
+realized till the other night at dinner that you have grown such
+a great girl, Linda.  That's fine! Fix your workroom the way you
+would like to have it, and if there's anything I can do to help
+you in any way, you have only to command me.  I haven't seen you
+often lately."
+
+"No," said Linda, "but I don't feel that it is exactly my fault. 
+Marian and I were always pals.  When I saw that you preferred
+Eileen, I kept with Marian to comfort her all I could.  I don't
+suppose she cared, particularly.  She couldn't have, or she would
+at least have made some effort to prevent Eileen from
+monopolizing you.  She probably was mighty glad to be rid of you;
+but since you had been together so much, I thought she might miss
+you, so I tried to cover your defection."
+
+John Gilman's face flushed.  He stood very still, while he seemed
+deeply thoughtful.
+
+"Of course you were free to follow your inclinations, or Eileen's
+machinations, whichever you did follow," Linda said lightly, "but
+'them as knows' could tell you, John, as Katy so well puts it,
+that you have made the mistake of your young life."
+
+Then she turned and went to the garage, leaving John to his visit
+with Eileen.
+
+The Eileen who took possession of John was an Eileen with whom he
+was not acquainted.  He had known, the night of the dinner party,
+that Eileen was pouting, but there had been no chance to learn
+from her what her grievance was, and by the next time they met
+she was a bundle of flashing allurement, so he ignored the
+occurrence.  This evening, for the first time, it seemed to him
+that Eileen was not so beautiful a woman as he had thought her. 
+Something had roiled the blood in her delicate veins until it had
+muddied the clear freshness of her smooth satiny skin.  There was
+discontent in her eyes, which were her most convincing
+attraction.  They were big eyes, wide open and candid.  She had
+so trained them through a lifetime of practice that she could
+meet other eyes directly while manipulating her most dextrous
+evasion.  Whenever Eileen was most deceptively subtle, she was
+looking straight at her victim with the innocent appeal of a baby
+in her gaze.
+
+John Gilman had had his struggle.  He had succeeded.  He had
+watched, and waited, and worked incessantly, and when his
+opportunity came he was ready.  Success had come to such a degree
+that in a short time he had assured himself of comfort for any
+woman he loved.  He knew that his appearance was quite as
+pleasing as that of his friend.  He knew that in manner and
+education they were equals.  He was now handling large business
+affairs.  He had made friends in high places.  Whenever Eileen
+was ready, he would build and furnish a home he felt sure would
+be equal, if not superior, to what Morrison was planning.  Why
+had Eileen felt that she would envy any woman who shared life
+with Peter Morrison?
+
+All that day she had annoyed him, because there must have been in
+the very deeps of his soul "a still, small voice" whispering to
+him that he had not lived up to the best traditions of a
+gentleman in his course with Marian.  While no definite plans had
+been made, there had been endless assumption.  Many times they
+had talked of the home they would make together.  When he reached
+the point where he decided that he never had loved Marian as a
+man should love the woman he marries, he felt justified in
+turning to Eileen, but in his heart he knew that if he had been
+the man he was pleased to consider himself, he would have gone to
+Marian Thorne and explained, thereby keeping her friendship,
+while he now knew that he must have earned her contempt.
+
+The day at Riverside had been an enigma he could not solve. 
+Eileen was gay to a degree that was almost boisterous.  She had
+attracted attention and comment which no well-bred woman would
+have done.
+
+The growing discontent in John's soul had increased under Linda's
+direct attack.  He had known Linda since she was four years old
+and had been responsible for some of her education.  He had been
+a large influence in teaching Linda from childhood to be a good
+sport, to be sure she was right and then go ahead, and if she
+hurt herself in the going, to rub the bruise, but to keep her
+path.
+
+A thing patent to the eye of every man who turned an appraising
+look upon Linda always had been one of steadfast loyalty.  You
+could depend upon her.  She was the counterpart of her father;
+and Doctor Strong had been loved by other men.  Wherever he had
+gone he had been surrounded.  His figure had been one that
+attracted attention.  When he had spoken, his voice and what he
+had to say had commanded respect.  And then there had emanated
+from him that peculiar physical charm which gives such pleasing
+and distinguished personality to a very few people in this world. 
+This gift too had descended to Linda.  She could sit and look
+straight at you with her narrow, interested eyes, smile faintly,
+and make you realize what she thought and felt without opening
+her lips.  John did not feel very well acquainted with the girl
+who had dominated the recent dinner party, but he did see that
+she was attractive, that both Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson
+had been greatly amused and very much entertained by her.  He had
+found her so interesting himself that he had paid slight
+attention to Eileen's pouting.
+
+Tonight he was forced to study Eileen, for the sake of his own
+comfort to try to conciliate her.  He was uncomfortable because
+he was unable to conduct himself as Eileen wished him to, without
+a small sickening disgust creeping into his soul.  Before the
+evening was over he became exasperated, and ended by asking
+flatly:  "Eileen, what in the dickens is the matter with you?"
+
+It was a new tone and a new question on nerves tensely strung.
+
+"If you weren't blind you'd know without asking," retorted Eileen
+hotly.
+
+"Then I am 'blind,' for I haven't the slightest notion.  What
+have I done?"
+
+"Isn't it just barely possible," asked Eileen, "that there might
+be other people who would annoy and exasperate me?  I have not
+hinted that you have done anything, although I don't know that
+it's customary for a man calling on his betrothed to stop first
+for a visit with her sister."
+
+"For the love of Mike!" said John Gilman.  "Am I to be found
+fault with for crossing the lawn a minute to see how Linda's wild
+garden is coming on?  I have dug and helped set enough of those
+plants to justify some interest in them as they grow."
+
+"And the garden was your sole subject of conversation?" inquired
+Eileen, implied doubt conveyed nicely.
+
+"No, it was not," answered Gilman, all the bulldog in his nature
+coming to the surface.
+
+"As I knew perfectly," said Eileen.  "I admit that I'm not
+feeling myself.  Things began going wrong recently, and
+everything has gone wrong since.  I think it all began with
+Marian Thorne's crazy idea of selling her home and going to the
+city to try to ape a man."
+
+"Marian never tried to ape a man in her life," said John,
+instantly yielding to a sense of justice.  "She is as strictly
+feminine as any woman I ever knew."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you think studying architecture is a
+woman's work?" sneered Eileen.
+
+"Yes, I do," said Gilman emphatically.  "Women live in houses. 
+They're in them nine tenths of the time to a man's one tenth. 
+Next to rocking a cradle I don't know of any occupation in this
+world more distinctly feminine than the planning of comfortable
+homes for homekeeping people."
+
+Eileen changed the subject swiftly.  "What was Linda saying to
+you?" she asked.
+
+"She was showing me a plant, a rare Echeveria of the Cotyledon
+family, that she tobogganed down one side of Multiflores Canyon
+and delivered safely on the roadway without its losing an
+appreciable amount of 'bloom' from its exquisitely painted
+leaves."
+
+Eileen broke in rudely.  "Linda has missed Marian.  There's not a
+possible thing to make life uncomfortable for me that she is not
+doing.  You needn't tell me you didn't see and understand her
+rude forwardness the other night!"
+
+"No, I didn't see it," said John, "because the fact is I thought
+the kid was positively charming, and so did Peter and Henry
+because both of them said so.  There's one thing you must take
+into consideration, Eileen.  The time has come when she should
+have clothes and liberty and opportunity to shape her life
+according to her inclinations.  Let me tell you she will attract
+attention in georgette and laces."
+
+"And where are the georgette and laces to come from?" inquired
+Eileen sarcastically.  "All outgo and no income for four years is
+leaving the Strong finances in mighty precarious shape, I can
+tell you."
+
+"All right," said Gilman, "I'm financially comfortable now.  I'm
+ready.  Say the word.  We'll select our location and build our
+home, and let Linda have what there is of the Strong income till
+she is settled in life.  You have pretty well had all of it for
+the past four years."
+
+"Yes," said Eileen furiously, "I have 'pretty well' had it, in a
+few little dresses that I have altered myself and very frequently
+made entirely.  I have done the best I could, shifting and
+skimping, and it's not accomplished anything that I have really
+wanted.  According to men, the gas and the telephone and the
+electric light and the taxes and food and cook pay for
+themselves.  All a woman ever spends money on is clothes!"
+
+"Eileen," chuckled John Gilman, "this sounds exactly as if we
+were married, and we're not, yet."
+
+"No," said Eileen, "thank heaven we're not.  If it's come to the
+place where you're siding with everybody else against me, and
+where you're more interested in what my kid sister has to say to
+you than you are in me, I don't think we ever shall be."  
+
+Then, from stress of nerve tension and long practice, some big
+tears gushed up and threatened to overflow Eileen's lovely eyes. 
+That never should happen, for tears are salt water and they cut
+little rivers through even the most carefully and skillfully
+constructed complexion, while Eileen's was looking its worst that
+evening.  She hastily applied her handkerchief, and John Gilman
+took her into his arms; so the remainder of the evening it was as
+if they were not married.  But when John returned to the subject
+of a home and begged Eileen to announce their engagement and let
+him begin work, she evaded him, and put him off, and had to have
+time to think, and she was not ready, and there were many
+excuses, for none of which Gilman could see any sufficient
+reason.  When he left Eileen that night, it was with a heavy
+heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.  Saturday's Child
+
+Throughout the week Linda had worked as never during her life
+previously, in order to save Saturday for Donald Whiting.  She
+ran the Bear Cat down to the garage and had it looked over once
+more to be sure that everything was all right.  Friday evening,
+on her way from school, she stopped at a grocery where she knew
+Eileen kept an account, and for the first time ordered a few
+groceries.  These she carried home with her, and explained to
+Katy what she wanted.
+
+Katy fully realized that Linda was still her child, with no
+thought in her mind save standing at the head of her classes,
+carrying on the work she had begun with her father, keeping up
+her nature study, and getting the best time she could out of life
+in the open as she had been taught to do from her cradle.
+
+Katy had not the slightest intention of opening her lips to say
+one word that might put any idea into the head of her beloved
+child, but she saw no reason why she herself should not harbor
+all the ideas she pleased.
+
+Whereupon, actuated by a combination of family pride, love,
+ambition in her chosen profession, Katy made ready to see that on
+the morrow the son of Frederick Whiting should be properly
+nourished on his outing with Linda.
+
+At six o'clock Saturday morning Linda ran the Bear Cat to the
+back door, where she and Katy packed it.  Before they had
+finished, Donald Whiting came down the sidewalk, his cheeks
+flushed with the exercise of walking, his eyes bright with
+anticipation, his cause forever won--in case he had a cause--with
+Katy, because she liked the wholesome, hearty manner in which he
+greeted Linda, and she was dumbfounded when he held out his hand
+to her and said laughingly:  "Blessed among women, did you put in
+a fine large consignment of orange punch?"
+
+"No," said Katy, "I'll just tell ye flat-footed there ain't going
+to be any punch, but, young sir, you're eshcortin' a very capable
+young lady, and don't ye bewail the punch, because ye might be
+complimenting your face with something ye would like a hape
+better."
+
+"Can't be done, Katy," cried Donald.
+
+"Ye must have a poor opinion of us," laughed Katy, "if ye are
+thinking ye can get to the end of our limitations in one lunch. 
+Fourteen years me and Miss Linda's been on this lunch-box stunt. 
+Don't ye be thinkin' ye can exhaust us in any wan trip, or in any
+wan dozen."
+
+So they said good-bye to Katy and rolled past Eileen's room on
+the way to the desert.  Eileen stood at the window watching them,
+and never had her heart been so full of discontent and her soul
+the abiding place of such envy or her mind so busy.  Just when
+she had thought life was going to yield her what she craved, she
+could not understand how or why things should begin to go wrong.
+
+As the Bear Cat traversed Lilac Valley, Linda was pointing out
+Peter Morrison's location.  She was telling Donald Whiting where
+to find Peter's articles, and what a fine man he was, and that he
+had promised to think how he could help with their plan to make
+of Donald a better scholar than was Oka Sayye.
+
+"Well, I call that mighty decent of a stranger," said Donald.
+
+"But he is scarcely more of a stranger than I am," answered
+Linda.  "He is a writer.  He is interested in humanity.  It's the
+business of every man in this world to reach out and help every
+boy with whom he comes in contact into the biggest, finest
+manhood possible.  He only knows that you're a boy tackling a big
+job that means much to every white boy to have you succeed with,
+and for that reason he's just as interested as I am.  Maybe, when
+we come in this evening, I'll run up to his place, and you can
+talk it over with him.  If your father helped you at one angle,
+it's altogether probable that Peter Morrison could help you at
+another."
+
+Donald Whiting rubbed his knee reflectively.  He was sitting half
+turned in the wide seat so that he might watch Linda's hands and
+her face while she drove.
+
+"Well, that's all right," he said heartily.  "You can write me
+down as willing and anxious to take all the help I can get, for
+it's going to be no microscopic job, that I can tell you.  One
+week has waked up the Jap to the fact that there's something
+doing, and he's digging in and has begun, the last day or two, to
+speak up in class and suggest things himself.  Since I've been
+studying him and watching him, I have come to the conclusion that
+he is much older than I am.  Something he said in class yesterday
+made me think he had probably had the best schooling Japan could
+give him before he came here.  The next time you meet him look
+for a suspicion of gray hairs around his ears.  He's too blamed
+comprehensive for the average boy of my age.  You said the Japs
+were the best imitators in the world and I have an idea in the
+back of my head that before I get through with him, Oka Sayye is
+going to prove your proposition."
+
+Linda nodded as she shot the Bear Cat across the streetcar tracks
+and headed toward the desert.  The engine was purring softly as
+it warmed up.  The car was running smoothly.  The sun of early
+morning was shining on them through bracing, salt, cool air, and
+even in the valley the larks were busy, and the mockingbirds, and
+from every wayside bush the rosy finches were singing.  All the
+world was coming to the exquisite bloom of a half-tropical
+country.  Up from earth swept the heavy odors of blooming citrus
+orchards, millions of roses, and the overpowering sweetness of
+gardens and cultivated flowers; while down from the mountains
+rolled the delicate breath of the misty blue lilac, the pungent
+odor of California sage, and the spicy sweet of the lemonade
+bush.  They were two young things, free for the day, flying down
+a perfect road, adventuring with Providence.  They had only gone
+a few miles when Donald Whiting took off his hat, stuffed it down
+beside him, and threw back his head, shaking his hair to the wind
+in a gesture so soon to become familiar to Linda.  She glanced
+across at him and found him looking at her.  A smile broke over
+her lips.  One of her most spontaneous laughs bubbled up in her
+throat.
+
+"Topping, isn't it!" she cried gaily.
+
+"It's the best thing that ever happened to me," answered Donald
+Whiting instantly.  "Our car is a mighty good one and Dad isn't
+mean about letting me drive it.  I can take it frequently and can
+have plenty of gas and take my crowd; but lordy, I don't believe
+there's a boy or girl living that doesn't just positively groan
+when they see one of these little gray Bear Cats go loping past. 
+And I never even had a ride in one before.  I can't get over the
+fact that it's yours.  It wouldn't seem so funny if it belonged
+to one of the fellows."
+
+With steady hand and gradually increasing speed, Linda put the
+Bear Cat over the roads of early morning.  Sometimes she stopped
+in the shade of pepper, eucalyptus, or palm, where the larks were
+specializing in their age-old offertory.  And then again they
+went racing until they reached the real desert.  Linda ran the
+car under the shade of a tall clump of bloom-whitened alders. 
+She took off her hat, loosened the hair at her temples, and
+looked out across the long morning stretch of desert.
+
+"It's just beginning to be good," she said.  She began pointing
+with her slender hand.  "That gleam you see over there is the
+gold of a small clump of early poppies.  The purple beyond it is
+lupin.  All these exquisite colors on the floor are birds'-eyes
+and baby blue eyes, and the misty white here and there is
+forget-me-not.  It won't be long til thousands and thousands of
+yucca plants will light their torches all over the desert and all
+the alders show their lacy mist.  Of course you know how
+exquisitely the Spaniards named the yucca 'Our Lord's Candles.'
+Isn't that the prettiest name for a flower, and isn't it the
+prettiest thought?"
+
+"It certainly is," answered Donald.
+
+"Had any experience with the desert?" Linda asked lightly.
+
+"Hunted sage hens some," answered Donald.
+
+"Oh, well, that'll be all right," said Linda.  "I wondered if
+you'd go murdering yourself like a tenderfoot."
+
+"What's the use of all this artillery?" inquired Donald as he
+stepped from the car.
+
+"Better put on your hat.  You're taller than most of the bushes;
+you'll find slight shade," cautioned Linda.  "The use is purely a
+matter of self-protection.  The desert has got such a devil of a
+fight for existence, without shade and practically without water,
+that it can't afford to take any other chance of extermination,
+and so it protects itself with needles here and spears there and
+sabers at other places and roots that strike down to China
+everywhere.  First thing we are going to get is some soap."
+
+"Great hat!" exclaimed Donald.  "If you wanted soap why didn't
+you bring some?"
+
+"For all you know," laughed Linda, "I may be going to education
+you up a little.  Dare you to tell me how many kinds of soap I
+can find today that the Indians used, and where I can find it."
+
+"Couldn't tell you one to save my life," said Donald.
+
+"And born and reared within a few miles of the desert!" scoffed
+Linda.  "Nice Indian you'd make.  We take our choice today
+between finding deer-brush and digging for amole, because the
+mock oranges aren't ripe enough to be nice and soapy yet.  I've
+got the deer-brush spotted, and we'll pass an amole before we go
+very far.  Look for a wavy blue-green leaf like a wide blade of
+grass and coming up like a lily."
+
+So together they went to the deer-brush and gathered a bunch of
+flowers that Linda bound together with some wiry desert grass and
+fastened to her belt.  It was not long before Donald spied an
+amole, and having found one, discovered many others growing near. 
+Then Linda led the way past thorns and brush, past impenetrable
+beds of cholla, until they reached a huge barrel cactus that she
+had located with the glasses.  Beside this bristling monstrous
+growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which Donald handed
+to her.  She drew it lightly across the armor protecting the
+plant.
+
+"Short of Victrola needles?" she inquired.  "Because if you are,
+these make excellent ones.  A lot more singing quality to them
+than the steel needles, not nearly so metallic."
+
+"Well, I am surely going to try that," said Donald.  "Never heard
+of such a thing."
+
+Linda chopped off a section of plant.  Then she picked one of the
+knives from the bucket and handed it to him.
+
+"All right, you get what you want," she said, "while I operate on
+the barrel."
+
+She set her feet firmly in the sand, swung the axe, and with a
+couple of deft strokes sliced off the top of the huge plant, and
+from the heart of it lifted up half a bucketful of the juicy
+interior, with her dipper.
+
+"If we didn't have drink, here is where we would get it, and
+mighty good it is," she said, pushing down with the dipper until
+she formed a small pool in the heart of the plant which rapidly
+filled.  "Have a taste."
+
+"Jove, that is good!" said Donald.  "What are you going to do
+with it?"
+
+"Show you later," laughed Linda.  "Think I'll take a sip myself."
+
+Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the
+car.  Once Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an
+extremely curious little plant spreading over the ground, a tiny
+reddish vine with quaint round leaves that looked as if a drop of
+white paint rimmed with maroon had fallen on each of them.
+
+"I never saw that before," said Donald.  "What are you going to
+do with it?"
+
+"Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite," said
+Linda.  "That is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites
+you, score each side of the wound with the cleanest, sharpest
+knife you have and then bruise the plant and bind it on with your
+handkerchief, and forget it."
+
+"Is that what you do?" inquired Donald.
+
+"Why sure," said Linda, "that is what I would do if a snake were
+so ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn't seem to be much of
+the antagonistic element in my nature.  I don't go through the
+desert exhaling the odor of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent
+or slip away so silently that I never see them."
+
+"Now what on earth do you mean by that?" inquired Donald.
+
+"Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he
+took me to the mountains and the desert.  If you are afraid, your
+system throws off formic acid, and the animals need only the
+suspicion of a scent of it to make them ready to fight.  Any
+animal you encounter or even a bee, recognizes it.  One of the
+first things that I remember about Daddy was seeing him sit on
+the running board of the runabout buckling up his desert boots
+while he sang to me,
+
+  'Let not your heart be troubled   Neither let it be afraid,'
+
+as he got ready to take me on his back and go into the desert for
+our first lesson; he told me that a man was perfectly safe in
+going to the forest or the desert or anywhere he chose among any
+kind of animals if he had sufficient self-control that no odor of
+fear emanated from him.  He said that a man was safe to make his
+way anywhere he wanted to go, if he started his journey by
+recognizing a blood brotherhood with anything living he would
+meet on the way; and I have heard Enos Mills say that when he was
+snow inspector of Colorado he traveled the crest of the Rockies
+from one end of the state to the other without a gun or any means
+of self-defense."  
+
+"Now, that is something new to think about," said Donald.
+
+"And it's something that is very true," said Linda.  "I have seen
+it work times without number.  Father and I went quietly up the
+mountains, through the canyons, across the desert, and we would
+never see a snake of any kind, but repeatedly we would see men
+with guns and dogs out to kill, to trespass on the rights of the
+wild, and they would be hunting for sticks and clubs and firing 
+their guns where we had passed never thinking of lurking danger. 
+If you start out in accord, at one with Nature, you're quite as
+safe as you are at home, sometimes more so.  But if you start out
+to stir up a fight, the occasion is very rare on which you can't
+succeed."
+
+"And that reminds me," said Donald, with a laugh, "that a week
+ago I came to start a fight with you.  What has become of that
+fight we were going to have, anyway?"
+
+"You can search me," laughed Linda, throwing out her hands in a
+graceful gesture.  "There's not a scrap of fight in my system
+concerning you, but if Oka Sayye were having a fight with you and
+I were anywhere around, you'd have one friend who would help you
+to handle the Jap."
+
+Donald looked at Linda thoughtfully.
+
+"By the great hocus-pocus," he said, "you know, I believe you. 
+If two fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I
+know would quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would
+stand by and help a fellow if he needed it."
+
+"That I surely would," said Linda; "but don't you say 'most of
+the girls I know' and then make a statement like that concerning
+girls, because you prove that you don't know them at all.  A few
+years ago, I very distinctly recall how angry many women were at
+this line in one of Kipling's poems:
+
+The female of the species is more deadly than the male,
+
+and there was nothing to it save that a great poet was trying to
+pay womanhood everywhere the finest compliment he knew how.  He
+always has been fundamental in his process of thought.  He gets
+right back to the heart of primal things.  When he wrote that
+line he was not really thinking that there was a nasty poison in
+the heart of a woman or death in her hands.  What he was thinking
+was that in the jungle the female lion or tiger or jaguar must go
+and find a particularly secluded cave and bear her young and
+raise them to be quite active kittens before she leads them out,
+because there is danger of the bloodthirsty father eating them
+when they are tiny and helpless.  And if perchance a male finds
+the cave of his mate and her tiny young and enters it to do
+mischief, then there is no recorded instance I know of in which
+the female, fighting in defense of her young, has not been 'more
+deadly than the male.' And that is the origin of the
+much-discussed line concerning the female of the species, and it
+holds good fairly well down the line of the wild.  It's even true
+among such tiny things as guinea pigs and canary birds.  There is
+a mother element in the heart of every girl.  Daddy used to say
+that half the women in the world married the men they did because
+they wanted to mother them.  You can't tell what is in a woman's
+heart by looking at her.  You must bring her face to face with an
+emergency before you can say what she'll do, but I would be
+perfectly willing to stake my life on this:  There is scarcely a
+girl you know who would see you getting the worst of a fight, say
+with Oka Sayye, or someone who meant to kill you or injure you,
+who would not pick up the first weapon she could lay her hands
+on, whether it was an axe or a stick or a stone, and go to your
+defense, and if she had nothing else to fight with, I have heard
+of women who put up rather a tidy battle with their claws. 
+Sounds primitive, doesn't it?"
+
+"It sounds true," said Donald reflectively.  "I see, young lady,
+where one is going to have to measure his words and think before
+he talks to you."
+
+"Pretty thought!" said Linda lightly.  "We'll have a great time
+if you must stop to consider every word before you say it."
+
+"Well, anyway," said Donald, "when are we going to have that
+fight which was the purpose of our coming together?"
+
+"Why, we're not ever going to have it," answered Linda.  "I have
+got nothing in this world to fight with you about since you're
+doing your level best to beat Oka Sayye.  I have watched your
+head above the remainder of your class for three years and wanted
+to fight with you on that point."
+
+"Now that's a queer thing," said Donald, "because I have watched
+you for three years and wanted to fight with you about your
+drygoods, and now since I've known you only such a short while, I
+don't care two whoops what you wear.  It's a matter of perfect
+indifference to me.  You can wear French heels or baby pumps, or
+go barefoot.  You would still be you."
+
+ "Is it a truce?" asked Linda.  I
+
+"No, ma'am," said Donald, "it's not a truce.  That implies war
+and we haven't fought.  It's not armed neutrality; it's not even
+watchful waiting.  It's my friend, Linda Strong.  Me for her and
+her for me, if you say so."
+
+He reached out his hand.  Linda laid hers in it, and looking into
+his eyes, she said:  "That is a compact.  We'll test this
+friendship business and see what there is to it.  Now come on;
+let's run for the canyon."
+
+It was only a short time until the Bear Cat followed its trail of
+the previous Saturday, and, rushing across the stream, stopped at
+its former resting place, while Linda and Donald sat looking at
+the sheer-walled little room before them.
+
+"I can see," said Linda, "a stronger tinge in the green.  There
+are more flowers in the carpet.  There is more melody in the
+birds' song.  We are going to have a better time than we had last
+Saturday.  First let's fix up our old furnace, because we must
+have a fire today."
+
+So they left the car, and under Linda's direction they
+reconstructed the old fireplace at which the girl and her father
+had cooked when botanizing in Multiflores.  In a corner secluded
+from wind, using the wall of the canyon for a back wall, big
+boulders the right distance apart on each side, and small stones
+for chinking, Linda superintended the rebuilding of the
+fireplace.
+
+She unpacked the lunch box, set the table, and when she had
+everything in readiness she covered the table, and taking a
+package, she carried it on a couple of aluminium pie pans to
+where her fire was burning crisply.  With a small field axe she
+chopped a couple of small green branches, pointed them to her
+liking, and peeled them.  Then she made a poker from one of the
+saplings they had used to move the rocks, and beat down her fire
+until she had a bright bed of deep coals.  When these were
+arranged exactly to her satisfaction, she pulled some sprays of
+deer weed bloom from her bundle and, going down to the creek,
+made a lather and carefully washed her hands, tucking the towel
+she used in drying them through her belt.  Then she came back to
+the fire and, sitting down beside it, opened the package and
+began her operations.  On the long, slender sticks she strung a
+piece of tenderloin beef, about three inches in circumference and
+one fourth of an inch in thickness, then half a slice of bacon,
+and then a slice of onion.  This she repeated until her skewer
+would bear no more weight.  Then she laid it across the rocks
+walling her fire, occasionally turning it while she filled the
+second skewer.  Then she brought from the car the bucket of pulp
+she had taken from the barrel cactus, transferred it to a piece
+of cheesecloth and deftly extracted the juice.  To this she added
+the contents of a thermos bottle containing a pint of sugar that
+had been brought to the boiling point with a pint of water and
+poured over some chopped spearmint to which had been added the
+juice of half a dozen lemons and three or four oranges.  From a
+small, metal-lined compartment, Linda took a chunk of ice and
+dropped it into this mixture.
+
+She was sitting on the ground, one foot doubled under her, the
+other extended.  She had taken off her hat; the wind and the
+bushes had roughened her hair.  Exercise had brought deep red to
+her cheeks and her lips.  Happiness had brought a mellow glow to
+her dark eyes.  She had turned back her sleeves, and her slender
+hands were fascinatingly graceful in their deft handling of
+everything she touched.  They were a second edition of the hands
+with which Alexander Strong had felt out defective nerve systems
+and made delicate muscular adjustments.  She was wholly absorbed
+in what she was doing.  Sitting on the blanket across from her
+Donald Whiting was wholly absorbed in her and he was thinking. 
+He was planning how he could please her, how he could earn her
+friendship.  He was admitting to himself that he had very little,
+if anything, to show for hours of time that he had spent in
+dancing, at card games, beach picnics, and races.  All these
+things had been amusing.  But he had nothing to show for the time
+he had spent or the money he had wasted.  Nothing had happened
+that in any way equipped him for his battle with Oka Sayye. 
+Conversely, this girl, whom he had resented, whom he had
+criticized, who had claimed his notice only by her radical
+difference from the other girls, had managed, during the few
+minutes he had first talked with her in the hall, to wound his
+pride, to spur his ambition, to start him on a course that must
+end in lasting and material benefit to him even if he failed in
+making a higher record of scholarship than Oka Sayye.  It was
+very certain that the exercise he was giving his brain must be
+beneficial.  He had learned many things that were intensely
+interesting to him and he had not even touched the surface of
+what he could see that she had been taught by her father or had
+learned through experience and personal investigation.  She had
+been coming to the mountains and the canyons alone, for four
+years doing by herself what she would have done under her
+father's supervision had he lived.  That argued for steadfastness
+and strength of character.  She would not utter one word of
+flattery.  She would say nothing she did not mean.  Watching her
+intently, Donald Whiting thought of all these things.  He thought
+of what she had said about fighting for him, and he wondered if
+it really was true that any girl he knew would fight for him.  He
+hardly believed it when he remembered some of his friends, so
+entirely devoted to personal adornment and personal
+gratification.  But Linda had said that all women were alike in
+their hearts.  She knew about other things.  She must know about
+this.  Maybe all women would fight for their young or for their
+men, but he knew of no other girl who could drive a Bear Cat with
+the precision and skill with which Linda drove.  He knew no other
+girl who was master of the secrets of the desert and the canyons
+and the mountains.  Certainly he knew no other girl who would tug
+at great boulders and build a fireplace and risk burning her
+fingers and scorching her face to prepare a meal for him.  So he
+watched Linda and so he thought.
+
+At first he thought she was the finest pal a boy ever had, and
+then he thought how he meant to work to earn and keep her
+friendship; and then, as the fire reddened Linda's cheeks and she
+made running comments while she deftly turned her skewers of
+brigand beefsteak, food that half the Boy Scouts in the country
+had been eating for four years, there came an idea with which he
+dallied until it grew into a luring vision.
+
+"Linda," he asked suddenly, "do you know that one of these days
+you're going to be a beautiful woman?"
+
+Linda turned her skewers with intense absorption.  At first he
+almost thought she had not heard him, but at last she said
+quietly:  "Do you really think that is possible, Donald?"
+
+"You're lovely right now !" answered the boy promptly.
+
+"For goodness' sake, have an eye single to your record for truth
+and veracity," said Linda.  "Doesn't this begin to smell zippy?"
+
+"It certainly does," said Donald.  "It's making me ravenous.  But
+honest, Linda, you are a pretty girl."
+
+"Honest, your foot!" said Linda scornfully.  "I am not a pretty
+girl.  I am lean and bony and I've got a beak where I should have
+a nose.  Speaking of pretty girls, my sister, Eileen, is a pretty
+girl.  She is a downright beautiful girl."
+
+"Yes," said Donald, "she is, but she can't hold a candle to you. 
+How did she look when she was your age?"
+
+"I can't remember Eileen," said Linda, "when she was not
+exquisitely dressed and thinking more about taking care of her
+shoes than anything else in the world.  I can't remember her when
+she was not curled, and even when she was a tiny thing Mother put
+a dust of powder on her nose.  She said her skin was so delicate
+that it could not bear the sun.  She never could run or play or
+motor much or do anything, because she has always had to be saved
+for the sole purpose of being exquisitely beautiful.  Talk about
+lilies of the field, that's what Eileen is! She is an improvement
+on the original lily of the field--she's a lily of the drawing
+room.  Me, now, I'm more of a Joshua tree."
+
+Donald Whiting laughed, as Linda intended that he should.
+
+A minute afterward she slid the savory food from a skewer upon
+one of the pie pans, tossed back the cover from the little table,
+stacked some bread-and-butter sandwiches beside the meat and
+handed the pan to Donald.
+
+"Fall to," she said, "and prove that you're a man with an
+appreciative tummy.  Father used to be positively ravenous for
+this stuff.  I like it myself."
+
+She slid the food from the second skewer to a pan for herself,
+settled the fire to her satisfaction and they began their meal. 
+Presently she filled a cup from the bucket beside her and handed
+it to Donald.  At the same time she lifted another for herself.
+
+"Here's to the barrel cactus," she said.  "May the desert grow
+enough of them so that we'll never lack one when we want to have
+a Saturday picnic."
+
+Laughingly they drank this toast; and the skewers were filled a
+second time.  When they could eat no more they packed away the
+lunch things, buried the fire, took the axe and the field
+glasses, and started on a trip of exploration down the canyon. 
+Together they admired delicate and exquisite ferns growing around
+great gray boulders.  Donald tasted hunters' rock leek, and
+learned that any he found while on a hunting expedition would
+furnish a splendid substitute for water.  Linda told him of rare
+flowers she lacked and what they were like and how he would be
+able to identify what she wanted in case he should ever find any
+when he was out hunting or with his other friends.  They peeped
+into the nesting places of canyon wrens and doves and finches,
+and listened to the exquisite courting songs of the birds whose
+hearts were almost bursting with the exuberance of spring and the
+joy of home making.  When they were tired out they went back to
+the dining room and after resting a time, they made a supper from
+the remnants of their dinner.  When they were seated in the car
+and Linda's hand was on the steering wheel, Donald reached across
+and covered it with his own.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said.  "Before we leave here I want to ask you a
+question and I want you to make me a promise."
+
+"All right," said Linda.  "What's your question?"
+
+"What is there," said Donald, "that I can do that would give you
+such pleasure as you have given me?"
+
+Linda could jest on occasions, but by nature she was a serious
+person.  She looked at Donald reflectively.
+
+"Why, I think," she said at last, "that having a friend, having
+someone who understands and who cares for the things I do, and
+who likes to go to the same places and to do the same things, is
+the biggest thing that has happened to me since I lost my father. 
+I don't see that you are in any way in my debt, Donald."
+
+"All right then," said the boy, "that brings me to the promise I
+want you to make me.  May we always have our Saturdays together
+like this?"
+
+"Sure!" said Linda, "I would be mightily pleased.  I'll have to
+work later at night and scheme, maybe.  By good rights Saturday
+belongs to me anyway because I am born Saturday's child."
+
+"Well, hurrah for Saturday! It always was a grand old day," said
+Donald, "and since I see what it can do in turning out a girl
+like you, I've got a better opinion of it than ever.  We'll call
+that settled.  I'll always ask you on Friday at what hour to
+come, and hereafter Saturday is ours."
+
+"Ours it is," said Linda.
+
+Then she put the Bear Cat through the creek and on the road and,
+driving swiftly as she dared, ran to Lilac Valley and up to Peter
+Morrison's location.
+
+She was amazed at the amount of work that had been accomplished. 
+The garage was finished.  Peter's temporary work desk and his cot
+were in it.  A number of his personal belongings were there.  The
+site for his house had been selected and the cellar was being
+excavated.
+
+Linda descended from the Bear Cat and led Donald before Peter.
+
+"Since you're both my friends," she said, "I want you to know
+each other.  This is Donald Whiting, the Senior I told you about,
+Mr. Morrison.  You know you said you would help him if you
+could."
+
+"Certainly," said Peter.  "I am very glad to know any friend of
+yours, Miss Linda.  Come over to my workroom and let's hear about
+this."
+
+"Oh, go and talk it over between yourselves," said Linda.  "I am
+going up here to have a private conversation with the spring.  I
+want it to tell me confidentially exactly the course it would
+enjoy running so that when your house is finished and I come to
+lay out your grounds I will know exactly how it feels about
+making a change."
+
+"Fine!" said Peter.  "Take your time and become extremely
+confidential, because the more I look at the location and the
+more I hear the gay chuckling song that that water sings, the
+more I am in love with your plan to run it across the lawn and
+bring it around the boulder."
+
+"It would be a downright sin not to have that water in a
+convenient place for your children to play in, Peter," said
+Linda.
+
+"Then that's all settled," said Peter.  "Now, Whiting, come this
+way and we'll see whether I can suggest anything that will help
+you with your problem."
+
+"Whistle when you are ready, Donald," called Linda as she turned
+away.
+
+Peter Morrison glanced after her a second, and then he led Donald
+Whiting to a nail keg in the garage and impaled that youngster on
+the mental point of a mental pin and studied him as carefully as
+any scientist ever studied a rare specimen.  When finally he let
+him go, his mental comment was:  "He's a mighty fine kid.  Linda
+is perfectly safe with him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.  Linda's Hearthstone
+
+Early the following week Linda came from school one evening to
+find a load of sand and a heap of curiously marked stones beside
+the back door.
+
+"Can it possibly be, Katy," she asked, "that those men are
+planning to begin work on my room so soon?  I am scared out of
+almost seven of my five senses.  I had no idea they would be
+ready to begin work until after I had my settlement with Eileen
+or was paid for the books."
+
+"Don't ye be worried," said Katy.  "There's more in me stocking
+than me leg, and you're as welcome to it as the desert is welcome
+to rain, an' nadin' it 'most as bad."
+
+"Anyway," said Linda, "it will surely take them long enough so
+that I can pay by the time they finish."
+
+But Linda was not figuring that back of the projected
+improvements stood two men, each of whom had an extremely
+personal reason for greatly desiring to please her.  Peter
+Morrison had secured a slab of sandstone.  He had located a
+marble cutter to whom he meant to carry it, and was spending much
+thought that he might have been using on an article in trying to
+hit upon exactly the right line or phrase to build in above
+Linda's fire--something that would convey to her in a few words a
+sense of friendship and beauty.
+
+While Peter gazed at the unresponsive gray sandstone and wrote
+line after line which he immediately destroyed, Henry Anderson
+explored the mountain and came in, red faced and perspiring, from
+miles of climbing with a bright stone in each hand, or took the
+car to bring in small heaps too heavy to carry that he had
+collected near the roads.  They were two men striving for the
+favor of the same girl.  How Linda would have been amused had she
+understood the situation, or how Eileen would have been provoked,
+neither of the men knew nor did they care.
+
+The workmen came after Linda left and went before her return. 
+Having been cautioned to silence, Katy had not told her when work
+actually began; and so it happened that, going to her room one
+evening, she unlocked the door and stepped inside to face the
+completed fireplace.  The firebox was not very large but ample. 
+The hearthstone was a big sheet of smooth gray sandstone.  The
+sides and top were Henry's collection of brilliant boulders,
+carefully and artistically laid in blue mortar, and over the
+firebox was set Peter's slab of gray sandstone.  On it were four
+deeply carved lines.  The quaint Old English lettering was filled
+even to the surface with a red mortar, while the capitals were
+done in dull blue.  The girl slowly read:
+
+  Voiceless stones, with Flame-tongues Preach     Sermons struck
+from Nature's Lyre;   Notes of Love and Trust and Hope     Hourly
+sing in Linda's Fire.
+
+In the firebox stood a squat pair of black andirons, showing age
+and usage.  A rough eucalyptus log waited across them while the
+shavings from the placing of the mantel and the cutting of the
+windows were tucked beneath it.  Linda stood absorbed a minute. 
+She looked at the skylight, flooding the room with the light she
+so needed coming from the right angle.  She went over to the new
+window that gave her a view of the length of the valley she loved
+and a most essential draft.  When she turned back to the
+fireplace her hands were trembling.
+
+"Now isn't that too lovely of them?" she said softly.  "Isn't
+that altogether wonderful?  How I wish Daddy were here to sit
+beside my fire and share with me the work I hope to do here."
+
+In order to come as close to him as possible she did the next
+best thing.  She sat down at her table and wrote a long letter to
+Marian, telling her everything she could think of that would
+interest her.  Then she re-read with extreme care the letter she
+had found at the Post Office that day in reply to the one she had
+written Marian purporting to come from an admirer.  Writing
+slowly and thinking deeply, she answered it.  She tried to
+imagine that she was Peter Morrison and she tried to say the
+things in that letter that she thought Peter would say in the
+circumstances, because she felt sure that Marian would be
+entertained by such things as Peter would say.  When she
+finished, she read it over carefully, and then copied it with
+equal care on the typewriter, which she had removed to her
+workroom.
+
+When she heard Katy's footstep outside her door, she opened it
+and drew her in, slipping the bolt behind her.  She led her to
+the fireplace and recited the lines.
+
+"Now ain't they jist the finest gentlemen?" said Katy.  "Cut
+right off of a piece of the same cloth as your father.  Now some
+way we must get together enough money to get ye a good-sized rug
+for under your worktable, and then ye've got to have two bits of
+small ones, one for your hearthstone and one for your aisel; and
+then ye're ready, colleen, to show what ye can do.  I'm so proud
+of ye when I think of the grand secret it's keepin' for ye I am;
+and less and less are gettin' me chances for the salvation of me
+soul, for every night I'm a-sittin' starin' at the magazines ye
+gave me when I ought to be tellin' me beads and makin' me
+devotions.  Ain't it about time the third was comin' in?"
+
+"Any day now," said Linda in a whisper.  "And, Katy, you'll be
+careful?  That editor must think that 'Jane Meredith' is full of
+years and ripe experience.  I probably wouldn't get ten cents, no
+not even a for-nothing chance, if he knew those articles were
+written by a Junior."
+
+"Junior nothing!" scoffed Katy.  "There was not a day of his life
+that your pa did not spend hours drillin' ye in things the rest 
+of the girls in your school never heard of.  'Tain't no
+high-school girl that's written them articles.  It's Alexander
+Strong speakin' through the medium of his own flesh and blood."
+
+"Why, so it is, Katy!" cried Linda delightedly.  "You know, I
+never thought of that.  I have been so egoistical I thought I was
+doing them myself."
+
+"Paid ye anything yet?" queried Katy.
+
+"No," said Linda, "they haven't.  It seems that the amount of
+interest the articles evoke is going to decide what I am to be
+paid for them, but they certainly couldn't take the recipe and
+the comments and the sketch for less than twenty-five or thirty
+dollars, unless recipes are like poetry.  Peter said the other
+day that if a poet did not have some other profession to support
+him, he would starve to death on all he was paid for writing the
+most beautiful things that ever are written in all this world. 
+Peter says even an effort to write a poem is a beautiful thing."
+
+"Well, maybe that used to be the truth," said Katy as she started
+toward the door, "but I have been reading some things labeled
+'poetry' in the magazines of late, and if the holy father knows
+what they mean, he's even bigger than ever I took him to be."
+
+"Katy," said Linda, "we are dreadful back numbers.  We are
+letting this world progress and roll right on past us without a
+struggle.  We haven't either one been to a psychoanalyst to find
+out the color of our auras."
+
+"Now God forbid," said Katy.  "I ain't going to have one of them
+things around me.  The colors I'm wearin' satisfy me entoirely."
+
+"And mine are going to satisfy me very shortly, now," laughed
+Linda, "because tomorrow is my big day with Eileen.  Next time we
+have a minute together, old dear, I'll have started my bank
+account."
+
+"Right ye are," said Katy, "jist exactly right.  You're getting
+such a great girl it's the proper thing ye should be suitably
+dressed, and don't ye be too modest."
+
+"The unfortunate thing about that, Katy, is that l intimated the
+other day that I would be content with less than half, since she
+is older and she should have her chance first."
+
+"Now ain't that jist like ye?" said Katy.  "I might have known ye
+would be doing that very thing."
+
+"After I have gone over the accounts," said Linda, "I'll know
+better what to demand.  Now fly to your cooking, Katy, and let me
+sit down at this table and see if I can dig out a few dollars of
+honest coin; but I'm going to have hard work to keep my eves on
+the paper with that fireplace before me.  Isn't that red and blue
+lettering the prettiest thing, Katy, and do you notice that tiny
+'P.  M.' cut down in the lower left-hand corner nearly out of
+sight?  That, Katy, stands for 'Peter Morrison,' and one of these
+days Peter is going to be a large figure on the landscape.  The
+next Post he has an article in I'll buy for you."
+
+"It never does," said Katy, "to be makin' up your mind in this
+world so hard and fast that ye can't change it.  In the days
+before John Gilman got bewitched out of his senses I did think,
+barrin' your father, that he was the finest man the Lord ever
+made; but I ain't thought so much of him of late as I did
+before."
+
+"Same holds good for me," said Linda.
+
+"I've studied this Peter," continued Katy, "like your pa used to
+study things under his microscope.  He's the most come-at-able
+man.  He's got such a kind of a questionin' look on his face, and
+there's a bit of a stoop to his shoulders like they had been
+whittled out for carryin' a load, and there's a kind of a whimsy
+quiverin' around his lips that makes me heart stand still every
+time he speaks to me, because I can't be certain whether he is
+going to make me laugh or going to make me cry, and when what
+he's sayin' does come with that little slow drawl, I can't be
+just sure whether he's meanin' it or whether he's jist pokin' fun
+at me.  He said the quarest thing to me the other day when he was
+here fiddlin' over the makin' of this fireplace.  He was standin'
+out beside your desert garden and I come aven with him and I says
+to him:  'Them's the rare plants Miss Linda and her pa have been
+goin' to the deserts and the canyons, as long as he lived, to
+fetch in; and then Miss Linda went alone, and now the son of
+Judge Whiting, the biggest lawyer in Los Angeles, has begun goin'
+with her.  Ain't it the brightest, prettiest place?' I says to
+him.  And he stood there lookin', and he says to me:  'No, Katy,
+that is a graveyard.' Now what in the name of raison was the man
+meanin' by that?"
+
+Linda stared at the hearth motto reflectively.
+
+"A graveyard!" she repeated.  "Well, if anything could come
+farther from a graveyard than that spot, I don't know how it
+would do it.  I haven't the remotest notion what he meant.  Why
+didn't you ask him?"
+
+"Well, the truth is," said Katy, "that I proide myself on being
+able to kape me mouth shut when I should."
+
+"I'll leave to think over it," said Linda.  "At present I have no
+more idea than you in what respect my desert garden could
+resemble a graveyard.  Oh! yes, there's one thing I wanted to ask
+you, Katy.  Has Eileen been around while this room was being
+altered?"
+
+"She came in yesterday," answered Katy, "when the hammerin' and
+sawin' was goin' full blast."
+
+"What I wanted to find out'" said Linda, "was whether she had
+been here and seen this room or not, because if she hasn't and
+she wants to see it, now is her time.  After I get things going
+here and these walls are covered with drying sketches this room
+is going to be strictly private.  You see that you keep your key
+where nobody gets hold of it."
+
+"It's on a string round me neck this blessed minute," said Katy. 
+"I didn't see her come up here, but ye could be safe in bettin'
+anything ye've got that she came."
+
+"Yes, I imagine she did," said Linda.  "She would be sufficiently
+curious that she would come to learn how much I have spent if she
+had no other interest in me."
+
+She looked at the fireplace reflectively.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "what Eileen thought of that and I wonder
+if she noticed that little 'P.  M.' tucked away down there in the
+corner."
+
+"Sure she did," said Katy.  "She has got eyes like a cat.  She
+can see more things in a shorter time than anybody I ever knew." 
+So that evening at dinner Linda told Eileen that the improvements
+she had made for her convenience in the billiard room were
+finished, and asked her if she would like to see them.
+
+"I can't imagine what you want to stick yourself off up there
+alone for," said Eileen.  "I don't believe I am sufficiently
+interested in garret skylights and windows to climb up to look at
+them.  What everybody in the neighborhood can see is that you
+have absolutely ruined the looks of the back part of the house."
+
+"Good gracious!" said Linda.  "Have I?  You know I never thought
+of that."
+
+"Of course! But all you've got to do is go on the cast lawn and
+take a look at that side and the back end of the house to see
+what you have done," said Eileen.  "Undoubtedly you've cut the
+selling price of the house one thousand, at least.  But it's
+exactly like you not to have thought of what chopping up the roof
+and the end of the house as you have done, would make it look
+like.  You have got one of those single-track minds, Linda, that
+can think of only one thing at a time, and you never do think,
+when you start anything, of what the end is going to be."
+
+"Very likely there's a large amount of truth in that," said Linda
+soberly.  "Perhaps I do get an idea and pursue it to the
+exclusion of everything else.  It's an inheritance from Daddy,
+this concentrating with all my might on one thing at a time.  But
+I am very sorry if I have disfigured the house."
+
+"What I want to know," said Eileen, "is how in this world, at
+present wages and cost of material, you're expecting to pay men
+for the work you have had done."  
+
+"I can talk more understandingly about that," said Linda quietly,
+"day after tomorrow.  I'll get home from school tomorrow as early
+as I can, and then we'll figure out our financial situation
+exactly."
+
+Eileen made no reply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.  Producing the Evidence
+
+When Linda hurried home the next evening, her first word to Katy
+was to ask if Eileen were there.
+
+"No, she isn't here," said Katy, "and she's not going to be."
+
+"Not going to be!" cried Linda, her face paling perceptibly.
+
+"She went downtown this morning and she telephoned me about three
+sayin' she had an invoitation to go with a motor party to
+Pasadena this afternoon, an' she wasn't knowin' whether she could
+get home the night or not."
+
+"I don't like it," said Linda.  "I don't like it at all."
+
+She liked it still less when Eileen came home for a change of
+clothing the following day, and again went to spend the night
+with a friend, without leaving any word whatever.
+
+"I don't understand this," said Linda, white lipped and tense. 
+"She does not want to see me.  She does not intend to talk
+business with me if she can possibly help it.  She is treating me
+as if I were a four-year-old instead of a woman with as much
+brain as she has.  If she appears while I am gone tomorrow and
+starts away again, you tell her Come to think of it, you needn't
+tell her anything; I'll give you a note for her."
+
+So Linda sat down and wrote:
+
+DEAR EILEEN:
+
+It won't be necessary to remind you of our agreement night before
+last to settle on an allowance from Father's estate for me.  Of
+course I realize that you are purposely avoiding seeing me, for
+what reason I can't imagine; but I give you warning, that if you
+have been in this house and have read this note, and are not here
+with your figures ready to meet me when I get home tomorrow
+night, I'll take matters into my own hands, and do exactly what I
+think best without the slightest reference to what you think
+about it.  If you don't want something done that you will
+dislike, even more than you dislike seeing me, you had better
+heed this warning.
+
+LINDA.
+
+She read it over slowly:  "My, that sounds melodramatic!" she
+commented.  "It's even got a threat in it, and it's a funny thing
+to threaten my own sister.  I don't think that it's a situation
+that occurs very frequently, but for that matter I sincerely hope
+that Eileen isn't the kind of sister that occurs frequently."
+
+Linda went up to her room and tried to settle herself to work,
+but found that it was impossible to fix her attention on what she
+was doing.  Her mind jumped from one thing to another in a way
+that totally prohibited effective work of any kind.  A sudden
+resolve came into her heart.  She would not wait any longer.  She
+would know for herself just how she was situated financially. 
+She wrote a note to the editor of Everybody's Home, asking him if
+it would be convenient to let her know what reception her work
+was having with his subscribers, whether he desired her to
+continue the department in his magazines, and if so, what was the
+best offer he could make her for the recipes, the natural history
+comments accompanying them, and the sketches.  Then she went down
+to the telephone book and looked up the location of the
+Consolidated Bank.  She decided that she would stop there on her
+way from school the next day and ask to be shown the Strong
+accounts.
+
+While she was meditating these heroic measures the bell rang and
+Katy admitted John Gilman.  Strangely enough, he was asking for
+Linda, not for Eileen.  At the first glimpse of him Linda knew
+that something was wrong; so without any prelude she said
+abruptly:  "What's the matter, John?  Don't you know where I
+Eileen is either?"
+
+"Approximately," he answered.  "She has 'phoned me two or three
+times, but I haven't seen her for three days.  Do you know where
+she is or exactly why she is keeping away from home as she is?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I do.  I told you the other day the time had
+come when I was going to demand a settlement of Father's estate
+and a fixed income.  That time came three days ago and I have not
+seen Eileen since."
+
+They entered the living room.  As Linda passed the table, propped
+against a candlestick on it, she noticed a note addressed to
+herself.
+
+"Oh, here will be an explanation," she said.  "Here is a note for
+me.  Sit down a minute till I read it."
+
+She seated herself on the arm of a chair, tore open the note, and
+instantly began reading aloud.
+
+"Dear little sister--"
+
+"Pathetic," interpolated Linda, "in consideration of the fact
+that I am about twice as big as she is.  However, we'll let that
+go, and focus on the enclosure."  She waved a slender slip of
+paper at Gilman.  "I never was possessed of an article like this
+before in all my tender young life, but it seems to me that it's
+a cheque, and I can't tell you quite how deeply it amuses me. 
+But to return to business, at the present instant I am:
+
+DEAR LITTLE SISTER:
+
+It seems that all the friends I have are particularly insistent
+on seeing me all at once and all in a rush.  I don't think I ever
+had quite so many invitations at one time in my life before, and
+the next two or three days seem to be going to be equally as
+full.  But I took time to run into the bank and go over things
+carefully.  I find that after the payment of taxes and insurance
+and all the household expenses, that by wearing old clothes I
+have and making them over I can afford to turn over at least
+seventy-five dollars a month to you for your clothing and
+personal expenses.  As I don't know exactly when I can get home,
+I am enclosing a cheque which is considerably larger than I had
+supposed I could make it, and I can only do this by skimping
+myself; but of course you are getting such a big girl and
+beginning to attract attention, so it is only right that you
+should have the very best that I can afford to do for you.  I am
+not taking the bill from The Mode into consideration.  I paid
+that with last month's expenses.
+
+With love,
+
+EILEEN.
+
+Linda held the letter in one hand, the cheque in the other, and
+stared questioningly at John Gilman.
+
+"What do you think of that?" she inquired tersely.
+
+"It seems to me," said Gilman, "that a more pertinent question
+would be, what do you think of it?"
+
+"Rot!" said Linda tersely.  "If I were a stenographer in your
+office I would think that I was making a fairly good start; but I
+happen to be the daughter of Alexander Strong living in my own
+home with my only sister, who can afford to flit like the
+flittingest of social butterflies from one party to another as
+well dressed as, and better dressed than, the Great General
+Average.  You have known us, John, ever since Eileen sat in the
+sun to dry her handmade curls, while I was leaving a piece of my
+dress on every busk in Multiflores Canyon.  Right here and now I
+am going to show you something!"
+
+Linda started upstairs, so John Gilman followed her.  She went to
+the door of Eileen's suite and opened it.
+
+"Now then," she said, "take a look at what Eileen feels she can
+afford for herself.  You will observe she has complete and
+exquisite furnishings and all sorts of feminine accessories on
+her dressing table.  You will observe that she has fine rugs in
+her dressing room and bathroom.  Let me call your attention to
+the fact that all these drawers are filled with expensive
+comforts and conveniences."
+
+Angrily Linda began to open drawers filled with fancy feminine
+apparel, daintily and neatly folded, everything in perfect order: 
+gloves, hose, handkerchiefs, ribbons, laces, all in separate
+compartments She pointed to the high chiffonier, the top
+decorated with candlesticks and silver-framed pictures.  Here the
+drawers revealed heaps of embroidered underclothing and silken
+garments.  Then she walked to the closet and threw the door wide.
+
+She pushed hangers on their rods, sliding before the perplexed
+and bewildered man dress after dress of lace and georgette,
+walking suits of cloth, street dresses of silk, and pretty
+afternoon gowns, heavy coats, light coats, a beautiful evening
+coat.  Linda took this down and held it in front of John Gilman.
+
+"I see things marked in store windows," she said.  "Eileen paid
+not a penny less than three hundred for this one coat.  Look at
+the rows of shoes, and pumps, and slippers, and what that box is
+or I don't know."
+
+Linda slid to the light a box screened by the hanging dresses,
+and with the toe of her shoe lifted the lid, disclosing a
+complete smoking outfit--case after case of cigarettes.  Linda
+dropped the lid and shoved the box back.  She stood silent a
+second, then she looked at John Gilman.
+
+"That is the way things go in this world," she said quietly. 
+"Whenever you lose your temper, you always do something you
+didn't intend to do when you started.  I didn't know that, and I
+wouldn't have shown it to you purposely if I had known it; but it
+doesn't alter the fact that you should know it.  If you did know
+it no harm's done but if you didn't know it, you shouldn't be
+allowed to marry Eileen without knowing as much about her as you
+did about Marian, and there was nothing about Marian that you
+didn't know.  I am sorry for that, but since I have started this
+I am going through with it.  Now give me just one minute more."
+
+Then she went down the hall, threw open the door to her room, and
+walking in said:  "You have seen Eileen's surroundings; now take
+a look at mine.  There's my bed; there's my dresser and toilet
+articles; and this is my wardrobe."
+
+She opened the closet door and exhibited a pair of overalls in
+which she watered her desert garden.  Next ranged her khaki
+breeches and felt hat.  Then hung the old serge school dress,
+beside it the extra skirt and orange blouse.  The stack of
+underclothing on the shelves was pitifully small, visibly
+dilapidated.  Two or three outgrown gingham dresses hung
+forlornly on the opposite wall.  Linda stood tall and straight
+before John Gilman.
+
+"What I have on and one other waist constitute my wardrobe," she
+said, "and I told Eileen where to get this dress and suggested it
+before I got it."
+
+Gilman looked at her in a dazed fashion.
+
+"I don't understand," he said slowly.  "If that isn't the dress I
+saw Eileen send up for herself, I'm badly mistaken.  It was the
+Saturday we went to Riverside.  It surely is the very dress."
+
+Linda laughed bleakly.
+
+"That may be," she said.  "The one time she ever has any respect
+for me is in a question of taste.  She will agree that I know
+when colors are right and a thing is artistic.  Now then, John,
+you are the administrator of my father's estate; you have seen
+what you have seen.  What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Linda," he said quietly, "what my heart might prompt me to do in
+consideration of the fact that I am engaged to marry Eileen, and
+what my legal sense tells me I must do as executor of your
+father's wishes, are different propositions.  I am going to do
+exactly what you tell me to.  What you have shown me, and what
+I'd have realized, if I had stopped to think, is neither right
+nor just."
+
+Then Linda took her tun at deep thought.
+
+"John," she said at last, "I am feeling depressed over what I
+have just done.  I am not sure that in losing my temper and
+bringing you up here I have played the game fairly.  You don't
+need to do anything.  I'll manage my affairs with Eileen myself. 
+But I'll tell you before you go, that you needn't practice any
+subterfuges.  When she reaches the point where she is ready to
+come home, I'll tell her that you were here, and what you have
+seen.  That is the best I can do toward squaring myself with my
+own conscience."
+
+Slowly they walked down the ha]l together.  At the head of the
+stairs Linda took the cheque that she carried and tore it into
+bits.  Stepping across the hall, she let the little heap slowly
+flutter to the rug in front of Eileen's door.  Then she went back
+to her room and left John Gilman to his own reflections.  
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.  A Rock and a Flame
+
+The first time Linda entered the kitchen after her interview with
+Gilman, Katy asked in deep concern, "Now what ye been doing,
+lambie?"
+
+"Doing the baby act, Katy," confessed Linda.  "Disgracing myself. 
+Losing my temper.  I wish I could bring myself to the place where
+I would think half a dozen times before I do a thing once."
+
+"Now look here," said Katy, beginning to bristle, "ain't it the
+truth that ye have thought for four years before ye did this
+thing once?"
+
+"Quite so," said Linda.  "But since I am the daughter of the
+finest gentleman I ever knew, I should not do hasty, regrettable
+things.  On the living-room table I found a note sweeter than
+honey, and it contained a cheque for me that wouldn't pay
+Eileen's bills for lunches, candy, and theaters for a month; so
+in undue heat I reduced it to bits and decorated the rug before
+her door.  But before that, Katy, I led my guardian into the
+room, and showed him everything.  I meant to tell him that, since
+he had neglected me for four years, he could see that I had
+justice now, but when I'd personally conducted him from Eileen's
+room to mine, and when I took a good look at him there was
+something on his face, Katy, that I couldn't endure.  So I told
+him to leave it to me; that I would tell Eileen myself what I had
+done, and so I will.  But I am sorry I did it, Katy; I am awfully
+sorry.  You always told me to keep my temper and I lost it
+completely.  From now on I certainly will try to behave myself
+more like a woman than a spoiled child.  Now give me a dust cloth
+and brushes.  I am almost through with my job in the library and
+I want to finish, because I shall be forced to use the money from
+the books to pay for my skylight and fireplace."
+
+Linda went to the library and began work, efficiently, carefully,
+yet with a precise rapidity habitual to her.  Down the long line
+of heavy technical books, she came to the end of the shelf. 
+Three books from the end she noticed a difference in the wall
+behind the shelf.  Hastily removing the other two volumes, she
+disclosed a small locked door having a scrap of paper protruding
+from the edge which she pulled out and upon which she read:
+
+In the event of my passing, should anyone move these books and
+find this door, these lines are to inform him that it is to
+remain untouched.  The key to it is in my safety-deposit vault at
+the Consolidated Bank.  The Bank will open the door and attend to
+the contents of the box at the proper time.
+
+Linda fixed the paper back exactly as she had found it.  She
+stood looking at the door a long time, then she carefully wiped
+it, the wall around it, and the shelf.  Going to another shelf,
+she picked out the books that had been written by her father and,
+beginning at the end of the shelf, she ranged them in a row until
+they completely covered the opening.  Then she finished filling
+the shelf with other books that she meant to keep, but her brain
+was working, milling over and over the question of what that
+little compartment contained and when it was to be opened and
+whether John Gilman knew about it, and whether the Consolidated
+Bank would remember the day specified, and whether it would mean
+anything important to her.
+
+She carried the dusters back to Katy, and going to her room,
+concentrated resolutely upon her work; but she Was unable to do
+anything constructive.  Her routine lessons she could prepare,
+but she could not even sketch a wild rose accurately.  Finally
+she  laid down her pencil, washed her brushes, put away her
+material, and locking her door, slipped the key into her pocket. 
+Going down to the garage she climbed into the Bear Cat and headed
+straight for Peter Morrison.  She drove into his location and
+blew the horn.  Peter stepped from the garage, and seeing her,
+started in her direction.  Linda sprang down and hurried toward
+him.  He looked at her intently as she approached and formed his
+own conclusions.
+
+"Sort of restless," said Linda.  "Couldn't evolve a single new
+idea with which to enliven the gay annals of English literature
+and Greek history.  A personal history seems infinitely more
+insistent and unusual.  I ran away from my lessons, and my work,
+and came to you, Peter, because I had a feeling that there was
+something you could give me, and I thought you would."
+
+Peter smiled a slow curious smile.
+
+"I like your line of thought, Linda," he said quietly.  "It
+greatly appeals to me.  Any time an ancient and patriarchal
+literary man named Peter Morrison can serve as a rock upon which
+a young thing can rest, why he'll be glad to be that rock."
+
+"What were you doing?" asked Linda abruptly.
+
+"Come and see," said Peter.
+
+He led the way to the garage.  His worktable and the cement floor
+around it were littered with sheets of closely typed paper.
+
+"I'll have to assemble them first," said Peter, getting down on
+his knees and beginning to pick them up.
+
+Linda sat on a packing case and watched him.  Already she felt
+comforted.  Of course Peter was a rock, of course anyone could
+trust him, and of course if the tempest of life beat upon her too
+strongly she could always fly to Peter.
+
+"May I?" she inquired, stretching her hand in the direction of a
+sheet.
+
+"Sure," said Peter.
+
+"What is it?" inquired Linda lightly.  "The bridge or the road or
+the playroom?"
+
+"Gad!" he said slowly.  "Don't talk about me being a rock! Rocks
+are stolid, stodgy unresponsive things.  I thought I was
+struggling with one of the biggest political problems of the day
+from an economic and psychological standpoint.  If I'd had sense
+enough to realize that it was a bridge I was building, I might
+have done the thing with some imagination and subtlety.  If you
+want a rock and you say I am a rock, a rock I'll be, Linda.  But
+I know what you are, and what you will be to me when we really
+become the kind of friends we are destined to be."
+
+"I wonder now," said Linda, "if you are going to say that I could
+be any such lovely thing on the landscape as a bridge."
+
+"No," said Peter slowly, "nothing so prosaic.  Bridges are common
+in this world.  You are going to be something uncommon.  History
+records the experiences of but one man who has seen a flame in
+the open.  I am a second Moses and you are going to be my burning
+bush.  I intended to read this article to you."
+
+Peter massed the sheets, straightened them on the desk, and
+deliberately ripped them across several times.  Linda sprang to
+her feet and stretched out her hands.
+
+"Why, Peter!" she cried in a shocked voice.  "That is perfectly
+inexcusable.  There are hours and hours of work on that, and I
+have not a doubt but that it was good work."
+
+"Simple case of mechanism," said Peter, reducing the bits to
+smaller size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that
+served as his wastebasket.  "A lifeless thing without a soul,
+mere clockwork.  I have got the idea now.  I am to build a bridge
+and make a road.  Every way I look I can see a golden-flame
+tongue of inspiration burning.  I'll rewrite that thing and
+animate it.  Take me for a ride, Linda."
+
+Linda rose and walked to the Bear Cat.  Peter climbed in and sat
+beside her.  Linda laid her hands on the steering wheel and
+started the car.  She ran it down to the highway and chose a
+level road leading straight down the valley through cultivated
+country.  In all the world there was nothing to equal the
+panorama that she spread before Peter that evening.  She drove
+the Bear Cat past orchards, hundreds of acres of orchards of
+waxen green leaves and waxen white bloom of orange, grapefruit,
+and lemon.  She took him where seas of pink outlined peach
+orchards, and  other seas the more delicate tint of the apricots. 
+She glided down avenues lined with palm and eucalyptus, pepper
+and olive, and through unbroken rows, extending for miles, of
+roses, long stretches of white, again a stretch of pink, then
+salmon, yellow, and red.  Nowhere in all the world are there to
+be found so many acres of orchard bloom and so many miles of
+tree-lined, rose-decorated roadway as in southern California. 
+She sent the little car through the evening until she felt that
+it was time to go home, and when at last she stopped where they
+had started, she realized that neither she nor Peter had spoken
+one word.  As he stepped from the car she leaned toward him and
+reached out her hand.
+
+"Thank you for the fireplace, Peter," she said.
+
+Peter took the hand she extended and held it one minute in both
+his own.  Then very gently he straightened it out in the palm of
+one of his hands and with the other hand turned back the fingers
+and laid his lips to the heart of it.
+
+"Thank you, Linda, for the flame," he said, and turning abruptly,
+he went toward his workroom.
+
+Stopping for a bite to eat in the kitchen, Linda went back to her
+room.  She sat down at the table and picking up her pencil, began
+to work, and found that she could work.  Every stroke came true
+and strong.  Every idea seemed original and unusual.  Quite as
+late as a light ever had shone in her window, it shone that
+night, the last thing she did being to write another anonymous
+letter to Marian, and when she reread it Linda realized that it
+was an appealing letter.  She thought it certainly would comfort
+Marian and surely would make her feel that someone worth while
+was interested in her and in her work.  She loved some of the
+whimsical little touches she had put into it, and she wondered if
+she had made it so much like Peter Morrison that it would be
+suggestive of him to Marian.  She knew that she had no right to
+do that and had no such intention.  She merely wanted a model to
+copy from and Peter seemed the most appealing model at hand.
+
+After school the next day Linda reported that she had finished
+going through the books and was ready to have them taken.  Then,
+after a few minutes of deep thought, she made her way to the
+Consolidated Bank.  At the window of the paying teller she
+explained that she wished to see the person connected with the
+bank who had charge of the safety-deposit boxes and who looked
+after the accounts pertaining to the estate of Alexander Strong. 
+The teller recognized the name.  He immediately became
+deferential.
+
+"I'll take you to the office of the president," he said.  "He and
+Doctor Strong were very warm friends.  You can explain to him
+what it is you want to know."
+
+Before she realized what was happening, Linda found herself in an
+office that was all mahogany and marble.  At a huge desk stacked
+with papers sat a man, considerably older than her father.  Linda
+remembered to have seen him frequently in their home, in her
+father's car, and she recalled one fishing expedition to the
+Tulare Lake region where he had been a member of her father's
+party.
+
+"Of course you have forgotten me, Mr. Worthington," she said as
+she approached his desk.  "I have grown such a tall person during
+the past four years."
+
+The white-haired financier rose and stretched out his hand.
+
+"You exact replica of Alexander Strong," he said laughingly, "I
+couldn't forget you any more than I could forget your father. 
+That fine fishing trip where you proved such a grand little scout
+is bright in my memory as one of my happiest vacations.  Sit down
+and tell me what I can do for you."
+
+Linda sat down and told him that she was dissatisfied with the
+manner in which her father's estate was being administered.
+
+He listened very carefully to all she had to say, then he pressed
+a button and gave a few words of instruction to the clerk who
+answered it.  When several ledgers and account books were laid
+before him, with practiced hand he turned to what he wanted.  The
+records were not complicated.  They covered a period of four
+years.  They showed exactly what monies had been paid into the
+bank for the estate.  They showed what royalties had been paid on
+the books.  Linda sat beside him and watched his pencil running
+up and down columns, setting down a list of items, and making
+everything plain.  Paid cheques for household expenses I and
+drygoods bills were all recorded and deducted.  With narrow,
+alert eyes, Linda was watching, and her brain was keenly alive. 
+As she realized the discrepancy between the annual revenue from
+the estate and the totaling of the expenses, she had an
+inspiration.  Something she never before had thought of occurred
+to her.  She looked the banker in the eye and said very quietly: 
+"And now, since she is my sister and I am going to be of age very
+shortly and these things must all be gone into and opened up,
+would it be out of place for me to ask you this afternoon to let
+me have a glimpse at the private account of Miss Eileen Strong?"
+
+The banker drew a deep breath and looked at Linda keenly.
+
+"That would not be customary," he said slowly.
+
+"No?" said Linda.  "But since Father and Mother went out at the
+same time and there was no will and the property would be legally
+divided equally between us upon my coming of age, would my sister
+be entitled to a private account?"
+
+"Had she any sources of obtaining money outside the estate?"
+
+"No," said Linda.  "At least none that I know of.  Mother had I
+some relatives in San Francisco who were very wealthy people, but
+they never came to see us and we never went there.  I know
+nothing about them.  I never had any money from them and I am
+quite sure Eileen never had."
+
+Linda sat very quietly a minute and then she looked at the
+banker.
+
+"Mr. Worthington," she said, "the situation is slightly peculiar. 
+My guardian, John Gilman, is engaged to marry my sister Eileen. 
+She is a beautiful girl, as you no doubt recall, and he is very
+much in love with her.  Undoubtedly she has been able, at least
+recently, to manage affairs very much in her own way.  She is
+more than four years my senior, and has always had charge of the
+household accounts and the handling of the bank accounts.  Since
+there is such a wide discrepancy between the returns from the
+property and the expenses that these books show, I am forced .o
+the conclusion that there must be upon your books, or the books
+of some other bank in the city, a private account in Eileen's
+name or in the name of the Strong estate."
+
+"That I can very easily ascertain," said Mr. Worthington,
+reaching again toward the button on his desk.  A few minutes
+later the report came that there was a private account in the
+name of Miss Eileen Strong.  Again Linda was deeply thoughtful.
+
+"Is there anything I can do," she inquired, "to prevent that
+account from being changed or drawn out previous to my coming of
+age?"
+
+Then Mr. Worthington grew thoughtful.
+
+"Yes," he said at last.  "If you are dissatisfied, if you feel
+that you have reason to believe that money rightfully belonging
+to you is being diverted to other channels, you have the right to
+issue an injunction against the bank, ordering it not to pay out
+any further money on any account nor to honor any cheques drawn
+by Miss Strong until the settlement of the estate.  Ask your
+guardian to execute and deliver such an injunction, or merely ask
+him, as your guardian and the administrator of the estate, to
+give the bank a written order to that effect."
+
+"But because he is engaged to Eileen, I told him I would not
+bring him into this matter," said Linda.  "I told him that I
+would do what I wanted done, myself."
+
+"Well, how long is it until this coming birthday of yours?"
+inquired Mr. Worthington.
+
+"Less than two weeks," answered Linda.
+
+For a time the financier sat in deep thought, then he looked at
+Linda.  It was a keen, searching look.  It went to the depths of
+her eyes; it included her face and hair; it included the folds of
+her dress, the cut of her shoe, and rested attentively on the
+slender hands lying quietly in her lap.  
+
+"I see the circumstances very clearly," he said.  "I sympathize
+with your position.  Having known your father and being well
+acquainted with your guardian, would you be satisfied if I should
+take the responsibility of issuing to the clerks an order not to
+allow anything to be drawn from the private account until the
+settlement of the estate?" 
+
+"Perfectly satisfied," said Linda.
+
+"It might be," said Mr. Worthington, "managing matters i that
+way, that no one outside of ourselves need ever know of il Should
+your sister not draw on the private account in the mean time, she
+would be free to draw household cheques on the monthly income and
+if in the settlement of the estate she turns in this private
+account or accounts, she need never know of the restriction
+concerning this fund."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Linda.  "That will fix everything
+finely."
+
+On her way to the street car, Linda's brain whirled.
+
+"It's not conceivable," she said, "that Eileen should be
+enriching herself at my expense.  I can't imagine her being
+dishonest in money affairs, and yet I can recall scarcely a
+circumstance in life in which Eileen has ever hesitated to be
+dishonest when a lie served her purpose better than the truth. 
+Anyway, matters are safe now."
+
+The next day the books were taken and a cheque for their value
+was waiting for Linda when she reached home.  She cashed this
+cheque and went straight to Peter Morrison for his estimate of
+the expenses for the skylight and fireplace.  When she asked for
+the bill Peter hesitated.
+
+"You wouldn't accept this little addition to your study as a gift
+from Henry and me?" he asked lightly.  "It would be a great
+pleasure to us if you would."
+
+"I could accept stones that Henry Anderson had gathered from the
+mountains and canyons, and I could accept a verse carved on
+stone, and be delighted with the gift; but I couldn't accept
+hours of day labor at the present price of labor, so you will
+have to give me the bill, Peter."
+
+Peter did not have the bill, but he had memoranda, and when Linda
+paid him she reflected that the current talk concerning the
+inflated price of labor was greatly exaggerated.
+
+For two evenings as Linda returned from school and went to her
+room she glanced down the hall and smiled at the decoration
+remaining on Eileen's rug.  The third evening it was gone, so
+
+that she knew Eileen was either in her room or had been there. 
+She did not meet her sister until dinnertime.  She was prepared
+to watch Eileen, to study her closely.  She was not prepared to
+admire her, but in her heart she almost did that very thing. 
+Eileen had practiced subterfuges so long, she was so
+accomplished, that it would have taken an expert to distinguish
+reality from subterfuge.  She entered the dining room humming a
+gay tune.  She was carefully dressed and appealingly beautiful. 
+She blew a kiss to Linda and waved gaily to Katy.
+
+"I was rather afraid," she said lightly, "that I might find you
+two in mourning when I got back.  I never stayed so long before,
+did I?  Seemed as if every friend I had made special demand on my
+time all at once.  Hope you haven't been dull without me."
+
+"Oh, no," said Linda quietly.  "Being away at school all day, of
+course I wouldn't know whether you were at home or not, and I
+have grown so accustomed to spending my evenings alone that I
+don't rely on you for entertainment at any time."
+
+"In other words," said Eileen, "it doesn't make any difference to
+you where I am."
+
+"Not so far as enjoying your company is concerned," said Linda. 
+"Otherwise, of course it makes a difference.  I hope you had a
+happy time."
+
+"Oh, I always have a happy time," answered Eileen lightly.  "I
+certainly have the best friends."
+
+"That's your good fortune," answered Linda.
+
+At the close of the meal Linda sat waiting.  Eileen gave Katy
+instructions to have things ready for a midnight lunch for her
+and John Gilman and then, humming her tune again, she left the
+dining room and went upstairs.  Linda stood looking after her.  
+
+ "Now or never," she said at last.  "I have no business to let
+her meet John until I have recovered my self-respect.  But the
+Lord help me to do the thing decently !"
+
+So she followed Eileen up the stairway.  She tapped at the door,
+and without waiting to hear whether she was invited or not,
+opened it and stepped inside.  Eileen was sitting before the
+window, a big box of candy beside her, a magazine in her fingers.
+
+Evidently she intended to keep her temper in case the coming
+interview threatened to become painful.
+
+"I was half expecting you," she said, "you silly hothead.  I
+found the cheque I wrote you when I got home this afternoon. 
+That was a foolish thing to do.  Why did you tear it up?  If it
+were too large or if it were not enough why didn't you use it and
+ask for another?  Because I had to be away that was merely to
+leave you something to go on until I got back."
+
+Then Linda did the most disconcerting thing possible.  In her
+effort at self-control she went too far.  She merely folded her
+hands in her lap and sat looking straight at Eileen without
+saying one word.  It did not show much on the surface, but Eileen
+really had a conscience, she really had a soul; Linda's eyes,
+resting rather speculatively on her, were honest eyes, and Eileen
+knew what she knew.  She flushed and fidgeted, and at last she
+broke out impatiently:  "Oh, for goodness' sake, Linda, don't
+play 'Patience-on-a-monument.' Speak up and say what it is that
+you want.  If that cheque was not big enough, what will satisfy
+you?"
+
+"Come to think of it," said Linda quietly, "I can get along with
+what I have for the short time until the legal settlement of our
+interests is due.  You needn't bother any more about a cheque."
+
+Eileen was surprised and her face showed it; and she was also
+relieved.  That too her face showed.
+
+"I always knew," she said lightly, "that I had a little sister
+with a remarkably level head and good common sense.  I am glad
+that you recognize the awful inflation of prices during the war
+period, and how I have had to skimp and scheme and save in order
+to make ends meet and to keep us going on Papa's meager income."
+
+All Linda's good resolutions vanished.  She was under strong
+nervous tension.  It irritated her to have Eileen constantly
+referring to their monetary affairs as if they were practically
+paupers, as if their father's life had been a financial failure,
+as if he had not been able to realize from achievements
+recognized around the world a comfortable living for two women.
+
+"Oh, good Lord!" she said shortly.  "Bluff the rest of the world
+like a professional, Eileen, but why try it with me?  You're
+right about my having common sense.  I'll admit that I am using
+it now.  I will be of age in a few days, and then we'll take John
+Gilman and go to the Consolidated Bank, and if it suits your
+convenience to be absent for four or five days at that period,
+I'll take John Gilman and we'll go together."
+
+Eileen was amazed.  The receding color in her cheeks left the
+rouge on them a ghastly, garish thing.
+
+"Well, I won't do anything of the sort," she said hotly, "and
+neither will John Gilman."
+
+"Unfortunately for you," answered Linda, "John Gilman is my
+guardian, not yours.  He'll be forced to do what the law says he
+must, and what common decency tells him he must, no matter what
+his personal feelings are; and I might as well tell you that your
+absence has done you no good.  You'd far better have come home,
+as you agreed to, and gone over the books and made me a decent
+allowance, because in your absence John came here to ask me where
+you were, and I know that he was anxious."
+
+"He came here!" cried Eileen.
+
+"Why, yes," said Linda.  "Was it anything unusual?  Hasn't he
+been coming here ever since I can remember?  Evidently you didn't
+keep him as well posted this time as you usually do.  He came
+here and asked for me."
+
+"And I suppose," said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into
+her white cheeks, "that you took pains to make things
+uncomfortable for me."
+
+"I am very much afraid," said Linda, "that you are right.  You
+have made things uncomfortable for me ever since I can remember,
+for I can't remember the time when you were not finding fault
+with me, putting me in the wrong and getting me criticized and
+punished if you possibly could.  It was a fair understanding that
+you should be here, and you were not, and I was seeing red about
+it; and just as John came in I found your note in tile living
+room and read it aloud.';
+
+"Oh, well, there was nothing in that," said Eileen in a relieved
+tone.  
+
+"Nothing in the wording of it, no," said Linda, "but there was
+everything in the intention back of it.  Because you did not live
+up to your tacit agreement, and because I had been on high
+tension for two or three days, I lost my temper completely.  I
+brought John Gilman up here and showed him the suite of rooms in
+which you have done for yourself, for four years.  I gave him
+rather a thorough inventory of your dressing table and drawers,
+and then I opened the closet door and called his attention to the
+number and the quality of the garments hanging there.  The box
+underneath them I thought was a shoe box, but it didn't prove to
+be exactly that; and for that I want to tell you, as I have
+already told John, I am sorry.  I wouldn't have done that if I
+had known what I was doing."
+
+"Is that all?" inquired Eileen, making a desperate effort at
+self-control.
+
+"Not quite," said Linda.  "When I finished with your room, I took
+him back and showed him mine in even greater detail than I showed
+him yours.  I thought the contrast would be more enlightening
+than anything either one of us could say."
+
+"And I suppose you realize," said Eileen bitterly, "that you lost
+me John Gilman when you did it."
+
+"I?" said Linda.  "I lost you John Gilman when I did it?  But I
+didn't do it.  You did it.  You have been busy for four years
+doing it.  If you hadn't done it, it wouldn't have been there for
+me to show him.  I can't see that this is profitable.  Certainly
+it's the most distressing thing that ever has occurred for me. 
+But I didn't feel that I could let you meet John Gilman tonight
+without telling you what he knows.  If you have any way to square
+your conscience and cleanse your soul before you meet him, you
+had better do it, for he's a mighty fine man and if you lose him
+you will have lost the best chance that is likely ever to come to
+you."
+
+Linda sat studying Eileen.  She saw the gallant effort she was
+making to keep her self-possession, to think with her accustomed
+rapidity, to strike upon some scheme whereby she could square
+herself.  She rose and started toward the door.
+
+"What you'll say to John I haven't the faintest notion," she
+said.  "I told him very little.  I just showed him."
+
+Then she went out and closed the door after her.  At the foot of
+the stairs she met Katy admitting Gilman.  Without any
+preliminaries she said:  "I repeat, John, that I'm sorry for what
+happened the other day.  I have just come from Eileen.  She will
+be down as soon as Katy tells her you're here, no doubt.  I have
+done what I told you I would.  She knows what I showed you so you
+needn't employ any subterfuges.  You can be frank and honest with
+each other."
+
+"I wish to God we could," said John Gilman.
+
+Linda went to her work.  She decided that she would gauge what
+happened by the length of time John stayed.  If he remained only
+a few minutes it would indicate that there had been a rupture. 
+If he stayed as long as he usually did, the chances were that
+Eileen's wit had triumphed as usual.
+
+At twelve o'clock Linda laid her pencils in the box, washed the
+brushes, and went down the back stairs to the ice chest for a
+glass of milk.  The living room was still lighted and Linda
+thought Eileen's laugh quite as gay as she ever had heard it. 
+Linda closed her lips very tight and slowly climbed the stairs. 
+When she entered her room she walked up to the mirror and stared
+at herself in the glass for a long time, and then of herself she
+asked this question:
+
+"Well, how do you suppose she did it?" 
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.  Spanish Iris
+
+Just as Linda was most deeply absorbed with her own concerns
+there came a letter from Marian which Linda read and reread
+several times; for Marian wrote:
+
+MY DEAREST PAL:
+
+Life is so busy up San Francisco way that it makes Lilac Valley
+look in retrospection like a peaceful sunset preliminary to bed
+time.
+
+But I want you to have the consolation and the comfort of knowing
+that I have found at least two friends that I hope will endure. 
+One is a woman who has a room across the hall from mine in my
+apartment house.  She is a newspaper woman and life is very full
+for her, but it is filled with such intensely interesting things
+that I almost regret having made my life work anything so prosaic
+as inanimate houses; but then it's my dream to enliven each house
+I plan with at least the spirit of home.  This woman--her name is
+Dana Meade--enlivens every hour of her working day with something
+concerning the welfare of humanity.  She is a beautiful woman in
+her soul, so extremely beautiful that I can't at this minute
+write you a detailed description of her hair and her eyes and her
+complexion, because this nice, big, friendly light that radiates
+from her so lights her up and transfigures her that everyone says
+how beautiful she is, and yet I have a vague recollection that
+her nose is what you would call a "beak," and I am afraid her
+cheek bones are too high for good proportion, and I know that her
+hair is not always so carefully dressed as it should be, but what
+is the difference when the hair is crowned with a halo?  I can't
+swear to any of these things; they're sketchy impressions.  The
+only thing I am absolutely sure about is the inner light that
+shines to an unbelievable degree.  I wish she had more time and I
+wish I had more time and that she and I might become such friends
+as you and I are.  I can't tell you, dear, how much I think of
+you.  It seems to me that you're running a sort of undercurrent
+in my thoughts all day long.
+
+You will hardly credit it, Linda, but a few days ago I drove a
+car through the thickest traffic, up a steep hill, and round a
+curve.  I did it, but practically collapsed when it was over. 
+The why of it was this:  I think I told you before that in the
+offices of Nicholson and Snow there is a man who is an
+understanding person.  He is the junior partner and his name is
+Eugene Snow.  I happened to arrive at his desk the day I came for
+my instructions and to make my plans for entering their contest. 
+He was very kind to me and went out of his way to smooth out the
+rough places.  Ever since, he makes a point of coming to me and
+talking a few minutes when I am at the office or when he passes
+me on my way to the drafting rooms where I take my lessons.  The
+day I mention I had worked late and hard the night before.  I had
+done the last possible thing to the plans for my dream house.  At
+the last minute, getting it all on paper, working at the
+specifications, at which you know I am wobbly, was nervous
+business; and when I came from the desk after having turned in my
+plans, perhaps I showed fatigue.  Anyway, he said to me that his
+car was below.  He said also that he was a lonely person, having
+lost his wife two years ago, and not being able very frequently
+to see his little daughter who is in the care of her grandmother,
+there were times when he was hungry for the companionship he had
+lost.  He asked me if I would go with him for a drive and I told
+him that I would.  I am rather stunned yet over what happened. 
+The runabout he led me to was greatly like yours, and, Linda, he
+stopped at a florist's and came out with an armload of
+bloom--exquisite lavender and pale pink and faint yellow and
+waxen white--the most enticing armload of spring.  For one minute
+I truly experienced a thrill.  I thought he was going to give
+that mass of flowers to me, but he did not.  He merely laid it
+across my lap and said:  "Edith adored the flowers from bulbs.  I
+never see such bloom that my heart does not ache with a keen,
+angry ache to think that she should be taken from the world, and
+the beauty that she so loved, so early and so ruthlessly.  We'll
+take her these as I would take them to her were she living."
+
+So, Linda dear, I sat there and looked at color and drank in
+fragrance, and we whirled through the city and away to a cemetery
+on a beautiful hill, and filled a vase inside the gates of a
+mausoleum with these appealing flowers.  Then we sat down, and a
+man with a hurt heart told me about his hurt, and what an effort
+he was making to get through the world as the woman he loved
+would have had him; and before I knew what I was doing, Linda, I
+told him the tellable part of my own hurts.  I even lifted my
+turban and bowed my white head before him.  This hurt--it was one
+of the inexorable things that come to people in this world--I
+could talk about.  That deeper hurt, which has put a scar that
+never will be effaced on my soul, of course I could not tell him
+about.  But when we went back to the car he said to me that he
+would help me to get back into the sunlight.  He said the first
+thing I must do to regain self-confidence was to begin driving
+again.  I told him I could not, but he said I must, and made me
+take the driver's seat of a car I had never seen and take the
+steering wheel of a make of machine I had never driven, and
+tackle two or three serious problems for a driver.  I did it all
+right, Linda, because I couldn't allow myself to fail the kind of
+a man Mr. Snow is, when he was truly trying to help me, but in
+the depths of my heart I am afraid I am a coward forever, for
+there is a ghastly illness takes possession of me as I write
+these details to you.  But anyway, put a red mark on your
+calendar beside the date on which you get this letter, and
+joyfully say to yourself that Marian has found two real,
+sympathetic friends.
+
+In a week or ten days I shall know about the contest.  If 1: 
+win, as I really have a sneaking hope that I shall, since I have
+condensed the best of two dozen houses into one and exhausted my
+imagination on my dream home, I will surely telegraph, and you
+can make it a day of jubilee.  If I fail, I will try to find out
+where my dream was not true and what can be done to make it
+materialize properly; but between us, Linda girl, I am going to
+be dreadfully disappointed.  I could use the material value that
+prize represents.  I could start my life work which I hope to do
+in Lilac Valley on the prestige and the background that it would
+give me.  I don't know, Linda, whether you ever learned to pray
+or not, but I have, and it's a thing that helps when the black
+shadow comes, when you reach the land of "benefits forgot and
+friends remembered not."
+
+And this reminds me that I should not write to my very dearest
+friend who has her own problems and make her heart sad with mine;
+so to the joyful news of my two friends add a third, Linda, for I
+am going to tell you a secret because it will make you happy. 
+Since I have been in San Francisco some man, who for a reason of
+his own does not tell me his name, has been writing me extremely
+attractive letters.  I have had several of them and I can't tell
+you, Linda, what they mean to me or how they help me.  There is a
+touch of whimsy about them.  I can't as yet connect them with
+anybody I ever met, but to me they are taking the place of a
+little lunch on the bread of life.  They are such real, such
+vivid, such alive letters from such a real person that I have
+been doing the very foolish and romantic thing of answering them
+as my heart dictates and signing my own name to them, which on
+the surface looks unwise when the man in the case keeps his
+identity in the background; but since he knows me and knows my
+name it seems useless to do anything else:  and answer these
+letters I shall and must; because every one of them is to me a
+strong light thrown on John Gilman.  Every time one of these
+letters comes to me I have the feeling that I would like to reach
+out through space and pick up the man who is writing them and
+dangle him before Eileen and say to her:  "Take HIM.  I dare you
+to take HIM."  And my confidence, Linda, is positively supreme
+that she could not do it.
+
+You know, between us, Linda, we regarded Eileen as a rare
+creature, a kind of exotic thing, made to be kept in a glass
+house with tempered air and warmed water; but as I go about the
+city and at times amuse myself at concerts and theaters, I am
+rather dazed to tell you, honey, that the world is chock full of
+Eileens.  On the streets, in the stores, everywhere I go,
+sometimes half a dozen times in a day I say to myself:  "There
+goes Eileen."  I haven't a doubt that Eileen has a heart, if it
+has not become so calloused that nobody could ever reach it, and
+I suspect she has a soul, but the more I see of her kind the more
+I feel that John Gilman may have to breast rather black water
+before he finds them.
+
+With dearest love, be sure to remember me to Katherine O'Donovan. 
+Hug her tight and give her my unqualified love.  Don't let her
+forget me.
+
+As ever,
+
+MARIAN.  
+
+This was the letter that Linda read once, then she read it again
+and then she read it a third time, and after that she lost count
+and reread it whenever she was not busy doing something else, for
+it was a letter that was the next thing to laying hands upon
+Marian.  The part of the letter concerning the unknown man who
+was writing Marian, Linda pondered over deeply.
+
+"That is the best thing I ever did in my life," she said in self-
+commendation.  "It's doing more than I hoped it would.  It's
+giving Marian something to think about.  It's giving her an
+interest in life.  It's distracting her attention.  Without
+saying a word about John Gilman it is making her see for herself
+the weak spots in him through the very subtle method of calling
+her attention to the strength that may lie in another man.  For
+once in your life, Linda, you have done something strictly worth
+while.  The thing for you to do is to keep it up, and in order to
+keep it up, to make each letter fresh and original, you will have
+to do a good deal of sticking around Peter Morrison's location
+and absorbing rather thoroughly the things he says.  Peter
+doesn't know he is writing those letters but he is in them till
+it's a wonder Marian does not hear him drawl and see the imps
+twisting his lips as she reads them.  Before I write another
+single one I'll go see Peter.  Maybe he will have that article
+written.  I'll take a pencil, and as he reads I'll jot down the
+salient points and then I'll come home and work out a head and
+tail piece for him to send in with it, and in that way I'll ease
+my soul about the skylight and the fireplace."
+
+So Linda took pad and pencils, raided Katy for everything she
+could find that was temptingly edible, climbed into the Bear Cat,
+and went to see Peter as frankly as she would have crossed the
+lawn to visit Marian.  He was not in the garage when she stopped
+her car before it, but the workmen told her that he had strolled
+up the mountain and that probably he would return soon.  Learning
+that he had been gone but a short time Linda set the Bear Cat
+squalling at the top of its voice.  Then she took possession of
+the garage, and clearing Peter's worktable spread upon it the
+food she had brought, and then started out to find some flowers
+for decorations.  When Peter came upon the scene he found Linda,
+flushed and brilliant eyed, holding before him a big bouquet of
+alder bloom, the last of the lilacs she had found in a cool,
+shaded place, pink filaree, blue lupin, and white mahogany
+panicles.  "Peter," she cried.  "you can't guess what I have been
+doing!"
+
+Peter glanced at the flowers.
+
+"Isn't it obvious?" he inquired.
+
+"No, it isn't," said Linda, "because I am capable of two
+processes at once.  The work of my hands is visible; with it I am
+going to decorate your table.  You won't have to go down to the
+restaurant for your supper tonight because I have brought my
+supper up to share with you, and after we finish, you're going to
+read me your article as you have rewritten it.  I am going to
+decorate it and we are going to make a hit with it that will be
+at least a start on the road to greater fame.  What you see is
+material.  You can pick it up, smell it, admire it and eat it. 
+But what I have truly been doing is setting Spanish iris for
+yards down one side of the bed of your stream.  When I left it
+was a foot and a half high Peter, and every blue that the sky
+ever knew in its loveliest moments, and a yellow that is the
+concentrated essence of the best gold from the heart of
+California.  Oh, Peter, there is enchantment in the way I set it. 
+There are irregular deep beds, and there are straggly places
+where there are only one or two in a ragged streak, and then it
+runs along the edge in a fringy rim, and then it stretches out in
+a marshy place that is going to have some other wild things,
+arrowheads, and orchids, and maybe a bunch of paint brush on a
+high, dry spot near by.  I wish you could see it!"
+
+Peter looked at Linda reflectively and then he told her that he
+could see it.  He fold her that he adored it, that he was crazy
+about her straggly continuity and her fringy border, but there
+was not one word of truth in what he said, because what he saw
+was a slender thing, willowy, graceful; roughened wavy black hair
+hanging half her length in heavy braids, dark eyes and bright
+cheeks, a vivid red line of mouth, and a bright brown line of
+freckles bridging a prominent and aristocratic nose.  What he was
+seeing was a soul, a young thing, a thing he coveted with every
+nerve and fiber of his being.  And while he glibly humored her in
+her vision of decorating his brook, in his own consciousness he
+was saying to himself:  "Is there any reason why I should not try
+for her?"
+
+And then he answered himself.  "There is no reason in your life. 
+There is nothing ugly that could offend her or hurt her.  The
+reason, the real reason, probably lies in the fact that if she
+were thinking of caring for anyone it would be for that
+attractive young schoolmate she brought up here for me to
+exercise my wits upon.  It is very likely that she regards me in
+the light of a grandfatherly person to whom she can come with her
+joys or her problems, as frankly as she has now."
+
+So Peter asked if the irises crossed the brook and ran down both
+sides.  Linda sat on a packing case and concentrated on the iris,
+and finally she announced that they did.  She informed him that
+his place was going to bc natural, that Nature evolved things in
+her own way.  She did not grow irises down one side of a brook
+and arrowheads down the other.  They waded across and flew across
+and visited back and forth, riding the water or the wind or the
+down of a bee or the tail of a cow.  As she served the supper she
+had brought she very gravely informed him that there would be
+iris on both sides of his brook, and cress and miners' lettuce
+under the bridge; and she knew exactly where the wild clematis
+grew that would whiten his embankment after his workmen had
+extracted the last root of poison oak.
+
+"It may not scorch you, Peter," she said gravely, "but you must
+look out for the Missus and the little things.  I haven't
+definitely decided on her yet, but she looks a good deal like
+Mary Louise Whiting to mc.  I saw her the other day.  She came to
+school after Donald.  I liked her looks so well that I said to
+myself:  'Everybody talks about how fine she is.  I shouldn't
+wonder if I had better save her for Peter'; but if I decide to,
+you should act that poison stuff out, because it's sure as
+shooting to attack any one with the soft, delicate skin that goes
+with a golden head."
+
+"Oh, let's leave it in," said Peter, "and dispense with the
+golden head.  By the time you get that stream planted as you're
+planning, I'll have become so accustomed to a dark head bobbing
+up and down beside it that I won't take kindly to a sorrel top." 
+"That is positively sacrilegious," said Linda, lifting her hands
+to her rough black hair.  "Never in my life saw anything lovelier
+than the rich gold on Louise Whiting's bare head as she bent to
+release her brakes and start her car.  A black head looks like a
+cinder bed beside it; and only think what a sunburst it will be
+when Mary Louise kneels down beside the iris."
+
+When they had finished their supper Linda gathered up the
+remnants and put them in the car, then she laid a notebook and
+pencil on the table.
+
+"Now I want to hear that article," she said.  "I knew you would
+do it over the minute I was gone, and I knew you would keep it to
+read to me before you sent it."
+
+"Hm," said Peter.  "Is it second sight or psychoanalysis or
+telepathy, or what?"
+
+"Mostly 'what'," laughed Linda.  "I merely knew.  The workmen are
+gone and everything is quiet now, Peter.  Begin.  I am crazy to
+get the particular angle from which you 'make the world safe for
+democracy.' John used to call our attention to your articles
+during the war.  He said we had not sent another man to France
+who could write as humanely and as interestingly as you did.  I
+wish I had kept those articles; because I didn't get anything
+from them to compare with what I can get since I have a slight
+acquaintance with the procession that marches around your mouth. 
+Peter, you will have to watch that mouth of yours.  It's an
+awfully betraying feature.  So long as it's occupied with
+politics and the fads and the foibles and the sins and the
+foolishness and the extravagances of humanity, it's all very
+well.  But if you ever get in trouble or if ever your heart
+hurts, or you get mad enough to kill somebody, that mouth of
+yours is going to be a most awfully revealing feature, Peter. 
+You will have hard work to settle it down into hard-and-fast
+noncommittal lines."
+
+Peter looked at the girl steadily.
+
+"Have you specialized on my mouth?" he asked.
+
+"Huh-umph!" said Linda, shaking her head vigorously.  When I
+specialize I use a pin and a microscope and go right to the root
+of matters as I was taught.  This is superficial.  I am
+extemporizing now."
+
+"Well, if this is extemporizing," said Peter, "God help my soul
+if you ever go at me with a pin and a microscope."
+
+"Oh, but I won't!" cried Linda.  "It wouldn't be kind to pin your
+friends on a setting board and use a microscope on them.  You
+might see things that were strictly private.  You might see
+things they wouldn't want you to see.  They might not be your
+friends any more if you did that.  When I make a friend I just
+take him on trust like I did Donald.  You're my friend, aren't
+you, Peter?"
+
+"Yes, Linda," said Peter soberly.  "Put me to any test you can
+think of if you want proof."
+
+"But I don't believe in PROVING friends, either," said Linda.  "I
+believe in nurturing them.  I would set a friend in my garden and
+water his feet and turn the sunshine on him and tell him to stay
+there and grow.  I might fertilize him, I might prune him, and I
+might use insecticide on him.  I might spray him with rather
+stringent solutions, but I give you my word I would not test him. 
+If he flourished under my care I would know it, and if he did not
+I would know it, and that would be all I would want to know.  I
+have watched Daddy search for the seat of nervous disorders, and
+sometimes he had to probe very deep to find what developed nerves
+unduly but he didn't ever do any picking and raveling and
+fringing at the soul of a human being merely for the sake of
+finding out what it was made of; and everyone says I am like
+him."
+
+"I wish I might have known him," said Peter.
+
+"Don't I wish it!" said Linda.  "Now then, Peter, go ahead.  Read
+your article."
+
+Peter opened a packing case, picked out a sheaf of papers, and
+sitting opposite Linda, began to read.  He was dumbfounded to
+find that he, a man who had read and talked extemporaneously
+before great bodies of learned men, should have cold feet and
+shaking hands and a hammering heart because he was trying to read
+an article on America for Americans before a high-school Junior. 
+But presently, as the theme engrossed him, he forgot the vision
+of Linda interesting herself in his homemaking, and saw instead a
+vision of his country threatened on one side by the red menace of
+the Bolshevik, on the other by the yellow menace of the Jap, and
+yet on another by the treachery of the Mexican and the slowly
+uprising might of the black man, and presently he was thundering
+his best-considered arguments at Linda until she imperceptibly
+drew back from him on the packing case, and with parted lips and
+wide eyes she listened in utter absorption.  She gazed at a
+transformed Peter with aroused eyes and a white light of
+patriotism on his forehead, and a conception even keener than
+anything that the war had brought her young soul was burning in
+her heart of what a man means when he tries to express his
+feeling concerning the land of his birth.  Presently, without
+realizing what she was doing, she reached for her pad and pencils
+and rapidly began sketching a stretch of peaceful countryside
+over which a coming storm of gigantic proportions was gathering. 
+Fired by Peter's article, the touch of genius in Linda's soul
+became creative and she fashioned huge storm clouds wind driven,
+that floated in such a manner as to bring the merest suggestion
+of menacing faces, black faces, yellow faces, brown faces, and
+under the flash of lightning, just at the obscuring of the sun, a
+huge, evil, leering red face.  She swept a stroke across her
+sheet and below this she began again, sketching the same stretch
+of country she had pictured above, strolling in cultivated
+fields, dotting it with white cities, connecting it with smooth
+roadways, sweeping the sky with giant planes.  At one side,
+winging in from the glow of morning, she drew in the
+strong-winged flight of a flock of sea swallows, peacefully
+homing toward the far-distant ocean.  She was utterly unaware
+when Peter stopped reading.  Absorbed, she bent over her work. 
+When she had finished she looked up.
+
+"Now I'll take this home," she said.  "I can't do well on color
+with pencils.  You hold that article till I have time to put this
+on water-color paper and touch it up a bit here and there, and I
+believe it will be worthy of starting and closing your article."
+
+She pushed the sketches toward him.
+
+"You little wonder!" said Peter softly.
+
+"Yes, 'little' is good," scoffed Linda, rising to very nearly his
+height and reaching for the lunch basket.  " 'Little' is good,
+Peter.  If I could do what I like to myself I would get in some
+kind of a press and squash down about seven inches."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said Peter.  "Forget it.  What's the difference what
+the inches of your body are so long as your brain has a stature
+worthy of mention?"
+
+"Good-bye!" said Linda.  "On the strength of that I'll jazz that
+sketch all up, bluey and red-purple and jade-green.  I 11 make it
+as glorious as a Catalina sunset."
+
+As she swung the car around the sharp curve at the boulders she
+looked back and laughingly waved her hand at Peter, and Peter
+experienced a wild desire to shriek lest she lose control of the
+car and plunge down the steep incline.  A second later, when he
+saw her securely on the road below, he smiled to himself.
+
+"Proves one thing," he said conclusively.  "She is over the
+horrors.  She is driving unconsciously.  Thank God she knew that
+curve so well she could look the other way and drive it mentally.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.  The Official Bug-Catcher
+
+Not a mile below the exit from Peter's grounds, Linda perceived a
+heavily laden person toiling down the roadway before her and when
+she ran her car abreast and stopped it, Henry Anderson looked up
+at her with joyful face.
+
+"Sorry I can't uncover, fair lady," he said, "but you see I am
+very much otherwise engaged."
+
+What Linda saw was a tired, disheveled man standing in the
+roadway beside her car, under each arm a boulder the size of her
+head, one almost jet-black, shot through with lines of white and
+flying figures of white crossing between these bands that almost
+reminded one of winged dancers.  The other was a combination
+stone made up of matrix thickly imbedded with pebbles of brown,
+green, pink, and dull blue.
+
+"For pity's sake!" said Linda.  "Where are you going and why are
+you personally demonstrating a new method of transporting rock?"
+
+"I am on my way down Lilac Valley to the residence of a friend of
+mine," said Henry Anderson.  "I heard her say the other day that
+she saved every peculiarly marked boulder she could find to
+preserve coolness and moisture in her fern bed."
+
+Linda leaned over and opened the car door.
+
+"All well and good," she said; "but why in the cause of reason
+didn't you leave them at Peter's and bring them down in his car?"
+
+Henry Anderson laid the stones in the bottom of the car, stepped
+in and closed the door behind him.  He drew a handkerchief from
+his pocket and wiped his perspiring face and soiled hands.
+
+"I had two sufficient personal reasons," he said.  "One was that
+the car at our place is Peter Morrison's car, not mine; and the
+other was that it's none of anybody's business but my own if I
+choose to 'say it' with stones."
+
+Linda started the car, being liberal with gas--so liberal that it
+was only a few minutes till Henry Anderson protested.
+
+"This isn't the speedway," he said.  "What's your hurry?"
+
+"Two reasons seem to be all that are allowed for things at the
+present minute," answered Linda.  "One of mine is that you can't
+drive this beast slow, and the other is that my workroom is piled
+high with things I should be doing.  I have two sketches I must
+complete while I am in the mood, and I have had a great big
+letter from my friend, Marian Thorne, today that I want to answer
+before I go to bed tonight."
+
+"In other words," said Henry Anderson bluntly, "you want me to
+understand that when I have reached your place and dumped these
+stones I can beat it; you have no further use for me."
+
+"You said that," retorted Linda.
+
+"And who ever heard of such a thing," said Henry, "as a young
+woman sending away a person of my numerous charms and attractions
+in order to work, or to write a letter to another woman?"
+
+"But you're not taking into consideration," said Linda, "that I
+must work, and I scarcely know you, while I have known Marian
+ever since I was four years old and she is my best friend."
+
+"Well, she has no advantage over me" said Henry instantly,
+"because I have known you quite as long as Peter Morrison has at
+least, and I'm your official bug-catcher."
+
+"I had almost forgotten about the bugs," said Linda.
+
+"Well, don't for a minute think I am going to give you an
+opportunity to forget," said Henry Anderson.
+
+He reached across and laid his hand over Linda's on the steering
+gear.  Linda said nothing, neither did she move.  She merely
+added more gas and put the Bear Cat forward at a dizzy whirl. 
+Henry laughed.
+
+"That's all right, my beauty," he said.  "Don't you think for a
+minute that I can't ride as fast as you can drive."
+
+A dull red mottled Linda's cheeks.  As quickly as it could be
+done she brought the Bear Cat to a full stop.  Then she turned
+and looked at Henry Anderson.  The expression in her eyes was
+disconcerting even to that cheeky young individual--he had not
+borne her gaze a second until he removed his hand.
+
+"Thanks," said Linda in a dry drawl.  "And you will add to my
+obligation if in the future you will remember not to deal in
+assumptions.  I am not your 'beauty,' and I'm not anyone's
+beauty; while the only thing in this world that I am interested
+in at present is to get the best education I can and at the same
+time carry on work that I love to do.  I have a year to finish my
+course in the high school and when I finish I will only have a
+good beginning for whatever I decide to study next."
+
+"That's nothing," said the irrepressible Henry.  "It will take me
+two years to catch a sufficient number of gold bugs to be really
+serious, but there wouldn't be any harm in having a mutual
+understanding and something definite to work for, and then we
+might be able, you know, to cut out some of that year of high-
+school grinding.  If the plans I have submitted in the Nicholson
+and Snow contest should just happen to be the prize winners, that
+would put matters in such a shape for young Henry that he could
+devote himself to crickets and tumble-bugs at once."
+
+"Don't you think," said Linda quietly, "that you would better
+forget that silly jesting and concentrate the best of your brains
+on improving your plans for Peter Morrison's house?"
+
+"Why, surely I will if that's what you command me to do," said
+Henry, purposely misunderstanding her.
+
+"You haven't mentioned before," said Linda, "that you had
+submitted plans in that San Francisco contest."
+
+"All done and gone," said Henry Anderson lightly.  "I had an
+inspiration one day and I saw a way to improve a house with 
+comforts and conveniences I never had thought of before.  I was
+enthusiastic over the production when I got it on paper and
+figured it.  It's exactly the house that I am going to build for
+Peter, and when I've cut my eye teeth on it I am going to correct
+everything possible and build it in perfection for you."
+
+"Look here," said Linda soberly, "I'm not accustomed to this sort
+of talk.  I don't care for it.  If you want to preserve even the
+semblance of friendship with me you must stop it, and get to
+impersonal matters and stay there."
+
+"All right," he agreed instantly, "but if you don't like my line
+of talk, you're the first girl I ever met that didn't."
+
+"You have my sympathy," said Linda gravely.  "You have been
+extremely unfortunate."
+
+Then she started the Bear Cat, and again running at undue speed
+she reached her wild-flower garden.  Henry Anderson placed the
+stones as she directed and waited for an invitation to come in,
+but the invitation was not given.  Linda thanked him for the
+stones.  She told him that in combination with a few remaining
+from the mantel they would make all she would require, and
+excusing herself she drove to the garage.  When she came in she
+found the irrepressible Henry sitting on the back steps
+explaining to Katy the strenuous time he had had finding and
+carrying down the stones they had brought.  Katy had a plate of
+refreshments ready to hand him when Linda laughingly passed them
+and went to her room.
+
+When she had finished her letter to Marian she took a sheet of
+drawing paper, and in her most attractive lettering sketched in
+the heading, "A Palate Teaser," which was a direct quotation from
+Katy.  Below she wrote:
+
+You will find Tunas in the cacti thickets of any desert, but if
+you are so fortunate as to be able to reach specimens which were
+brought from Mexico and set as hedges around the gardens of the
+old missions, you will find there the material for this salad in
+its most luscious form.  Naturally it can be made from either
+Opuntia Fiscus-Indica or Opuntia Tuna, but a combination of these
+two gives the salad an exquisite appearance and a tiny touch more
+delicious flavor, because Tuna, which is red, has to my taste a
+trifle richer and fuller flavor than Indica, which is yellow. 
+Both fruits taste more like the best well-ripened watermelon than
+any other I recall.
+
+Bring down the Tunas with a fishing rod or a long pole with a
+nail in the end.  With anything save your fingers roll them in
+the sand or in tufts of grass to remove the spines.  Slice off
+either end, score the skin down one side, press lightly, and a
+lush globule of pale gold or rosy red fruit larger than a hen's
+egg lies before you.  With a sharp knife, beginning with a layer
+of red and ending with one of yellow, slice the fruits thinly,
+stopping to shake out the seeds as you work.  In case you live in
+San Diego County or farther south, where it is possible to secure
+the scarlet berries of the Strawberry Cactus-- it is the
+Mammillaria Goodridgei species that you should use--a beautiful
+decoration for finishing your salad can be made from the red
+strawberries of these.  If you live too far north to find these,
+you may send your salad to the table beautifully decorated by
+cutting fancy figures from the red Tuna, or by slicing it
+lengthwise into oblong pieces and weaving them into a decoration
+over the yellow background.
+
+For your dressing use the juice of a lemon mixed with that of an
+orange, sweetened to taste, into which you work, a drop at a
+time, four tablespoons of the best Palermo olive oil.  If the
+salad is large more oil and more juice should be used.
+
+To get the full deliciousness of this salad, the fruit must have
+been on ice, and the dressing made in a bowl imbedded in cracked
+ice, so that when ready to blend both are ice-cold, and must be
+served immediately.
+
+Gigantic specimens of fruit-bearing Cacti can be found all over
+the Sunland Desert near to the city, but they are not possessed
+of the full flavor of the cultivated old mission growths, so that
+it is well worth your while to make a trip to the nearest of
+these for the fruit with which to prepare this salad.  And if, as
+you gather it, you should see a vision of a white head, a thin,
+ascetic, old face, a lean figure trailing a brown robe, slender
+white hands clasping a heavy cross; if you should hear the music
+of worship ascending from the throats of Benedictine fathers
+leading a clamoring choir of the blended voices of Spaniard,
+Mexican, and Indian, combining with the music of the bells and
+the songs of the mocking birds, nest making among the Tunas, it
+will be good for your soul in the line of purging it from
+selfishness, since in this day we are not asked to give all of
+life to the service of others, only a reasonable part of it.
+
+Linda read this over, working in changes here and there, then she
+picked up her pencil and across the top of her sheet indicated an
+open sky with scarcely a hint of cloud.  Across the bottom she
+outlined a bit of Sunland Desert she well remembered, in the
+foreground a bed of flat-leaved nopal, flowering red and yellow,
+the dark red prickly pears, edible, being a near relative of the
+fruits she had used in her salad.  After giving the prickly pear
+the place of honor to the left, in higher growth she worked in
+the slender, cylindrical, jointed stems of the Cholla, shading
+the flowers a paler, greenish yellow.  On the right, balancing
+the Cholla, she drew the oval, cylindrical columns of the
+hedgehog cactus, and the color touch of the big magenta flowers
+blended exquisitely with the color she already had used.  At the
+left, the length of her page, she drew a gigantic specimen of
+Opuntia Tuna, covered with flowers, and well-developed specimens
+of the pears whose coloring ran into the shades of the hedgehog
+cactus.
+
+She was putting away her working materials when she heard steps
+and voices on the stairs, so she knew that Eileen and John Gilman
+were coming.  She did not in the least want them, yet she could
+think of no excuse for refusing them admission that would not
+seem ungracious.  She hurried to the wall, snatched down the
+paintings for Peter Morrison, and looked around to see how she
+could dispose of them.  She ended by laying one of them in a
+large drawer which she pushed shut and locked.  The other she
+placed inside a case in the wall which formerly had been used for
+billiard cues.  At their second tap she opened the door.  Eileen
+was not at her best.  There was a worried look across her eyes, a
+restlessness visible in her movements, but Gilman was radiant.
+
+"What do you think, Linda?" he cried.  "Eileen has just named the
+day!"
+
+"I did no such thing," broke in Eileen.
+
+"Your pardon, fair lady, you did not," said Gilman.  "That was
+merely a figure of speech.  I meant named the month.  She has
+definitely promised in October, and I may begin to hunt a
+location and plan a home for us.  I want the congratulations of
+my dear friend and my dearer sister."
+
+Linda held out her hand and smiled as bravely as she could.
+
+"I am very glad you are so pleased, John," she said quietly, "and
+I hope that you will be as happy as you deserve to be."
+
+"Now exactly what do you mean by that?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, Linda prides herself on being deep and subtle and conveying
+hidden meanings," said Eileen.  "She means what a thousand people
+will tell you in the coming months:  merely that they hope you
+will be happy."
+
+"Of course," Linda hastened to corroborate, wishing if possible
+to avoid any unpleasantness.
+
+"You certainly have an attractive workroom here," said John,
+"much as I hate to see it spoiled for billiards."
+
+"It's too bad," said Linda, "that I have spoiled it for you for
+billiards.  I have also spoiled the outside appearance of the
+house for Eileen."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said John.  "I looked at it carefully the
+other day as I came up, and I thought your changes enhanced the
+value of the property."
+
+"I am surely glad to hear that," said Linda.  "Take a look
+through my skylight and my new window.  Imagine you see the rugs
+I am going to have and a few more pieces of furniture when I can
+afford them; and let me particularly point out the fireplace that
+Henry Anderson and your friend Peter designed and had built for
+me.  Doesn't it add a soul and a heart to my study?"
+
+John Gilman walked over and looked at the fireplace critically. 
+He read the lines aloud, then he turned to Eileen.
+
+"Why, that is perfectly beautiful," he said.  "Let's duplicate it
+in our home."
+
+"You bungler!" scoffed Eileen.
+
+"I think you're right," said Gilman reflectively, "exactly right. 
+Of course I would have no business copying Linda's special
+fireplace where the same people would see it frequently; and if I
+had stopped to think a second, I might have known that you would
+prefer tiling to field stone."
+
+"Linda seems very busy tonight," said Eileen.  "Perhaps we are
+bothering her."
+
+"Yes," said John, "we'll go at once.  I had to run up to tell our
+good news; and I wanted to tell you too, Linda dear, that I think
+both of us misjudged Eileen the other day.  You know, Linda, you
+have always dressed according to your father's ideas, which were
+so much simpler and plainer than the manner in which your mother
+dressed Eileen, that she merely thought that you wished to
+continue in his way.  She had no objection to your having any
+kind of clothes you chose, if only you had confided in her, and
+explained to her what you wanted."
+
+Linda stood beside her table, one lean hand holding down the
+letter she had been writing.  She stood very still, but she was
+powerless to raise her eyes to the face of either John or Eileen. 
+Above everything she did not wish to go any further in revealing
+Eileen to John Gilman.  If he knew what he knew and if he felt
+satisfied, after what he had seen, with any explanation that
+Eileen could trump up to offer, Linda had no desire to carry the
+matter further.  She had been ashamed of what she already had
+done.  She had felt angry and dissatisfied with herself, so she
+stood before them downcast and silent.
+
+"And it certainly was a great joke on both of us," said John
+jovially, "what we thought about that box of cigarettes, you
+know.  They were a prize given by a bridge club at an
+'Ambassador' benefit for the Good Samaritan Hospital.  Eileen,
+the little card shark she is, won it, and she was keeping it
+hidden away there to use as a gift for my birthday.  Since we
+disclosed her plans prematurely, she gave it to me at once, and
+I'm having a great time treating all my friends."
+
+At that instant Linda experienced a revulsion.  Previously she
+had not been able to raise her eyes.  Now it would have been
+quite impossible to avoid looking straight into Eileen's face. 
+But Eileen had no intention of meeting anyone's gaze at that
+minute.  She was fidgeting with a sheet of drawing paper.
+
+"Careful you don't bend that," cautioned Linda.  Then she looked
+at John Gilman.  He BELIEVED what he was saying; he was happy
+again.  Linda evolved the best smile she could.
+
+"How stupid of us not to have guessed!" she said.
+
+Closing the door behind them, Linda leaned against it and looked
+up through the skylight at the creep blue of the night, the
+low-hung stars.  How long she stood there she did not know. 
+Presently she went to her chair, picked up her pencil, and slowly
+began to draw.  At first she scarcely realized what she was
+doing, then she became absorbed in her work.  Then she reached
+for her color box and brushes, and shortly afterward tacked
+against the wall an extremely clever drawing of a greatly
+enlarged wasp.  Skillfully she had sketched a face that was
+recognizable round the big insect eyes.  She had surmounted the
+face by a fluff of bejewelled yellow curls, encased the hind legs
+upon which the creature stood upright in pink velvet Turkish
+trousers and put tiny gold shoes on the feet.  She greatly
+exaggerated the wings into long trails and made them of green
+gauze with ruffled edges.  All the remainder of the legs she had
+transformed into so many braceleted arms, each holding a tiny
+fan, or a necklace, a jewel box, or a handkerchief of lace.  She
+stood before this sketch, studying it for a few minutes, then she
+walked over to the table and came back with a big black pencil. 
+Steadying her hand with a mahl stick rested against the wall,
+with one short sharp stroke she drew a needle-pointed stinger, so
+screened by the delicate wings that it could not be seen unless
+you scrutinized the picture minutely.  After that, with careful,
+interested hands she brought out Peter Morrison's drawings and
+replaced them on the wall to dry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.  The Cap Sheaf
+
+Toward the last of the week Linda began to clear the mental decks
+of her ship of life in order that she might have Saturday free
+for her promised day with Donald.  She had decided that they
+would devote that day to wave-beaten Laguna.  It was a long drive
+but delightful.  It ran over the old King's Highway between miles
+of orange and lemon orchards in full flower, bordered by other
+miles of roses in their prime.
+
+Every minute when her mind was not actively occupied with her
+lessons or her recipes Linda was dreaming of the King's Highway. 
+Almost unconsciously she began to chant:
+
+"All in the golden weather, forth let us ride today, You and I
+together on the King's Highway, The blue skies above us, and
+below the shining sea; There's many a road to travel, but it's
+this road for me."
+
+You must have ridden this road with an understanding heart and
+the arm of God around you to know the exact degree of
+disappointment that swelled in Linda's heart when she answered
+the telephone early Saturday morning and heard Donald Whiting's
+strained voice speaking into it.  He was talking breathlessly in
+eager, boyish fashion.
+
+"Linda, I am in a garage halfway downtown," he was saying, "and
+it looks to me as if to save my soul I couldn't reach you before
+noon.  I have had the darnedest luck.  Our Jap got sick last week
+and he sent a new man to take his place.  There wasn't a thing
+the matter with our car when I drove it in Friday night.  This
+morning Father wanted to use it on important business, and it
+wouldn't run.  He ordered me to tinker it up enough to get it to
+the shop.  I went at it and when it would go, I started You can
+imagine the clip I was going, and the thing went to pieces.  I
+don't know yet how it comes that I saved my skin.  I'm pretty
+badly knocked out, but I'll get there by noon if it's a possible
+thing."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Linda, fervently hoping that the
+ache in her throat would not tincture her voice.
+
+It was half-past eleven when Donald came.  Linda could not bring
+herself to give up the sea that day.  She found it impossible to
+drive the King's Highway.  It seemed equally impossible not to
+look on the face of the ocean, so she compromised by skirting
+Santa Monica Bay, and taking the foothill road she ran it to the
+north end of the beach drive.  When they had spread their
+blankets on the sand, finished their lunch and were resting,
+Linda began to question Donald about what had happened.  She
+wanted to know how long Whitings' gardener had been in their
+employ; if they knew where he lived and about his family; if they
+knew who his friends were, or anything concerning him.  She
+inquired about the man who had taken his place, and wanted most
+particularly to know what the garage men had found the trouble
+with a car that ran perfectly on Friday night and broke down in
+half a dozen different places on Saturday morning.  Finally
+Donald looked at her, laughingly quizzical.
+
+"Linda," he said, "you're no nerve specialist and no naturalist. 
+You're the cross examiner for the plaintiff.  What are you trying
+to get at?  Make out a case against Yogo Sani?"
+
+"Of course it's all right," said Linda, watching a distant
+pelican turn head down and catapult into the sea.  "It has to be
+all right, but you must admit that it looks peculiar.  How have
+you been getting along this week?"
+
+Donald waved his hand in the direction of a formation of stone
+the size of a small house.  
+
+"Been rolling that to the top of the mountain," he said lightly. 
+Linda's eyes narrowed, her face grew speculative.  She looked at
+Donald intently.
+
+"Is it as difficult as that?" she asked in a lowered voice as if
+the surf and the sea chickens might hear.
+
+"It is just as difficult as that," said Donald.  "While you're
+talking about peculiar things, I'll tell you one.  In class I
+came right up against Oka Sayye on the solution of a theorem in
+trigonometry.  We both had the answer, the correct answer, but we
+had arrived at it by widely different routes, and it was up to me
+to prove that my line of reasoning was more lucid, more natural,
+the inevitable one by which the solution should be reached.  We
+got so in earnest that I am afraid both of us were rather tense. 
+I stepped over to his demonstration to point out where I thought
+his reasoning was wrong.  I got closer to the Jap than I had ever
+been before; and by gracious, Linda! scattered, but nevertheless
+still there, and visible, I saw a sprinkling of gray hairs just
+in front of and over his ears.  It caught me unawares, and before
+I knew what I was doing, before the professor and the assembled
+classroom I blurted it out:  'Say, Oka Sayye, how old are you?'
+If the Jap had had any way of killing me, I believe he would have
+done it.  There was a look in his eyes that was what I would call
+deadly.  It was only a flash and then, very courteously, putting
+me in the wrong, of course, he remarked that he was 'almost
+ninekleen'; and it struck me from his look and the way he said it
+that it was a lie.  If he truly was the average age of the rest
+of the class there was nothing for him to be angry about.  Then I
+did take a deliberate survey.  From the settled solidity of his
+frame and the shape of his hands and the skin of his face and the
+set of his eyes in his head, I couldn't see that much youth. 
+I'll bet he's thirty if he's a day, and I shouldn't be a bit
+surprised if he has graduated at the most worthwhile university
+in Japan, before he ever came to this country to get his English
+for nothing."
+
+Linda was watching a sea swallow now, and slowly her lean fingers
+were gathering handfuls of sand and sifting them into a little
+pyramid she was heaping beside her.  Again almost under her
+breath she spoke.
+
+"Donald, do you really believe that?" she asked.  "Is it possible
+that mature Jap men are coming here and entering our schools and
+availing themselves of the benefits that the taxpayers of
+California provide for their children?"
+
+"Didn't you know it?" asked Donald.  "I hadn't thought of it in
+connection with Oka Sayye, but I do know cases where mature Japs
+have been in grade schools with children under ten."
+
+"Oh, Donald!" exclaimed Linda.  "If California is permitting that
+or ever has permitted it, we're too easy.  We deserve to become
+their prey if we are so careless."
+
+"Why, I know it's true," said Donald.  "I have been in the same
+classes with men more than old enough to be my father."
+
+"I never was," said Linda, industriously sifting sand.  "I have
+been in classes with Japs ever since I have been at school, but
+it was with girls and boys of our gardeners and fruit dealers and
+curio-shop people, and they were always of my age and entitled to
+be in school, since our system includes the education of anybody
+who happens to be in California and wants to go to school."
+
+"Did my being late spoil any particular plan you had made,
+Linda?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "it did."
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry!" cried Donald.  "I certainly shall try to see
+that it doesn't occur again.  Could we do it next Saturday?"
+
+"I am hoping so," said Linda.
+
+"I told Dad," said Donald, "where I wanted to go and what I
+wanted to do, and he was awfully sorry but he said it was
+business and it would take only a few minutes and he thought I
+could do it and be on time.  If he had known I would be detained
+I don't believe he would have asked it of me.  He's a grand old
+peter, Linda."  
+
+
+
+"Yes, I know," said Linda.  "There's not much you can tell me
+about peters of the grand sort, the real, true flesh-and-blood,
+bighearted, human-being fathers, who will take you to the fields
+and the woods and take the time to teach you what God made and
+how He made it and why He made it and what we can do with it, and
+of the fellowship and brotherhood we can get from Nature by being
+real kin.  The one thing that I have had that was the biggest
+thing in all this world was one of these real fathers."
+
+Donald watched as she raised the pyramid higher and higher.
+
+"Did you tell your father whom you were to go with?" she asked.
+
+"Sure I did," said Donald.  "Told the whole family at dinner last
+night.  Told 'em about all the things I was learning, from where
+to get soap off the bushes to the best spot for material for
+wooden legs or instantaneous relief for snake bite."
+
+"What did they say?" Linda inquired laughingly.
+
+"Unanimously in favour of continuing the course," he said.  "I
+had already told Father about you when I asked him for books and
+any help that he could give me with Oka Sayye.  Since I had
+mentioned you last night he told Mother and Louise about that,
+and they told me to bring you to the house some time.  All of
+them are crazy to know you.  Mother says she is just wild to know
+whether a girl who wears boots and breeches and who knows canyons
+and the desert and the mountains as you do can be a feminine and
+lovable person."
+
+"If I told her how many friends I have, she could have speedily
+decided whether I am lovable or not," said Linda; "but I would
+make an effort to convince her that I am strictly feminine."
+
+"You would convince her of that without making the slightest
+effort.  You're infinitely more feminine than any other girl I
+have ever known "
+
+"How do you figure that?" asked Linda.
+
+"Well," said Donald, "it's a queer thing about you, Linda.  I
+take any liberty I pretty nearly please with most of the girls I
+have been associated with.  I tie their shoes and pull their
+hair--down if I want to--and hand them round 'most any way the
+notion takes me, and they just laugh and take the same liberties
+with me, which proves that I am pretty much a girl with them or
+they are pretty much boys with me.  But it wouldn't occur to me
+to touch your hair or your shoe lace or the tips of your fingers;
+which proves that you're more feminine than any other girl I
+know, because if you were not I would be treating you more like
+another boy.  I thought, the first day we were together, that you
+were like a boy, and I said so, and I thought it because you did
+not tease me and flirt with me, but since I have come to know you
+better, you're less like a boy than any other girl I ever have
+known."
+
+"Don't get psychological, Donald," said Linda.  "Go on with the
+Jap.  I haven't got an answer yet to what I really want to know. 
+Have you made the least progress this week?  Can you beat him?"
+
+Donald hesitated, studying over the answer.
+
+"Beat him at that trig proposition the other day," he said.  "Got
+an open commendation before the class.  There's not a professor
+in any of my classes who isn't 'hep' to what I'm after by this
+time, and if I would cajole them a little they would naturally be
+on my side, especially if their attention were called to that
+incident of yesterday; but you said I have to beat him with my
+brains, by doing better work than he does; so about the biggest
+thing I can honestly tell you is that I have held my own.  I have
+only been ahead of him once this week, but I haven't failed in
+anything that he has accomplished.  I have been able to put some
+additional touches to some work that he has done for which he
+used to be marked A which means your One Hundred.  Double A which
+means your plus I made in one instance.  And you needn't think
+that Oka Sayye does not realize what I am up to as well as any of
+the rest of the class, and you needn't think that he is not going
+to give me a run for my brain.  All I've got will be needed
+before we finish this term."
+
+"I see," said Linda, slowly nodding her head.
+
+"I wish," said Donald, "that we had started this thing two years
+ago, or better still, four.  But of course you were not in the 
+high school four years ago and there wasn't a girl in my class or
+among my friends who cared whether I beat the Jap or not.  They
+greatly preferred that I take them motoring or to a dance or a
+picture show or a beach party.  You're the only one except Mother
+and Louise who ever inspired me to get down to business."  
+
+Linda laid her palm on the top of the sand heap and pressed it
+flat.  She looked at Donald with laughing eyes.
+
+"Symbolical," she announced.  "That sand was the Jap."  She
+stretched her hand toward him.  "That was you.  Did you see
+yourself squash him?"
+
+Donald's laugh was grim.
+
+"Yes, I saw," he said.  "I wish it were as easy as that."
+
+"That was not easy," said Linda; "make a mental computation of
+all the seconds that it took me to erect that pyramid and all the
+millions of grains of sand I had to gather."
+
+Donald was deeply thoughtful, yet a half smile was playing round
+his lips.
+
+"Of all the queer girls I ever knew, you're the cap sheaf,
+Linda," he said.
+
+Linda rose slowly, shook the sand from her breeches and stretched
+out her hand.
+
+"Let's hotfoot it down to the African village and see what the
+movies are doing that is interesting today," she proposed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.  Shifting the Responsibility
+
+On her pillow that night before dropping to almost instantaneous
+sleep Linda reflected that if you could not ride the King's
+Highway, racing the sands of Santa Monica was a very excellent
+substitute.  It had been a wonderful day after all.  When she had
+left Donald at the Lilac Valley end of the car line he had held
+her hand tight an instant and looked into her face with the most
+engaging of clear, boyish smiles.
+
+"Linda, isn't our friendship the nicest thing that ever happened
+to us?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Linda promptly, "quite the nicest.  Make your
+plans for all day long next Saturday."
+
+"I'll be here before the birds are awake," promised Donald.
+
+At the close of Monday's sessions, going down the broad walk from
+the high school, Donald overtook Linda and in a breathless
+whisper he said:  "What do you think?  I came near Oka Sayye
+again this morning in trig, and his hair was as black as jet,
+dyed to a midnight, charcoal finish, and I am not right sure that
+he had not borrowed some girl's lipstick and rouge pot for the
+benefit of his lips and cheeks.  Positively he's hectically
+youthful today.  What do you know about that?"
+
+Then he hurried on to overtake the crowd of boys he had left,
+Linda's heart was racing in her breast.
+
+Turning, she re-entered the school building, and taking a
+telephone directory she hunted an address, and then, instead of
+going to the car line that took her to Lilac Valley she went to
+the address she had looked up.  With a pencil she wrote a few
+lines on a bit of scratch paper in one of her books.  That note
+opened a door and admitted her to the presence of a tall, lean,
+gray-haired man with quick, blue-gray eyes and lips that seemed
+capable of being either grave or gay on short notice.  With that
+perfect ease which Linda had acquired through the young days of
+her life in meeting friends of her father, she went to the table
+beside which this man was standing and stretched out her hand.
+
+"Judge Whiting?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," said the Judge.
+
+"I am Linda Strong, the younger daughter of Alexander Strong.  I
+think you knew my father."
+
+"Yes," said the Judge, "I knew him very well indeed, and I have
+some small acquaintance with his daughter through very
+interesting reports that my son brings home."
+
+"Yes, it is about Donald that I came to see you," said Linda.
+
+If she had been watching as her father would have watched, Linda
+would have seen the slight uplift of the Judge's figure, the
+tensing of his muscles, the narrowing of his eyes in the swift,
+speculative look he passed over her from the crown of her bare,
+roughened black head down the gold-brown of her dress to her
+slender, well-shod feet.  The last part of that glance Linda
+caught.  She slightly lifted one of the feet under inspection,
+thrust it forward and looked at the Judge with a gay challenge in
+her dark eyes.
+
+"Are you interested in them too?" she asked.
+
+The Judge was embarrassed.  A flush crept into his cheeks.  He
+was supposed to be master of any emergency that might arise, but
+one had arisen in connection with a slip of a schoolgirl that
+left him wordless.
+
+"It is very probable," said Linda, "that if my shoes had been
+like most other girls' shoes I wouldn't be here today.  I was in
+the same schoolroom with your son for three years, and he never
+saw me or spoke to me until one day he stopped me to inquire why
+I wore the kind of shoes I did.  He said he had a battle to wage
+with me because I tried to be a law to myself, and he wanted to
+know why I wasn't like other girls.  And I told him I had a crow
+to pick with HIM because he had the kind of brain that would be
+content to let a Jap beat him in his own school, in his own
+language and in his own country; so we made an engagement to
+fight to a finish, and it ended by his becoming the only boy
+friend I have and the nicest boy friend a girl ever had, I am
+very sure.  That's why I'm here."
+
+Linda lifted her eyes and Judge Whiting looked into them till he
+saw the same gold lights in their depths that Peter Morrison had
+seen.  He came around the table and placed a big leather chair
+for Linda.  Then he went back and resumed his own.
+
+"Of course," said the Judge in his most engaging manner.  "I
+gather from what Donald has told me that you have a reason for
+being here, and I want you to understand that I am intensely
+interested in anything you have to say to me.  Now tell me why
+you came."
+
+"I came," said Linda, "because I started something and am afraid
+of the possible result.  I think very likely if, in retaliation
+for what Donald said to me about my hair and my shoes, I had not
+twitted him about the use he was making of his brain and done
+everything in my power to drive him into competition with Oka
+Sayye in the hope that a white man would graduate with the
+highest honors, he would not have gone into this competition,
+which I am now certain has antagonized Oka Sayye."
+
+Linda folded her slim hands on the table and leaned forward.
+
+"Judge Whiting," she said earnestly, "I know very little about
+men.  The most I know was what I learned about my father and the
+men with whom he occasionally hunted and fished.  They were all
+such fine men that I must have grown up thinking that every man
+was very like them, but one day I came in direct contact with the
+Jap that Donald is trying to beat, and the thing I saw in his
+face put fear into my heart and it has been there ever since.  I
+have almost an unreasoning fear of that Jap, not because he has
+said anything or done anything.  It's just instinctive.  I may be
+wholly wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time,
+but there are two things I wanted to tell you.  I could have told
+Donald, but if I did and his mind went off at a tangent thinking
+of these things he wouldn't be nearly so likely to be in
+condition to give his best thought to his studies.  If I really
+made him see what I think I have seen, and fear what I know I
+fear, he might fail where I would give almost anything to see him
+succeed; so I thought I would come to you and tell you about it
+and ask you please to think it over, and to take extra care of
+him, because I really believe that he may be in danger; and if he
+is I never shall be able to rid myself of a sense of
+responsibility."
+
+"I see," said Judge Whiting.  "Now tell me, just as explicitly as
+you have told me this, exactly what it is that you fear."
+
+"Last Saturday," said Linda, "Donald told me that while standing
+at the board beside Oka Sayye, demonstrating a theorem, he
+noticed that there were gray hairs above the Jap's ears, and he
+bluntly asked him, before the professor and the class, how old he
+was.  In telling me, he said he had the feeling that if the Jap
+could have done so in that instant, he would have killed him.  He
+said he was nineteen, but Donald says from the matured lines of
+his body, from his hands and his face and his hair, he is certain
+that he is thirty or more, and he thinks it very probable that he
+may have graduated at home before he came here to get his English
+for nothing from our public schools.  I never before had the fact
+called to my attention that this was being done, but Donald told
+me that he had been in classes with matured men when he was less
+than ten years of age.  That is not fair, Judge Whiting; it is
+not right.  There should be an age specified above which people
+may not be allowed to attend public school."
+
+"I quite agree with you," said the Judge.  "That has been done in
+the grades, but there is nothing fair in bringing a boy under
+twenty in competition with a man graduated from the institutions
+of another country, even in the high schools.  If this be the
+case--"
+
+"You can be certain that it is," said Linda, "because Donald
+whispered to me as he passed me half an hour ago, coming from the
+school building, that TODAY Oka Sayye's hair is a uniform,
+shining black, and he also thought that he had used a lipstick
+and rouge in an effort at rejuvenation.  Do you think, from your
+knowledge of Donald, that he would imagine that?"
+
+"No," said Judge Whiting, "I don't think such a thing would occur
+to him unless he saw it."
+
+"Neither do I," said Linda.  "From the short acquaintance I have
+with him I should not call him at all imaginative, but he is
+extremely quick and wonderfully retentive.  You have to show him
+but once from which cactus he can get Victrola needles and
+fishing hooks, or where to find material for wooden legs."
+
+The Judge laughed.  "Doesn't prove much," he said.  "You wouldn't
+have to show me that more than once either.  If anyone were
+giving me an intensive course on such interesting subjects, I
+would guarantee to remember, even at my age."
+
+Linda nodded in acquiescence.  "Then you can regard it as quite
+certain," she said, "that Oka Sayye is making up in an effort to
+appear younger than he is which means that he doesn't want his
+right questioned to be in our schools, to absorb the things that
+we are taught, to learn our language, our government, our
+institutions, our ideals, our approximate strength and our
+only-too-apparent weakness."
+
+The Judge leaned forward and waited attentively.
+
+"The other matter," said Linda, "was relative to Saturday.  There
+may not be a thing in it, but sometimes a woman's intuition
+proves truer than what a man thinks he sees and knows.  I haven't
+SEEN a thing, and I don't KNOW a thing, but I don't believe your
+gardener was sick last week.  I believe he had a dirty job he
+wanted done and preferred to save his position and avoid risks by
+getting some other Jap who had no family and no interests here,
+to do it for him.  I don't BELIEVE that your car, having run all
+right Friday night, was shot to pieces Saturday morning so that
+Donald went smash with it in a manner that might very easily have
+killed him, or sent him to the hospital for months, while Oka
+Sayye carried off the honors without competition I want to ask
+you to find out whether your regular gardener truly was ill,
+whether he has a family and interests to protect here, or whether
+he is a man who could disappear in a night as Japs who have
+leased land and have families cannot.  I want to know about the
+man who took your gardener's place, and I want the man who is
+repairing your car interviewed very carefully as to what he found
+the trouble with it."
+
+Linda paused.  Judge Whiting sat in deep thought, then he looked
+at Linda.
+
+"I see," he said at last.  "Thank you very much for coming to me. 
+All these things and anything that develops from them shall be
+handled carefully.  Of course you know that Donald is my only son
+and you can realize what he is to me and to his mother and
+sister."
+
+"It is because I do realize that," said Linda, "that I am here. 
+I appreciate his friendship, but it is not for my own interests
+that I am asking to have him taken care of while he wages his
+mental war with this Jap.  I want Donald to have the victory, but
+I want it to be a victory that will be an inspiration to any boy
+of white blood among any of our allies or among peoples who
+should be our allies.  There's a showdown coming between the
+white race and a mighty aggregation of colored peoples one of
+these days, and if the white man doesn't realize pretty soon that
+his supremacy is not only going to be contested but may be lost,
+it just simply will be lost; that is all there is to it."
+
+The Judge was studying deeply now.  Finally he said:  "Young
+lady, I greatly appreciate your coming to me.  There may be
+NOTHING in what you fear.  It MIGHT be a matter of national
+importance.  In any event, it shows that your heart is in the
+right place.  May Mrs. Whiting and I pay you a visit some day
+soon in your home?"
+
+"Of course," said Linda simply.  "I told Donald to bring his
+mother the first time he came, but he said he did not need to be
+chaperoned when he came to see me, because my father's name was a
+guarantee to his mother that my home would be a proper place for
+him to visit."
+
+"I wonder how many of his other girl friends invited him to bring
+his mother to see them," said the Judge.
+
+"Oh, he probably grew up with the other girls and was acquainted
+with them from tiny things," said Linda.
+
+"Very likely," conceded the Judge.  "I think, after all, I would
+rather have an invitation to make one of those trips with you to
+the desert or the mountains.  Is there anything else as
+interesting as fish hooks and Victrola needles and wooden legs to
+be learned?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Linda, leaning farther forward, a lovely color
+sweeping up into her cheeks, her eyes a-shine.  She had missed
+the fact that the Judge was jesting.  She had thought him in
+sober, scientific earnest.
+
+"It's an awfully nice thing if you dig a plant or soil your hands
+in hunting, or anything like that, to know that there are four or
+five different kinds of vegetable soap where you can easily reach
+them, if you know them.  If you lose your way or have a long
+tramp, it's good to know which plants will give you drink and
+where they are.  And if you're short of implements, you might at
+any time need a mescal stick, or an arrow shaft or an arrow,
+even.  If Donald were lost now, he could keep alive for days,
+because he would know what wood would make him a bow and how he
+could take amole fiber and braid a bow string and where he could
+make arrows and arrow points so that he could shoot game for
+food.  I've taught him to make a number of snares, and he knows
+where to find and how to cook his greens and potatoes and onions
+and where to find his pickles and how to make lemonade and tea,
+and what to use for snake bite.  It's been such fun, Judge
+Whiting, and he has been so interested."
+
+"Yes, I should think he would be," said the Judge.  "I am
+interested myself.  If you would take an old boy like me on a few
+of those trips, I would be immensely pleased."
+
+"You'd like brigand beefsteak," suggested Linda, "and you'd like
+cress salad, and I am sure you'd like creamed yucca."
+
+"Hm," said the Judge.  "Sounds to me like Jane Meredith."
+
+Linda suddenly sat straight.  A dazed expression crossed her
+face.  Presently she recovered.  
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," she said, "what a great criminal judge
+knows about Jane Meredith?" 
+
+"Why, I hear my wife and daughter talking about her," said the
+Judge.
+
+"I wonder," said Linda, "if a judge hears so many secrets that he
+forgets what a secret is and couldn't possibly keep one to save
+his life."
+
+"On the other hand," said Judge Whiting, "a judge hears so many
+secrets that he learns to be a very secretive person himself, and
+if a young lady just your size and so like you in every way as to
+be you, told me anything and told me that it was a secret, I
+would guarantee to carry it with me to my grave, if I said I
+would."
+
+One of Linda's special laughs floated out of the windows.  Her
+right hand slipped across the table toward the Judge.
+
+"Cross your heart and body?" she challenged.
+
+The Judge took the hand she offered in both of his own.
+
+"On my soul," he said, "I swear it."
+
+"All right," bubbled Linda.  "Judge Whiting, allow me to present
+to you Jane Meredith, the author and originator of the Aboriginal
+Cookery articles now running in Everybody's Home.',
+
+Linda stood up as she made the presentation and the Judge arose
+with her.  When she bowed her dark head before him the Judge
+bowed equally as low, then he took the hand he held and pressed
+it against his lips.
+
+"I am not surprised," he said.  "I am honored, deeply honored,
+and I am delighted.  For a high school girl that is a splendid
+achievement."
+
+"But you realize, of course," said Linda, "that it is vicarious. 
+I really haven't done anything.  I am just passing on to the
+world what Alexander Strong found it interesting to teach his
+daughter, because he hadn't a son."
+
+"I certainly am fortunate that my son is getting the benefit of
+this," said Judge Whiting earnestly.  "There are girls who make
+my old-fashioned soul shudder, but I shall rest in great comfort
+whenever I know that my boy is with you."
+
+"Sure!" laughed Linda.  "I'm not vamping him.  I don't know the
+first principles.  We're not doing a thing worse than sucking
+'hunters' rock leek' or roasting Indian potatoes or fishing for
+trout with cactus spines.  I have had such a lovely time I don't
+believe that I'll apologize for coming.  But you won't waste a
+minute in making sure about Oka Sayye?"
+
+"I won't waste a minute," said the Judge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.  The End of Marian's Contest
+
+Coming from school a few days later on an evening when she had
+been detained, Linda found a radiant Katy awaiting her.
+
+"What's up, old dear?" cried Linda.  "You seem positively
+illumined."
+
+"So be," said Katy.  "It's a good time I'm havin'.  In the first
+place the previous boss of this place ain't nowise so bossy as
+sue used to be, an' livin' with her is a dale aisier.  An' then,
+when Miss Eileen is around these days, she is beginning to see
+things, and she is just black with jealousy of ye.  Something
+funny happened here the afternoon, an' she was home for once an'
+got the full benefit of it.  I was swapin' the aist walk, but I
+know she was inside the window an' I know she heard.  First,
+comes a great big loaded automobile drivin' up, and stopped in
+front with a flourish an' out hops as nice an' nate a lookin' lad
+as ever you clapped your eyes on, an' up he comes to me an' off
+goes his hat with a swape, an' he hands me that bundle an' he
+says:  'Here's something Miss Linda is wantin' bad for her wild
+garden.' "
+
+Katy handed Linda a bundle of newspaper, inside which, wrapped in
+a man's handkerchief, she found several plants, carefully lifted,
+the roots properly balled, the heads erect, crisp, although in
+full flower.
+
+"Oh, Katy!" cried Linda.  "Look, it's Gallito, 'little rooster'!"
+"Now ain't them jist yellow violets?" asked Katy dubiously.
+
+"No," said Linda, "they are not.  They are quite a bit rarer. 
+They are really a wild pansy.  Bring water, Katy, and help me."
+
+"But I've something else for ye," said Katy.
+
+"I don't care what you have," answered Linda.  "I am just
+compelled to park these little roosters at once."
+
+"What makes ye call them that ungodly name?" asked Katy.
+
+"Nothing ungodly about it," answered Linda.  "It's funny. 
+Gallito is the Spanish name for these violets, and it means
+'little rooster.' "
+
+Linda set the violets as carefully as they had been lifted and
+rinsed her hands at the hydrant.
+
+"Now bring on the remainder of the exhibit," she ordered.
+
+"It's there on the top of the rock pile, which you notice has
+incrased since ye last saw it."
+
+"So it has!" said Linda.  "So it has! And beautifully colored
+specimens those are too.  My fern bed will lift up its voice and
+rejoice in them.  And rocks mean Henry Anderson.  The box I do
+not understand."
+
+Linda picked it up, untied the string, and slipped off the
+wrapping.  Katy stared in wide-mouthed amazement.
+
+"I was just tickled over that because Miss Eileen saw a good-
+looking and capable young man leave a second package, right on
+the heels of young Whiting," she said.  "Whatever have ye got,
+lambie?  What does that mean?"
+
+Linda held up a beautiful box of glass, inside of which could be
+seen swarming specimens of every bug, beetle, insect, and worm
+that Henry Anderson had been able to collect in Heaven only knew
+what hours of search.  Linda opened the box.  The winged
+creatures flew, the bettles tumbled, the worms went over the top. 
+She set it on the ground and laughed to exhaustion.  Her eyes
+were wet as she looked up at Katy.
+
+"That first night Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison were here to
+dinner, Katy," she said, "Anderson made a joke about being my
+bug-catcher when I built my home nest, and several times since he
+has tried to be silly about it, but the last time I told him it
+was foolishness to which I would listen no more, so instead of
+talking, he has taken this way of telling me that he is fairly
+expert as a bug-catcher.  Really, it is awfully funny, Katy."
+
+Katy was sober.  She showed no appreciation of the fun.
+
+"Ye know, lambie," she said, her hands on her hips, her elbows
+wide-spread, her jaws argumentative, "I've done some blarneying
+with that lad, an' I've fed him some, because he was doin' things
+that would help an' please ye, but now I'm tellin' ye, just like
+I'll be tellin' ye till I die, I ain't STRONG for him.  If ever
+the day comes when ye ask me to take on that Whiting kid for me
+boss, I'll bow my head an' I'll fly at his bidding, because he is
+real, he's goin' to come out a man lots like your pa, or hisn. 
+An' if ever the day comes when ye will be telling me ye want me
+to serve Pater Morrison, I'll well nigh get on my knees to him. 
+I think he'd be the closest we'd ever come to gettin' the master
+back.  But I couldn't say I'd ever take to Anderson.  They's
+something about him, I can't just say what, but he puts me back
+up amazin'."
+
+"Don't worry, ancient custodian of the family," said Linda. 
+"That same something in Henry Anderson that antagonizes you,
+affects me in even stronger degree.  You must not get the foolish
+notion that any man has a speculative eye on me, because it is
+not true.  Donald Whiting is only a boy friend, treating me as a
+brother would, and Peter Morrison is much too sophisticated and
+mature to pay any serious attention to a girl with a year more
+high school before her.  I want to be decent to Henry Anderson,
+because he is Peter's architect, and I'm deeply interested in
+Peter's house and the lady who will live in it.  Sometimes I hope
+it will be Donald's sister, Mary Louise.  Anyway, I am going to
+get acquainted with her and make it my business to see that she
+and Peter get their chance to know each other well.  My job for
+Peter is to help run his brook at the proper angle, build his
+bridge, engineer his road, and plant his grounds; so don't be
+dreaming any foolish dreams, Katy."
+
+Katy folded her arms, tilted her chin at an unusually aspiring
+angle, and deliberately sniffed.
+
+"Don't ye be lettin' yourself belave your own foolishness," she
+said.  "I ain't done with me exhibit yet.  On the hall table ye
+will find a package from the Pater Morrison man that Miss Eileen
+had the joy of takin' in and layin' aside for ye, an atop of it
+rists a big letter that I'm thinkin' might mean Miss Marian."
+
+"Oh," cried Linda.  "Why are you wasting all this time?  If there
+is a letter from Marian it may mean that the competition is
+decided; but if it is, she loses, because she was to telegraph if
+she won."
+
+Linda rushed into the house and carried her belongings to her
+workroom.  She dropped them on the table and looked at them.
+
+"I'll get you off my mind first," she said to the Morrison
+package, which enclosed a new article entitled "How to Grow Good
+Citizens."  With it was a scrawled line, "I'm leaving the head
+and heels of the future to you."
+
+"How fine!" exulted Linda.  "He must have liked the head and tail
+pieces I drew for his other article, so he wants the same for
+this, and if he is well paid for his article, maybe in time,
+after I've settled for my hearth motto, he will pay me something
+for my work.  Gal-lum-shus!"
+
+As she opened the letter from Marian she slowly shook her head.
+
+"Drat the luck," she muttered, "no good news here."
+
+Slowly and absorbedly she read:
+
+DEAREST LINDA:
+
+No telegram to send.  I grazed the first prize and missed the
+second because Henry Anderson wins with plans so like mine that
+they are practically duplicates.  I have not seen the winning
+plans.  Mr. Snow told me as gently as he could that the judges
+had ruled me out entirely.  The winning plans are practically a
+reversal of mine, more
+
+
+
+professionally drawn, and no doubt the specifications are far
+ahead of mine, as these are my weak spot, although I have worked
+all day and far into the night on the mathematics of house
+building.  Mr. Snow was very kind, and terribly cut up about it. 
+I made what I hope was a brave fight, I did so believe in those
+plans that I am afraid to say just how greatly disappointed I am. 
+All I can do is to go to work again and try to find out how to
+better my best, which I surely put into the plans I submitted.  I
+can't see how Henry Anderson came to hit upon some of my personal
+designs for comforts and conveniences.  I had hoped that no man
+would think of my especial kitchen plans.  I rather fancied
+myself as a benefactor to my sex, an emancipator from drudgery,
+as it were.  I had a concealed feeling that it required a woman
+who had expended her strength combating the construction of a
+devilish kitchen, to devise some of my built-in conveniences, and
+I worked as carefully on my kitchen table, as on any part of the
+house.  If I find later that the winning plans include these
+things I shall believe that Henry Anderson is a mind reader, or
+that lost plans naturally gravitate to him.  But there is no use
+to grouch further.  I seem to be born a loser.  Anyway, I haven't
+lost you and I still have Dana Meade.
+
+I have nothing else to tell you except that Mr. Snow has waited
+for me two evenings out of the week ever since I wrote you, and
+he has taken me in his car and simply forced me to drive him for
+an hour over what appeals to me to be the most difficult roads he
+could select.  So far I have not balked at anything but he has
+had the consideration not to direct me to the mountains.  He is
+extremely attractive, Linda, and I do enjoy being with him, but I
+dread it too, because his grief is so deep and so apparent that
+it constantly keeps before me the loss of my own dear ones, and
+those things to which the hymn books refer as "aching voids" in
+my own life.
+
+But there is something you will be glad to hear.  That unknown
+correspondent of mine is still sending letters, and I am crazy
+about them.  I don't answer one now until I have mulled over it
+two or three days and I try to give him as good as he sends.
+
+I judge from your letters that you are keeping at least even with
+Eileen, and that life is much happier for you.  You seem to be
+broadening.  I am so glad for the friendship you have formed with
+Donald Whiting.  My mother and Mrs. Whiting were friends.  She is
+a charming woman and it has seemed to me that in her daughter
+Louise she has managed a happy compound of old-fashioned
+straightforwardness and unswerving principle, festooned with
+happy trimmings of all that is best in the present days.  I hope
+that you do become acquainted with her.  She is older than you,
+but she is the kind of girl I know you would like.
+
+Don't worry because I have lost again, Linda dear.  Today is my
+blue day.  Tomorrow I shall roll up my sleeves and go at it again
+with all my might, and by and by it is written in the books that
+things will come right for me.  They cannot go wrong for ever. 
+With dearest love,
+
+MARIAN.
+
+Linda looked grim as she finished the letter.
+
+"Confound such luck," she said emphatically.  "I do not
+understand it.  How can a man like Henry Anderson know more about
+comforts and conveniences in a home than a woman with Marian's
+experience and comprehension?  And she has been gaining
+experience for the past ten years.  That partner of his must be a
+six-cylinder miracle."
+
+Linda went to the kitchen, because she was in pressing need of
+someone to whom to tell her troubles, and there was no one except
+Katy.  What Katy said was energetic and emphatic, but it
+comforted Linda, because she agreed with it and what she was
+seeking at the minute was someone who agreed with her.  As she
+went back upstairs, she met Eileen on her way to the front door. 
+Eileen paused and deliberately studied Linda's face, and Linda
+stopped and waited quietly until she chose to speak.
+
+"I presume," said Eileen at last, "that you and Katy would call
+the process through which you are going right now, 'taking the
+bit in your teeth,' or some poetic thing like that, but I can't
+see that you are getting much out of it.  I don't hear the old
+laugh or the clatter of gay feet as I did before all this war of
+dissatisfaction broke out.  This minute if you haven't either
+cried, or wanted to, I miss my guess."
+
+"You win," said Linda.  "I have not cried, because I make it a
+rule never to resort to tears when I can help it; so what you see
+now is unshed tears in my heart.  They in no way relate to what
+you so aptly term my 'war of dissatisfaction'; they are for
+Marian.  She has lost again, this time the Nicholson and Snow
+prize in architecture."
+
+"Serves her right," said Eileen, laughing contemptuously.  "The
+ridiculous idea of her trying to compete in a man's age-old
+occupation! As if she ever could learn enough about joists and
+beams and girders and installing water and gas and electricity to
+build a house.  She should have had the sense to know she
+couldn't do it."
+
+"But," said Linda quietly, "Marian wasn't proposing to be a
+contractor, she only wants to be an architect.  And the man who
+beat her is Peter Morrison's architect, Henry Anderson, and he
+won by such a narrow margin that her plans were thrown out of
+second and third place, because they were so very similar to his. 
+Doesn't that strike you as curious?"
+
+"That is more than curious," said Eileen slowly.  "That is a very
+strange coincidence.  They couldn't have had anything from each
+other, because they only met at dinner, before all of us, and
+Marian went away the next morning; it does seem queer."  Then she
+added with a flash of generosity and justice, "It looks pretty
+good for Marian, at that.  If she came so near winning that she
+lost second and third because she was too near first to make any
+practical difference, I must be wrong and she must be right."
+
+"You are wrong," said Linda tersely, "if you think Marian cannot
+make wonderful plans for houses.  But going back to what my 'war
+of dissatisfaction' is doing to me, it's a pale affair compared
+with what it is doing to you, Eileen.  You look a debilitated
+silhouette of the near recent past.  Do you feel that badly about
+giving up a little money and authority?"
+
+"I never professed to have the slightest authority over you,"
+said Eileen very primly, as she drew back in the shadows.  "You
+have come and gone exactly as you pleased.  All I ever tried to
+do was to keep up a decent appearance before the neighbors and
+make financial ends meet."
+
+"That never seemed to wear on you as something seems to do now,"
+said Linda.  "I am thankful that this week ends it.  I was
+looking for you because I wanted to tell you to be sure not to
+make any date that will keep you from meeting me at the office of
+the president of the Consolidated Bank Thursday afternoon.  I am
+going to arrange with John to be there and it shouldn't take
+fifteen minutes to run through matters and divide the income in a
+fair way between us.  I am willing for you to go on paying the
+bills and ordering for the house as you have been."
+
+"Certainly you are," sneered Eileen.  "You are quite willing for
+all the work and use the greater part of my time to make you
+comfortable."
+
+Linda suddenly drew back.  Her body seemed to recoil, but her
+head thrust forward as if to bring her eyes in better range to
+read Eileen's face.
+
+"That is utterly unjust, Eileen," she cried.
+
+Then two at a time she rushed the stairs in a race for her room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.  The Day of Jubilee
+
+Linda started to school half an hour earlier Wednesday morning
+because that was the day for her weekly trip to the Post Office
+for any mail which might have come to her under the name of Jane
+Meredith.  She had hard work to keep down her color when she
+recognized the heavy gray envelope used by the editor of
+Everybody's Home.  As she turned from the window with it in her
+fingers she was trembling slightly and wondering whether she
+could have a minute's seclusion to face the answer which her last
+letter might have brought.  There was a small alcove beside a
+public desk at one side of the room.  Linda stepped into this,
+tore open the envelope and slipped out the sheet it contained. 
+Dazedly she stared at the slip that fell from it.  Slowly the
+color left her cheeks and then came rushing back from her
+surcharged heart until her very ears were red, because that slip
+was very manifestly a cheque for five hundred dollars.  Mentally
+and physically Linda shook herself, then she straightened to full
+height, tensing her muscles and holding the sheet before her with
+a hand on each side to keep it from shaking, while she read:
+
+MY DEAR MADAM:
+
+I sincerely apologize for having waited so long before writing
+you of the very exceptional reception which your articles have
+had.  I think one half their attraction has been the exquisite
+and appealing pictures you have sent for their illustration.  At
+the present minute they are forming what I consider the most
+unique feature in the magazine.  I am enclosing you a cheque for
+five hundred dollars as an initial payment on the series.  Just
+what the completed series should be worth I am unable to say
+until you inform me how many months you can keep it up at the
+same grade of culinary and literary interest and attractive
+illustration; but I should say at a rough estimate that you would
+be safe in counting upon a repetition of this cheque for every
+three articles you send in.  This of course includes payment for
+the pictures also, which are to me if anything more attractive
+than the recipes, since the local color and environment they add
+to the recipe and the word sketch are valuable in the extreme.
+
+If you feel that you can continue this to the extent of even a
+small volume, I shall be delighted to send you a book contract. 
+In considering this proposition, let me say that if you could not
+produce enough recipes to fill a book, you could piece it out to
+the necessary length most charmingly and attractively by
+lengthening the descriptions of the environment in which the
+particular fruits and vegetables you deal with are to be found;
+and in book form you might allow yourself much greater latitude
+in the instructions concerning the handling of the fruits and the
+preparation of the recipes.  I think myself that a wonderfully
+attractive book could be made from this material, and hope that
+you will agree with me.  Trusting that this will be satisfactory
+to you and that you will seriously consider the book proposition
+before you decline it, I remain, my dear madam, Very truly yours,
+
+HUGH THOMPSON,
+
+Editor, Everybody's Home.
+
+Gripping the cheque and the letter, Linda lurched forward against
+the window casement and shut her eyes tight, because she could
+feel big, nervous gulps of exultation and rejoicing swelling up
+in her throat.  She shifted the papers to one hand and
+surreptitiously slipped the other to her pocket.  She tried to
+keep the papers before her and looked straight from the window to
+avoid attracting attention.  The tumult of exultation in her
+heart was so wild that she did not surely know whether she wanted
+to sink to the floor, lay her face against the glass, and indulge
+in what for generations women have referred to as "a good cry,"
+or whether she wanted to leap from the window and sport on the
+wind like a driven leaf.
+
+Then she returned the letter and cheque to the envelope, and
+slipped it inside her blouse, and started on her way to school. 
+She might as well have gone to Multiflores Canyon and pitted her
+strength against climbing its walls for the day, for all the good
+she did in her school work.  She heard no word of any recitation
+by her schoolmates.  She had no word ready when called on for a
+recitation herself.  She heard nothing that was said by any of
+the professors.  On winged feet she was flying back and forth
+from the desert to the mountains, from the canyons to the sea. 
+She was raiding beds of amass and devising ways to roast the
+bulbs and make a new dish.  She was compounding drinks from
+mescal and bisnaga.  She was hunting desert pickles and trying to
+remember whether Indian rhubarb ever grew so far south.  She was
+glad when the dismissal hour came that afternoon.  With eager
+feet she went straight to the Consolidated Bank and there she
+asked again to be admitted to the office of the president.  Mr.
+Worthington rose as she came in.
+
+"Am I wrong in my dates?" he inquired.  "I was not expecting you
+until tomorrow."
+
+"No, you're quite right," said Linda.  "At this hour tomorrow. 
+But, Mr. Worthington, I am in trouble again."
+
+Linda looked so distressed that the banker pushed a chair to the
+table's side for her, and when she had seated herself, he said
+quietly:  "Tell me all about it, Linda.  We must get life
+straightened out as best we can."
+
+"I think I must tell you all about it," said Linda, "because I
+know just enough about banking to know that I have a proposition
+that I don't know how to handle.  Are bankers like father
+confessors and doctors and lawyers?"
+
+"I think they are even more so," laughed Mr. Worthington. 
+"Perhaps the father confessor takes precedence, otherwise I
+believe people are quite as much interested in their financial
+secrets as in anything else in all this world.  Have you a
+financial secret?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I have what is to me a big secret, and I
+don't in the least know how to handle it, so right away I thought
+about you and that you would be the one to tell me what I could
+do."
+
+"Go ahead," said Mr. Worthington kindly.  "I'll give you my word
+of honor to keep any secret you confide to me."
+
+Linda produced her letter.  She opened it and without any
+preliminaries handed it and the cheque to the banker.  He looked
+at the cheque speculatively, and then laid it aside and read the
+letter.  He gave every evidence of having read parts of it two or
+three times, then he examined the cheque again, and glanced at
+Linda.
+
+"And just how did you come into possession of this, young lady?"
+he inquired.  "And what is it that you want of me?"
+
+"Why, don't you see?" said Linda.  "It's my letter and my cheque;
+I'm 'Jane Meredith.' Now how am I going to get my money.
+
+For one dazed moment Mr. Worthington studied Linda; then he threw
+back his head and laughed unrestrainedly.  He came around the
+table and took both Linda's hands.
+
+"Bully for you !" he cried exultantly.  "How I wish your father
+could see the seed he has sown bearing its fruit.  Isn't that
+fine?  And do you want to go on with this anonymously?"
+
+"I think I must," said Linda.  "I have said in my heart that no
+Jap, male or female, young or old, shall take first honors in a
+class from which I graduate; and you can see that if people
+generally knew this, it would make it awfully hard for me to go
+on with my studies, and I don't know that the editor who is
+accepting this work would take it if he knew it were sent him by
+a high-school Junior.  You see the dignified way in which he ad
+dresses me as 'madam'?"
+
+"I see," said Mr. Worthington reflectively.
+
+"I'm sure," said Linda with demure lips, though the eyes above
+them were blazing and dancing at high tension, "I'm sure that the
+editor is attaching a husband, and a house having a well-ordered
+kitchen, and rather wide culinary experience to that 'dear
+madam.'"
+
+"And what about this book proposition?" asked the banker gravely. 
+"That would be a big thing for a girl of your age.  Can you do
+it, and continue your school work?"
+
+"With the background I have, with the unused material I have, and
+with vacation coming before long, I can do it easily," said
+Linda.  "My school work is not difficult for me.  It only
+requires concentration for about two hours in the preparation
+that each day brings.  The remainder of the time I could give to
+amplifying and producing new recipes."
+
+"I see," said the banker.  "So you have resolved, Linda, that you
+don't want your editor to know your real name."
+
+"Could scarcely be done," said Linda.
+
+"But have you stopped to think," said the banker, "that you will
+be asked for personal history and about your residence, and no
+doubt a photograph of yourself.  If you continue this work
+anonymously you're going to have trouble with more matters than
+cashing a cheque."
+
+"But I am not going to have any trouble cashing a cheque," she
+said, "because I have come straight to the man whose business is
+cheques."
+
+"True enough," he said; "I SHALL have to arrange the cheque;
+there's not a doubt about that; and as for your other bugbears "
+
+"I refuse to be frightened by them," interposed Linda.
+
+"Have you ever done any business at the bank?"
+
+"No," said Linda.
+
+"None of the clerks know you?"
+
+"Not that I remember," said Linda.  "I might possibly be
+acquainted with some of them.  I have merely passed through the
+bank on my way to your room twice."
+
+"Then," said the banker, "we'll have to risk it.  After this
+estate business is settled you will want to open an account in
+your name."
+
+"Quite true," said Linda.
+
+"Then I would advise you," said Mr. Worthington, "to open this
+account in your own name.  Endorse this cheque 'Jane Meredith'
+and make it payable to me personally.  Whenever one
+
+of these comes, bring it to me and I'll take care of it for you. 
+One minute."
+
+He left Linda sitting quietly reading and rereading her letter,
+and presently returned and laid a sheaf of paper money before
+her.
+
+"Take it to the paying teller.  Tell him that you wish to deposit
+it, and ask him to give you a bank book and a cheque book," he
+said.  "Thank you very much for coming to me and for confiding in
+me."
+
+Linda gathered up the money, and said good-bye to the banker. 
+Just as she started forward she recognized Eileen at the window
+of the paying teller.  It was an Eileen she never before had
+seen.  Her face was strained to a ghastly gray.  Her hat was not
+straight and her hands were shaking.  Without realizing that she
+was doing it, Linda stepped behind one of the huge marble pillars
+supporting the ceiling and stood there breathlessly, watching
+Eileen.  She could gather that she was discussing the bank ledger
+which lay before the teller and that he was refusing something
+that Eileen was imploring him to do.  Linda thought she
+understood what it was.  Then very clearly Eileen's voice, sharp
+and strained, reached her ears.
+
+"You mean that you are refusing to pay me my deposits on my
+private account?" she cried; and Linda could also hear the
+response.
+
+"I am very sorry if it annoys or inconveniences you, Miss Strong,
+but since the settlement of the estate takes place to
+
+morrow, our orders are to pay out no funds in any way connected
+with the estate until after that settlement has been arranged."
+
+"But this is my money, my own private affair," begged Eileen. 
+"The estate has nothing to do with it."
+
+"I am sorry," repeated the teller.  "If that is the case, you
+will have no difficulty in establishing the fact in a few
+minutes' time."
+
+Eileen turned and left the bank, and it seemed that she was
+almost swaying.  Linda stood a second with narrowed eyes, in deep
+thought.
+
+"I think," she said at last, deep down in her heart, "that it
+looks precious much as if there had been a bit of transgression
+in this affair.  It looks, too, as if 'the way of the
+transgressor' were a darned hard way.  Straight ahead open and
+aboveboard for you, my girl!"
+
+Then she went quietly to the desk and transacted her own
+business; but her beautiful day was clouded.  Her heart was no
+longer leaping exultantly.  She was sickened and sorrowful over
+the evident nerve strain and discomfort which Eileen seemed to
+have brought upon herself.  She dreaded meeting her at dinner
+that night, and she wondered all the way home where Eileen had
+gone from the bank and what she had been doing.  What she felt
+was a pale affair compared with what she would have felt if she
+could have seen Eileen leave the bank and enter a near-by store,
+go to a telephone booth and put in a long-distance call for San
+Francisco.  Her eyes were brilliant, her cheeks by nature redder
+than the rouge she had used upon them.  She squared her
+shoulders, lifted her head, as if she irrevocably had made a
+decision and would not be thwarted in acting upon it.  While she
+waited she straightened her hat, and tucked up her pretty hair,
+once more evincing concern about her appearance.  After a nervous
+wait she secured her party.
+
+"Am I speaking with Mr. James Heitman?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," came the answer.
+
+"Well, Uncle Jim, this is Eileen."
+
+"Why, hello, girlie," was the quick response.  "Delighted that
+you're calling your ancient uncle.  Haven't changed the decision
+in the last letter I had from you, have you?"
+
+"Yes," said Eileen, "I have changed it.  Do you and Aunt Caroline
+still want me, Uncle Jim?"
+
+"YOU BET WE WANT YOU!" roared the voice over the 'phone.  "Here
+we are, with plenty of money and not a relation on earth but you
+to leave it to.  You belong to us by rights.  We'd be tickled to
+death to have you, and for you to have what's left of the money
+when we get through with it.  May I come after you?  Say the
+word, and I'll start this minute."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Jim, could you?  Would you?" cried Eileen.
+
+"Well, I'd say I could.  We'd be tickled to death, I tell you!"
+
+"How long would it take you to get here?" said Eileen.
+
+"Well, I could reach you by noon tomorrow.  Eleven something is
+the shortest time it's been made in; that would give me thirteen
+--more than enough.  Are you in that much of a hurry?"
+
+"Yes," gasped Eileen, "yes, I am in the biggest kind of a hurry
+there is, Uncle Jim.  This troublesome little estate has to be
+settled tomorrow afternoon.  There's going to be complaint about
+everything that I have seen fit to do.  I've been hounded and
+harassed till I am disgusted with it.  Then I've promised to
+marry John Gilman as I wrote you, and I don't believe you would
+think that was my best chance with the opportunities you could
+give me.  It seems foolish to stay here, abused as I have been
+lately, and as I will be tomorrow.  You have the house number. 
+If you come and get me out of it by noon tomorrow, I'll go with
+you.  You may take out those adoption papers you have always
+entreated me to agree to and I'll be a daughter that you can be
+proud of.  It will be a relief to have some real money and some
+real position, and to breathe freely and be myself once more."
+
+"All right for you, girlie!" bellowed the great voice over the
+line.  "Pick up any little personal bits you can put in a
+suitcase, and by twelve o'clock tomorrow I'll whisk you right out
+of that damn mess."
+
+Eileen walked from the telephone booth with her head high,
+triumph written all over her face and figure.  They were going to
+humiliate her.  She would show them!
+
+She went home immediately.  Entering her room, she closed the
+door and stood looking at her possessions.  How could she get her
+trunk from the garret?  How could she get it to the station? 
+Would it be possible for Uncle James to take it in his car?  As
+she pondered these things Eileen had a dim memory of a day in her
+childhood when her mother had gone on business to San Francisco
+and had taken her along.  She remembered a huge house, all
+turrets and towers and gables, all turns and twists and angles,
+closed to the light of day and glowing inside with shining
+artificial lights.  She remembered stumbling over deep rugs.  One
+vivid impression was of walls covered with huge canvases, some of
+them having frames more than a foot wide.  She remembered knights
+in armor, and big fireplaces, and huge urns and vases.  It seemed
+to her like the most wonderful bazaar she ever had been in.  She
+remembered, too, that she had been glad when her mother had taken
+her out into the sunshine again and from the presence of two
+ponderous people who had objected strongly to everything her
+mother had discussed with them.  She paused one instant,
+contemplating this picture.  The look of triumph on her face
+toned down considerably.  Then she comforted herself aloud.
+
+"I've heard Mother say," she said softly, "that everybody overdid
+things and did not know how to be graceful with immense fortunes
+got from silver and gold mines, and lumber.  It will be different
+now.  Probably they don't live in the same house, even.  There is
+a small army of servants, and there is nothing I can think of
+that Uncle Jim won't gladly get me.  I've been too big a fool for
+words to live this way as long as I have.  Crush me, will they? 
+I'll show them! I won't even touch these things I have strained
+so to get."
+
+Eileen jerked from her throat the strand of pearls that she had
+worn continuously for four years and threw it contemptuously on
+her dressing table.
+
+"I'll make Uncle Jim get me a rope with two or three strands in
+it that will reach to my waist.  'A suitcase !' I don't know what
+I would fill a suitcase with from here.  The trunk may stay in
+the garret, and while I am leaving all this rubbish, I'll just
+leave John Gilman with it.  Uncle Jim will give me an income that
+will buy all the cigarettes I want without having to deceive
+anyone; and I can have money if I want to stake something at
+bridge without being scared into paralysis for fear somebody may
+find it out or the accounts won't balance.  I'll put on the most
+suitable thing I have to travel in, and just walk out and leave
+everything else."
+
+That was what Eileen did.  At noon the next day her eyes were
+bright with nervousness.  Her cheeks alternately paled with fear
+and flooded red with anxiety.  She had dressed herself carefully,
+laid out her hat and gloves and a heavy coat in case the night
+should be chilly.  Once she stood looking at the dainty, brightly
+colored dresses hanging in her wardrobe A flash of regret passed
+over her face.
+
+"Tawdry little cheap things and makeshifts," she said.  "If Linda
+feels that she has been so terribly defrauded, she can help
+herself now!"
+
+By twelve o'clock she found herself standing at the window,
+straining her eyes down Lilac Valley.  She was not looking at its
+helpful hills, at its appealing curves, at its brilliant colors. 
+She was watching the roadway.  When Katy rang to call her to
+lunch, she told her to put the things away; she was expecting
+people who would take her out to lunch presently.  In the past
+years she had occasionally written to her uncle.  Several times
+when he had had business in Los Angeles she had met him at his
+hotel and dined with him.  She reasoned that he would come
+straight to the house and get her, and then they would go to one
+of the big hotels for lunch before they started.
+
+"I shan't feel like myself," said Eileen, "until we are well on
+the way to San Francisco."
+
+At one o'clock she was walking the floor.  At two she was almost
+frantic.  At half past she almost wished that she had had the
+good sense to have some lunch, since she was very hungry and
+under tense nerve strain.  Once she paused before the glass, but
+what she saw frightened her.  Just when she felt that she could
+not endure the strain another minute, grinding brakes, the blast
+of a huge Klaxon, and the sound of a great voice arose from the
+street.  Eileen rushed to the window.  She took one look, caught
+up the suitcase and raced down the stairs.  At the door she met a
+bluff, big man, gross from head to foot.  It seemed to Eileen
+strange that she could see in him even a trace of her mother, and
+yet she could.  Red veins crossed his cheeks and glowed on his
+nose.  His tired eyes were watery; his thick lips had an
+inclination to sag; but there was heartiness in his voice and
+earnestness in the manner in which he picked her up.  
+
+"What have they been doing to you down here?" he demanded. 
+"Never should have left you this long.  Ought to have come down
+and taken you and showed you what you wanted, and then you would
+have known whether you wanted it or not."
+
+At this juncture a huge woman, gross in a feminine way as her
+husband was in his, paddled up the walk.
+
+"I'm comin' in and rest a few minutes," she said.  "I'm tired to
+death and I'm pounded to pieces."
+
+Her husband turned toward her.  He opened his lips to introduce
+Eileen.  His wife forestalled him.
+
+"So this is the Eileen you have been ravin' about for years," she
+said.  "I thought you said she was a pretty girl."
+
+Eileen's soul knew one sick instant of recoil.  She looked from
+James Heitman to Caroline, his wife, and remembered that he had a
+habit of calling her "Callie."  All that paint and powder and
+lipstick and brilliantine could do to make the ponderous, big
+woman more ghastly had been done, but in the rush of the long
+ride through which her husband had forced her, the colors had
+mixed and slipped, the false waves were displaced.  She was not
+in any condition to criticize the appearance of another woman. 
+For one second Eileen hesitated, then she lifted her shaking
+hands to her hat.
+
+"I have been hounded out of my senses," she said apologetically,
+"and have been so terribly anxious for fear you wouldn't get here
+on time.  Please, Aunt Caroline, let us go to a hotel, some place
+where we can straighten up comfortably."
+
+"Well, what's your hurry?" said Aunt Caroline coolly.  "You're
+not a fugitive from justice, are you?  Can't a body rest a few
+minutes and have a drink, even?  Besides, I am going to see what
+kind of a place you've been living in, and then I'll know how
+thankful you'll be for what we got to offer."
+
+Eileen turned and threw open the door.  The big woman walked in. 
+She looked down the hall, up the stairway, and went on to the
+living room.  She gave it one contemptuous glance, and turning,
+came back to the door.
+
+"All right, Jim," she said brusquely.  "I have seen enough.  If
+you know the best hotel in the town, take me there.  And then, if
+Eileen's in such a hurry, after we have had a bite we'll start
+for home."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Caroline, oh, thank you!" cried Eileen.
+
+"You needn't take the trouble to 'aunt' me every time you speak
+to me," said the lady.  "I know you're my niece, but I ain't
+goin' to remind you of it every time I speak to you.  It's
+agein', this 'auntie' business.  I don't stand for it, and as for
+a name, I am free to confess I always like the way Jim calls me
+'Callie.' That sounds younger and more companionable than
+'Caroline.' "
+
+James Heitman looked at Eileen and winked.
+
+"You just bet, old girl!" he said.  "They ain't any of them can
+beat you, not even Eileen at her best.  Let's get her out of
+here.  Does this represent your luggage, girlie?"
+
+"You said not to bother with anything else," said Eileen.
+
+"So I did," said Uncle Jim, "and I meant just what I said if it's
+all right with you.  I suppose I did have, in the back of my
+head, an idea that there might be a trunk or a box--some things
+that belonged to your mother, mebby, and your 'keepsakes.'"
+
+"Oh, never mind," interrupted Eileen.  "Do let's go.  It's nearly
+four o'clock.  Any minute they may send for me from the bank, and
+I'd be more than glad to be out of the way."
+
+"Well, I'm not accustomed to being the porter, but if time's that
+precious, here we go," said Uncle Jim.
+
+He picked up the suitcase with one hand and took his wife's arm
+with the other.  
+
+"Scoot down there and climb into that boat," he said proudly to
+Eileen.  "We'll have a good dinner in a private room when we get
+to the hotel.  I won't even register.  And then we'll get out of
+here when we have rested a little."
+
+"Can't we stay all night and go in the morning?" panted his wife.
+
+"No, ma'am, we can't," said James Heitman authoritatively. 
+"We'll eat a bite because we need to be fed up, and I sincerely
+hope they's some decent grub to be had in this burg.  The first
+place we come to outside of here, that looks like they had a
+decent bed, we'll stop and make up for last night.  But we ain't
+a-goin' to stay here if Eileen wants us to start right away, eh,
+Eileen?"
+
+"Yes, please!" panted Eileen.  "I just don't want to meet any of
+them.  It's time enough for them to know what has happened after
+I am gone."
+
+"All right then," said Uncle James.  "Pile in and we'll go."
+
+So Eileen started on the road to the unlimited wealth her soul
+had always craved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.  Linda's First Party
+
+At the bank Linda and John Gilman waited an hour past the time
+set for Eileen's appearance.  Then Linda asserted herself.
+
+"I have had a feeling for some time," she said quietly, "that
+Eileen would not appear today, and if she doesn't see fit to
+come, there is no particular reason why she should.  There is
+nothing to do but go over the revenue from the estate.  The books
+will show what Eileen has drawn monthly for her expense budget. 
+That can be set aside and the remainder divided equally between
+us.  It's very simple.  Here is a letter I wrote to the
+publishers of Father's books asking about royalties.  I haven't
+even opened it.  I will turn it in with the remainder of the
+business."
+
+They were in the office with the president of the bank.  He rang
+for the clerk he wanted and the books he required, and an hour's
+rapid figuring settled the entire matter, with the exception of
+the private account, amounting to several thousands, standing in
+Eileen's name.  None of them knew any source of separate income
+she might have.  At a suggestion from Linda, the paying teller
+was called in and asked if he could account for any of the funds
+that had gone into the private account.
+
+"Not definitely," he said, "but the amounts always corresponded
+exactly with the royalties from the books.  I strongly suspect
+that they constitute this private account of Miss Eileen's."  
+
+But he did not say that she had tried to draw it the day
+previous.
+
+John Gilman made the suggestion that they should let the matter
+rest until Eileen explained about it.  Then Linda spoke very
+quietly, but with considerable finality in her tone.
+
+"No," she said, "I know that Eileen HAD no source of private
+income.  Mother used to mention that she had some wealthy
+relatives in San Francisco, but they didn't approve of her
+marriage to what they called a 'poor doctor,' and she would never
+accept, or allow us to accept, anything from them.  They never
+came to see us and we never went to see them.  Eileen knows no
+more about them than I do.  We will work upon the supposition
+that everything that is here belonged to Father.  Set aside to
+Eileen's credit the usual amount for housekeeping expenses.  Turn
+the private account in with the remainder.  Start two new bank
+books, one for Eileen and one for me.  Divide the surplus each
+month exactly in halves.  And I believe this is the proper time
+for the bank to turn over to me a certain key, specified by my
+father as having been left in your possession to be delivered to
+me on my coming of age."
+
+With the key in her possession, Linda and John Gilman left the
+bank.  As they stood for a moment in front of the building,
+Gilman removed his hat and ran his hands through his hair as if
+it were irritating his head.
+
+"Linda," he said in a deeply wistful tone, "I don't understand
+this.  Why shouldn't Eileen have come today as she agreed?  What
+is there about this that is not according to law and honor and
+the plain, simple rights of the case?"
+
+"I don't know," said Linda; "but there is something we don't
+understand about it.  And I am going to ask you, John, as my
+guardian, closing up my affairs today, to go home with me to be
+present when I open the little hidden door I found at the back of
+a library shelf when I was disposing of Daddy's technical books. 
+There was a slip of paper at the edge of it specifying that the
+key was in possession of the Consolidated Bank and was to be
+delivered to me, in the event of Daddy's passing, on my coming of
+age.  I have the key, but I would like to have you with me, and
+Eileen if she is in the house, when I open that door.  I don't
+know what is behind it, but there's a certain feeling that always
+has been strong in my heart and it never was so strong as it is
+at this minute."
+
+So they boarded the street car and ran out to Lilac Valley.  When
+Katy admitted them Linda put her arm around her and kissed her. 
+She could see that the house was freshly swept and beautifully
+decorated with flowers, and her trained nostrils could scent
+whiffs of delicious odors from food of which she was specially
+fond.  In all her world Katy was the one person who was
+celebrating her birthday.  She seemed rather surprised when Linda
+and Gilman came in together.
+
+"Where is Eileen?" inquired Linda.
+
+"She must have made some new friends," said Katy.  "About four
+o'clock, the biggest car that ever roared down this street rolled
+up, and the biggest man and woman that I ever see came puffin'
+and pantin' in.  Miss Eileen did not tell me where she was goin'
+or when she would be back, but I know it won't be the night,
+because she took her little dressin' case with her.  Belike it's
+another of them trips to Riverside or Pasadena."
+
+"Very likely," said Linda quietly.  "Katy, can you spare a few
+minutes?"
+
+"No, lambie, I jist can't," said Katy, "because a young person
+that's the apple of me eye is havin' a birthday the day and I
+have got me custard cake in the oven and the custard is in the
+makin', and after Miss Eileen went and I didn't see no chance for
+nothin' special, I jist happened to look out, one of the ways ye
+do things unbeknownst to yourself, and there stood Mr. Pater
+Morrison moonin' over the 'graveyard,' like he called it, and it
+was lookin' like seein' graves he was, and I jist took the bull
+by the horns, and I sings out to him and I says:  'Mr. Pater
+Morrison, it's a good friend ye were to the young missus when ye
+engineered her skylight and her beautiful fireplace, and this
+bein' her birthday, I'm takin' the liberty to ask ye to come to
+dinner and help me celebrate.' And he said he would run up to the
+garage and get into his raygimentals, whatever them might be, and
+he would be here at six o'clock.  So ye got a guest for dinner,
+and if the custard's scorched and the cake's flat, it's up to ye
+for kapin' me here to tell ye all this."
+
+Then Katy hurried to the kitchen.  Linda looked at John Gilman
+and smiled.
+
+"Isn't that like her?" she said.
+
+Then she led the way to the library, pulled aside the books,
+fitted the key to the little door, and opened it.  Inside lay a
+single envelope, sealed and bearing her name.  She took the
+envelope, and walking to her father's chair beside his library
+table, sat down in it, and laying the envelope on the table,
+crossed her hands on top of it.
+
+"John," she said, "ever since I have been big enough to think and
+reason and study things out for myself, there is a feeling I have
+had--I used to think it was unreasonable, then I thought it
+remote possibility.  This minute I think it's extremely probable. 
+Before I open this envelope I am going to tell you what I believe
+it contains.  I have not the slightest evidence except personal
+conviction, but I believe that the paper inside this envelope is
+written by my father's hand and I believe it tells me that he was
+not Eileen's father and that I am not her sister.  If it does not
+say this, then there is nothing in race and blood and inherited
+tendencies."
+
+Linda picked up the paper cutter, ran it across the envelope,
+slipped out the sheet, and bracing herself she read:
+
+MY DARLING LINDA:
+
+These lines are to tell you that your mother went to her eternal
+sleep when you were born.  Four years later I met and fell in
+love with the only mother you ever have known.  At the time of
+our marriage we entered into a solemn compact that her little
+daughter by a former marriage and mine should be reared as
+sisters.  I was to give half my earnings and to do for Eileen
+exactly as I did for you.  She was to give half her love and her
+best attention to your interests.
+
+I sincerely hope that what I have done will not result in any
+discomfort or inconvenience to you.
+
+With dearest love, as ever your father,
+
+ALEXANDER STRONG.
+
+Linda laid the sheet on the table and dropped her hands on top of
+it.  Then she looked at John Gilman.
+
+"John," she said, "I believe you had better face the fact that
+the big car and the big people that carried Eileen away today
+were her mother's wealthy relatives from San Francisco.  She must
+have been in touch with them.  I think very likely she sent for
+them after I saw her in the bank yesterday afternoon, trying with
+all her might to make the paying teller turn over to her the
+funds of the private account."
+
+John Gilman sat very still for a long time, then he raised tired,
+disappointed eyes to Linda's face.
+
+"Linda," he said, "do you mean you think Eileen was not straight
+about money matters?"
+
+"John," said Linda quietly, "I think it is time for the truth
+about Eileen between you and me.  If you want me to answer that
+question candidly, I'll answer it."
+
+�"I want the truth," said John Gilman gravely.
+
+"Well," said Linda, "I never knew Eileen to be honest about
+anything in all her life unless the truth served her better than
+an evasion.  Her hair was not honest color and it was not honest
+curl.  Her eyebrows were not so dark as she made them.  Her
+cheeks and lips were not so red, her forehead and throat were not
+so white, her form was not so perfect.  Her friends were selected
+because they could serve her.  As long as you were poor and
+struggling, Marian was welcome to you.  When you won a great case
+and became prosperous and fame came rapidly, Eileen took you.  I
+believe what I told you a minute ago:  I think she has gone for
+good.  I think she went because she had not been fair and she
+would not be forced to face the fact before you and me and the
+president of the Consolidated today.  I think you will have to
+take your heart home tonight and I think that before the night is
+over you will realize what Marian felt when she knew that in 
+addition to having been able to take you from her, Eileen was not
+a woman who would make you happy.  I am glad, deeply g]ad, that
+there is not a drop of her blood in my veins, sorry as I am for
+you and much as I regret what has happened.  I won't ask you to
+stay tonight, because you must go through the same black waters
+Marian breasted, and you will want to be alone.  Later, if you
+think of any way I can serve you, I will be glad for old sake's
+sake; but you must not expect me ever to love you or respect your
+judgment as I did before the shadow fell."
+
+Then Linda rose, replaced the letter, turned the key in the lock,
+and quietly slipped out of the room.
+
+When she opened her door and stepped into her room she paused in
+astonishment.  Spread out upon the bed lay a dress of georgette
+with little touches of fur and broad ribbons of satin.  In color
+it was like the flame of seasoned beechwood.  Across the foot of
+the bed hung petticoat, camisole, and hose, and beside the dress
+a pair of satin slippers exactly matching the hose, and they
+seemed the right size.  Linda tiptoed to the side of the bed and
+delicately touched the dress, and then she saw a paper lying on
+the waist front, and picking it up read:
+
+Lambie, here's your birthday, from loving old Katy.
+
+The lines were terse and to the point.  Linda laid them down, and
+picking up the dress she walked to the mirror, and holding it
+under her chin glanced down the length of its reflection.  What
+she saw almost stunned her.
+
+"Oh, good Lord!" she said.  "I can't wear that.  That isn't me."
+
+Then she tossed the dress on the bed and started in a headlong
+rush to the kitchen.  As she came through the door, "You blessed
+old darling!" she cried.  "What am I going to say to make you
+know how I appreciate your lovely, lovely gift?"
+
+Katy raised her head.  There was something that is supposed to be
+the prerogative of royalty in the lift of it.  Her smile was
+complacent in the extreme.
+
+"Don't ye be standin' there wastin' no time talkie'," she said.
+
+"I have oodles of time," said Linda, "but I warn you, you won't
+know me if I put on that frock, Katy."
+
+"Yes, I will, too," said Katy.
+
+"Katy," said Linda, sobering suddenly, "would it make any great
+difference to you if I were the only one here for always, after
+this?"
+
+Katy laughed contemptuously.
+
+"Well, I'd warrant to survive it," she said coolly.
+
+"But that is exactly what I must tell you, Katy," said Linda
+soberly.  "You know I have told you a number of times through
+these years that I did not believe Eileen and I were sisters, and
+I am telling you now that I know it.  She did not come to the
+bank today, and the settlement of Father's affairs developed the
+fact that I was my father's child and Eileen was her mother's;
+and I'm thinking, Katy, that the big car you saw and the opulent
+people in it were Eileen's mother's wealthy relatives from San
+Francisco.  My guess is, Katy, that Eileen has gone with them for
+good.  Lock her door and don't touch her things until we know
+certainly what she wants done with them."
+
+Katy stood thinking intently, then she lifted her eyes to
+Linda's.
+
+"Lambie," she whispered softly, "are we ixpicted to go into
+mourning over this?"
+
+A mischievous light leaped into Linda's eyes.
+
+"Well, if there are any such expectations abroad, Katherine
+O'Donovan," she said soberly, "the saints preserve 'em, for we
+can't fulfill 'em, can we, Katy?"
+
+ "Not to be savin' our souls," answered Katy heartily.  "I'm jist
+so glad and thankful that I don't know what to do, and it's such
+good news that I don't belave one word of it.  And while you're
+talkie', what about John Gilman?"
+
+"I think," said Linda quietly, "that tonight is going to teach
+him how Marian felt in her blackest hours."
+
+"Well, he needn't be coming to me for sympathy," said Katy.  "But
+if Miss Eileen has gone to live with the folks that come after
+her the day, ye might be savin' a wee crap o' sympathy for her,
+lambie.  They was jist the kind of people that you'd risk your
+neck slidin' down a mountain to get out of their way."
+
+"That is too bad," said Linda reflectively; "because Eileen is
+sensitive and constant contact with crass vulgarity certainly
+would wear on her nerves."
+
+"Now you be goin' and gettin' into that dress, lambie," said
+Katy.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan," said Linda, "you're used to it; come again
+to confession.  Tell me truly where and how did you get that
+dress?"
+
+"'Tain't no rule of polite society to be lookin' gift horses in
+the mouth," said Katy proudly.  "HOW I got it is me own affair,
+jist like ye got any gifts ye was ever makin' me, is yours. 
+WHERE I got it?  I went into the city on the strafe car and I
+went to the biggest store in the city and I got in the elevator
+and I says to the naygur:  'Let me off where real ladies buy
+ready-to-wear dresses.'
+
+"And up comes a little woman, and her hair was jist as soft and
+curling round her ears, and brown and pretty was her eyes, and
+the pink that God made was in her cheeks, and in a voice like
+runnin' water she says:  'Could I do anything for you?' I told
+her what I wanted.  And she says:  'How old is the young lady,
+and what's her size, and what's her color?' Darlin', ain't that
+dress the answer to what I told her?"
+
+"Yes," said Linda.  "If an artist had been selecting a dress for
+me he would probably have chosen that one.  But, old dear, it's
+not suitable for me.  It's not the kind of dress that I intended
+to wear for years and years yet.  Do you think, if I put it on
+tonight, I'll ever be able to go back to boots and breeches
+again, and hunt the canyons for plants to cook for--you know
+what?"
+
+Katy stood in what is commonly designated as a "brown study." 
+Then she looked Linda over piercingly.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," she said conclusively.  "It's my judgment that ye
+will.  I think ye'll maybe wrap the braids of ye around your head
+tonight, and I think ye'll put on that frock, and I think ye'll
+show Pater Morrison how your pa's daughter can sit at the head of
+his table and entertain her friends.  Then I think ye'll hang it
+in your closet and put on your boots and breeches and go back to
+your old Multiflores and attind to your business, the same as
+before."
+
+"All right, Katy," said Linda, "if you have that much faith in me
+I have that much faith in myself; but, old dear, I can't tell you
+how I LOVE having a pretty dress for tonight.  Katy dear, the
+'Day of Jubilee' has come.  Before you go to sleep I'm coming to
+your room to tell you fine large secrets, that you won't believe
+for a minute, but I haven't the time to do it now."
+
+Then Linda raced to her room and began dressing.  She let down
+the mop of her hair waving below her waist and looked at it
+despairingly.
+
+"That dress never was made for braids down your back," she said,
+glancing toward the bed where it lay shimmering in a mass of
+lovely color.  "I am of age today; for state occasions I should
+be a woman.  What shall I do with it?"
+
+And then she recalled Katy's voice saying:  "Braids round your
+head."
+
+"Of course," said Linda, "that would be the thing to do.  I
+certainly don't need anything to add to my height; I am far too
+tall now."
+
+So she parted her hair in the middle, brushed it back, divided it
+in even halves, and instead of braiding it, she coiled it around
+her head, first one side and then the other.
+
+She slipped into the dress and struggled with its many and
+intricate fastenings.  Then she went to the guest room to stand
+before the full-length mirror there.  Slowly she turned. 
+Critically she examined herself.  
+
+"It's a bit shorter than I would have ordered it," she said, "but
+it reduces my height, it certainly gives wonderful freedom in
+walking, and it's not nearly so short as I see other girls
+wearing."
+
+Again she studied herself critically.
+
+"Need some kind of ornament for my hair," she muttered, "but I
+haven't got it, and neither do I own beads, bracelet, or a ring;
+and my ears are sticking right out in the air.  I am almost
+offensively uncovered."  
+
+Then she went down to show herself to a delighted Katy.  When the
+doorbell rang Linda turned toward the hall.  Katy reached a
+detaining hand.
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort," she said.  "I answered the bell
+for Miss Eileen.  Answer the bell I shall for you."
+
+Down the hall went Katy with the light of battle in her eyes and
+the air of a conqueror in the carriage of her head.  She was well
+trained.  Neither eyelid quivered as she flung the door wide to
+Peter Morrison.  He stood there in dinner dress, more imposing
+than Katy had thought he could be.  With quick, inner exultation
+she reached for two parcels he carried; over them her delight was
+so overpowering that Peter Morrison must have seen a hint of it. 
+With a flourish Katy seated him, and carried the packages to
+Linda.  She returned a second later for a big vase, and in this
+Linda arranged a great sheaf of radiant roses.  As Katy started
+to carry them back to the room, Linda said "Wait a second," and
+selecting one half opened, she slipped it out, shortened the stem
+and tucked it among the coils of hair where she would have set an
+ornament.  The other package was a big box that when opened
+showed its interior to be divided into compartments in each of
+which nestled an exquisite flower made of spun sugar.  The
+petals, buds, and leaves were perfect.  There were wonderful
+roses with pale pink outer petals and deeper-colored hearts. 
+There were pink mallows that seemed as if they must have been cut
+from the bushes bordering Santa Monica road.  There were
+hollyhocks of white and gold, and simply perfect tulips.  Linda
+never before had seen such a treasure candy box.  She cried out
+in delight, and hurried to show Katy.  In her pleasure over the
+real flowers and the candy flowers Linda forgot her dress, but
+when she saw Peter Morrison standing tall and straight, in dinner
+dress, she stopped and looked the surprise and pleasure she felt. 
+She had grown accustomed to Peter in khaki pottering around his
+building.  This Peter she never before had seen.  He represented
+something of culture, something of pride, a conformity to a nice
+custom and something more.  Linda was not a psychoanalyst.
+
+She could not see a wonderful aura of exquisite color enveloping
+Peter.  But when Peter saw the girl approaching him, transformed
+into a woman whose shining coronet was jewelled with his living
+red rose, when he saw the beauty of her lithe slenderness clothed
+in a soft, flaming color, something emanated from his inner
+consciousness that Linda did see, and for an instant it disturbed
+her as she went forward holding out her hands.
+
+"Peter," she said gaily, "do you know that this is my Day of
+Jubilee?  I am a woman today by law, Peter.  Hereafter I am to
+experience at least a moderate degree of financial freedom, and
+that I shall enjoy.  But the greatest thing in life is friends."
+
+Peter took both the hands extended to him and looked smilingly
+into her eyes.
+
+"You take my breath," he said.  "I knew, the first glimpse I ever
+had of you scrambling from the canyon floor, that this
+transformation COULD take place.  My good fortune is beyond words
+that I have been first to see it.  Permit me, fair lady."
+
+Peter bent and kissed both her hands.  He hesitated a second,
+then he turned the right hand and left one more kiss in its palm.
+
+"To have and to hold!" he said whimsically.
+
+"Thank you," said Linda, closing her fist over it and holding it
+up for inspection.  "I'll see that it doesn't escape.  And this
+minute I thank you for the candy, which I know is delicious, and
+for my very first sheaf of roses from any man.  See what I have
+done with one of them?"
+
+She turned fully around that he might catch the effect of the
+rose, and in getting that he also got the full effect of the
+costume, and the possibilities of the girl before him.  And then
+she gave him a shock.
+
+"Isn't it a lovely frock?" she said.  "Another birthday gift from
+the Strong rock of ages.  I have been making a collection of
+rocks for my fern bed, and I have got another collection that is
+not visible to anyone save myself.  Katy's a rock, and you're a
+rock, and Donald is a rock, and Marian's a rock, and I am resting
+securely on all of you.  I wish my father knew that in addition
+to Marian and Katy I have found two more such wonderful friends."
+
+"And what about Henry Anderson?" inquired Peter.  "Aren't you
+going to include him?"
+
+Linda walked over to the chair in which she intended to seat
+herself.
+
+"Peter," she said, "I wish you hadn't asked me that."
+
+Peter's figure tensed suddenly.
+
+"Look here, Linda," he said sternly, "has that rather bold
+youngster made himself in any way offensive to you?"
+
+"Not in any way that I am not perfectly capable of handling
+myself," said Linda.  She looked at Peter confidently.
+
+"Do you suppose," she said, "that I can sit down in this thing
+without ruining it?  Shouldn't I really stand up while I am
+wearing it?"
+
+Peter laughed unrestrainedly.
+
+"Linda, you're simply delicious," he said.  "It seems to me that
+I have seen young ladies in like case reach round and gather the
+sash to one side and smooth out the skirt as they sit."
+
+"Thank you, Peter, of course that would be the way," said Linda. 
+"This being my first, I'm lacking in experience."
+
+And thereupon she sat according to direction; while Peter sat
+opposite her.
+
+"Now finish.  Just one word more about Henry Anderson," he said. 
+"Are you perfectly sure there is nothing I need do for you in
+that connection?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly," said Linda lightly.  "I didn't mean to alarm
+you.  He merely carried that bug-catcher nonsense a trifle too
+far.  I wouldn't have minded humoring him and fooling about it a
+little.  But, Peter, do you know him quite well?  Are you very
+sure of him?"
+
+"No," said Peter, "I don't know him well at all.  The only thing
+I am sure about him is that he is doing well in his profession. 
+I chose him because he was an ambitious youngster and I thought I
+could get more careful attention from him than I could from some
+of the older fellows who had made their reputation.  You see,
+there are such a lot of things I want to know about in this
+building proposition, and the last four years haven't been a time
+for any man to be careful about saving his money."
+
+"Then," said Linda, "he is all right, of course.  He must be. 
+But I think I'm like a cat.  I'm very complacent with certain
+people, but when I begin to get goose flesh and hair prickles my
+head a bit, I realize that there is something antagonistic
+around, something for me to beware of.  I guess it's because I am
+such a wild creature."
+
+"Do you mean to say," said Peter, "that these are the sensations
+that Henry gives you?"
+
+Linda nodded.
+
+"Now forget Henry," she said.  "I have had such a big day I must
+tell you about it, and then we'll come to that last article you
+left me.  I haven't had time to put anything on paper concerning
+it yet, but I believe I have an awfully good idea in the paint
+pot, and I'll find time in a day or two to work it out.  Peter, I
+have just come from the bank, where I was recognized as of legal
+age, and my guardian discharged.  And perhaps I ought to explain
+to you, Peter, that your friend, John Gilman, is not here because
+this night is going to be a bad one for him.  When you knew him
+best he was engaged, or should have been, to Marian Thorne.  When
+you met him this time he really was engaged to Eileen.  I don't
+know what you think about Eileen.  I don't feel like influencing
+anyone's thought concerning her, so I'll merely say that today
+has confirmed a conviction that always has been in my heart. 
+Katy could tell you that long ago I said to her that I did not
+believe Eileen was my sister.  Today has brought me the knowledge
+and proof positive that she is not, and today she has gone to
+some wealthy relatives of her mother in San Francisco.  She
+expressed her contempt for what she was giving up by leaving
+everything, including the exquisite little necklace of pearls
+which has been a daily part of her since she owned them.  I may
+be mistaken, but intuition tells me that with the pearls and the
+wardrobe she has also discarded John Gilman.  I think your friend
+will be suffering tonight quite as deeply as my friend suffered 
+when John abandoned her at a time when she had lost everything
+else in life but her money.  I feel very sure that we won't see
+Eileen any more.  I hope she will have every lovely thing in
+life."
+
+"Amen," said Peter Morrison earnestly.  "I loved John Gilman when
+we were in school together, but I have not been able to feel,
+since I located here, that he is exactly the same John; and what
+you have told me very probably explains the difference in him."
+
+When Katy announced dinner Linda arose.
+
+Peter Morrison stepped beside her and offered his arm.  Linda
+rested her finger tips upon it and he led her to the head of the
+table and seated her.  Then Katy served a meal that, if it had
+been prepared for Eileen, she would have described as a banquet. 
+She gave them delicious, finely flavored food, stimulating,
+exquisitely compounded drinks that she had concocted from the
+rich fruits of California and mints and essences at her command. 
+When, at the close of the meal, she brought Morrison some of the
+cigars Eileen kept for John Gilman, she set a second tray before
+Linda, and this tray contained two packages.  Linda looked at
+Katy inquiringly, and Katy, her face beaming, nodded her sandy
+red head emphatically.
+
+"More birthday gifts you've havin', me lady," she said in her
+mellowest Irish voice.
+
+"More?" marveled Linda.  She picked up the larger package, and
+opening it, found a beautiful book inscribed from her friend
+Donald, over which she passed caressing fingers.
+
+"Why, how lovely of him!" she said.  "How in this world did he
+know?"
+
+Katherine O'Donovan could have answered that question, but she
+did not.  The other package was from Marian.  When she opened it
+Linda laughed unrestrainedly.
+
+"What a joke!" she said.  "I had promised myself that I would not
+touch a thing in Eileen's room, and before I could do justice to
+Katy's lovely dress I had to go there for pins for my hair and
+powder for my nose.  This is Marian's way of telling me that I am
+almost a woman.  Will you look at this?"
+
+"Well, just what is it?" inquired Peter.
+
+"Hairpins," laughed Linda, "and hair ornaments, and a box of face
+powder, and the little, feminine touches that my dressing table
+needs badly.  How would you like, Peter, to finish your cigar in
+my workroom?"
+
+"I would like it immensely," said Peter.
+
+So together they climbed to the top of the house.  Linda knelt
+and made a little ceremony of lighting the first fire in her
+fireplace.  She pushed one of her chairs to one side for Peter,
+and taking the other for herself, she sat down and began the
+process of really becoming acquainted with him.  Two hours later,
+as he was leaving her, Peter made a circuit of the room,
+scrutinizing the sketches and paintings that were rapidly
+covering the walls, and presently he came to the wasp.  He looked
+at it so closely that he did not miss even the stinger.  Linda
+stood beside him when he made his first dazed comment:  "If that
+isn't Eileen, and true to the life!"
+
+"I must take that down," said Linda.  "I did it one night when my
+heart was full of bitterness."
+
+"Better leave it," said Peter drily.
+
+"Do you think I need it as a warning?" asked Linda.
+
+Peter turned and surveyed her slowly.
+
+"Linda," he said quietly, "what I think of you has not yet been
+written in any of the books."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.  Buena Moza
+
+As soon as Peter had left her Linda took her box of candy flowers
+and several of her finest roses and went to Katy's room.  She
+found Katy in a big rocking chair, her feet on a hassock, reading
+a story in Everybody's home.  When her door opened and she saw
+her young mistress framed in it she tossed the magazine aside and
+sprang to her feet, but Linda made her resume her seat.  The girl
+shortened the stems of the roses and put them in a vase on Katy's
+dresser.
+
+"They may clash with your coloring a mite, Mother Machree," she
+said, "but by themselves they are very wonderful things, aren't
+they?"
+
+Linda went over, and drawing her dress aside, sat down on the
+hassock and leaning against Katy's knee she held up the box of
+candy flowers for amazed and delighted inspection.
+
+"Ah, the foine gintleman!" cried Katy.  "Sure 'twas only a pape I
+had when ye opened the box, an' I didn't know how rare them
+beauties railly was."
+
+"Choose the one you like best," said Linda.
+
+But Katy would not touch the delicate things, so Linda selected a
+brushy hollyhock for her and then sat at her knee again.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan," she said solemnly, "it's up to a couple of
+young things such as we are, stranded on the shoals of the
+Pacific as we have been, to put our heads together and take
+counsel.  You're a host, Katy, and while I am taking care of you,
+I'll be just delighted to have you go on looking after your black
+sheep; but it's going to be lonely, for all that.  After Eileen
+has taken her personal possessions, what do you say to fixing up
+that room with the belongings that Marian kept, and inviting her
+to make that suite her home until such time as she may have a
+home of her own again?"
+
+"Foine!" cried Katy.  "I'd love to be havin' her.  I'd agree to
+take orders from Miss Marian and to be takin' care of her jist
+almost the same as I do of ye, Miss Linda.  The one thing I don't
+like about it is that it ain't fair nor right to give even Marian
+the best.  Ye be takin' that suite yourself, lambie, and give
+Miss Marian your room all fixed up with her things, or, if ye
+want her nearer, give her the guest room and make a guest room of
+yours."
+
+"I am willing to follow either of the latter suggestions for
+myself," said Linda; "it might be pleasant to be across the hall
+from Marian where we could call back and forth to each other.  I
+wouldn't mind a change as soon as I have time to get what I'd
+need to make the change.  I'll take the guest room for mine, and
+you may call in a decorator and have my room freshly done and the
+guest things moved into it."
+
+Katy looked belligerent.  Linda reached up and touched the
+frowning lines on her forehead.
+
+"Brighten your lovely features with a smile, Katherine me dear,"
+she said gaily.  "Don't be forgetting that this is our Day of
+Jubilee.  We are free--I hope we are free forever--from petty
+annoyances and dissatisfactions and little, galling things that
+sear the soul and bring out all the worst in human nature.  I
+couldn't do anything to Eileen's suite, not even if I resorted to
+tearing out partitions and making it new from start to finish,
+that would eliminate Eileen from it for me.  If Marian will give
+me permission to move and install her things in it, I think she
+can use it without any such feeling, but I couldn't.  It's agreed
+then, Katy, I am to write to Marian and extend to her a welcome
+on your part as well as on mine?"
+
+"That ye may, lambie," said Katy heartily.  "And, as the boss
+used to be sabin', just to make assurance doubly sure, if YoU
+would address it for me I would be writing' a bit of a line
+myself, conveying' to her me sentiments on the subject."
+
+"Oh, fine, Katy; Marian would be delighted!" cried Linda,
+springing up.
+
+"And, Katy dear, it won't make us feel any more like mourning for
+Eileen when I tell you that it developed at the bank yesterday
+and today, that since she has been managing household affairs she
+has deposited in a separate account all the royalties from
+Father's books.  I had thought the matter closed at the bank when
+this fund was added to the remainder of the estate, the household
+expenses set aside to Eileen, and the remainder divided equally
+between us.  I didn't get the proof that she was not my sister
+until after I came home.  I think it means that I shall have to
+go back to the bank, have the matter reopened, and unless she can
+produce a will or something proving that she is entitled to it,
+it seems to me that what remains of my father's estate is legally
+mine.  Of course, if it develops that he has made any special
+provision for her, she shall have it; otherwise, Katy, we'll be
+in a position to install you as housekeeper and put some
+light-footed, capable young person under you for a step-saver in
+any direction you want to use her.  It means, too, that I shall
+be able to repay your loan immediately and to do the things that
+I wanted to do about the house."
+
+"Now I ain't in any hurry about that money, lambie," said Katy;
+"and you understand of course that the dress you're wearing' I am
+given' ye."
+
+"Of course, old dear, and you should have seen Peter Morrison
+light up and admire it.  He thinks you have wonderful taste,
+Katy."
+
+Katy threw up both her hands.
+
+"Oh, my Lord, lambie!" she cried, aghast.  "Was you telling' him
+that the dress ye were wearing' was a present from your old
+cook?"
+
+"Why, certainly I was," said Linda, wide eyed with astonish meet. 
+"Why shouldn't I?  I was proud to.  And now, old dear, before I
+go, the biggest secret of all.  I had a letter, Katy, from the
+editor of Everybody's Home, and people like our articles, KatY;
+they are something now and folk are letting the editor know about
+it, and he wants all I can send him.  He likes the pictures I
+make; and, Katy, you won't believe it till I show you my little
+bank book, but for the three already published with their
+illustrations he pays me five hundred nice, long, smooth,
+beautifully decorated, paper dollars!"
+
+"Judas praste!" cried Katy, her hands once more aloft.  "Ye ain't
+manin' it, lambie?"
+
+"Yes, I are," laughed Linda.  "I've got the money; and for each
+succeeding three with their pictures I am to have that much more,
+and when I finish- -now steady yourself, Katy, because this is
+going to be a shock--when I finish, blessed old dear heart, he is
+going to make them into a book! That will be my job for this
+summer, and you shall help me, and it will be a part of our great
+secret.  Won't it be the most fun?"
+
+"My soul!" said Katy.  "You're jist crazy.  I don't belave a word
+you're telling' me."
+
+"But I can prove it, because I have the letter and the bank
+book," said Linda.
+
+Katy threw her arms around the girl and kissed the top of her
+head and cried over her and laughed at the same time and patted
+her and petted her and ended by saying:  "Oh, lambie, if only the
+master could be knowin' it."
+
+"But he does know, Katy," said Linda.
+
+She went to her room, removed the beautiful dress and, arranging
+it on a hanger, left it in her closet.  Slipping into an old
+dressing gown, she ran to her workroom and wrote a letter to
+Marian from herself.  She tried not to tell Marian the big, vital
+thing that was throbbing in her heart all day concerning her
+work, the great secret that meant such a wonderful thing to her,
+the thing that was beating in her heart and fluttering behind her
+lips like a bird trying to escape its cage; but she could tell
+her in detail of Eileen's undoubted removal to San Francisco; she
+could tell her enough of the financial transactions of the day to
+make her
+
+understand what had been happening in the past; and she could
+tell of her latest interview with John Gilman.  Once, as she sat
+with her pen poised, thinking how to phrase a sentence, Linda
+said to herself:  "I wonder in my heart if he won't try to come
+crawfishing back to Marian now, and if he does, I wonder, oh, how
+I wonder, what she will do."  Linda shut her lips very tight and
+stared up through her skylight to the stars, as she was fast
+falling into a habit of doing when she wanted inspiration.
+
+"Well, I know one thing," she said to the shining things above
+her, "Marian will do as she sees fit, of course, but if it were
+I, and any man had discarded me as John Gilman discarded Marian,
+in case he ever wanted to pick me up again he would find I was
+not there.  Much as I plan in my heart for the home and the man
+and the little people that I hope to have some day, I would give
+up all of them before I would be discarded and re-sought like
+that; and knowing Marian as I do, I have a conviction that she
+will feel the same way.  From the things she is writing about
+this Snow man I think it is highly probable that he may awake
+some day to learn that he is not so deeply grieved but that he
+would like to have Marian to comfort him in his loneliness; and
+as for his little girl I don't see where he could find a woman
+who would rear her more judiciously and beautifully than Marian
+would."
+
+She finished her letter, sealed and stamped it, and then, taking
+out a fresh sheet, she lettered in at the top of it, "INDIAN
+POTATOES" and continued:
+
+And very good potatoes they are.  You will find these growing
+everywhere throughout California, blooming from May to July,
+their six long, slender, white petals shading to gold at the
+base, grayish on the outside, a pollen-laden pistil upstanding,
+eight or ten gold-clubbed stamens surrounding it, the slender
+brown stem bearing a dozen or more of these delicate blooms,
+springing high from a base of leaves sometimes nearly two feet
+long and an inch broad, wave margined, spreading in a circle
+around it.  In the soil of the plains and the dry hillsides you
+will find an amazingly large solid bulb, thickly enwrapped in a
+coat of brown fiber, the long threads of which can be braided,
+their amazing strength making them suitable for bow strings,
+lariats, or rope of any kind that must needs be improvised for
+use at the moment.  The bulbs themselves have many uses.  Crushed
+and rubbed up in water they make a delightful cleansing lather. 
+The extracted juice, when cooked down, may be used as glue.  Of
+the roasted bulbs effective poultices for bruises and boils may
+be made.  It was an Indian custom to dam a small stream and throw
+in mashed Amole bulbs, the effect of which was to stupefy the
+fish so that they could be picked out by hand; all of which does
+not make it appear that the same bulb would serve as an excellent
+substitute for a baked potato; but we must remember how our
+grandmothers made starch from our potatoes, used them to break in
+the new ironware, and to purify the lard; which goes to prove
+that one vegetable may be valuable for many purposes.  Amole,
+whose ponderous scientific name is Chlorogalum pomeridiarum, is
+at its best for my purposes when all the chlorophyll from flower
+and stem has been driven back to the bulb, and it lies ripe and
+fully matured from late August until December.
+
+Remove the fibrous cover down to the second or third layer
+enclosing the bulb.  These jackets are necessary as they keep the
+bulbs from drying out and having a hard crust.  Roast them
+exactly as you would potatoes.  When they can easily be pierced
+with a silver fork remove from the oven, and serve immediately
+with any course with which you would use baked potatoes.
+
+"And gee, but they're good!" commented Linda as she reread what
+she had written.
+
+After that she turned her attention to drawing a hillside
+whitened here and there with amole bloom showing in its purity
+against the warm grayish-tan background.  The waving green leaves
+ran among big rocks and overlapped surrounding growth.  At the
+right of her drawing Linda sketched in a fine specimen of monkey
+flower, deepening the yellow from the hearts of the amole lilies
+for the almost human little monkey faces.  On the left one giant
+specimen of amole, reared from a base of exquisitely waving
+leaves, ran up the side of the drawing and broke into an airy and
+graceful head of gold-hearted white lilies.  For a long time
+Linda sat with poised pencil, studying her foreground.  What
+should she introduce that would be most typical of the location
+and gave her the desired splash of contrasting color that she
+used as a distinctive touch in the foreground of all her
+drawings?
+
+Her pencil flew busily a few minutes while she sketched in a
+flatly growing bush of prickly phlox, setting the flower faces as
+closely as the overlapped scales of a fish, setting them even as
+they grow in nature; and when she resorted to the color box she
+painted these faces a wonderful pink that was not wild rose, not
+cerise, not lilac, but it made one think of all of them.  When
+she could make no further improvement on this sketch, she
+carefully stretched it against the wall and tacked it up to dry.
+
+Afterward she cleared her mental decks of all the work she could
+think of in order to have Saturday free, because Saturday was the
+day upon which she found herself planning in the back of her mind
+throughout the strenuous week, to save for riding the King's
+Highway with Donald Whiting.  Several times she had met him on
+the walks or in the hallways, and always he had stopped to speak
+with her and several times he had referred to the high hope in
+which he waited for Saturday.  Linda already had held a
+consultation with Katy on the subject of the lunch basket.  That
+matter being satisfactorily arranged, there was nothing for her
+to do but to double on her work so that Saturday would be free. 
+Friday evening Linda was called from the dinner table to the
+telephone.  She immediately recognized the voice inquiring for
+her as that of Judge Whiting, and then she listened breathlessly
+while he said to her:  "You will recognize that there is very
+little I may say over a telephone concerning a matter to which
+you brought my attention.  I have a very competent man looking
+into the matter thoroughly, and I find that your fear is amply
+justified.  Wherever you go or whatever you do, use particular
+care.  Don't have anything to do with any stranger.  Just use
+what your judgment and common sense tell you is a reasonable
+degree of caution in every direction no matter how trivial.  You
+understand?"
+
+"I do," said Linda promptly.  "Would you prefer that we do not go
+on any more Saturday trips at present?"
+
+The length of time that the Judge waited to answer proved that he
+had taken time to think.
+
+"I can't see," he said finally, "that you would not be safer on
+such a trip where you are moving about, where no one knows who
+you arc, than you would where you are commonly found."
+
+"All right then," said Linda.  "Ask the party we are considering
+and he will tell you where he will be tomorrow.  Thank you very
+much for letting me know.  If anything should occur, you will
+understand that it was something quite out of my range of
+fore-sight."
+
+"I understand," said the Judge.
+
+With all care and many loving admonitions Katy assisted in the
+start made early Saturday morning.  The previous Saturday Linda
+had felt that all nature along the road she planned to drive
+would be at its best, but they had not gone far until she
+modified her decision.  They were slipping through mists of early
+morning, over level, carefully made roads like pavilion floors. 
+If any one objection could have been made, it would have been
+that the mists of night were weighting too heavily to earth the
+perfume from the blooming orchards and millions of flowers in
+gardens and along the roadside.  At that hour there were few cars
+abroad.  Linda was dressed in her outing suit of dark green.  She
+had removed her hat and slipped it on the seat beside her.  She
+looked at Donald, a whimsical expression on her most expressive
+young face.
+
+"Please to 'scuse me," she said lightly, "if I step on the gas a
+mite while we have the road so much to ourselves and are so
+familiar with it.  Later, when we reach stranger country and have
+to share with others, we'll be forced to go slower."
+
+"Don't stint your speed on account of me," said Donald.  "I am
+just itching to know what Kitty can do."
+
+"All right, here's your chance," said Linda.  "Hear her purr?"
+
+She settled her body a trifle tensely, squared her shoulders, and
+gripped the steering wheel.  Then she increased the gas and let
+the Bear Cat roll over the smooth road from Lilac Valley running
+south into Los Angeles.  At a speed that was near to flying as a
+non-professional attains, the youngsters traveled that road. 
+Their eyes were shining; their blood was racing.  Until the point
+where rougher roads and approaching traffic forced them to go
+slower, they raced, and when they slowed down they looked at each
+other and laughed in morning delight.
+
+"I may not be very wise," said Linda, "but didn't I do the
+smartest thing when I let Eileen have the touring car and saved
+the Bear Cat for us?"
+
+"Nothing short of inspiration," said Donald.  "The height of my
+ambition is to own a Bear Cat.  If Father makes any mention of
+anything I would like particularly to have for a graduation
+present, I am cocked and primed as to what I shall tell him."
+
+"You'd better save yourself a disappointment," said Linda
+soberly.  "You will be starting to college this fall, and when
+you do you will be gone nine months out of the year, and I am
+fairly sure your father wouldn't think shipping a Bear Cat back
+and forth a good investment, or furnishing you one to take to
+school with you.  He would fear you would never make a grade that
+would be a credit to him if he did."
+
+"My!" laughed Donald, "you've got a long head on your shoulders!"
+
+"When you're thrown on your own for four of the longest,
+lonesomest years of your life, you learn to think," said Linda
+soberly.
+
+She was touching the beginning of Los Angeles traffic.  Later she
+was on the open road again.  The mists were thinning and lifting. 
+The perfume was not so heavy.  The sheeted whiteness of the
+orange groves was broken with the paler white of plum merging
+imperceptibly into the delicate pink of apricot and the stronger
+pink of peach, and there were deep green orchards of smooth waxen
+olive foliage and the lacy-leaved walnuts.  Then came the citrus
+orchards again, and all the way on either hand running with them
+were almost uninterrupted miles of roses of every color and kind,
+and everywhere homes ranging from friendly mansions, all written
+over in adorable flower color with the happy invitation, "Come in
+and make yourself at home," to tiny bungalows along the wayside
+crying welcome to this gay pair of youngsters in greetings
+fashioned from white and purple wisteria, gold bignonia, every
+rose the world knows, and myriad brilliant annual and perennial
+flower faces gathered from the circumference of the tropical
+globe and homing enthusiastically on the King's Highway. 
+Sometimes Linda lifted her hand from the wheel to wave a passing
+salute to a particularly appealing flower picture.  Sometimes she
+whistled a note or cried a greeting to a mockingbird, a rosy
+finch, or a song sparrow.
+
+"Look at the pie timber!" she cried to Donald, calling his
+attention to a lawn almost covered with red-winged blackbirds. 
+"Four hundred and twenty might be baked in that pie," she
+laughed.
+
+Then a subtle change began to creep over the world.  The sun
+peered over the mountains inquiringly, a timid young thing, as if
+she were asking what degree of light and warmth they would like
+for the day.  A new brilliancy tinged every flower face in this
+light, a throbbing ecstasy mellowed every bird note; the orchards
+dropped farther apart, meadows filled with grazing cattle flashed
+past them, the earthy scent of freshly turned fields mingled with
+flower perfume, and on their right came drifting in a cool salt
+breath from the sea.  At mid-forenoon, as they neared Laguna,
+they ran past great hills, untouched since the days when David
+cried:  "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence
+cometh my help."  At one particularly beautiful range, draped
+with the flowing emerald of spring, decorated with beds of gold
+poppy, set with flowering madrona and manzanita, with the gold of
+yellow monkey flower or the rich red of the related species, with
+specimens of lupin growing in small trees, here and there
+adventurous streams singing and flashing their unexpected way to
+the mother breast of the waiting ocean very near to the road
+which at one surprising turn carried them to the never-ending
+wonder of the troubled sea, they drove as slowly as the Bear Cat
+would consent to travel, so that they might study great boulders,
+huge as many of the buildings they had passed, their faces
+scarred by the wrack of ages.  Studying their ancient records one
+could see that they had been familiar with the star that rested
+over Bethlehem.  On their faces had shone the same moon that
+opened the highways Journeying into Damascus.  They had stood the
+storms that had beaten upon the world since the days when the
+floods subsided, the land lifted above the face of the waters in
+gigantic upheavals that had ripped the surface of the globe from
+north to south and forced up the hills, the foothills, and the
+mountains of the Coast Range.  They had been born then, they had
+first seen the light of day, in glowing, molten, red-hot,
+high-piled streams of lava that had gushed forth in that awful
+evolution of birth.
+
+Sometimes Linda stopped the car, they left it, and climbed over
+the faces of these mighty upheavals.  Once Linda reached her hand
+to Donald and cried, half laughingly, half in tense earnest: 
+"Oh, kid, we have got to hurry.  Compared with the age of these,
+we've only a few minutes.  It's all right to talk jestingly about
+'the crack of doom' but you know there really was a crack of
+doom, and right here is where it cracked and spewed out the
+material that hardened into these very rocks.  Beside them I feel
+as a shrimp must feel beside a whale, and I feel that we must
+hurry."
+
+"And so we must," said Donald.  "I'm hungry as Likeliest when he
+waited for them to find enough peacock tongues to satisfy his
+appetite."
+
+"I wonder what brand of home-brew made him think of that," said
+Linda.
+
+"Well, you know," said Donald, "the world was only a smallish
+place then.  They didn't have to go far to find everything to
+which they had access, and it must have been rather a decent time
+in which to live.  Awful lot of light and color and music and
+unique entertainment."
+
+"You're talking," said Linda, "from the standpoint of the king or
+the master.  Suppose you had lived then and had been the slave."
+
+"There you go again," said Donald, "throwing a brick into the
+most delicate mechanism of my profound thought.  You ought to be
+ashamed to round me up with something scientific and
+materialistic every time I go a-glimmering.  Don't you think this
+would be a fine place to have lunch?"
+
+"You wait and see where we lunch today, and you will have the
+answer to that," said Linda, starting back to the Bear Cat.
+
+A few miles farther on they followed the road around the frowning
+menace of an overhanging rock and sped out directly to the
+panorama of the sea.  The sun was shining on it, but, as always
+round the Laguna shore, the rip tide was working itself into
+undue fury.  It came dashing up on the ancient rocks until one
+could easily understand why a poet of long ago wrote of sea
+horses.  Some of the waves did suggest monstrous white chargers
+racing madly to place their feet upon the solid rock.
+
+Through the village, up the steep inclines, past placid lakes,
+past waving yellow mustard beds, beside highways where the
+breastplate of Mother Earth gleamed emerald and ruby against the
+background of billions of tiny, shining diamonds of the iceplant,
+past the old ostrich tree reproduced by etchers of note the world
+over, with grinding brakes, sliding down the breathless declivity
+leading to the shore, Linda stopped at last where the rock walls
+lifted sheer almost to the sky.  She led Donald to a huge circle
+carpeted with cerise sand verbena, with pink and yellow iceplant
+bloom, with jewelled iceplant foliage, with the running blue of
+the lovely sea daisy, with the white and pink of the sea fig,
+where the walls were festooned with ferns, lichens, studded all
+over with flaming Our Lord's Candles, and strange, uncanny,
+grotesque flower forms, almost human in their writhing turns as
+they twisted around the rocks and slipped along clinging to the
+sheer walls.  Just where the vegetation met the white, sea-washed
+sand, Linda spread the Indian blanket, and Donald brought the
+lunch box.  At their feet adventurous waves tore themselves to
+foam on the sharp rocks.  On their left they broke in booming
+spray, tearing and fretting the base of cliffs that had stood
+impregnable through aeons of such ceaseless attack and repulse.
+
+"I wonder," said Donald, "how it comes that I have lived all my
+life in California, and today it seems to me that most of the
+worthwhile things I know about her I owe to you.  When I go to
+college this winter t.he things I shall be telling the boys will
+be how I could gain a living, if I had to, on the desert, in
+Death Valley, from the walls of Multiflores Canyon; and how the
+waves go to smash on the rocks of Laguna, not to mention cactus
+fish hooks, mescal sticks, and brigand beefsteak.  It's no wonder
+the artists of all the world come here copying these pictures. 
+It's no wonder they build these bungalows and live here for
+years, unsatisfied with their efforts to reproduce the pictures
+of the Master Painter of them all."
+
+"I wonder," said Linda, "if anybody is very easily satisfied.  I
+wonder today if Eileen is satisfied with being merely rich.  I
+wonder if we are satisfied to have this golden day together.  I
+wonder if the white swallows are satisfied with the sea.  I
+wonder if those rocks are satisfied and proud to stand
+impregnable against the constant torment of the tide."
+
+"I wonder, oh, Lord, how I wonder," broke in Donald, "about
+Katherine O'Donovan's lunch box.  If you want a picture of per
+feet satisfaction, Belinda beloved, lead me to it!"
+
+"Thank heaven you're mistaken," she said; "they spared me the
+'Be'--.  It's truly just 'Linda."'
+
+"Well, I'm not sparing you the 'Be--'," said Donald, busy with
+the fastenings of the lunch basket.  "Did you hear where I used
+it?"
+
+"Yes, child, and I like it heaps," said Linda casually.  "It's
+fine to have you like me.  Awfully proud of myself."
+
+"You have two members of our family at your feet," said Donald
+soberly as he handed her packages from the box.  "My dad is
+beginning to discourse on you with such signs of intelligence
+that I am almost led to believe, from some of his wildest
+outbursts, that he has had some personal experience in some way."
+
+"And why not?" asked Linda lightly.  "Haven't I often told you
+that my father constantly went on fishing and hunting trips, that
+he was a great collector of botanical specimens, that he
+frequently took his friends with him?  You might ask your father
+if he does not recall me as having fried fish and made coffee and
+rendered him camp service when I was a slip of a thing in the
+dawn of my teens."
+
+"Well, he didn't just mention it," said Donald, "but I can
+.easily see how it might have been."
+
+After they had finished one of Katy's inspired lunches, in which
+a large part of the inspiration had been mental on Linda's part
+and executive on Katy's, they climbed rock faces, skirted
+wave-beaten promontories, and stood peering from overhanging
+cliffs dipping down into the fathomless green sea, where the
+water boiled up in turbulent fury.  Linda pointed out the rocks
+upon which she would sit, if she were a mermaid, to comb the
+seaweed from her hair.  She could hear the sea bells ringing in
+those menacing depths, but Donald's ears were not so finely
+tuned.  At the top of one of the highest cliffs they climbed,
+there grew a clump of slender pale green bushes, towering high
+above their heads with exquisitely cut blue-green leaves, lance
+shaped and slender.  Donald looked at the fascinating growth
+appraisingly.
+
+"Linda," he said, "do you know that the slimness and the
+sheerness and the audacious foothold and the beauty of that thing
+remind me of you?  It is covered all over with the delicate
+frostbloom you taught me to see upon fruit.  I find it everywhere
+but you have never told me what it is."
+
+Linda laughingly reached up and broke a spray of greenish-yellow
+tubular flowers, curving out like clustered trumpets spilling
+melody from their fluted throats.
+
+"You will see it everywhere.  You will find these flowers every
+month of the year," she said, "and I am particularly gladsome
+that this plant reminds you of me.  I love the bluish-green
+'bloom' of its sheer foliage.  I love the music these flower
+trumpets make to me.  I love the way it has traveled, God knows
+how, all the way from the Argentine and spread itself over our
+country wherever it is allowed footing.  I am glad that there is
+soothing in these dried leaves for those who require it.  I shall
+be delighted to set my seal on you with it.  There are two little
+Spanish words that it suggests to the Mexican--Buena moza--but
+you shall find out for yourself what they mean."
+
+Encountering his father that night at his library door, Donald
+Whiting said to him:  "May I come in, Dad?  I have something I
+must look up before I sleep.  Have you a Spanish lexicon, or no
+doubt you have this in your head."
+
+"Well, I've a halting vocabulary," said the Judge.  "What's your
+phrase?"
+
+"Linda put this flower on me today," said Donald, "and she said
+she was pleased because I said the tall, slender bush it grew on
+reminded me of her.  She gave me the Spanish name, but I don't
+know the exact significance of the decoration I am wearing until
+I learn the meaning of the phrase."
+
+"Try me on it," said the Judge.
+
+" 'Buena moza,"' quoted Donald.
+
+The Judge threw back his head and laughed heartily.
+
+"Son," he said, "you should know that from the Latin you're
+learning.  You should translate it instinctively.  I couldn't
+tell you exactly whether a Spaniard would translate 'Buena'
+'fine' or 'good.' Knowing their high-falutin' rendition of almost
+everything else I would take my chance on 'fine.' Son, your
+phrase means 'a fine girl.' "
+
+Donald looked down at the flower in his buttonhole, and then he
+looked straight at his father.
+
+"And only the Lord knows, Dad," he said soberly, "exactly how
+fine Linda-girl is."  
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.  A Mouse Nest
+
+LINDA DEAREST:
+
+I am delighted that you had such a wonderful birthday.  I would
+take a shot in air that anything you don't understand about it
+you might with reasonable safety charge to Katherine O'Donovan. 
+I think it was great of her to have a suitable and a becoming
+dress waiting for you and a congenial man like Peter Morrison to
+dine with you.  He appealed to me as being a rare character,
+highly original, and, I should think, to those who know him well
+he must be entertaining and lovable in the extreme.  I never
+shall be worried about you so long as I know that he is taking
+care of you.
+
+I should not be surprised if some day I meet Eileen somewhere,
+because Dana and I are going about more than you would believe
+possible.  I heartily join with you in wishing her every good
+that life can bring her.  I don't want to be pessimistic, but I
+can't help feeling, Linda, that she is taking a poor way to win
+the best, and I gravely doubt whether she finds it in the
+spending of unlimited quantities of the money of a coarse man who
+stumbled upon his riches accidentally, as has many a man of
+California and Colorado.
+
+I intended, when I sat down to write, the very first thing I
+said, to thank you for your wonderful invitation, seconded so
+loyally and cordially by Katy, to make my home with you until the
+time comes-- if it ever does come--when I shall have a home of my
+own again.  And just as simply and wholeheartedly as you made the
+offer, I accept it.  I am enclosing the address and the receipt
+for my furniture in storage, and a few lines ordering it
+delivered at your house and the bill sent to me.  I only kept a
+few heirlooms and things of Mother's and Father's that are very
+precious to me.  Whenever Eileen takes her things you can order
+mine in and let me know, and I'll take a day or two off and run
+down for a short visit.
+
+Mentioning Eileen makes me think of John.  I think of him more
+frequently than I intend or wish that I did, but I feel my ninth
+life is now permanently extinguished concerning him.  I thought I
+detected in your letter, Linda dear, a hint of fear that he might
+come back to me and that I might welcome him.  If you have any
+such feeling in your heart, abandon it, child, because, while I
+try not to talk about myself, I do want to say that I rejoice in
+a family inheritance of legitimate pride.  I couldn't give the
+finest loyalty and comradeship I had to give to a man, have it
+returned disdainfully, and then furbish up the pieces and present
+it over again.  If I can patch those same pieces and so polish
+and refine them that I can make them, in the old phrase, "as good
+as new," possibly in time-
+
+But, Linda, one thing is certain as the hills of morning.  Never
+in my life will any man make any headway with me again with vague
+suggestions and innuendoes and hints.  If ever any man wants to
+be anything in my life, he will speak plainly and say what he
+wants and thinks and hopes and intends and feels in not more than
+two-syllable English.  I learned my lesson about the futility of
+building your house of dreams on a foundation of sand.  Next time
+I erect a dream house, it is going to have a proper foundation of
+solid granite.  And that may seem a queer thing for me to say
+when you know that I am getting the joy in my life, that I do not
+hesitate to admit I am, from letters written by a man whose name
+I don't know.  It may be that I don't know the man, but I
+certainly am very well acquainted with him, and in some way he
+seems to me to be taking on more definite form.  I should not be
+surprised if I were to recognize him the first time I met him
+face to face.
+
+Linda looked through the skylight and cried out to the stars: 
+"Good heavens! Have I copied Peter too closely?"
+
+She sat thinking a minute and then she decided she had not.
+
+And in this connection you will want to know how I am progressing
+in my friendship with the junior partner, and what kind of
+motorist I am making.  I am still driving twice a week, and
+lately on Sundays in a larger car, taking Dana and a newspaper
+friend of hers along.  I think I have driven every hazard that
+this part of California affords except the mountains; Mr. Snow is
+still merciful about them.
+
+Linda dear, I know what you're dying to know.  You want to know
+whether Mr. Snow is in the same depths of mourning as when our
+acquaintance first began.  This, my dear child, is very
+reprehensible of you.  Young girls with braids down their
+backs--and by the way, Linda, you did not tell me what happened
+"after the ball was over."  Did you go to school the next morning
+with braids down your back, or wearing your coronet?  Because on
+that depends what I have to say to you now; if you went with
+braids, you're still my little girl chum, the cleanest, finest
+kid I have ever known; but if you wore your coronet, then you're
+a woman and my equal and my dearest friend, far dearer than Dana
+even; and I tell you this, Linda, because I want you always to
+understand that you come first.
+
+I have tried and tried to visualize you, and can't satisfy my
+mind as to whether the braids are up or down.  Going on the
+assumption that they are up, and that life may in the near future
+begin to hold some interesting experiences for you, I will tell
+you this, beloved child:  I don't think Mr. Snow is mourning
+quite so deeply as he was.  I have not been asked, the last four
+or five trips we have been on, to carry an armload of exquisite
+flowers to the shrine of a departed love.  I have been privileged
+to take them home and arrange them in my room and Dana's.  And I
+haven't heard so much talk about loneliness, and I haven't seen
+such tired, sad eyes.  It seems to me that a familiar pair of
+shoulders are squaring up to the world again, and a very kind
+pair of eyes are brighter with interest.  I don't know how you
+feel about this; I don't know how I feel about it myself.  I am
+sure that Eugene Snow is a man who, in the years to come, would
+line up beside your father and mine, and I like him immensely. 
+It is merely a case of not liking him less, but of liking my
+unknown man more.  I couldn't quite commit the sacrilege, Linda
+dear, of sending you a sample of the letters I am receiving, but
+they are too fanciful and charming for any words of mine to
+describe adequately.  I don't know who this man is, or what he
+has to offer, or whether he intends to offer anything, but it is
+a ridiculous fact, Linda, that I would rather sit with him in a
+chimney corner of field boulders, on a pine floor, with a palm
+roof and an Ocotillo candle, than to glow in the
+parchment-shielded electric light of the halls of a rich man.  In
+a recent letter, Linda, there was a reference to a woman who wore
+"a diadem of crystallized light."  It was a beautiful thing and I
+could not help taking it personally.  It was his way of telling
+me that he knew me, and knew my tragedy; and, as I said before, I
+am beginning to feel that I have him rather definitely located;
+and I can understand the fine strain in him that prompted his
+anonymity, and his reasons for it.  Of course I am not
+sufficiently confident yet to say anything definite, but my heart
+is beginning to say things that I sincerely hope my lips never
+will be forced to deny.
+
+Linda laid down the letter, folded her hands across it, and once
+more looked at the stars.
+
+"Good gracious!" she said.  "I am tincturing those letters with
+too much Peter.  I'll have to tone down a bit.  Next thing I know
+she will be losing her chance with that wonderful Snow man for a
+dream.  In my efforts to comfort her I must have gone too far. 
+It is all right to write a gushy love letter and stuff it full of
+Peter's whimsical nonsense, but, in the language of the poet, how
+am I going to 'deliver the goods'?  Of course that talk about
+Louise Whiting was all well enough.  Equally, of course, I
+outlined and planted the brook and designed the bridge for
+Marian, whether she knows it or Peter knows it, or not.  If they
+don't know it, it's about time they were finding it out.  I think
+it's my job to visit Peter more frequently and see if I can't
+invent some way to make him see the light.  I will give Katy a
+hint in the morning.  Tomorrow evening I'll go up and have supper
+with him and see if he has another article in the stewpan.  I
+like this work with Peter.  I like having him make me dream
+dreams and see pictures.  I like the punch and the virility he
+puts into my drawings.  It's all right reproducing monkey flowers
+and lilies for pastime, but for serious business, for real life
+work, I would rather do Peter's brainstorming, heart-thrilling
+pictures than my merely pretty ones.  On the subject of Peter, I
+must remember in the morning to take those old books he gave me
+to Donald.  I believe that from one of them he is going to get
+the very material he needs to down the Jap in philosophy.  And
+they are not text books which proves that Peter must have been
+digging into the subject and hunted them up in some second-hand
+store, or even sent away an order for them."
+
+In the hall the next morning Linda stopped Donald and gave him
+the books.  In the early stages of their friendship she had
+looked at him under half-closed lids and waited to see whether he
+intended stopping to say a word with her when they passed each
+other or came down the halls together.  She knew that their
+acquaintance would be noted and commented upon, and she knew how
+ready the other girls would be to say that she was bold and
+forward, so she was careful to let Donald make the advances,
+until he had called to her so often, and had dug flowers and left
+his friends waiting at her door while he delivered them, that she
+felt free to address him as she chose.  He had shown any
+interested person in the high school that he was her friend, that
+he was speaking to her exactly as he did to girls he had known
+from childhood.  He was very popular among the boys and girls of
+his class and the whole school.  His friendship, coming at the
+time of Linda's rebellion on the subject of clothes, had
+developed a tendency to bring her other friendships.  Boys who
+never had known she was in existence followed Donald's example in
+stopping her to say a word now and then.  Girls who had politely
+ignored her now found things to say; and several invitations she
+had not had leisure to accept had been sent to her for afternoon
+and evening entertainments among the young people.  Linda had
+laid out for herself something of a task in deciding to be the
+mental leader of her class.  There were good brains in plenty
+among the other pupils.  It was only by work, concentration, and
+purpose, only by having a mind keenly alert, by independent
+investigation and introducing new points of view that she could
+hold her prestige.  Up to the receipt of her letter containing
+the offer to publish her book she had been able rigorously to
+exclude from her mind the personality and the undertakings of
+Jane Meredith.  She was Linda Strong in the high school and for
+an hour or two at her studies.  She was Jane Meredith over the
+desert, through the canyons, beside the sea, in her Multiflores
+kitchen or in Katherine O'Donovan's.  But this book offer opened
+a new train of thought, a new series of plans.  She could see her
+way-- thanks to her father she had the material in her mind and
+the art in her finger tips-- to materialize what she felt would
+be even more attractive in book form than anything her editor had
+been able to visualize from her material.  She knew herself, she
+knew her territory so minutely.  Frequently she smiled when she
+read statements in her botanies as to where plants and vegetables
+could be found.  She knew the high home of the rare and precious
+snow plant.  She knew the northern limit of the strawberry
+cactus.  She knew where the white sea swallow nested.  She knew
+where the Monarch butterfly went on his winter migration.  She
+knew where the trap-door spider, with cunning past the cunning of
+any other architect of Nature, built his small, round,
+silken-lined tower and hinged his trap door so cleverly that only
+he could open it from the outside.  She had even sat immovable
+and watched him erect his house, and she would have given much to
+see him weave its silver lining.
+
+Linda was fast coming to the place where she felt herself to be
+one in an interested group of fellow workers.  She no longer gave
+a thought to what kind of shoes she wore.  Other girls were
+beginning to wear the same kind.  The legislatures of half a
+dozen states were passing laws regulating the height of heel
+which might be worn within their boundaries.  Manufacturers were
+promising for the coming season that suitable shoes would be
+built for street wear and mountain climbing, for the sands of the
+sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of canyons. 
+The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the
+extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down.  A sane and
+sensible wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country.  Under the
+impetus of Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and
+those of other pupils to lead theirs a higher grade of
+scholarship was beginning to be developed throughout the high
+school.  Pupils were thinking less of what they wore and how much
+amusement they could crowd in, and more about making grades that
+would pass them with credit from year to year.  The horrors of
+the war and the disorders following it had begun to impress upon
+the young brains growing into maturity the idea that soon it
+would be their task to take over the problems that were now
+vexing the world's greatest statesmen and its wisest and most
+courageous women.  A tendency was manifesting itself among young
+people to equip themselves to take a worthy part in the struggles
+yet to come.  Classmates who had looked with toleration upon
+Linda's common-sense shoes and plain dresses because she was her
+father's daughter, now looked upon her with respect and
+appreciation because she started so many interesting subjects for
+discussion, because she was so rapidly developing into a creature
+well worth looking at.  Always she would be unusual because of
+her extreme height, her narrow eyes, her vivid coloring.  But a
+greater maturity, a fuller figure, had come to be a part of the
+vision with which one looked at Linda.  In these days no one saw
+her as she was.  Even her schoolmates had fallen into the habit
+of seeing her as she would be in the years to come.
+
+Thus far she had been able to keep her identities apart without
+any difficulty; but the book proposition was so unexpected, it
+was such a big thing to result from her modest beginning, that
+Linda realized that she must proceed very carefully, she must
+concentrate with all her might, else her school work would begin
+to suffer in favor of the book.  Recently so many things had
+arisen to distract her attention.  Many days she had not been
+able to keep Eileen's face off her geometry papers; and again she
+saw Gilman's, anxious and pain-filled.  Sometimes she found
+herself lifting her eyes from tasks upon which she was
+concentrating with all her might, and with no previous thought
+whatever she was searching for Donald Whiting, and when she saw
+him, coming into muscular and healthful manhood, she returned to
+her work with more strength, deeper vision, a quiet, assured
+feeling around her heart.  Sometimes, over the edge of Literature
+and Ancient History, Peter Morrison looked down at her with
+gravely questioning eyes and dancing imps twisting his mouth
+muscles, and Linda paused a second to figure upon what had become
+an old problem with her.  Why did her wild-flower garden make
+Peter Morrison think of a graveyard?  What was buried there
+besides the feet of her rare flowers?  She had not as yet found
+the answer.
+
+This day her thoughts were on Peter frequently because she
+intended to see him that night.  She was going to share with him
+a supper of baked ham and beans and bread and butter and pickled
+onions and little nut cakes, still warm from Katy's oven.  She
+was going to take Katy with her in order that she might see Peter
+Morrison's location and the house for his dream lady, growing at
+the foot of the mountain like a gay orchid homing on a forest
+tree.  To Linda it was almost a miracle, the rapidity with which
+a house could be erected in California.  In a few weeks' time she
+had seen a big cellar scooped out of the plateau, had seen it
+lined and rising to foundation height above the surface in solid
+concrete, faced outside with cracked boulders.  She had seen a
+framework erected, a rooftree set, and joists and rafters and
+beams swinging into place.  Fretworks of lead and iron pipe were
+running everywhere, and wires for electricity.  Soon shingles and
+flooring would be going into place, and Peter said that when he
+had finished acrobatic performances on beams and girders and
+really stepped out on solid floors where he might tread without
+fear of breaking any of his legs, he would perform a Peacock
+Dance all by himself.
+
+"Peter, you sound like a centipede," said Linda.
+
+"Dear child," said Peter, "when I enter my front door and get to
+the back on two-inch footing, I positively feel that I have
+numerous legs, and I ache almost as badly in the fear that I
+shall break the two I have, as I should if they were really
+broken."
+
+And then he added a few words on a subject of which he had not
+before spoken to Linda.
+
+"It was like that in France.  When we really got into the heat of
+things and the work was actually being done, we were not afraid: 
+we were too busy; we were 'supermen.' The time when we were all
+legs and arms and head, and all of them were being blown away
+wholesale was when the shells whined over while we had a rest
+hour and were trying to sleep, or in the cold, dim dawn when we
+stumbled out stiff, hungry, and sleepy.  It's not the REAL THING
+when it's really occurring that gets one.  It's the devils of
+imagination tormenting the soul.  There is only one thing in this
+world can happen to me that is really going to be as bad as the
+things I dream."
+
+Linda looked down Lilac Valley, her eyes absently focusing on
+Katy busily setting supper on a store box in front of the garage. 
+Then she looked at Peter.
+
+"Mind telling?" she inquired lightly.
+
+Peter looked at her speculatively.
+
+"And would a man be telling his heart's best secret to a kid like
+you?" he asked.
+
+"Now, I call that downright mean," said Linda.  "Haven't you
+noticed that my braids are up?  Don't you see a maturity and a
+dignity and a general matronliness apparent all over me today?"
+
+"Matronliness" was too much for Peter.  You could have heard his
+laugh far down the blue valley.
+
+"That's good!" he cried.
+
+"It is," agreed Linda.  "It means that my braids are up to stay,
+so hereafter I'm a real woman."
+
+She lingered over the word an instant, glancing whimsically at
+Peter, a trace of a smile on her lips, then she made her way down
+a slant declivity and presently returned with an entire flower
+plant, new to Peter and of unusual beauty.
+
+"And because I am a woman I shall set my seal upon you," she
+said.
+
+In the buttonhole of his light linen coat she placed a flower of
+satin face of purest gold, the five petals rounded, but sharply
+tipped, a heavy mass of silk stamens, pollen dusted in the heart. 
+She pushed back the left side of his coat and taking one of the
+rough, hairy leaves of the plant she located it over Peter's
+heart, her slim, deft fingers patting down the leaf and
+flattening it out until it lay pasted smooth and tight.  As she
+worked, she smiled at him challengingly.  Peter knew he was
+experiencing a ceremony of some kind, the significance of which
+he must learn.  It was the first time Linda had voluntarily
+touched him.  He breathed lightly and held steady, lest he
+startle her.
+
+"Lovely enough," he said, "to have come from the hills of the
+stars.  Don't make me wait, Linda; help me to the
+interpretation."
+
+"Buena Mujer," suggested Linda.
+
+"Good woman," translated Peter.
+
+Linda nodded, running a finger down the leaf over his heart.
+
+"Because she sticks close to you," she explained.  Then startled
+by the look in Peter's eyes, she cried in swift change:  "Now we
+are all going to work for a minute.  Katy's spreading the lunch. 
+You take this pail and go to the spring for water and I shall
+tidy your quarters for you."
+
+With the eye of experience Linda glanced over the garage deciding
+that she must ask for clean sheets for the cot and that the
+Salvation Army would like the heap of papers.  Studying the
+writing table she heard a faint sound that untrained ears would
+have missed.
+
+"Ah, ha, Ma wood mouse," said Linda, "nibbling Peter's dr, goods
+are you?"
+
+Her cry a minute later answered the question.  She came from the
+garage upon Katherine O'Donovan rushing to meet her, holding a
+man's coat at the length of her far-reaching arm.
+
+"I wish you'd look at that pocket.  I don't know how long this
+coat has been hanging there, but there is a nest of field mice in
+it," she said.
+
+Katy promptly retreated to the improvised dining table, seated
+herself upon an end of it, and raised both feet straight into the
+air.
+
+"Small help I'll be getting from you," said Linda laughingly.
+
+She went to the edge of the declivity that cut back to the garage
+and with a quick movement reversed the coat catching it by the
+skirts and shaking it vigorously.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.  The Straight and Narrow
+
+This served exactly the purpose Linda had intended.  It dislodged
+the mouse nest and dropped it three feet below her level, but it
+did something else upon which Linda had no time to count.  It
+emptied every pocket in the coat and sent the contents scattering
+down the rough declivity.
+
+"Oh my gracious!" gasped Linda.  "Look what I have done! Katy,
+come help me quickly; I have to gather up this stuff; but it's no
+use; I'll have to take it to Peter and tell him.  I couldn't put
+these things back in the pockets where his hand will reach for
+them, because I don't know which came from inside and which came
+from out."
+
+Linda sprang down and began hastily gathering up everything she
+could see that had fallen from the coat pockets.  She had almost
+finished when her fingers chanced upon a very soiled, befigured
+piece of paper whose impressed folds showed that it had been
+carried for some time in an inner pocket.  As her fingers touched
+this paper her eyes narrowed, her breath came in a gasp.  She
+looked at it a second, irresolute, then she glanced over the top
+of the declivity in the direction Peter had taken.  He was
+standing in front of the building, discussing some matter with
+the contractor.  He had not yet gone to the spring.  Shielded by
+the embankment with shaking fingers Linda opened the paper barely
+enough to see that it was Marian's lost sheet of plans; but it
+was not as Marian had lost it.  It was scored deeply here and
+there with heavy lines suggestive of alterations, and the margin
+was fairly covered with fine figuring.  Linda did not know Peter
+Morrison's writing or figures.  His articles had been typewritten
+and she had never seen his handwriting.  She sat down suddenly on
+account of weakened knees, and gazed unseeingly down the length
+of Lilac Valley, her heart sick, her brain tormented.  Suddenly
+she turned and studied the house.
+
+"Before the Lord!" she gasped.  "I THOUGHT there was something
+mighty familiar even about the skeleton of you! Oh, Peter, Peter,
+where did you get this, and how could you do it?"
+
+For a while a mist blurred her eyes.  She reached for the coat
+and started to replace the things she had gathered up, then she
+shut her lips tight.
+
+"Best time to pull a tooth," she said tersely to a terra cotta
+red manzanita bush, "is when it aches."
+
+When Peter returned from the spring he was faced by a trembling
+girl, colorless and trying hard to keep her voice steady.  She
+held out the coat to him with one hand, the package of papers
+with the other, the folded drawing conspicuous on the top.  With
+these she gestured toward the declivity.
+
+"Mouse nest in your pocket, Peter," she said thickly.  "Reversed
+the coat to shake it out, and spilled your stuff."
+
+Then she waited for Peter to be confounded.  But Peter was not in
+the faintest degree troubled about either the coat or the papers. 
+What did trouble him was the face and the blazing eyes of the
+girl concerning whom he would not admit, even to himself, his
+exact state of feeling.
+
+"The mouse did not get on you, Linda?" he asked anxiously.
+
+Linda shook her head.  Suddenly she lost her self-control.
+
+"Oh, Peter," she wailed, "how could you do it?"
+
+Peter's lean frame tensed suddenly.
+
+"I don't understand, Linda," he said quietly.  "Exactly what have
+I done?"
+
+Linda thrust the coat and the papers toward him accusingly and
+stood there wordless but with visible pain in her dark eyes. 
+peter smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+"That's not my coat, you know.  If there is anything distressing
+about it, don't lay it to me."
+
+"Oh, Peter!" cried Linda, "tell the truth about it.  Don't try
+any evasions.  I am so sick of them."
+
+A rather queer light sprang into Peter's eyes.  He leaned forward
+suddenly and caught the coat from Linda's fingers.
+
+"Well, if you need an alibi concerning this coat," he said, "I
+think I can furnish it speedily."
+
+As he talked he whirled the garment around and shot his long arms
+into the sleeves.  Shaking it into place on his shoulders, he
+slowly turned in front of Linda and the surprised Katy.  The
+sleeves came halfway to his wrists and the shoulders slid down
+over his upper arms.  He made such a quaint and ridiculous figure
+that Katy burst out laughing.  She was very well trained, but she
+knew Linda was deeply distressed.
+
+"Wake up, lambie!" she cried sharply.  "That coat ain't belonging
+to Mr. Pater Morrison.  That gairment is the property of that
+bug-catchin' architect of his."
+
+Peter shook off the coat and handed it back to Linda.
+
+"Am I acquitted?" he asked lightly; but his surprised eyes were
+searching her from braid to toe.
+
+Linda turned from him swiftly.  She thrust the packet into a side
+pocket and started to the garage with the coat.  As she passed
+inside she slipped down her hand, slid the sheet of plans from
+the other papers, and slipped it into the front of her blouse. 
+She hung the coat back where she had found it, then suddenly sat
+down on the side of Peter Morrison's couch, white and shaken. 
+Peter thought he heard a peculiar gasp and when he strayed past
+the door, casually glancing inward, he saw what he saw, and it
+brought him to his knees beside Linda with all speed.
+
+"Linda-girl," he implored, "what in this world has happened?"
+
+Linda struggled to control her voice; but at last she buried her
+face in her hands and frankly emitted a sound that she herself
+would have described as "howling."  Peter knelt back in wonder.
+
+"Of all the things I ever thought about you, Linda," he said,
+"the one thing I never did think was that you were hysterical."
+
+If there was one word in Linda's vocabulary more opprobrious than
+"nerves," which could be applied to a woman, it was "hysterics." 
+The great specialist had admitted nerves; hysterics had no
+standing with him.  Linda herself had no more use for a
+hysterical woman than she had for a Gila monster.  She
+straightened suddenly, and in removing her hands from her face
+she laid one on each of Peter's shoulders.
+
+"Oh, Peter," she wailed, "I am not a hysterical idiot, but I
+couldn't have stood it if that coat had been yours.  Peter, I
+just couldn't have borne it!"
+
+Peter held himself rigidly in the fear that he might disturb the
+hands that were gripping him.
+
+"I see I have the job of educating these damned field mice as to
+where they may build with impunity," he said soberly.
+
+But Linda was not to be diverted.  She looked straight and deep
+into his eyes.
+
+"Peter," she said affirmatively, "you don't know a thing about
+that coat, do you?"
+
+"I do not," said Peter promptly.
+
+"You never saw what was in its pockets, did you?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge," answered Peter.  "What was in the pockets,
+Linda?"
+
+Linda thought swiftly.  Peter adored his dream house.  If she
+told him that the plans for it had been stolen by his architect,
+the house would be ruined for Peter.  Anyone could see from the
+candor of his gaze and the lines that God and experience had
+graven on his face that Peter was without guile.  Suddenly Linda
+shot her hands past Peter's shoulders and brought them together
+on the back of his neck.  She drew his face against hers and
+cried:  "Oh Peter, I would have been killed if that coat had been
+yours.  I tell you I couldn't have endured it, Peter.  I am just
+tickled to death!"
+
+One instant she hugged him tight.  If her lips did not brush his
+cheek, Peter deluded himself.  Then she sprang up and ran from
+the garage.  Later he took the coat from its nail, the papers
+from its pockets, and carefully looked them over.  There was
+nothing among them that would give him the slightest clue to
+Linda's conduct.  He looked again, penetratingly, searchingly,
+for he must learn from them a reason; and no reason was apparent. 
+With the coat in one hand and the papers in the other he stepped
+outside.
+
+"Linda," he said, "won't you show me?  Won't you tell me?  What
+is there about this to upset you?"
+
+Linda closed her lips and shook her head.  Once more Peter sought
+in her face, in her attitude the information he craved.
+
+"Needn't tell me," he said, "that a girl who will face the desert
+and the mountains and the canyons and the sea is upset by a
+mouse."
+
+"Well, you should have seen Katy sitting in the midst of our
+supper with her feet rigidly extended before her!" cried the
+girl, struggling to regain her composure.  "Put back that coat
+and come to your supper.  It's time for you to be fed now.  The
+last workman has gone and we'll barely have time to finish nicely
+and show Katy your dream house before it's time to go."
+
+Peter came and sat in the place Linda indicated.  His mind was
+whirling.  There was something he did not understand, but in her
+own time, in her own way, a girl of Linda's poise and
+self-possession would tell him what had occurred that could be
+responsible for the very peculiar things she had done.  In some
+way she had experienced a shock too great for her usual
+self-possession.  The hands with which she fished pickled onions
+from the bottle were still unsteady, and the corroboration Peter
+needed for his thoughts could be found in the dazed way in which
+Katy watched Linda as she hovered over her in serving her.  But
+that was not the time.  By and by the time would come.  The thing
+to do was to trust Linda and await its coming.  So Peter called
+on all the reserve wit and wisdom he had at command.  He jested,
+told stories, and to Linda's satisfaction and Katy's delight, he
+ate his supper like a hungry man, frankly enjoying it, and when
+the meal was finished Peter took Katy over the house, explaining
+to her as much detail as was possible at that stage of its
+construction, while Linda followed with mute lips and rebellion
+surging in her heart.  When leaving time came, while Katy packed
+the Bear Cat, Linda wandered across toward the spring, and Peter,
+feeling that possibly she might wish to speak with him, followed
+her.  When he overtook her she looked at him straightly, her eyes
+showing the hurt her heart felt.
+
+"Peter," she said, "that first night you had dinner with us, was
+Henry Anderson out of your presence one minute from the time you
+came into the house until you left it?"
+
+Peter stopped and studied the ground at his feet intently. 
+Finally he said conclusively:  "I would go on oath, Linda, that
+he was not.  We were all together in the living room, all
+together in the dining room.  We left together at night and John
+was with us."
+
+"I see," said Linda.  "Well, then, when you came back the next
+morning after Eileen, before you started on your trip, to hunt a
+location, was he with you all the time?"
+
+Again Peter took his time to answer.
+
+"We came to your house with Gilman," he said.  "John started to
+the front door to tell Miss Eileen that we were ready.  I
+followed him.  Anderson said he would look at the scenery.  He
+must have made a circuit of the house, because when we came out
+ready to start, a very few minutes later, he was coming down the
+other side of the house."
+
+"Ah," said Linda comprehendingly.
+
+"Linda," said Peter quietly, "it is very obvious that something
+has worried you extremely.  Am I in any way connected with it?"
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+"Is there anything I can do?"
+
+The negative was repeated.  Then she looked at him.
+
+"No, Peter," she said quietly, "I confess I have had a shock, but
+it is in no way connected with you and there is nothing you can
+do about it but forget my foolishness.  But I am glad--Peter, you
+will never know how glad I am--that you haven't anything to do
+with it."
+
+Then in the friendliest fashion imaginable she reached him her
+hand and led the way back to the Bear Cat, their tightly gripped
+hands swinging between them.  As Peter closed the door he looked
+down on Linda.
+
+"Young woman," he said, "since this country has as yet no nerve
+specialist to take the place of your distinguished father, if you
+have any waves to wave to me tonight, kindly do it before you
+start or after you reach the highway.  If you take your hands off
+that steering wheel as you round the boulders and strike that
+declivity as I have seen you do heretofore, I won't guarantee
+that I shall not require a specialist myself."
+
+Linda started to laugh, then she saw Peter's eyes and something
+in them stopped her suddenly.
+
+"I did not realize that I was taking any risk," she said.  "I
+won't do it again.  I will say good-bye to you right here and now
+so I needn't look back."
+
+So she shook hands with Peter and drove away.  Peter slowly
+followed down the rough driveway, worn hard by the wheels of
+delivery trucks, and stood upon the highest point of the rocky
+turn, looking after the small gray car as it slid down the steep
+declivity.  And he wondered if there could have been telepathy in
+the longing with which he watched it go, for at the level roadway
+that followed between the cultivated land out to the highway
+Linda stopped the car, stood up in it, and turning, looked back
+straight to the spot upon which Peter stood.  She waved both
+hands to him, and then gracefully and beautifully, with
+outstretched, fluttering fingers she made him the sign of birds
+flying home.  And with the whimsy in his soul uppermost, Peter
+reflected, as he turned back for a microscopic examination of
+Henry Anderson's coat and the contents of its pockets, that there
+was one bird above all others which made him think of Linda; but
+he could not at the moment feather Katherine O'Donovan.  And then
+he further reflected as he climbed the hill that if it had to be
+done the best he could do would be a bantam hen contemplating
+domesticity.  
+
+Linda looked the garage over very carefully when she put away the
+Bear Cat.  When she closed the garage doors she was particular
+about the locks.  As she came through the kitchen she said to
+Katy, busy with the lunch box:
+
+"Belovedest, have there been any strange Japs poking around here
+lately?"
+
+She nearly collapsed when Katy answered promptly:
+
+"A dale too many of the square-headed haythens.  I am pestered to
+death with them.  They used to come jist to water the lawn but
+now they want to crane the rugs; they want to do the wash.  They
+are willing to crane house.  They want to get into the garage;
+they insist on washing the car.  If they can't wash it they jist
+want to see if it nades washin'."
+
+Linda stood amazed.
+
+"And how long has this been going on, Katy?" she finally asked.
+
+"Well, I have had two good months of it," said Katy; "that is, it
+started two months ago.  The past month has been workin' up and
+the last ten days it seemed to me they was a Jap on the back
+steps oftener than they was a stray cat, and I ain't no truck
+with ayther of them.  They give me jist about the same falin'. 
+Between the two I would trust the cat a dale further with my bird
+than I would the Jap."
+
+"Have you ever unlocked the garage for them, Katy?" asked Linda.
+
+"No," said Katy.  "I only go there when I nade something about me
+work."
+
+"Well, Katy," said Linda, "let me tell you this:  the next time
+you go there for anything take a good look for Japs before you
+open the door.  Get what you want and get out as quickly as
+possible and be sure, Katy, desperately sure, that you lock the
+door securely when you leave."
+
+Katy set her hands on her hips, flared her elbows, and lifted her
+chin.
+
+"What's any of them little haythen been coin' to scare ye,
+missy?" she demanded belligerently.  "Don't you think I'm afraid
+of them! Comes any of them around me and I'll take my mopstick
+over the heads of them."
+
+"And you'll break a perfectly good mopstick and not hurt the Jap
+when you do it," said Linda.  "There's an undercurrent of
+something deep and subtle going on in this country right now,
+Katy.  When Japan sends college professors to work in our
+kitchens and relatives of her greatest statesmen to serve our
+tables, you can depend on it she is not doing it for the money
+that is paid them.  If California does not wake up very shortly
+and very thoroughly she is going to pay an awful price for the
+luxury she is experiencing while she pampers herself with the
+service of the Japanese, just as the South has pampered herself
+for generations with the service of the Negroes.  When the
+Negroes learn what there is to know, then the day of retribution
+will be at hand.  And this is not croaking, Katy.  It is the
+truest gospel that was ever preached.  Keep your eyes wide open
+for Japs.  Keep your doors locked, and if you see one prowling
+around the garage and don't know what he is after, go to the
+telephone and call the police."
+
+Linda climbed the stairs to her workroom, plumped down at the
+table, set her chin in her palms, and lost herself in thought. 
+For half an hour she sat immovable, staring at her caricature of
+Eileen through narrowed lids.  Then she opened the typewriter,
+inserted a sheet and wrote:
+
+MY DEAR Mr. SNOW:
+
+I am writing as the most intimate woman friend of Marian Thorne. 
+As such, I have spent much thought trying to figure out exactly
+the reason for the decision in your recent architectural
+competition; why a man should think of such a number of very
+personal, intimate touches that, from familiarity with them, I
+know that Miss Thorne had incorporated in her plans, and why his
+winning house should be her winning house, merely reversed.
+
+Today I have found the answer, which I am forwarding to you,
+knowing that you will understand exactly what should be done. 
+Enclosed you will find one of the first rough s};etches Marian
+made of her plans.  In some mysterious manner it was lost on a
+night when your prize-winning architect had dinner at our house
+where Miss Thorne was also a guest.  Before retiring she showed
+to me and explained the plans with which she hoped to win your
+competition.  In the morning I packed her suitcase and handed it
+to the porter of her train.  When she arrived at San Francisco
+she found that the enclosed sheet was missing.
+
+This afternoon tidying a garage in which Mr. Peter Morrison, the
+author, is living while Henry Anderson completes a residence he
+is building for him near my home, I reversed a coat belonging to
+Henry Anderson to dislodge from its pocket the nest of a field
+mouse.  In so doing I emptied all the pockets, and in gathering
+up their contents I found this lost sheet from Marian's plans.
+
+I think nothing more need be said on my part save that I
+understood the winning plan was to become the property of
+Nicholson and Snow.  Without waiting to see whether these plans
+would win or not, Henry Anderson has them three fourths of the
+way materialized in Mr. Morrison's residence in Lilac Valley
+which is a northwestern suburb of Los Angeles.
+
+You probably have heard Marian speak of me, and from her you may
+obtain any information you might care to have concerning my
+responsibility.
+
+I am mailing the sketch to you rather than to Marian because I
+feel that you are the party most deeply interested in a business
+way, and I hope, too, that you will be interested in protecting
+my very dear friend from the disagreeable parts of this very
+disagreeable situation.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+LINDA STRONG.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.  Putting It Up to Peter
+
+When Peter Morrison finally gave up looking in the pockets of
+Henry Anderson's coat for enlightenment concerning Linda's
+conduct, it was with his mind settled on one point.  There was
+nothing in the coat now that could possibly have startled the
+girl or annoyed her.  Whatever had been there that caused her
+extremely peculiar conduct she had carried away with her.  Peter
+had settled convictions concerning Linda.  From the first instant
+he had looked into her clear young eyes as she stood in
+Multiflores Canyon triumphantly holding aloft the Cotyledon in
+one hand and with the other struggling to induce the skirt of her
+blouse to resume its proper location beneath the band of her
+trousers, he had felt that her heart and her mind were as clear
+and cool and businesslike as the energetic mountain stream
+hurrying past her.  Above all others, "straight" was the one
+adjective he probably would have applied to her.  Whatever she
+had taken from Henry's pockets was something that concerned her. 
+If she took anything, she had a right to take it; of that Peter
+was unalterably certain.  He remembered that a few days before
+she practically had admitted to him that Anderson had annoyed
+her, and a slow anger began to surge up in Peter's carefully
+regulated heart.  His thoughts were extremely busy, but the thing
+he thought most frequently and most forcefully was that he would
+thoroughly enjoy taking Henry Anderson by the scruff of the neck,
+leading him to the sheerest part of his own particular share of
+the mountain, and exhaustively booting him down it.
+
+"It takes these youngsters to rush in and raise the devil where
+there's no necessity for anything to happen if just a modicum of
+common sense had been used," growled Peter.
+
+He mulled over the problem for several days, and then he decided
+he should see Linda, and with his first look into her
+straight-forward eyes, from the tones of her voice and the
+carriage of her head he would know whether the annoyance
+persisted.  About the customary time for her to return from
+school Peter started on foot down the short cut between his home
+and the Strong residence.  He was following a footpath rounding
+the base of the mountain, crossing and recrossing the
+enthusiastic mountain stream as it speeded toward the valley,
+when a flash of color on the farther side of the brook attracted
+him.  He stopped, then hastily sprang across the water, climbed a
+few yards, and, after skirting a heavy clump of bushes, looked at
+Linda sitting beside them--a most astonishing Linda, appearing
+small and humble, very much tucked away, unrestrained tears
+rolling down her cheeks, a wet handkerchief wadded in one hand, a
+packet of letters in her lap.  A long instant they studied each
+other.
+
+"Am I intruding?" inquired Peter at last.
+
+Linda shook her head vigorously and gulped down a sob.
+
+"No, Peter," she sobbed, "I had come this far on my way to you
+when my courage gave out."
+
+Peter rearranged the immediate landscape and seated himself
+beside Linda.
+
+"Now stop distressing yourself," he said authoritatively.  "You
+youngsters do take life so seriously.  The only thing that could
+have happened to you worth your shedding a tear over can't
+possibly have happened; so stop this waste of good material. 
+Tears are very precious things, Linda.  They ought to be the most
+unusual things in life.  Now tell me something.  Were you coming
+to me about that matter that worried you the other evening?"
+
+Linda shook her head.
+
+"No," she said, "I have turned that matter over where it belongs. 
+I have nothing further to do with it.  I'll confess to you I took
+a paper from among those that fell from Henry Anderson's pocket. 
+It was not his.  He had no right to have it.  He couldn't
+possibly have come by it honorably or without knowing what it
+was.  I took the liberty to put it where it belongs, or at least
+where it seemed to me that it belongs.  That is all over."
+
+"Then something else has happened?" asked Peter.  "Something
+connected with the package of letters in your lap?"
+
+Linda nodded vigorously.
+
+"Peter, I have done something perfectly awful," she confessed. 
+"I never in this world meant to do it.  I wouldn't have done it
+for anything.  I have got myself into the dreadfullest mess, and
+I don't know how to get out.  When I couldn't stand it another
+minute I started right to you, Peter, just like I'd have started
+to my father if I'd had him to go to."
+
+"I see," said Peter, deeply interested in the toe of his shoe. 
+"You depended on my age and worldly experience and my unconcealed
+devotion to your interests, which is exactly what you should do,
+my dear.  Now tell me.  Dry your eyes and tell me, and whatever
+it is I'll fix it all right and happily for you.  I'll swear to
+do it if you want me to."
+
+Then Linda raised her eyes to his face.
+
+"Oh, Peter, you dear!" she cried.  "Peter, I'll just kneel and
+kiss your hands if you can fix this for me."  
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Peter set his jaws and continued his meditations on shoe leather.
+
+"Make it snappy!" he said tersely.  "The sooner your troubles are
+out of your system the better you'll feel.  Whose letters are
+those, and why are you crying over them?"
+
+"Oh, Peter," quavered Linda, "you know how I love Marian.  You
+have seen her and I have told you over and over."
+
+"Yes," said Peter soothingly, "I know."
+
+"I have told you how, after years of devotion to Marian, John
+Gilman let Eileen make a perfect rag of him and tie him into any
+kind of knot she chose.  Peter, when Marian left here she had
+lost everything on earth but a little dab of money.  She had lost
+a father who was fine enough to be my father's best friend.  She
+had lost a mother who was fine enough to rear Marian to what she
+is.  She had lost them in a horrible way that left her room for a
+million fancies and regrets:  'if I had done this,' or 'if I had
+done that,' or 'if I had taken another road.' And when she went
+away she knew definitely she had lost the first and only love of
+her heart; and I knew, because she was so sensitive and so fine,
+I knew, better than anybody living, how she COULD be hurt; and I
+thought if I could fix some scheme that would entertain her and
+take her mind off herself and make her feel appreciated only for
+a little while--I knew in all reason, Peter, when she got out in
+the world where men would see her and see how beautiful and fine
+she is, there would be somebody who would want her quickly.  All
+the time I have thought that when she came back, YOU would want
+her.  Peter, I fibbed when I said I was setting your brook for
+Louise Whiting.  I was not.  I don't know Louise Whiting.  She is
+nothing to me.  I was setting it for you and Marian.  It was a
+WHITE head I saw among the iris marching down your creek bank,
+not a gold one, Peter."
+
+Peter licked his dry lips and found it impossible to look at
+Linda.
+
+"Straight ahead with it," he said gravely.  "What did you do?"
+
+"Oh, I have done the awfullest thing," wailed Linda, "the most
+unforgivable thing!"
+
+She reached across and laid hold of the hand next her, and
+realizing that she needed it for strength and support, Peter gave
+it into her keeping.
+
+"Yes?" he questioned.  "Get on with it, Linda.  What was it you
+did?"
+
+"I had a typewriter:  I could.  I began writing her letters, the
+kind of letters that I thought would interest her and make her
+feel loved and appreciated."
+
+"You didn't sign my name to them, did you, Linda?" asked Peter in
+a dry, breathless voice.
+
+"No, Peter," said Linda, "I did not do that, I did worse.  Oh, I
+did a whole lot worse!"
+
+"I don't understand," said Peter hoarsely.
+
+"I wanted to make them fine.  I wanted to make them brilliant.
+
+I wanted to make them interesting.  And of course I could not do
+it by myself.  I am nothing but a copycat.  I just quoted a lot
+of things I had heard you say; and I did worse than that, Peter. 
+I watched the little whimsy lines around your mouth and I tried
+to interpret the perfectly lovely things they would make you say
+to a woman if you loved her and were building a dream house for
+her.  And oh, Peter, it's too ghastly; I don't believe I can tell
+you."
+
+"This is pretty serious business, Linda," said Peter gravely. 
+"Having gone this far you are in honor bound to finish.  It would
+not be fair to leave me with half a truth.  What is the result of
+this impersonation?"
+
+"Oh, Peter," sobbed Linda, breaking down again, "you're going to
+hate me; I know you're going to hate me and Marian's going to
+hate me; and I didn't mean a thing but the kindest thing in all
+the world."
+
+"Don't talk like that, Linda," said Peter.  "If your friend is
+all you say she is, she is bound to understand.  And as for me, I
+am not very likely to misjudge you.  But be quick about it.  What
+did you do, Linda?"
+
+"Why, I just wrote these letters that I am telling you about,"
+said Linda, "and I said the things that I thought would comfort
+her and entertain her and help with her work; and these are the
+answers that she wrote me, and I don't think I realized till last
+night that she was truly attributing them to any one man, truly
+believing in them.  Oh, Peter, I wasn't asleep a minute all last
+night, and for the first time I failed in my lessons today."
+
+"And what is the culmination, Linda?" urged Peter.  
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"She liked the letters, Peter.  They meant all I intended them to
+and they must have meant something I never could have imagined. 
+And in San Francisco one of the firm where she studies --a very
+fine man she says he is, Peter; I can see that in every way he
+would be quite right for her; and I had a letter from her last
+night, and, Peter, he had asked her to marry him, to have a
+lifelong chance at work she's crazy about.  He had offered her a
+beautiful home with everything that great wealth and culture and
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+good taste could afford.  He had offered her the mothering of his
+little daughter; and she refused him, Peter, refused him because
+she is in love, with all the love there is left in her
+disappointed, hurt heart, with the personality that these letters
+represent to her; and that personality is yours, Peter.  I stole
+it from you.  I copied it into those letters.  I'm not straight. 
+I'm not fair.  I wasn't honest with her.  I wasn't honest with
+you.  I'll just have to take off front the top of the highest
+mountain or sink in the deepest place in the sea, Peter.  I
+thought I was straight.  I thought I was honorable I have made
+Donald believe that I was.  If I have to tell him the truth about
+this he won't want to wear my flower any more.  I shall know all
+the things that Marian has suffered, and a thousand times worse,
+because she was not to blame; she had nothing with which to
+reproach herself."
+
+Peter put an arm across Linda's shoulders and drew her up to him. 
+For a long, bitter moment he thought deeply, and then he said
+hoarsely:  "Now calm down, Linda.  You're making an extremely
+high mountain out of an extremely shallow gopher hole.  You
+haven't done anything irreparable.  I see the whole situation. 
+You are sure your friend has finally refused this offer she has
+had on account of these letters you have written?"
+
+Suddenly Linda relaxed.  She leaned her warm young body against
+Peter.  She laid her tired head on his shoulder.  She slipped the
+top letter of the packet in her lap from under its band, opened
+it, and held it before him.  Peter read it very deliberately,
+then he nodded in acquiescence.
+
+"It's all too evident," he said quietly, "that you have taught
+her that there is a man in this world more to her liking than
+John Gilman ever has been.  When it came to materializing the
+man, Linda, what was your idea?  Were you proposing to deliver
+me?"
+
+"I thought it would be suitable and you would be perfectly
+happy," sobbed Linda, "and that way I could have both of you."
+
+"And Donald also?" asked Peter lightly.
+
+"Donald of course," assented Linda.
+
+And then she lifted her tear-spilling, wonderful eyes, wide open,
+to Peter's, and demanded:  "But, oh Peter, I am so miserable I am
+
+almost dead.  I have said you were a rock, and you are a rock. 
+peter, can you get me out of this?"
+
+"Sure," said Peter grimly.  "Merely a case of living up to your
+blue china, even if it happens to be in the form of hieroglyphics
+instead of baked pottery.  Give me the letters, Linda.  Give me a
+few days to study them.  Exchange typewriters with me so I can
+have the same machine.  Give me some of the paper on which you
+have been writing and the address you have been using, and I'll
+guarantee to get you out of this in some way that will leave you
+Donald, and your friendship with Marian quite as good as new."
+
+At that juncture Peter might have been kissed, but his neck was
+very stiff and his head was very high and his eyes were on a
+far-distant hilltop from which at that minute he could not seem
+to gather any particular help.
+
+"Would it be your idea," he said, "that by reading these letters
+I could gain sufficient knowledge of what has passed to go on
+with this?"
+
+"Of course you could," said Linda.
+
+Peter reached in his side pocket and pulled out a clean
+handkerchief.  He shook it from its folds and dried her eyes. 
+Then he took her by her shoulders and set her up straight.
+
+"Now stop this nerve strain and this foolishness," he said
+tersely.  "You have done a very wonderful thing for me.  It is
+barely possible that Marian Thorne is not my dream woman, but we
+can't always have our dreams in this world, and if I could not
+have mine, truly and candidly, Linda, so far as I have lived my
+life, I would rather have Marian Thorne than any other woman I
+have ever met."
+
+Linda clapped her hands in delight.
+
+"Oh, goody goody, Peter!" she cried.  "How joyous! Can it be
+possible that my bungling is coming out right for Marian and
+right for you?" 
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"And right for you, Linda?" inquired Peter lightly.
+
+"Sure, right for me," said Linda eagerly.  "Of course it's right
+for me when it's right for you and Marian.  And since it's not my
+secret alone I don't think it would be quite honorable to tell
+Donald about it.  What hurts Marian's heart or heals it is none
+of his business.  He doesn't even know her."
+
+"All right then, Linda," said Peter, rising, "give me the letters
+and bring me the machine and the paper.  Give me the joyous
+details and tell me when I am expected to send in my first letter
+in propria persona?',
+
+"Oh, Peter," cried Linda, beaming on him, "oh, Peter, you are a
+rock! I do put my trust in you."
+
+"Then God help me," said Peter, "for whatever happens, your trust
+in me shall not be betrayed, Linda."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.  Katy Unburdens Her Mind
+
+Possibly because she wished to eliminate herself from the offices
+of Nicholson and Snow for a few days, possibly because her finely
+attuned nature felt the call, Marian Thorne boarded a train that
+carried her to Los Angeles.  She stepped from it at ten o'clock
+in the morning, and by the streetcar route made her way to Lilac
+Valley.  When she arrived she realized that she could not see
+Linda before, possibly, three in the afternoon.  She entered a
+restaurant, had a small lunch box packed, and leaving her
+dressing case, she set off down the valley toward the mountains. 
+She had need of their strength, their quiet and their healing. 
+To the one particular spot where she had found comfort in Lilac
+Valley her feet led her.  By paths of her own, much overgrown for
+want of recent usage, she passed through the cultivated fields,
+left the roadway, and began to climb.  When she reached the
+stream flowing down the rugged hillside, she stopped to rest for
+a while, and her mind was in a tumult.  In one minute she was
+seeing the bitterly disappointed face of a lonely, sensitive man
+whose first wound had been reopened by the making of another
+possibly quite as deep; and at the next her heart was throbbing
+because Linda had succeeded in transferring the living Peter to
+paper.
+
+The time had come when Marian felt that she would know the
+personality embodied in the letters she had been receiving; and
+in the past few days her mind had been fixing tenaciously upon
+Peter
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Morrison.  And the feeling concerning which she had written Linda
+had taken possession of her.  Wealth did not matter; position did
+not matter.  Losing the love of a good man did not matter But the
+mind and the heart and the personality behind the letters she had
+been receiving did matter.  She thought long and seriously When
+at last she arose she had arrived at the conclusion that she had
+done the right thing, no matter whether the wonderful letters she
+had received went on and offered her love or not, no matter about
+anything.  She must merely live and do the best she could, until
+the writer of those letters chose to disclose himself and say
+what purpose he had in mind when he wrote them.
+
+So Marian followed her own path beside the creek until she neared
+its head, which was a big, gushing icy spring at the foot of the
+mountain keeping watch over the small plateau that in her heart
+she had thought of as hers for years.  As she neared the location
+strange sounds began to reach her, voices of men, clanging of
+hammers, the rip of saws.  A look of deep consternation
+overspread her face.  She listened an instant and then began to
+run.  When she broke through the rank foliage flourishing from
+the waters of the spring and looked out on the plateau what she
+saw was Peter Morrison's house in the process of being floored
+and shingled.  For a minute Marian was physically ill.  Her heart
+hurt until her hand crept to her side in an effort to soothe it. 
+Before she asked the question of a man coming to the spring with
+a pail in his hand, she knew the answer.  It was Peter Morrison's
+house.  Marian sprang across the brook, climbed to the temporary
+roadway, and walked down in front of the building.  She stood
+looking at it intently.  It was in a rough stage, but much
+disguise is needed to prevent a mother from knowing her own
+child.  Marian's dark eyes began to widen and to blaze.  She
+walked up to the front of the house and found that rough flooring
+had been laid so that she could go over the first floor.  When
+she had done this she left the back door a deeply indignant
+woman.
+
+"There is some connection," she told herself tersely, "between my
+lost sketch and this house, which is merely a left-to-right
+rehearsal of my plans; and it's the same plan with which Henry
+Anderson won the Nicholson and Snow prize money and the still
+more valuable honor of being the prize winner.  What I want to
+know is how such a wrong may be righted, and what Peter Morrison
+has to do with it."
+
+Stepping from the back door, Marian followed the well-worn
+pathway that led to the garage, looking right and left for Peter,
+and she was wondering what she would say to him if she met him. 
+She was thinking that perhaps she had better return to San
+Francisco and talk the matter over with Mr. Snow before she said
+anything to anyone else; by this time she had reached the garage
+and stood in its wide-open door.  She looked in at the cot, left
+just as someone had arisen from it, at the row of clothing
+hanging on a rough wooden rack at the back, at the piled boxes,
+at the big table, knocked together from rough lumber, in the
+center, scattered and piled with books and magazines; and then
+her eyes fixed intently on a packet lying on the table beside a
+typewriter and a stack of paper and envelopes.  She walked over
+and picked up the packet.  As she had known the instant she saw
+them, they were her letters.  She stood an instant holding them
+in her hand, a dazed expression on her face.  Mechanically she
+reached out and laid her hands on the closed typewriter to steady
+herself.  Something about it appealed to her as familiar.  She
+looked at it closely, then she lifted the cover and examined the
+machine.  It was the same machine that had stood for years in
+Doctor Strong's library, a machine upon which she had typed
+business letters for her own father, and sometimes she had copied
+lectures and book manuscript on it for Doctor Strong.  Until his
+house was completed and his belongings arrived, Peter undoubtedly
+had borrowed it.  Suddenly a wild desire to escape swept over
+Marian.  Her first thought was of her feelings.  She was angry,
+and justly so.  In her heart she had begun to feel that the
+letters she was receiving were from Peter Morrison.  Here was the
+proof.
+
+Could it be possible that in their one meeting Peter had decided
+that she was his dream woman, that in some way he had secured
+that rough sketch of her plans, and from them was preparing her
+dream house for her?  The thought sped through her brain that he
+was something more than human to have secured those plans, to
+have found that secluded and choice location.  For an instant she
+forgot the loss of the competition in trying to comprehend the
+wonder of finding her own particular house fitting her own
+particular location as naturally as one of its big boulders.
+
+She tried to replace the package of letters exactly as she had
+found them.  On tiptoe she slipped back to the door and looked
+searchingly down the road, around, and as far as possible through
+the house.  Then she gathered her skirts, stepped from the
+garage, and began the process of effacing herself on the mountain
+side From clump to clump of the thickest bushes, crouching below
+the sage and greasewood, pausing to rest behind lilac and elder,
+with.  out regard for her traveling suit or her beautifully shod
+feet, Marian fled from her location.  When at last she felt that
+she was completely hidden and at least a mile from the spot, she
+dropped panting on a boulder, brushing the debris from her
+skirts, lifting trembling hands to straighten her hat, and
+ruefully contemplating her shoes.  Then she tried to think in a
+calm, dispassionate, and reasonable manner, but she found it a
+most difficult process.  Her mind was not well ordered, neither
+was it at her command.  It whirled and shot off at unexpected
+tangents and danced as irresponsibly as a grasshopper from one
+place to another.  The flying leaps it took ranged from San
+Francisco to Lilac Valley, from her location upon which Peter
+Morrison was building her house, to Linda.  Even John Gilman
+obtruded himself once more.  At one minute she was experiencing a
+raging indignation against Henry Anderson.  How had he secured
+her plan?  At another she was trying to figure dispassionately
+what connection Peter Morrison could have had with the building
+of his house upon her plan.  Every time Peter came into the
+equation her heart arose in his defense.  In some way his share
+in the proceeding was all right.  He had cared for her and he had
+done what he thought would please her.  Therefore she must be
+pleased, although forced to admit to herself that she would have
+been infinitely more pleased to have built her own house in her
+own way.
+
+She was hungry to see Linda.  She wanted Katherine O'Donovan to
+feed her and fuss over her and entertain her with her mellow
+Irish brogue; but if she went to them and disclosed her presence
+in the valley, Peter would know about it, and if he intended the
+building he was erecting as a wonderful surprise for her, then
+she must not spoil his joy.  Plan in any way she could, Marian
+could see no course left to her other than to slip back to the
+station and return to San Francisco without meeting any of her
+friends.  She hurriedly ate her lunch, again straightened her
+clothing, went to the restaurant for her traveling bag, and took
+the car for the station where she waited for a return train to
+San Francisco She bought a paper and tried to concentrate upon it
+in an effort to take her mind from her own problems so that, when
+she returned to them, she would be better able to think clearly,
+to reason justly, to act wisely.  She was very glad when her
+train came and she was started on her way northward.  At the
+first siding upon which it stopped to allow the passing of a
+south-bound limited, she was certain that as the cars flashed by,
+in one of them she saw Eugene Snow.  She was so certain that when
+she reached the city she immediately called the office and asked
+for Mr. Snow only to be told that he had gone away for a day or
+two on business.  After that Marian's thought was confused to the
+point of exasperation.
+
+It would be difficult to explain precisely the state of mind in
+which Linda, upon arriving at her home that afternoon, received
+from Katy the information that a man named Snow had been waiting
+an hour for her in the living room.  Linda's appearance was that
+of a person so astonished that Katy sidled up to her giving
+strong evidence of being ready to bristle.
+
+"Ye know, lambie," she said with elaborate indifference, "ye
+aren't havin' to see anybody ye don't want to.  If it's somebody
+intrudin' himself on ye, just say the word and I'll fire him;
+higher than Guilderoy's kite I'll be firin' him."
+
+"No, I must see him, Katy," said Linda quietly.  "And have
+something specially nice for dinner.  Very likely I'll take him
+to see Peter Morrison's house and possibly I'll ask him and Peter
+to dinner.  He is a San Francisco architect from the firm where
+Marian takes her lessons, and it's business about Peter's house. 
+I was surprised, that's all."
+
+Then Linda turned and laid a hand on each of Katy's hairy red
+arms.
+
+"Katherine O'Donovan, old dear," she said, "if we do come back
+for dinner, concentrate on Mr. Snow and study him.  Scrutinize,
+Katy! It's a bully word.  Scrutinize closely.  To add one more to
+our long lists of secrets, here's another.  He's the man I told
+you about who has asked Marian to marry him, and Marian has
+refused him probably because she prefers somebody nearer home."
+
+Then Linda felt the tensing of every muscle in Katy's body.  She
+saw the lift of her head, the incredulous, resentful look in her
+eyes.  There was frank hostility in her tone.
+
+"Well, who is there nearer home that Marian knows?" she demanded
+belligerently.
+
+"Well, now, who would there be?" retorted Linda.
+
+"Ye ain't manin' John Gilman?" asked Katy.
+
+"No," said Linda, "I am not meaning John Gilman.  You should know
+Marian well enough to know that."
+
+"Well, ye ought to know yourself well enough to know that they
+ain't anybody else around these diggin's that Marian Thorne's
+going to get," said Katy.
+
+"I imagine Marian will get pretty much whom she wants," said
+Linda laughingly.  "In your heart, Katy, you know that Marian
+need not have lost John Gilman if she had not deliberately let
+him go.  If she had been willing to meet Eileen on her own ground
+and to play the game with her, it wouldn't have happened.  Marian
+has more brains in a minute than Eileen has in a month."
+
+When Linda drew back the portiere and stepped into the living
+room Eugene Snow rose to meet her.  What either of them expected
+it might be difficult to explain.  Knowing so little of each
+other, it is very possible that they had no visualizations.  What
+Snow saw was what everyone saw who looked at Linda--a girl
+arrestingly unusual.  With Linda lay the advantage by far, since
+she had Marian's letters for a background.  What she saw was a
+tall man, slender, and about him there was to Linda a strong
+appeal.  As she looked into his eyes, she could feel the double
+hurt that Fate had dealt him.  She thought she could fathom the
+fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building his
+chosen occupation.  Instantly she liked him.  With only one look
+deep into his eyes she was on his side.  She stretched out both
+her hands and advanced.
+
+"Now isn't this the finest thing of you?" she said.  "I am so
+glad that you came.  I'll tell you word for word what happened
+here."
+
+"That will be fine," he said.  "Which is your favorite chair?"
+
+"You know," she said, "that is a joke.  I am so unfamiliar with
+this room that I haven't any favorite chair.  I'll have to take
+the nearest, like Thoreau selected his piece of chicken."
+
+Then for a few minutes Linda talked frankly.  She answered Eugene
+Snow's every question unhesitatingly and comprehensively. 
+Together they ascended the stairs, and in the guest room she
+showed him the table at which she and Marian had studied the
+sketches of plans, and exactly where they had left them lying
+overnight.
+
+"The one thing I can't be explicit about," said Linda, "is how
+many sheets were there in the morning.  We had stayed awake so
+late talking, that we overslept.  I packed Marian's bag while she
+dressed.  I snatched up what there were without realizing whether
+there were two sheets or three, laid them in the flat bottom of
+the case, and folded her clothing on top of them."
+
+"I see," said Mr. Snow comprehendingly.  "Now let's experiment a
+little.  Of course the window before that table was raised?" 
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Yes, it was," said Linda, "but every window in the house is
+screened."
+
+"And what about the door opening into the hall?  Can you tell me
+whether it was closed or open?"
+
+"It was open," said Linda.  "We left it slightly ajar to create a
+draft; the night was warm."
+
+"Is there anyone about the house," inquired Mr. Snow, "who could
+tell us certainly whether that window was screened that night?"
+
+"Of course," said Linda.  "Our housekeeper, Katherine O'Donovan,
+would know.  When we go down we'll ask her."
+
+On their return to the living room, for the first time in her
+life Linda rang for Katy.  She hesitated an instant before she
+did it.  It would be establishing a relationship that never
+before had existed between them.  She always had gone to Katy as
+she would have, gone to her mother.  She would have gone to her
+now, but she wanted Katy to make her appearance and give her
+information without the possibility of previous discussion.  Katy
+answered the bell almost at once.  Linda went to her side and
+reached her arm across her shoulders.
+
+"Katy," she said, "this is Mr. Eugene Snow of San Francisco He is
+interested in finding out exactly what became of that lost plan
+of Marian's that we have looked for so carefully.  Put on your
+thinking cap, old dear, and try to answer accurately any question
+that Mr. Snow may wish to ask you."
+
+Katy looked expectantly at Eugene Snow.
+
+"In the meantime," said Linda, "I'll be excused and go bring
+round the Bear Cat."
+
+"I have only one question to ask you," said Mr. Snow.  "Can you
+recall whether, for any reason, there was a screen out of the
+guest-room window directly in front of which the reading table
+was standing the night Miss Marian occupied the room before
+leaving for San Francisco?"
+
+"Sure there was," answered Katy instantly in her richest,
+mellowest brogue.
+
+She was taking the inventory she had been told to take.  She was
+deciding, as instantly as Linda had done, that she liked this
+man.  Years, appearance, everything about him appealed to Katy as
+being exactly right for Marian; and her cunning Irish mind was
+leaping and flying and tugging at the leash that thirty years of
+conventions had bound upon her.
+
+"Sure," she repeated, "the wildest santana that ever roared over
+us just caught that screen and landed it slam against the side of
+the garage, and it set inside for three days till I could get a
+workman to go up the outside and put it back.  It had been out
+two days before the night Marian was here."
+
+"Did Miss Linda know about it?" asked Snow.
+
+"Not that I know of," said Katy.  "She is a schoolgirl, you know,
+off early in the morning, back and up to her room, the busiest
+youngster the valley knows; and coin' a dale of good she is, too. 
+It was Miss Eileen that heard the screen ripped out and told me
+it was gone.  She's the one who looked after the housekapin' and
+paid the bills.  She knew all about it.  If 'twould be helpin'
+Miss Marian any about findin' them plans we've ransacked the
+premises for, I couldn't see any reason why Miss Eileen wouldn't
+tell ye the same as I'm tellin' ye, and her housekapin' accounts
+and her cheque book would show she paid the carpenter, if it's
+legal business you're wantin'."
+
+"Thank you, Katy," said Mr. Snow.  "I hope nothing of that kind
+will occur.  A great wrong has been perpetrated, but we must find
+some way to right it without involving such extremely nice young
+women in the annoyance of legal proceedings."
+
+Katy folded her arms and raised her head.  All her share of the
+blarney of Ireland began to roll from the mellow tip of her
+tongue.
+
+"Now, the nice man ye are, to be seein' the beauty of them girls
+so quick," she said.  "The good Lord airly in the mornin' of
+creation thought them out when He was jist fresh from rist, and
+the material was none shopworn.  They ain't ladies like 'em
+anywhere else in the whole of California, and belave me, a many
+rale ladies have I seen in my time.  Ye can jist make up your
+mind that Miss Linda is the broth of the earth.  She is her
+father's own child and she is like him as two pase in the pod. 
+And Marian growed beside her, and much of a hand I've had in her
+raisin' meself, and well I'm knowin' how fine she is and what a
+juel she'd be, set on any man's hearthstone.  I'm wonderin',"
+said Katy challengingly, "if you're the Mr. Snow at whose place
+she is takin' her lessons, and if ye are, I'm wonderin' if ye
+ain't goin' to use the good judgment to set her, like the juel
+she would be, ia the stone of your own hearth."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Eugene Snow looked at Katy intently.  He was not accustomed to
+discussing his affairs with household helpers, but he could not
+look at Katy without there remaining in his vision the forte of
+Linda standing beside her, a reassuring arm stretched across her
+shoulders, the manner in which she had presented her and then
+left her that she might be free to answer as she chose with out
+her young mistress even knowing exactly what was asked of her. 
+Such faith and trust and love were unusual.
+
+"I might try to do that very thing," he said, "but, you know, a
+wonderful woman is an animated jewel.  You can't manufacture a
+setting and put her in and tighten the clasps without her
+consent."
+
+"Then why don't you get it?" said Katy casually.
+
+Eugene Snow laughed ruefully.
+
+"But suppose," he said, "that the particular jewel you're
+discussing prefers to select her own setting, and mine does not
+please her."
+
+"Well, they's jist one thing," said Katy.  Her heels left the
+floor involuntarily; she arose on her tiptoes; her shoulders came
+up, and her head lifted to a height it never had known before. 
+"They's jist one thing," she said.  "Aside from Miss Linda, who
+is my very own child that I have washed and I have combed and I
+have done for since she was a toddlin' four-year-old, they ain't
+no woman in this world I would go as far for as I would for Miss
+Marian; but I'm tellin' ye now, ye Mr. Eujane Snow, that they's
+one thing I don't lend no countenance to.  I am sorry she has had
+the cold, cruel luck that she has, but I ain't sorry enough that
+I'm goin' to stand for her droppin' herself into the place where
+she doesn't belong.  If the good Lord ain't give her the sense to
+see that you're jist the image of the man that would be jist
+exactly right for her, somebody had better be tellin' her so. 
+Anyway, if Miss Linda is takin' ye up to the house that Mr. Pater
+Morrison is buildin' and the Pater man is there, I would advise
+ye to cast your most discernin' eye on that gintleman.  Ye watch
+him jist one minute when he looks at the young missus and he
+thinks nobody ain't observing him, and ye'll see what ye'll see. 
+If ye want Marian, ye jist go on and take her.  I'm not carin'
+whether ye use a club or white vi'lets, but don't ye be lettin'
+Marian Thorne get no idea into her head that she is goin' to take
+Mr. Pater Morrison, because concernin' Pater I know what I know,
+and I ain't goin' to stand by and see things goin' wrong for want
+of spakin' up.  Now if you're a wise man, ye don't nade nothing
+further said on the subject."
+
+Eugene Snow thought intently for a few moments.  His vision
+centered on Katherine O'Donovan's face.
+
+"You're absolutely sure of this?" he said at last.
+
+"Jist as sure as the sun's sure, and the mountains, and the
+seaSons come and go," said Katy with finality.  "Watch him and
+you'll see it stickin' out all over him.  I have picked him for
+me boss, and it's jist adorin' that man crature I am."
+
+"What about Miss Linda?" inquired Snow.  "Is she adoring him?"
+
+"She ain't nothing but a ganglin' school kid, adorin' the spade
+with which she can shoot around that Bear Cat of hers, and race
+the canyons, and the rely lovely things she can strike on paper
+with her pencil and light up with her joyous colors.  Her day and
+her hour ain't come, and the Pater man's that fine he won't lay a
+finger on her to wake her up when she has a year yet of her
+schoolin' before her.  But in the manetime it's my job to stand
+guard as I'm standin' right now.  I'm tellin' ye frank and fair. 
+Ye go on and take Marian Thorne because ye ought to have her.  If
+she's got any idea in her head that she's goin' to have Pater
+Morrison, she'll have to get it out."
+
+Eugene Snow held out his hand and started to the front door in
+answer to the growl of the Bear Cat.  As he came down the steps
+and advanced to the car, Linda, with the quick eye that had been
+one of her special gifts as a birthright, noted a change in him. 
+He seemed to have been keyed up and toned up.  There was a
+different expression on his face.  There was buoyancy in his
+step.  There was a visible determination in his eye.  He took the
+seat beside her and Linda started the car.  She looked at him
+interrogatively.
+
+"Can you connect a heavy wind with the date of the lost plan?" he
+inquired.
+
+"There was a crack-a-jack a few days before," said Linda.  "It
+blew over some trees in the lot next to us."
+
+"Exactly," said Snow; "and it plucked a screen from your
+guest-room window.  Katy thinks that the cheque to the carpenter
+and the cost of the repairs will be in your sister's account
+books."
+
+"Um hm," nodded Linda.  "Well, that simplifies matters, because
+Peter Morrison is going to tell you about a trip Henry Anderson
+made around our house the morning Marian left."
+
+"I think that is about all we need to know," said Mr. Snow
+conclusively.
+
+"I think so," said Linda, "but I want you to see Peter's house
+for yourself, since I understand that according to your contract
+the rights to reproduce these particular plans remained with you
+after you had paid prize money for them."
+
+"Most certainly," said Mr. Snow.  "We should have that much to
+show for our share of the transaction."
+
+"It's a queer thing," said Linda.  "You would have to know me a
+long time, and perhaps know under what conditions I have been
+reared in order to understand a feeling that I frequently have
+concerning people.  I tobogganed down a sheer side of Multiflores
+Canyon one day without my path having been previously prepared,
+and I very nearly landed in the automobile that carried Henry
+Anderson and Peter Morrison on their first trip to Lilac Valley. 
+I was much interested in preserving the integrity of my neck.  I
+fervently hoped not to break more than a dozen of my legs and
+arms, and was forced to bring down intact the finest Cotyledon
+pulverulenta that Daddy or I had found in fourteen years of
+collecting in California.  I am telling you all this that you may
+see why I might have been excused for not having been minutely
+observant of my surroundings when I landed.  But what I did
+observe was a chilly, caterpillary sensation chasing up my spine
+the instant I met the eyes of Henry Anderson.  In that instant I
+said to myself that I would not trust him, that I did not like
+him."
+
+"And what about his companion?" asked Eugene Snow lightly.  "Oh,
+Peter?" said Linda.  There was a caress in her pronunciation of
+the name.  "Why, Peter is a rock.  The instant I deposited my
+Cotyledon in a safe place I would have put my hand in Peter
+Morrison's and started around the world if he had asked me to go. 
+There is only one Peter.  You will recognize that the instant you
+meet him."
+
+"I am altogether willing to take your word for it," said Mr.
+Snow.
+
+"And there is one thing about this disagreeable business," said
+Linda.  "It was not Peter's coat that had the plan in it.  He
+knew nothing about it.  He has had his full service of stiff war
+work, and he has been knocking around big cities in newspaper
+work, and now he has come home to Lilac Valley to 'set up his
+rest,' as in the hymn book, you know.  He built his garage first
+and he is living in it because he so loves this house of his that
+he has to be present to watch it grow in minutes" detail.  Once
+on a time I saw a great wizard walking along the sidewalk, and he
+looked exactly like any man.  He might have been you so far as
+anything different from other men in his appearance w as
+concerned."
+
+Linda cut down the Bear Cat to its slowest speed.
+
+"What is on my mind is this," she said.  "I don't think Peter
+could quite afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the
+house he is building.  I think possibly he is tying himself up in
+obligations.  It may take him two or three years to come even on
+it; but it is a prepossession with him.  Now can't you see that
+if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand, unmanly
+tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart
+is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with
+such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the Sea
+clinging to his back?  Do you think, Mr. Eugene Snow, that you're
+enough of a wizard to examine this house and to satisfy yourself
+as to whether it's an infringement of your plans or not, without
+letting Peter know the things about it that would spoil it for
+him?" 
+
+Eugene Snow reached across and closed a hand over the one of
+Linda's nearest him on the steering wheel.
+
+"You very decent kid, you," he said appreciatively.  "I certainly
+am enough of a wizard to save your Peter man any disillusionment
+concerning his dream house."
+
+"Oh, but he is not my Peter man," said Linda.  "We are only the
+best friends in the world.  Really and truly, if you can keep a
+secret, he's Marian's."
+
+"Is he?" asked Mr. Snow interestedly.  And then he added very
+casually, in the most offhand manner--he said it more to an
+orange orchard through which they were passing than he said it to
+Linda--"I have very grave doubts about that.  I think there must
+be some slight complication that will have to be cleared up."
+
+Linda's heart gave a great jump of consternation.
+
+"Indeed no," she said emphatically.  "I don't think he has just
+told Marian yet, but I am very sure that he cares for her more
+than for any other woman, and I am equally sure she cares for
+him; and nothing could be more suitable."
+
+"All right then," agreed Mr. Snow.
+
+Linda put the Bear Cat at the mountain, crept around the road,
+skirted the boulders, and stopped halfway to the garage.  And
+there, in a low tone, she indicated to Mr. Snow where they had
+lunched, when she found the plans, how she had brought out the
+coat, where she had emptied the mouse nest.  Then she stepped
+from the car and hallooed for Peter.  Peter came hurrying from
+the garage, and Eugene Snow was swift in his mental inventory. 
+It coincided exactly with Linda's.  He would have been willing to
+join hands with Peter and start around the world, quite convinced
+of the fairness of the outcome, with no greater acquaintance than
+one intent look at Peter, one grip of his sure hand.  After that
+he began to act on Katy's hint, and in a very short time he had
+convinced himself that she was right.  Maybe Peter tried to
+absorb himself in the plans he was going over, in the house he
+was proud to show the great architect; but it seemed to the man
+he was entertaining that his glance scarcely left Linda, that he
+was so preoccupied with where she went and what she did that he
+was like a juggler keeping two mental balls in the air at the
+same time.
+
+It seemed to Peter a natural thing that, the architect being in
+the city on business, he should run out to call on Miss Thorne's
+dearest friend It seemed to him equally natural that Linda should
+bring him to see a house in which she was so kindly interesting
+herself.  And just when Peter was most dexterous in his juggling,
+just when he was trying to explain the very wonderful
+step-saving' time-saving, rational kitchen arrangements and at
+the same time watch Linda on her course down to the spring, the
+architect halted him with a jerk.  Eugene Snow stood very
+straight, his hands in his coat pockets, looking, Peter supposed,
+with interest at the arrangements of kitchen conveniences.  His
+next terse sentence fairly staggered Peter.  He looked him
+straight in the eye and inquired casually:  "Chosen your dream
+woman to fit your house, Morrison?"
+
+Peter was too surprised to conceal his feelings.  His jaws
+snapped together; a belligerent look sprang into his eyes.
+
+"I have had a good deal to do with houses," continued Mr. Snow. 
+"They are my life work.  I find that invariably they are built
+for a woman.  Almost always they are built from her plans, and
+for her pleasure.  It's a new house, a unique house, a wonderful
+house you're evolving here.  It must be truly a wonderful woman
+you're dreaming about while you build it."
+
+That was a nasty little trap.  With his years and worldly
+experience Peter should not have fallen into it; but all men are
+children when they are sick, heart sick or body sick, and Peter
+was a very sick man at that minute.  He had been addressed in
+such a frank and casual manner.  His own brain shot off at queer
+tangents and led him constantly into unexpected places.  The
+narrow side lane that opened up came into view so suddenly that
+Peter, with the innocence of a four-year-old, turned with
+military precision at the suggestion and looked over the premises
+for the exact location of Linda.  Eugene Snow had seen for
+himself the thing that Katy had told him he would see if he
+looked for it.  Suddenly he held out his hand.
+
+"As man to man, Morrison, in this instance," he said in rather a
+hoarse, breathless voice, "don't you think it would be a good
+idea for you and me to assert our manhood, to manage our own
+affairs, to select our own wives if need be?  If we really set
+ourselves to the job don't you believe we can work out our lives
+more to our liking than anyone else can plan for us?  You get the
+idea, don't you, Morrison?"
+
+Peter was facing the kitchen sink but he did not see it.  His
+brain was whirling.  He did see Snow's point of view.  He did
+realize his position.  But what Mr. Snow knew of his affairs he
+could only guess.  The one thing Mr. Snow could not know was that
+Linda frankly admitted her prepossession for her school chum,
+Donald Whiting, but in any event if Peter could not have Linda he
+would much prefer occupying his dream house alone.  So he caught
+at the straw held out to him with both hands.
+
+"I get you," he said tersely.  "It is not quite up to the mark of
+the manhood we like to think we possess to let our lives be
+engineered by a high school kid.  Suppose we do just quietly and
+masterfully assert ourselves concerning our own affairs."
+
+"Suppose we do," said Snow with finality.
+
+Whereupon they shook hands with a grip that whitened their
+knuckles.
+
+Then they went back to Lilac Valley and had their dinner
+together, and Linda and Peter escorted Eugene Snow to his train
+and started him on his return trip to San Francisco feeling very
+much better.  Peter would not allow Linda to drive him home at
+night, so he left her after the Bear Cat had been safely placed
+in the garage.  As she stood on the walk beside him, strongly
+outlined in the moonlight, Peter studied Linda whimsically.  He
+said it half laughingly, but there was something to think about
+in what he said:
+
+"I'm just picturing, Linda, what a nice old lady you will be by
+the time that high school kid of yours spends four years in
+college, one on the continent, and the Lord knows how many at
+mastering a profession."
+
+Linda looked at him with widened eyes.
+
+KATY UNBURDENS HER MIND 307
+
+"Why, what are you talking about, Peter?  Are you moonstruck?"
+she inquired solicitously.  "Donald's only a friend, you know.  I
+love him because he is the nicest companion; but there is nothing
+for you to be silly about."
+
+Then Peter began to realize the truth.  There wasn't anything for
+him to be concerned about.  She had not the slightest notion what
+love meant, even as she announced that she loved Donald.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.  Peter's Release
+
+Eugene Snow returned to San Francisco enthusiastic about Linda,
+while he would scarcely have known how to express his
+appreciation of Katherine O'Donovan.  He had been served a
+delicious dinner, deftly and quietly, such food as men
+particularly like; but there had been no subservience.  If
+Katherine O'Donovan had been waiting on her own table, serving
+her own friends she could not have managed with more pride.  It
+was very evident that she loved service, that she loved the girl
+to whom she gave constant attention.  He understood exactly what
+there was in her heart and why she felt as she did when he saw
+Linda and Peter together and heard their manner of speaking to
+each other, and made mental note of the many points of interest
+which seemed to exist between them.  He returned to San Francisco
+with a good deal of a "See-the-conquering-hero-comes" mental
+attitude.  He went directly to his office, pausing on the way for
+a box of candy and a bunch of Parma violets.  His first act on
+reaching the office was to send for Miss Thorne.  Marian came
+almost immediately, a worried look in her eyes.  She sat in the
+big, cushioned chair that was offered her, and smiled faintly
+when the box was laid on her lap, topped with the violets.  She
+looked at Eugene Snow with an "I-wish-you-wouldn't" expression on
+her face; but he smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+"Nothing," he said.  "Picked them up on the way from the station. 
+I made a hasty trip to that precious Lilac Valley of yours, and I
+must say it pales your representation.  It is a wonderfully
+lovely spot."
+
+Marian settled back in the chair.  She picked up the violets and
+ran an experienced finger around the stems until she found the
+pin with which she fastened them at her waist.  Then as they
+occupied themselves making selections from the candy box he
+looked smilingly at Marian.  Her eyes noted the change in him. 
+He was neither disappointed nor sad.  Something had happened in
+Lilac Valley that had changed his perspective.  Womanlike, she
+began probing.
+
+"Glad you liked my valley," she said.  "We are told that blue is
+a wonderful aura to surround a person, and it's equally wonderful
+when it surrounds a whole valley.  With the blue sky and the blue
+walls and a few true-blue friends I have there, it's naturally a
+very dear spot to me."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Snow, "I can see that it is.  I ran down on a
+business matter.  I have been deeply puzzled and much perturbed
+over this prize contest.  We have run these affairs once a year,
+sometimes oftener, for a long time, so I couldn't understand the
+peculiar thing about the similarity of the winning plans and your
+work this year.  I have been holding up the prize money, because
+I did not feel that you were saying exactly what was in your
+heart, and I couldn't be altogether satisfied that everything was
+right.  I went to Lilac Valley because I had a letter from your
+friend, Miss Linda Strong.  There was an enclosure in it."
+
+He drew from his pocket the folded sheet and handed it to Marian. 
+Her eyes were surprised, incredulous, as she opened the missing
+sheet from her plans, saw the extraneous lines drawn upon it and
+the minute figuring with which the margin was covered.
+
+"Linda found it at last!" she cried.  "Where in this world did
+she get it, and whose work is this on it?"
+
+"She got it," said Eugene Snow, "when she undertook to clean
+Peter Morrison's workroom on an evening when she and her cook
+were having supper with him.  She turned a coat belonging to his
+architect that hung with some of his clothing in Peter Morrison's
+garage.  She was shaking the nest of a field mouse from one of
+the side pockets.  Naturally this emptied all the pockets, and in
+gathering up their contents she came across that plan, which she
+recognized.  She thought it was right to take it and very wisely
+felt that it was man's business, so she sent it to me with her
+explanations.  I went to Lilac Valley because I wanted to judge
+for myself exactly what kind of young person she was.  I wanted
+to see her environment.  I wanted to see the house that she felt
+sure was being built from these plans.  I wanted to satisfy
+myself of the stability of what I had to work on before I
+mentioned the matter to you or Henry Anderson."
+
+Marian sat holding the plan, listening absorbedly to what he was
+saying.
+
+"It's an ugly business," he said, "so ugly that there is no
+question whatever but that it can be settled very quietly and
+without any annoyance to you.  I shall have to take the matter up
+with the board, but I have the details so worked out that I shall
+have no difficulty in arranging matters as I think best.  There
+is no question whatever, Marian, but Anderson found that sketch
+on the west side of the Strong residence.  When you left your
+plans lying on a table before a window in the Strong guestroom
+the night before you came to San Francisco you did not know that
+the santana which raged through the valley a day or two
+previously had stripped a screen from the window before which you
+left them.  In opening your door to establish a draft before you
+went to bed you started one that carried your top drawing through
+the window.  Waiting for Miss Strong the next morning, in making
+a circuit of the grounds Anderson found it and appropriated it to
+most excellent advantage.  Miss Linda tells me that your study of
+architecture was discussed at the dinner table that night.  He
+could not have helped realizing that any sheet of plans he found
+there must have been yours.  If he could acquit his conscience of
+taking them and using them, he would still have to explain why he
+was ready to accept the first prize and the conditions imposed
+when he already had a house fairly well under construction from
+the plans he submitted in the contest.  The rule is unbreakable
+that the plans must be original, must be unused, must be our sole
+property, if they take the prize."
+
+Marian was leaning forward, her eyes wide with interest, her
+breast agitated.  She nodded in acquiescence.  Eugene Snow
+reached across and helped himself to another piece of candy from
+the box on her knee.  He looked at her speculatively and spoke
+quietly as if the matter were of no great importance.
+
+"Would it be agreeable, Marian, if the prize committee should
+annOunce that there were reasons as to why they were not
+satisfied, that they have decided to return all plans and call
+off the present contest, opening another in a few months in which
+interested parties may again submit their drawings?  I will
+undertake swiftly and comprehensively to eliminate Henry Anderson
+from California.  I would be willing to venture quite a sum that
+when I finish with the youngster he will see the beauty of going
+straight hereafter and the desirability of a change of
+atmosphere.  He's a youngster.  I hate to make the matter public,
+not only on account of involving you and your friends in such
+disagreeable business, but I am sorry for him.  I would like to
+deal with him like the proverbial 'Dutch uncle,' then I would
+like to send him away to make a new start with the assurance that
+I am keeping close watch on him.  Would you be satisfied if I
+handled the matter quietly and in my own way?  Could you wait a
+few weeks for justice?"
+
+Marian drew a deep breath.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it would be wonderful if you could do
+that.  But what about Peter Morrison?  How much did he know
+concerning the plans, and what does he know about this?"
+
+"Nothing," said Mr. Snow.  "That most unusual young friend of
+yours made me see the light very clearly concerning Peter
+Morrison.  There is no necessity for him ever to know that the
+'dream house,' as Miss Linda calls it, that he is building for
+his dream woman has any disagreeable history attached to it.  He
+so loves the spot that he is living on it to watch that house in
+minutest detail.  Miss Linda was fairly eloquent in the plea she
+made on his behalf.  He strikes me as a very unusual person, and
+she
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+appealed to me in the same way.  There must be some scientific
+explanation concerning her that I don't just get, but I can see
+that she is most unusual When I watched them together and heard
+them talk of their plans for the house and the grounds and
+discussing illustrations that she is making for articles that he
+is writing, I saw how deep and wholesome was the friendship
+existing between them.  I even heard that wonderful serving
+woman, whom they so familiarly speak of as 'Katy,' chiding Peter
+Morrison for allowing Linda to take her typewriter to him and do
+her own work with a pen.  And because Miss Linda seems so
+greathearted and loving with her friends, I was rather glad to
+hear his explanation that they were merely changing machines for
+the time being for a very particular reason of their own."
+
+"Do you mean," asked Marian, "that you think there is anything
+more than casual friendship between Linda and Peter Morrison?"
+
+"Not on her part," answered Eugene Snow.  "Anybody can see that
+she is a child deeply engrossed in all sorts of affairs uncommon
+for a girl of her age and position.  Her nice perceptions, her
+wonderful loyalty to her friends, her loving thought for them,
+are manifest in everything she says or does.  If she ever makes
+any mistakes they will be from the head, not from the heart.  But
+for the other end of the equation I could speak authoritatively. 
+Katy pointed out to me the fact that if I would watch Peter
+Morrison in Miss Linda's presence, I should see that he adored
+her.  I did watch, and I did see that very thing.  When I taxed
+him about building a dream house for a dream woman, his eyes
+crossed a plateau, leaped a brook, and started up the side of a
+mountain.  They did not rest until they had found Linda."
+
+Marian sat so still that it seemed as if she were not even
+breathing.  In view of what Katy had said, and his few words with
+Peter Morrison, Eugene Snow had felt justified in giving Marian a
+hint as to what was going on in Lilac Valley.  Exactly what he
+had done he had no means of knowing.  If he had known and had
+talked intentionally he could not have made clearer to Marian the
+thing which for months had puzzled her.  She was aware that
+Eugene Snow was talking, that he was describing the dinner he had
+been served, the wonderful wild-flower garden that he had seen,
+how skillfully Linda drove the Bear Cat.  She heard these things
+and dimly comprehended them but underneath, her brain was seizing
+upon one fact after another.  They had exchanged typewriters. 
+The poor, foolish little kid had known how her health was
+wracked, how she was suffering, how her pride would not let her
+stoop to Eileen's subterfuges and wage war with her implements
+for a man she did not want if her manner of living her everyday
+life did not appeal to him.  Linda had known how lonely and heart
+hungry and disappointed she had gone away, and loyally she had
+tried to create an interest in life for her; and she had
+succeeded entirely too well.  And then in a panic she must have
+gone to Peter Morrison and explained the situation; and Peter
+must have agreed to take over the correspondence.  One by one
+things that had puzzled her about the letters and about the whole
+affair began to grow clear.  She even saw how Linda, having
+friendly association with no man save Peter, would naturally use
+him for a model.  The trouble was that, with her gift of
+penetration and insight and her facility with her pen, she had
+overdone the matter.  She had not imitated Peter; she had BEEN
+Peter.  Marian arose suddenly.
+
+She went home, locked the door, and one after another she read
+the letters that had piqued, amused, comforted, and finally
+intrigued her.  They were brilliant letters, charming, appealing
+letters, and yet, with knowledge concerning them, Marian wondered
+how she could have failed to appreciate in the beginning that
+they were from Linda.
+
+"It goes to prove," she said at last, "how hungry the human heart
+is for love and sympathy.  And that poor kid, what she must have
+suffered when she went to Peter for help! And if, as Mr. Snow
+thinks, he cares for her, how he must have suffered before he
+agreed to help her, as no doubt he did.  What I have to do is to
+find some way out of the situation that will relieve Linda's
+anxiety and at least partially save my face.  I shall have to
+take a few days to work it out.  Luckily I haven't answered my
+last letter.  When I find out what I really want to say then I
+will be very careful how I say it.  I don't just exactly relish
+having my letters turned over to Peter Morrison, but possibly I
+can think of some way--I must think of some way--to make them
+feel that I have not been any more credulous than they."
+
+While she thought, both Linda and Peter were doing much thinking
+on the same subject.  Linda's heart was full of gratitude to
+Peter for helping her out of her very disagreeable situation. 
+Peter had not yet opened the packet of letters lying on his table
+He had a sickening distaste for the whole transaction.  He had
+thought that he would wait until he received the first letter he
+was to answer.  If it gave him sufficient foundation in itself
+for the answer, he would not be forced to search further.  He had
+smoked many pipes on this decision.  After the visit of Mr. Snow,
+Peter had seen a great light and had decided, from the mood and
+the attitude of that gentleman after his interview with Katy,
+that he very likely would be equal to any complication that might
+arise when he reached San Francisco.  Mulling over the situation
+one day Peter said reflectively to the spring which was very busy
+talking to him:  "I am morally certain that this matter has
+resolved itself into a situation that closely resembles the
+bootblack's apple:  'they ain't goin' to be any core.' I am
+reasonably certain that I never shall have a letter to answer. 
+In a few days probably I shall be able to turn back that packet
+to Linda without having opened it."
+
+To make up for the perturbation which had resulted in failure in
+class and two weeks of work that represented her worst
+appearances in high-school history, Linda, her mind freed from
+the worry over Marian's plans, and her heart calmer over the
+fiasco in trying to comfort her, devoted herself absorbingly to
+her lessons and to the next magazine article that she must
+finish.  She had decided that it was time to write on the subject
+of Indian confections.  Her first spare minute she and Katy must
+busy themselves working out the most delicious cactus candy
+possible.  Then they could try the mesquite candy.  No doubt she
+could evolve a delicious gum from the mesquite and the incense
+plant.  She knew she could from the willow milkweed; and under
+the head of "sweets" an appetizing jelly from manzanita.  There
+were delightful drinks too, from the manzanita and the chia.  And
+better than either, the lemonade berry would serve this purpose. 
+She had not experimented to an authoritative extent with the
+desert pickles.  And among drinks she might use the tea made from
+blue-eyed grass, brewed by the Indians for feverish conditions;
+and there was a whole world of interest to open up in differing
+seeds and berries, parched or boiled for food.  And there were
+the seeds that were ground for mush, like the thistle sage, and
+the mock orange which was food and soap also, and the wild
+sunflowers that were parched for meal, and above all, the acorns. 
+She could see that her problem was not going to be one of
+difficulty in securing sufficient material for her book; it would
+be how to find time to gather all these things, and put them
+through the various processes and combinations necessary to make
+edible dishes from I them.  It would mean a long summer of
+interesting and absorbing I work for her and for Katy.  Much of
+it could not be done until the I summer was far advanced and the
+seeds and the berries were I ripe.  She could rely on Donald to
+help her search for the material.  l With only herself and Katy
+in the family they could give much of their time to the work.
+
+"Where Katy will rebel," said Linda to herself, "is when it comes
+to gathering sufficient seeds and parching them to make these
+meal and mush dishes.  She will call it 'fiddlin' business.' She
+shall be propitiated with a new dress and a beautiful bonnet, and
+she shall go with me frequently to the fields.  The old dear
+loves to ride.  First thing I do I'll call at the bank again and
+have our affairs properly straightened and settled there in the
+light of the letter Daddy left me.  Then I shall have money to
+get all the furniture and the rugs and things we truly need. 
+I'll repaint the kitchen and get Katy some new cooking utensils
+to gladden her soul.  And Saturday I must make my trip with
+Donald account for something worth while on the book."
+
+All these plans were feasible.  What Linda had to do was to
+accomplish them, and this she proceeded to do in a swift and
+businesslike manner.  She soon reached the place where the whole
+house with the exception of Eileen's suite had been gone over,
+freshened and refurnished to her liking.  The guest-room
+furniture had been moved to her rejuvenated room.  On the
+strength of her I returns from the book she had disposed of her
+furniture and was finding much girlish delight in occupying a
+beautiful room, daintily decorated, comfortably furnished with
+pieces of her own selection.  As she and Katy stood looking over
+their work when everything was ready for her first night of
+occupancy Katy had said to her:
+
+"It's jist right and proper, lambie; it's jist the way it ought
+to be; and now say the word and let me clean out Eileen's suate
+and get it ready for Miss Marian, so if she would drop down
+unexpected she would find we was good as our word."
+
+"All right," said Linda.
+
+"And what am I to do with the stuff?" inquired Katy.
+
+"Katy, my dear," said Linda with a dry laugh, "you'll think I am
+foolish, but I have the queerest feeling concerning those things. 
+I can't feel that Eileen has done with them; I can't feel that
+she will never want them again; I can't feel that they should go
+to some second-hand basement.  Pack all of her clothing that you
+can manage in her trunk and put it in the garret, and what the
+trunk won't hold pack in a tight box and put that in the garret
+also.  She hasn't written me a line; she has sent me no address;
+I don't know what to do; but, as I have said before, I am going
+to save the things at least a year and see whether some day
+Eileen won't think of something she wants to do with them.  Clean
+the rooms and I will order Marian's things sent."
+
+According to these arrangements it was only a few days until
+Linda wrote Marian that her room was ready for her and that any
+time she desired to come and take possession she could test the
+lovingness of the welcome that awaited her by becoming intimately
+acquainted with it.  Marian answered the letter immediately.  She
+said that she was planning to come very soon to test that
+welcome.  She longed for the quiet of the valley, for its cool,
+clean, wild air.  She was very tired; she needed rest.  She
+thought she would love the new home they were offering her.  Then
+came two amazing paragraphs.
+
+The other day Dana and I went into one of the big cafes in the
+city to treat ourselves to a taste of the entertainment with
+which the people of wealth regale themselves.  We had wandered in
+laughingly jesting about what we should order, and ran into
+Eileen in the company of her aunt and uncle and a very flashy and
+loudly dressed young man, evidently a new suitor of Eileen's.  I
+don't think Eileen wanted to introduce us, and yet she acted like
+a person ravenous for news of her home and friends.  She did
+introduce us, and immediately her ponderous uncle took possession
+of us.  It seems that the man is a brother of Eileen's mother. 
+Linda, he is big and gross, he is everything that a man of nice
+perceptions would not be, but he does love Eileen.  He is trying
+conscientiously to please her.  His wife is the kind of person
+who would marry that kind of man and think everything he said and
+did was right.  And the suitor, my dear, was the kind of man who
+could endure that kind of people.  Eileen was almost, if not
+quite, the loveliest thing I ever have seen.  She was plain; she
+was simple; but it was the costly simplicity of extravagance.  Ye
+gods! but she had pearls of the size she had always wanted.  She
+tried with all her might to be herself, but she knows me well
+enough to know what I would think and what I would write to you
+concerning the conditions under which I met her.  We were simply
+forced to lunch with them.  We could only nibble at the too rich,
+too highly seasoned food set before us.  And I noticed that
+Eileen nibbled also.  She is not going to grow fat and waddle and
+redden her nose, but, my dear, back deep in her eyes and in the
+curve of her lips and in the tone of her voice there were such
+disappointment and discontent as I never have seen in any woman. 
+She could not suppress them; she could not conceal them.  There
+was nothing on earth she could do but sit quietly and endure. 
+They delivered us at our respective offices, leaving both of us
+dates on which to visit them, but neither of us intends to call
+on them.  Eileen's face was a tragedy when her uncle insisted on
+making the arrangements.  I can at least spare her that.
+
+And now, my dear, life is growing so full and my time is so taken
+with my work at the office and with my widening friendships with
+Dana and her friends and with Mr. Snow, that I really feel I have
+not time to go farther with our anonymous correspondence.  It is
+all I can do to find time to write you letters such as the one I
+am writing I have done my best to play up to what you expected of
+me and I think I have succeeded in fooling you quite as much as
+you have felt that you were fooling me.  But, Linda dear, I want
+you always to know that I appreciate the spirit in which you
+began this thing.  I know why you did it and I shall always love
+you a trifle more for your thought of me and your effort to tide
+over the very dark days you knew I would be facing in San
+Francisco.  I think, dear friend of mine, that I have had my
+share of dark days.  I think there is very beautiful sunlight
+ahead for me.  And by and by I hope to come into happiness that
+maybe is even more than my share.  I am coming to see you soon
+and then I will tell you all about it.
+
+There was more of the letter, but at that point Linda made one
+headlong rush for the Bear Cat.  She took the curve on two wheels
+and almost ran into the mountain face behind the garage before
+she could slow down.  Then she set the Cat screaming wildly for
+Peter.  As he came up to the car she leaned toward him, shaking
+with excitement.
+
+"Peter," she cried, "have you opened that packet of letters yet?"
+
+"No," said Peter, "I have not."
+
+"Then give them to me quickly, Peter," said Linda.
+
+Peter rushed into the garage and brought out the packet.  Linda
+caught it in both hands and dropped it in her lap.
+
+"Well, thank God," she said devoutly.  "And, Peter, the joke's on
+me.  Marian knew I was writing those letters all the time and she
+just pretended that she cared for them to make the game
+interesting for me.  And when she had so many friends and so much
+to do, she hadn't time for them any longer; then she pretended
+that she was getting awfully in earnest in order to stop me, and
+she did stop me all right."
+
+Linda's face was a small panorama of conflicting emotions as she
+appealed to Peter.
+
+"Peter," she said in a quivering voice, "you can testify that she
+stopped me properly, can't you, Peter?"
+
+Peter tried to smile.  He was older than Linda, and he was
+thinking swiftly, intently.
+
+"Yes, kid," he said with utmost corroboration, "yes, kid, she
+stopped you, but I can't see that it was necessary literally to
+scare the life out of you till she had you at the point where you
+were thinking of taking off from a mountain or into the sea.  Did
+you really mean that, Linda?"
+
+Linda relaxed suddenly.  She sank back into the deeply padded
+seat of the Bear Cat.  A look of fright and entreaty swept into
+her dark eyes.
+
+"Yes, Peter, I did mean it," she said with finality.  "I couldn't
+have lived if I had hurt Marian irreparably.  She has been hurt
+so much already.  And, Peter, it was awfully nice of you to wait
+about reading these letters.  Even if she only did it for a joke,
+I think Marian would rather that you had not read them.  Now I'll
+go back home and begin to work in earnest on the head piece of
+'How to Grow Good Citizens.' And I quite agree with you, Peter,
+that the oath of allegiance, citizenship, and the title to a
+piece of real estate are the prime requisites.  People have no
+business comma to our country to earn money that they intend to
+carry away to invest in the development and the strengthening of
+some other country that may some day be our worst enemy.  I have
+not found out yet how to say it in a four-by-twelve-inch strip,
+but by the time I have read the article aloud to my skylight
+along about ten tonight I'll get an inspiration; I am sure I
+shall."
+
+"Of course you will," said Peter; "but don't worry about it,
+dear; don't lose sleep.  Take things slower.  Give time for a
+little more flesh to grow on your bones.  And don't forget that
+while you're helping Donald to keep at the head of his classes
+it's your 
+
+
+
+
+
+first job to keep at the head of your own."
+
+"Thank you," said Linda.  "How is the dream coming?"
+
+"Beautifully," said Peter.  "One of these days you're going to
+come rushing around the boulders and down the side of the
+building to find all this debris cleared away and the place for a
+lawn leveled.  I am fighting down every possible avenue of
+expertise on the building in the effort to save money to make the
+brook run and the road wind where you have indicated that you
+want them to follow you."
+
+Linda looked at Peter while a queer, reflective light gathered in
+her eyes.  At last she said soberly:  "Well, I don't know, Peter,
+that you should make them so very personal to me as all that."
+
+"Why not?" asked Peter casually.  "Since there is no one else,
+why not?"
+
+Linda released the clutch and started the car.  She backed in
+front of the garage and turned.  She was still thinking deeply as
+she stopped.  Once again she extended a hand to Peter.
+
+"Thank you a thousand times for not reading these letters,
+Peter," she said.  "I can't express how awfully fine I think it
+is of you.  And if it's all right with you, perhaps there's not
+any real reason why you should not run that brook and drive that
+road the way I think they should go.  Somebody is going to design
+them.  Why shouldn't I, if it pleases you to have me?"
+
+"It pleases me very greatly," said Peter--"more than anything
+else I can think of in all the world at this minute."
+
+And then he did a thing that he had done once or twice before. 
+He bent back Linda's fingers and left another kiss in the palm of
+her hand, and then he closed her fingers very tightly over it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.  The End of Donald's Contest
+
+The middle of the week Linda had told Katy that she intended
+stocking up the Bear Cat for three and that she would take her
+along on the next Saturday's trip to her canyon kitchen.  It was
+a day upon which she had planned to gather greens, vegetables,
+and roots, and prepare a dinner wholly from the wild.  She was
+fairly sure exactly where in nature she would find the materials
+she wanted, but she knew that the search would be long and
+tiring.  It would be jolly to have Katy to help her prepare the
+lunch.  It would please Katy immensely to be taken; and the
+original things she said in her quaint Irish brogue greatly
+amused Donald.  The arrangement had been understood among them
+for some time, so they all started on their journey filled with
+happy expectations.  They closed the house and the garage
+carefully.  Linda looked over the equipment of the Bear Cat
+minutely making sure that her field axe, saw, knives, and her
+field glasses were in place.  Because more food than usual was to
+be prepared in the kitchen they took along a nest of cooking
+vessels and a broiler.  They found Donald waiting before either
+of them were ready, and in great glee, with much laughing and
+many jests they rolled down the valley in the early morning. 
+They drove to the kitchen, spread their blankets, set up their
+table, and arranged the small circular opening for their day's
+occupancy.  While Katy and Linda were busy with these affairs
+Donald took the axe and collected a big heap of wood.  Then they
+left Katy to burn the wood and have a deep bed of coals ready
+while they started out to collect from the canyon walls, the foot
+of the mountains, and the near-by desert the materials they would
+use for their dinner.
+
+Just where the desert began to climb the mountain Linda had for a
+long time watched a big bed of amole.  Donald used the shovel,
+she the hatchet, and soon they had brought to the surface such a
+quantity that Donald protested.
+
+"But I have two uses for them today," explained Linda.  "They
+must serve for potatoes and they have to furnish our meat."
+
+"Oh, I get you," said Donald.  "I have always been crazy to try
+that."
+
+So he began to dig again enthusiastically.
+
+"Now I'll tell you what I think we had better do," said Linda. 
+"We will skirmish around this side of the mountain and find a
+very nice tender yucca shoot; and then we'll take these back to
+Katy and let her bury them in the ashes and keep up the fire
+while we forage for the remainder of our wild Indian feast."
+
+Presently they found a yucca head that Linda said was exactly
+right, a delicate pink, thicker than her wrist and two feet in
+length.  With this and the amole they ran back to Katy.  She knew
+how to prepare the amole for roasting.  Linda gave her a few
+words of instruction concerning the yucca.  Then from the
+interior of the Bear Cat she drew a tightly rolled section of
+wire window screening.  Just where a deep, wide pool narrowed at
+a rocky defile they sank the screening, jammed it well to the
+bottom, fastened it tight at the sides, and against the current
+side of it they threw leaves, grass, chunks of moss, any debris
+they could gather that would make a temporary dam.  Then,
+standing on one side with her field knife, Linda began to slice
+the remainder of the amole very thin and to throw it over the
+surface of the pool.  On the other, Donald pounded the big, juicy
+bulbs to pulp and scattered it broadcast over the water.  Linda
+instructed Katy to sit on the bank with a long-handled landing
+net and whenever a trout arose, to snatch it out as speedily as
+possible, being careful not to take more than they would require.
+
+Then the two youngsters, exhilarated with youth, with living,
+with the joy of friendship, with the lure of the valley, with the
+heady intoxication of the salt breeze and the gold of the
+sunshine, climbed into the Bear Cat and went rolling through the
+canyon and out to the valley on the far side.  Here they gathered
+the tenderest heart shoots of the lupin until Linda said they had
+enough.  Then to a particular spot that she knew on the desert
+they hurried for the enlarged stems of the desert trumpet which
+was to serve that day for an appetizer in the stead of pickles. 
+Here, too, they filled a bucket from the heart of a big Bisnaga
+cactus as a basis for their drink.  Among Katherine O'Donovan's
+cooking utensils there was a box of delicious cactus candy made
+from the preserved and sun-dried heart meat of this same fruit
+which was to serve as their confection.  On the way back they
+stopped at the bridge and gathered cress for their salad.  When
+they returned to Katy she had five fine trout lying in the shade,
+and with more experienced eyes and a more skillful hand Linda in
+a few minutes doubled this number.  Then they tore out the dam,
+rinsed the screen and spread it over a rock to dry.  While Donald
+scaled the fish Linda put the greens to cook, prepared the salad
+and set the table.  Once, as he worked under her supervision,
+Linda said to Donald:  "Now about bread, kid--there's not going
+to be any bread, because the Indians did not have it when they
+lived the way we are living today.  When you reach the place
+where your left hand feels empty without a piece of bread in it,
+just butter up another amole and try it.  It will serve the same
+purpose as bread, and be much better for the inner man."
+
+"If you would let me skin these fish," said Donald, "I could do
+it much faster and make a better job of it."
+
+"But you shouldn't skin them; you want the skin to hold the meat
+together when it begins to cook tender; and you should be able to
+peel it off and discard it if it burns or gets smoky in the
+cooking.  It's a great concession to clean them as we do.  The 
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Indians cooked them in the altogether and ate the meat from the
+bones."
+
+"Oh my tummy!" said Donald.  "I always thought there was some
+dark secret about the Indians."
+
+Linda sat on a rock opposite him and clasped her hands around her
+knees.  She looked at him meditatively.
+
+"Did you?" she asked.  "Suppose you revise that opinion.  Our
+North American Indians in their original state were as fine as
+any peoples that ever have been discovered the round of the
+globe.  My grandfather came into intimate contact with them in
+the early days, and he said that their religion, embracing the
+idea of a great spirit to whom they were responsible for their
+deeds here, and a happy hunting ground to which they went as a
+reward for decent living, was as fine as any religion that ever
+has been practiced by people of any nation.  Immorality was
+unknown among them.  Family ties were formed and they were
+binding They loved their children and reared them carefully. 
+They were hardy and healthful.  Until the introduction of whiskey
+and what we are pleased to term civilized methods of living, very
+few of them died save from war or old age.  They were free; they
+were happy.  The moping, lazy, diseased creature that you find
+sleeping in the sun around the reservations is a product of our
+civilization.  Nice commentary on civilization, isn't it?"
+
+"For heaven's sake, Linda," said Donald, "don't start any big
+brainstorming trains of thought today! Grant me repose.  I have
+overworked my brain for a few months past until I know only one
+thing for certain."
+
+"All right then, me lad, this is the time for the big secret,"
+said Linda.  "I just happened to be in the assembly room on some
+business of my own last Thursday afternoon when my sessions were
+over, and I overheard your professor in trigonometry tell a marl
+I did not know, who seemed to be a friend visiting him, that the
+son of Judge Whiting was doing the finest work that ever had been
+done in any of the Los Angeles high schools, and that undoubtedly
+you were going to graduate with higher honors than any other boy
+ever had from that school."
+
+Donald sat thinking this over.  He absently lifted an elbow and
+wiped the tiny scales from his face with his shirt sleeve.
+
+"Young woman," he said solemnly, "them things what you're saying,
+are they 'cross your heart, honest to goodness, so help you,'
+truth, or are they the fruit of a perfervid imagination?"
+
+Linda shook her head vigorously.
+
+"De but', kid," she said, "de gospel but'.  You have the Jap
+going properly.  He can't stop you now.  You have fought your
+good fight, and you have practically won it.  All you have to do
+is to carry on till the middle of June, and you're It."
+
+"I wish Dad knew," said Donald in a low voice.
+
+"The Judge does know," said Linda heartily.  "It wasn't fifteen
+minutes after I heard that till I had him on the telephone
+repeating it as fast as I could repeat.  Come to think of it,
+haven't you noticed a particularly cocky set of his head and the
+corksome lightness about his heels during the past few days?"
+
+"By Jove, he has been happy about something!" said Donald.  "And
+I noticed that Louise and the Mater were sort of cheery and
+making a specialty of the only son and brother."
+
+"Sure, brother, sure," said Linda.  "Hurry up and scrape those
+fish and let's scamper down the canyon merely for the joy of
+flying with wings on our feet.  You're It, young man, just It!"
+
+Donald was sitting on a boulder.  On another in front of him he
+was operating on the trout.  His hands were soiled; his hair was
+tousled; he was fairly well decorated with fine scales.  He
+looked at Linda appealingly.
+
+"Am I 'It' with you, Linda?" he asked soberly.
+
+"Sure you are," said Linda.  "You're the best friend I have."
+
+"Will you write to me when I go to college this fall?"
+
+"Why, you couldn't keep me from it," said Linda.  "I'll have 
+
+
+
+
+
+so many things to tell you.  And when your first vacation comes
+we'll make it a hummer."
+
+"I know Dad won't let me come home for my holidays except for the
+midsummer ones," said Donald soberly.  "It would take most of the
+time there would be of the short holidays to travel back and
+forth."
+
+"You will have to go very carefully about getting a start," said
+Linda, "and you should be careful to find the right kind of
+friends at the very start.  Christmas and Thanksgiving boxes can
+always be sent on time to reach you.  It won't be so long for you
+as for us; and by the time you have Oka Sayye beaten to ravelings
+you will have such a 'perfect habit' that you will start right in
+with the beating idea.  That should keep you fairly busy, because
+most of the men you come up against will be beaters themselves."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Donald.  "Are you going to start me to
+college with the idea that I have to keep up this beating habit? 
+If I were to be one of fifty or a hundred, wouldn't that be good
+enough?"
+
+"Why, sure," said Linda, "if you will be satisfied with having me
+like fifty or a hundred as well as I do you."
+
+"Oh, damn!" said Donald angrily.  "Do I have to keep up this
+top-crust business all my days?"
+
+Linda looked at him with a queer smile on her lips.
+
+"Not unless you want to, Donald," she said quietly; "not unless
+you think you would rather."
+
+Donald scraped a fish vigorously.  Linda sat watching him. 
+Presently the tense lines around his eyes vanished.  A faint red
+crept up his neck and settled on his left cheek bone.  A confused
+grin slowly widened his naturally wide mouth.
+
+"Then it's me for the top crust," he said conclusively.
+
+"Then it's me for you," answered Linda in equally as
+matter-of-fact tones; and rising, she gathered up the fish and
+carried them to Katy while Donald knelt beside the chilly stream
+and scoured his face and hands, after which Linda whipped away
+the scales with an improvised brush of willow twigs.
+
+It was such a wonderful day; it was such an unusual and delicious
+feast.  Plump brook trout, fresh from icy water, delicately
+broiled over searing wood coals, are the finest of food.  Through
+the meal to the point where Donald lay on his back at the far
+curve of the canyon wall, nibbling a piece of cactus candy,
+everything had been perfect.  Nine months would be a long time to
+be gone, but Linda would wait for him, and she would write to
+him.
+
+He raised his head on his elbow and called across to her:  "Say,
+Linda, how often will you write to me?"
+
+Linda answered promptly:  "Every Saturday night.  Saturday is our
+day.  I'll tell you what has happened all the week.  I'll tell
+you specially what a darned unprofitable day Saturday is when
+you're three thousand miles away."
+
+Bending over the canyon fireplace, her face red with heat and
+exertion, Katherine O'Donovan caught up her poker and beat up the
+fire until the ashes flew.
+
+"Easy, Katy, easy," cautioned Linda.  "We may want to bury those
+coals and resurrect them to warm up what is left for supper."
+
+"We'll do no such thing," said Katy promptly.  "What remains goes
+to feed the fish.  Next time it's hungry ye are, we're goin' to
+hit it straight to Lilac Valley and fill ourselves with God's own
+bread and beefsteak and paraties.  Don't ye think we're goin' to
+be atin' these haythen messes twice in one day."
+
+To herself she was saying:  "The sooner I get you home to Pater
+Morrison, missy, the better I'll be satisfied."
+
+Once she stood erect, her hands at her belt, her elbows
+widespread, and with narrowed eyes watched the youngsters.  Her
+lips were closed so tightly they wrinkled curiously as she turned
+back to the fireplace.
+
+"Nayther one of them fool kids has come to yet," she said to
+herself, "and a mighty good thing it is that they haven't."
+
+Linda was looking speculatively at Donald as he lay stretched  on
+the Indian blanket at the base of the cliff.  And then, because
+she was for ever busy with Nature, her eyes strayed above him up
+the side of the cliff, noting the vegetation, the scarred rocks,
+the sheer beauty of the canyon wall until they reached the top. 
+Then, for no reason at all, she sat looking steadily at a huge
+boulder overhanging the edge of the cliff, and she was wondering
+how many ages it had hung there and how many more it would hang,
+poised almost in air, when a tiny pebble at its base loosened and
+came rattling and bounding down the canyon face.  Every nerve in
+Linda tensed.  She opened her mouth, but not a sound came.  For a
+breathless second she was paralyzed.  Then she shrieked wildly: 
+"Donald, Donald, roll under the ledge! Quick, quick!"
+
+She turned to Katy.
+
+"Back, Katy, back!" she screamed.  "That boulder is loose; it's
+coming down!"
+
+For months Donald Whiting had obeyed Linda implicitly and
+instantly.  He had moved with almost invisible speed at her
+warning many times before.  Sometimes it had been a venomous
+snake, sometimes a yucca bayonet, sometimes poison vines, again
+unsafe footing--in each case instant obedience had been the rule. 
+He did hot "question why" at her warning; he instantly did as he
+was told.  He, too, had noticed the falling pebble.  With all the
+agility of which he was capable he rolled under the narrow
+projecting ledge above him.  Katherine O'Donovan was a good
+soldier also.  She whirled and ran to the roadway.  She had
+barely reached it when, with a grinding crash, down came the huge
+boulder, carrying bushes, smaller rocks, sand, and debris with
+it.  On account of its weight it fell straight, struck heavily,
+and buried itself in the earth exactly on the spot upon which
+Donald had been lying.  Linda raised terrified eyes to the top of
+the wall.  For one instant a dark object peered over it and then
+drew back.  Without thought for herself Linda rushed to the
+boulder, and kneeling, tried to see back of it.
+
+"Donald!" she cried, "Donald, are you all right?"
+
+"Guess I am, unless it hit one foot pretty hard.  Feels fast."
+
+"Can you get out?" she cried, beginning to tear with her hands at
+the stone and the bushes where she thought his head would be.
+
+"I'm fast; but I'm all right," he panted.  "Why the devil did
+that thing hang there for ages, and then come down on me today?"
+
+"Yes, why did it?" gasped Linda.  "Donald, I must leave you a
+minute.  I've got to know if I saw a head peer over just as that
+stone came down."
+
+"Be careful what you do!" he cried after her.
+
+Linda sprang to her feet and rushed to the car.  She caught out
+the field classes and threw the strap over her head as she raced
+to the far side of the fireplace where the walls were not so
+sheer.  Katherine O'Donovan promptly seized the axe, caught its
+carrying strap lying beside it, thrust the handle through, swung
+it over her own head, dropped it between her shoulders, and
+ripping off her dress skirt she started up the cliff after Linda. 
+Linda was climbing so swiftly and so absorbedly that she reached
+the top before she heard a sound behind her.  Then she turned
+with a white face, and her mouth dropped open as she saw Katy
+three fourths of the way up the cliff.  For one second she was
+again stiff with terror, then, feeling she could do nothing, she
+stepped back out of sight and waited a second until Katy's red
+head and redder face appeared over the edge.  Realizing that her
+authority was of no avail, that Katy would follow her no matter
+where she went or what she did, and with no time to argue, Linda
+simply called to her encouragingly:  "Follow where I go; take
+your time; hang tight, old dear, it's dangerous!"
+
+ She started around the side of the mountain, heading almost
+
+straight upward, traveling as swiftly and as noiselessly as
+possible.  Over big boulders, on precarious footing, clinging to
+bushes, they made their way until they reached a place that
+seemed to be sheer above them; certainly it was for hundreds of
+feet below On a point of rock screened by overhanging bushes
+Linda paused until Katy overtook her.
+
+"We are about stalled," she panted.  "Find a good footing and
+stay where you are.  I'm going to climb out on these bushes and
+see if I can get a view of the mountain side."
+
+Advancing a few yards, Linda braced herself, drew around her
+glasses, and began searching the side of the mountain opposite
+her and below as far as she could range with the glasses.  At
+last she gave up.
+
+"Must have gone the other way," she said to Katy.  "I'll crawl
+back to you.  We'll go after help and get Donald out.  There will
+be time enough to examine the cliff afterward; but I am just as
+sure now as I will be when it is examined that that stone was
+purposely loosened to a degree where a slight push would drop it. 
+As Donald says, there's no reason why it should hang there for
+centuries and fall on him today.  Shut your eyes, old dear, and
+back up.  We must go to Donald.  I rather think it's on one of
+his feet from what he said.  Let me take one more good look."
+
+At that minute from high on the mountain above them a shower of
+sand and pebbles came rattling down.  Linda gave Katy one
+terrified look.
+
+"My God!" she panted.  "He's coming down right above us!"
+
+Just how Linda recrossed the bushes and reached Katy she did not
+know.  She motioned for her to make her way back as they had
+come.  Katy planted her feet squarely upon the rock.  Her lower
+jaw shot out; her eyes were aflame.  She stood perfectly still
+with the exception of motioning Linda to crowd back under the
+bushes, and again Linda realized that she had no authority; as
+she had done from childhood when Katy was in earnest, Linda
+obeyed her.  She had barely reached the overhanging bushes,
+crouched under them, and straightened herself, when a small
+avalanche came showering down, and a minute later a pair of feet
+were level with her head.  Then screened by the bushes, she could
+have reached out and touched Oka Sayye.  As his feet found a
+solid resting place on the ledge on which Linda and Katy stood,
+and while he was still clinging to the bushes, Katherine
+O'Donovan advanced upon him.  He had felt that his feet were
+firm, let go his hold, and turned, when he faced the infuriated
+Irishwoman.  She had pulled the strap from around her neck,
+slipped the axe from it, and with a strong thrust she planted the
+head of it against Oka Sayye's chest so hard that she almost fell
+forward.  The Jap plunged backward among the bushes, the roots of
+which had supported Linda while she used the glasses.  Then he
+fell, sliding among them, snatching wildly.  Linda gripped the
+overhanging growth behind which she had been screened, and leaned
+forward.
+
+"He has a hold; he is coming back up, Katy!" she cried.
+
+Katy took another step forward.  She looked over the cliff down
+an appalling depth of hundreds of feet.  Deliberately she raised
+the axe, circled it round her head and brought it down upon that
+particular branch to which Oka Sayye was clinging.  She cut it
+
+through, and the axe rang upon the stone wall behind it.  As she
+swayed forward Linda reached out, gripped Katy and pulled her
+back.
+
+"Get him?" she asked tersely, as if she were speaking of a rat or
+a rattlesnake.
+
+Katy sank back limply against the wall.  Linda slowly turned her
+around, and as she faced the rock, "Squeeze tight against it shut
+your eyes, and keep a stiff upper lip," she cautioned.  "I'm
+going to work around You; I want to be ahead of you."
+
+She squeezed past Katy, secured the axe and hung it round her own
+neck.  She cautioned Katy to keep her eyes shut and follow where
+she led her, then they started on their way back.  Linda did not
+attempt to descend the sheer wall by which they had climbed, but
+making a detour she went lower, and in a very short time they
+were back in the kitchen.  Linda rushed to the boulder and knelt
+again, but she could get no response to her questions.  Evidently
+Donald's foot was caught and he was unconscious from the pain. 
+Squeezing as close as she could, she thrust her arm under the
+ledge until she could feel his head.  Then she went to the other
+side, and there she could see that his right foot was pinned
+under the rock.  She looked at Katy reassuringly, then she took
+off the axe and handed it to her.
+
+"He's alive," she said.  "Can't kill a healthy youngster to have
+a crushed foot.  You stand guard until I take the Bear Cat and
+bring help.  It's not far to where I can find people."
+
+At full speed Linda put the Cat through the stream and out of the
+canyon until she reached cultivated land, where she found a man
+who would gather other men and start to the rescue.  She ran on
+until she found a house with a telephone.  There she called Judge
+Whiting, telling him to bring an ambulance and a surgeon, giving
+him explicit directions as to where to come, and assuring him
+that Donald could not possibly be seriously hurt.  She found time
+to urge, also, that before starting he set in motion any
+precautions he had taken for Donald's protection.  She told him
+where she thought what remained of Oka Sayye could be found.  And
+then, as naturally and as methodically as she had done all the
+rest, she called Peter Morrison and told him that she was in
+trouble and where he could find her.
+
+And because Peter had many miles less distance to travel than the
+others she had summoned, he arrived first.  He found Linda and
+Katy had burrowed under the stone until they had made an opening
+into which the broken foot might sink so that the pain of the
+pressure would be relieved.  Before the rock, with picks and
+shovels, half a dozen sympathetic farmers from ranches and
+cultivated land at the mouth of the canyon were digging furiously
+to make an opening undermining the boulder so that it could be
+easily tipped forward.  Donald was conscious and they had been
+passing water to him and encouraging him with the report that his
+father and a good surgeon would be there very soon.  Katherine
+O'Donovan had crouched at one side of the boulder, supporting the
+hurt foot.  She was breathing heavily and her usually red face
+was a ghastly green.  Linda had helped her to resume the skirt of
+her dress.  At the other side of the rock the girl was reaching
+to where she could touch Donald's head or reassuringly grip the
+hand that he could extend to her.  Peter seized Linda's axe and
+began hewing at the earth and rock in order to help in the speedy
+removal of the huge boulder.  Soon Judge Whiting, accompanied by
+Doctor Fleming, the city's greatest surgeon, came caring into the
+canyon and stopped on the roadway when he saw  the party.  The
+Judge sprang from the car, leaped the stream, and  started toward
+them.  In an effort to free his son before his arrival, all the
+men braced themselves against the face of the cliff and pushed
+with their combined strength.  The boulder dropped forward into
+the trench they had dug for it enough to allow Peter to crowd his
+body between it and the cliff and lift Donald's head and
+shoulders.  Linda instantly ran around the boulder, pushed
+
+her way in, and carefully lifting Donald's feet, she managed to
+work the lithe slenderness of her body through the opening, so
+that they carried Donald out and laid him down in the open.  He
+was considerably dazed and shaken, cruelly hurt, but proved
+
+himself a game youngster of the right mettle.  He raised himself
+to a sitting posture, managing a rather stiff-lipped smile for
+his father and Linda.  The surgeon instantly began cutting to
+reach the hurt foot, while Peter Morrison supported the boy's
+head and shoulders on one side, his father on the other.
+
+An exclamation of dismay broke from the surgeon's lips.  He
+looked at Judge Whiting and nodded slightly.  The men immediately
+picked up Donald and carried him to the ambulance.  Katherine
+O'Donovan sat down suddenly and buried her face in the skirt of
+her dress.  Linda laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
+
+"Don't, Katy," she said.  "Keep up your nerve; you're all right,
+old dear.  Donald's fine.  That doesn't mean anything except that
+his foot is broken, so he won't be able, and it won't be
+necessary for him, to endure the pain of setting it in a cast
+without an anesthetic; and Doctor Fleming can work much better
+where he has every convenience.  It's all right."
+
+The surgeon climbed into the ambulance and they started on an
+emergency run to the hospital.  As the car turned and swept down
+the canyon, for no reason that she could have explained, Linda
+began to shake until her teeth clicked.  Peter Morrison sprang
+back across the brook, and running to her side, he put his arm
+around her and with one hand he pressed her head against his
+shoulder, covering her face.
+
+"Steady, Linda," he said quietly, "steady.  You know that he is
+all right.  It will only be a question of a short confinement."
+
+Linda made a brave effort to control herself.  She leaned against
+Peter and held out both her hands.
+
+"I'm all right," she chattered.  "Give me a minute."
+
+Judge Whiting came to them.
+
+"I am getting away immediately," he said.  "I must reach Louise
+and Mother before they get word of this.  Doctor Fleming will
+take care of Donald all right.  What happened, Linda?  Can you
+tell me?"
+
+Linda opened her lips and tried to speak, but she was too
+breathless, too full of excitement, to be coherent.  To her
+amazement Katherine O'Donovan scrambled to her feet, lifted her
+head and faced the Judge.  She pointed to the fireplace.
+
+ "I was right there, busy with me cookie' utensils," she said l
+Miss Linda was a-sittin, on that exact spot, they jist havin 1
+finished atin' some of her haythen messes; and the lad was lyin,
+square where the boulder struck, on the Indian blanket, atin' a
+pace of cactus candy.  And jist one pebble came rattlin' down,
+but Miss Linda happened to be lookin', and she scramed to the b'y
+to be rollin' under where ye found him; so he gave a flop or two,
+and it's well that he took his orders without waitin' to ask the
+raison for them, for if he had, at the prisint minute he would be
+about as thick as a shate of writing paper.  The thing dropped
+clear and straight and drove itself into the earth and stone
+below it, as ye see."
+
+Katherine O'Donovan paused.
+
+"Yes," said the Judge.  "Anything else?"
+
+"Miss Linda got to him and she made sure he had brathin' space
+and he wasn't hurt bad, and then she told him he had got to stand
+it, because, sittin' where she did, she faced the cliff and she
+thought she had seen someone.  She took the telescope and started
+climbin', and I took the axe and I started climbin' after her."
+
+Katy broke down and emitted a weird Irish howl.  Linda instantly
+braced herself, threw her arms around Katy, and drew her head to
+her shoulder.  She looked at Judge Whiting and began to talk
+
+"I can show you where she followed me, straight up the face of
+the canyon, almost," she said.  "And she never had tried to climb
+a canyon side for a yard, either, but she came up and over after
+me, like a cat.  And up there on a small ledge Oka Sayye came
+down directly above us.  I couldn't be mistaken.  I saw him
+plainly.  I know him by sight as well as I do any of you.  We
+heard the stones coming down before him, and we knew someone was
+going to be on us who was desperate enough to kill.  When he
+touched our level and turned to follow the ledge we were on, I
+pushed him over."
+
+Katy shook off Linda's protecting arm and straightened suddenly.
+
+"Why, ye domned little fool, ye!" she screamed.  "Ye never told a
+lie before in all your days! Judge Whiting, I had the axe round
+me neck by the climbin' strap, and I got it in me fingers when we
+heard the crature comin', and against his chist I set it, and I
+gave him a shove that sint him over.  Like a cat he was
+a-clingin' and climbin', and when I saw him comin' up on us with
+that awful face of his, I jist swung the axe like I do when I'm
+rejoocin' a pace of eucalyptus to fireplace size, and whack! I
+took the branch supportin' him, and a dome' good axe I spoiled
+din' it."
+
+Katy folded her arms, lifted her chin higher than it ever had
+been before, and glared defiance at the Judge.
+
+"Now go on," she said, "and decide what ye'll do to me for it."
+
+The Judge reached over and took both Katherine O'Donovan's hands
+in a firm grip.
+
+"You brave woman!" he said.  "If it lay in my power, I would give
+you the Carnegie Medal.  In any event I will see that you have a
+good bungalow with plenty of shamrock on each side of your front
+path, and a fair income to keep you comfortable when the
+rheumatic days are upon you."
+
+"I am no over-feeder," said Katy proudly.  "I'm daily exercisin'
+me muscles enough to kape them young.  The rheumatism I'll not
+have.  And nayther will I have the house nor the income.  I've
+saved me money; I've an income of me own."
+
+"And as for the bungalow," interrupted Linda, "Katherine, as I
+have mentioned frequently before is my father, and my mother, and
+my whole family, and her front door is mine."
+
+"Sure," said Katy proudly.  "When these two fine people before
+you set up their hearthstone, a-swapin' it I'll be, and carin'
+for their youngsters; but, Judge, I would like a bit of the
+shamrock.  Ye might be sendin' me a start of that, if it would
+plase Your Honor."
+
+Judge Whiting looked intently at Katherine O'Donovan.  And then,
+as if they had been on the witness stand, he looked searchingly
+at Linda.  But Linda was too perturbed, too accustomed to Katy's
+extravagant nonsense even to notice the purport of what she had
+said.  Then the Judge turned his attention to Peter Morrison and
+realized that at least one of the parties to Katherine's proposed
+hearthstone had understood and heartily endorsed her proposal.
+
+"I will have to be going.  The boy and his mother will need me,"
+he said.  "I will see all of you later."
+
+Then he sprang across the brook and sent his car roaring down the
+canyon after the ambulance.
+
+Once more Katy sank to the ground.  Linda looked at her as she
+buried her face and began to wail.
+
+"Peter," she said quietly, "hunt our belongings and pack them in
+the Bear Cat the best you can.  Excuse us for a few minutes.  We
+must act this out of our systems."
+
+Gravely she sat down beside Katy, laid her head on her shoulder,
+and began to cry very nearly as energetically as Katy herself. 
+And that was the one thing which was most effective in restoring
+Katy's nerves.  Tears were such an unaccustomed thing with Linda
+that Katy controlled herself speedily so that she might be better
+able to serve the girl.  In a few minutes Katy had reduced her
+emotions to a dry sniffle.  She lifted her head, groped for her
+pocket, and being unable to find it for the very good reason that
+she was sitting upon it, she used her gingham hem as a
+handkerchief.  Once she had risen to the physical effort of
+wiping her eyes, she regained calmness rapidly.  The last time
+she applied the hem she looked at Peter, but addressed the
+Almighty in resigned tones:  "There, Lord, I guess that will do."
+
+In a few minutes she was searching the kitchen, making sure that
+no knives, spoons, or cooking utensils were lost.  Missing her
+support, Linda sat erect and endeavored to follow Katy's example. 
+Her eyes met Peter's and when she saw that his shoulders were
+shaking, a dry, hysterical laugh possessed her.
+
+"Yes, Katy," she panted, "that WILL do, and remember the tears we
+are shedding are over Donald's broken foot, and because this may
+interfere with his work, though I don't think it will for long."
+
+"When I cry," said Katy tersely, "I cry because I feel like it. 
+I wasn't wapin' over the snake that'd plan a death like that for
+anyone"--Katy waved toward the boulder--"and nayther was I
+wastin' me tears over the fut of a kid bein' jommed up a trifle."
+
+"Well, then, Katy," asked Linda tremulously, "why were you
+crying?"
+
+"Well, there's times," said Katy judicially, "when me spirits
+tell me I would be the better for lettin' off a wee bit of stame,
+and one of them times havin' arrived, I jist bowed me head to it,
+as is in accordance with the makings of me.  Far be it from me to
+be flyin' in the face of Providence and sayin' I won't, when all
+me interior disposhion says to me:  'Ye will!'"
+
+"And now, Linda," said Peter, "can you tell us why you were
+crying?"
+
+"Why, I think," said Linda, "that Katy has explained sufficiently
+for both of us.  It was merely time for us to howl after such
+fearful nerve strain, so we howled."
+
+"Well, that's all right," said Peter.  "Now I'll tell you
+something.  If you had gone away in that ambulance to an
+anesthetic and an operation, no wildcat that ever indulged in a
+hunger hunt through this canyon could have put up a howl equal to
+the one that I would have sent up."
+
+"Peter," said Linda, "there is nothing funny about this; it's no
+tame for jest.  But do men have nerves?  Would you really?"
+
+"Of course I would," said Peter.
+
+"No, you wouldn't," contradicted Linda.  "You just say that
+because you want to comfort us for having broken down, instead of
+trying to tease us as most men would."
+
+"He would, too!" said Katy, starting to the Bear Cat with a load
+of utensils.  "Now come on; let's go home and be gettin' craned
+up and ready for what's goin' to happen to us.  Will they be
+jailin' us, belike, Miss Linda?"
+
+Linda looked at Peter questioningly.
+
+"No," he said quietly.  "It is very probable that the matter
+never will be mentioned to you again, unless Judge Whiting gets
+hold of some clue that he wishes to use as an argument against
+matured Japs being admitted in the same high-school classes  with
+our clean, decent, young Americans.  They stopped that in the
+grades several years ago, I am told."
+
+Before they could start back to Lilac Valley a car stopped in the
+canyon and a couple of men introducing themselves as having come
+from Judge Whiting interviewed Katy and Linda exhaustively.  Then
+Linda pointed out to them an easier but much longer route by
+which they might reach the top of the canyon to examine the spot
+from which the boulder had fallen.  She showed them where she and
+Katy had ascended, and told them where they would be likely to
+find Oka Sayye.
+
+When it came to a question of really starting, Linda looked with
+appealing eyes at Peter.
+
+"Peter," she said, "could we fix it any way so you could drive
+Katy and me home?  For the first time since I have begun driving
+this spring I don't feel equal to keeping the road."
+
+"Of course," said Peter.  "I'll take your car to the nearest
+farmhouse and leave it, then I'll take you and Katy in my car."
+
+Late that evening Judge Whiting came to Lilac Valley with his
+wife and daughter to tell Linda that the top of the cliff gave
+every evidence of the stone having been loosened previously, so
+that a slight impetus would send it crashing down at the time
+when Donald lay in his accustomed place directly in the line of
+its fall.  His detectives had found the location of the encounter
+and they had gone to the bottom of the cliff, a thousand feet
+below, but they had not been able to find any trace of Oka Sayye. 
+Somewhere in waiting there had been confederates who had removed
+what remained of him.  On the way home Mrs. Whiting said to her
+husband:  "Judge, are you very sure that what the cook said to
+you this afternoon about Miss Strong and Mr. Morrison is true?"
+
+"I am only sure of its truth so far as he is concerned," replied
+the Judge.  "What he thought about Linda was evident.  I am very
+sorry.  She is a mighty fine girl and I think Donald is very much
+interested in her."
+
+"Yes, I think so, too," said Donald's mother.  "Interested; but
+he has not even a case of first love.  He is interested for the
+same  reason you would be or I would be, because she is
+intellectually so stimulating.  And you have to take into
+consideration the fact that in two or three years more she will
+be ready for marriage and a home of her own, and Donald will
+still be in school with his worldly experience and his business
+education not yet begun.  The best thing that can happen to
+Donald is just to let his infatuation for her die a natural
+death, with the quiet assistance of his family."
+
+The Judge's face reddened slightly.
+
+"Well, I would like mighty well to have her in the family," he
+said.  "She's a corking fine girl.  She would make a fine mother
+of fine men.  I haven't a doubt but that with the power of his
+personality and the power of his pen and the lure of propinquity,
+Peter Morrison will win her, but I hate it.  It's the best chance
+the boy ever will have."
+
+ And then Louise spoke up softly.
+
+"Donald hasn't any chance, Dad," she said quietly, "and he never
+did have.  I have met Peter Morrison myself and I would be only
+too glad if I thought he was devoted to me.  I'll grant that
+Linda Strong is a fine girl, but when she wakes up to the worth
+of Peter Morrison and to a realization of what other women would
+be glad to be to him, she will merely reach out and lay
+possessive hands upon what already belongs to her."
+
+It was a curious thing that such occurrences as the death of Oka
+Sayye and the injury to Donald could take place and no one know
+about them.  Yet the papers were silent on the subject and so
+were the courts.  Linda and Katy were fully protected.  The
+confederates of Oka Sayye for reasons of their own preferred to
+keep very quiet.
+
+By Monday Donald, with his foot in a plaster cast, was on a side
+veranda of his home with a table beside him strewn with books and
+papers.  An agreement had been made that his professors should
+call and hear his recitations for a few days until by the aid of
+a crutch and a cane he could resume his place in school.  Linda
+went to visit him exactly as she would have gone to see  Marian
+in like circumstances.  She succeeded in making all of the
+Whiting family her very devoted friends.
+
+One evening, after he had been hobbling about for over a week,
+Linda and Peter called to spend the evening, and a very gay and
+enjoyable evening it was.  And yet when it was over and they had
+gone away together Donald appeared worried and deeply thoughtful. 
+When his mother came to his room to see if the foot was unduly
+painful or there was anything she could do to make him more
+comfortable, he looked at her belligerently.
+
+"Mother," he said, "I don't like Peter Morrison being so much
+with my girl."
+
+Mrs. Whiting stood very still.  She thought very fast.  Should
+she postpone it or should she let the boy take all of his hurts
+together?  Her heart ached for him and yet she felt that she knew
+what life had in store for him concerning Linda.  So she sat on
+the edge of the bed and began to talk quietly, plainly,
+reasonably.  She tried to explain nature and human nature and
+what she thought the laws of probability were in the case. 
+Donald lay silent.  He said nothing until she had finished all
+she had to say, and then he announced triumphantly:  "You're all
+wrong.  That is what would happen if Linda were a girl like any
+of the other girls in her class, or like Louise.  But she has
+promised that she would write to me every Saturday night and she
+has said that she thinks more of me than of any of the other
+boys."
+
+"Donald dear," said Mrs. Whiting, "you're not 'in love' with
+Linda yourself, and neither is she with you.  By the time you are
+ready to marry and settle down in life, Linda in all probability
+will be married and be the mother of two or three babies."
+
+"Yes, like fun she will," said Donald roughly.
+
+"Have you asked her whether she loves you?" inquired Mrs.
+Whiting.
+
+"Oh, that 'love' business," said Donald, "it makes me tired!
+Linda and I never did any mushing around.  We had things of some
+importance to talk about and to do."
+
+A bit of pain in Mrs. Whiting's heart eased.  It was difficult to
+keep her lips quiet and even.
+
+"You haven't asked her to marry you, then?" she said soberly. 
+"Oh good Lord," cried Donald, "'marry!' How could I marry anyone
+when I haven't even graduated from high school and with college
+and all that to come?"
+
+"That is what I have been trying to tell you," said his mother
+evenly.  "I don't believe you have been thinking about marriage
+and I am absolutely certain that Linda has not, but she is going
+to be made to think about it long before you will be in such
+financial position that you dare.  That is the reason I am
+suggesting that you think about these things seriously and
+question yourself as to whether you would be doing the fair thing
+by Linda if you tried to tie her up in an arrangement that would
+ask her to wait six or eight years yet before you would be
+ready."
+
+"Well, I can get around faster than that," said Donald
+belligerently.
+
+"Of course you can," agreed his mother.  "I made that estimate
+fully a year too long.  But even in seven years Linda could do an
+awful lot of waiting; and there are some very wonderful girls
+that will be coming up six or seven years from now here at home. 
+You know that hereafter all the girls in the world are going to
+be very much more Linda's kind of girls than they have been
+heretofore.  The girls who have lived through the war and who
+have been intimate with its sorrow and its suffering and its
+terrible results to humanity, are not going to be such heedless,
+thoughtless, not nearly such selfish, girls as the world has
+known in the decade just past.  And there is going to be more
+outdoor life, more nature study.  There are going to be stronger
+bodies, better food, better-cared-for young people; and every
+year educational advantages are going to be greater.  If you can
+bring yourself to think about giving up the idea of there ever
+existing any extremely personal thing between you and Linda, I am
+very sure I could guarantee to introduce you to a girl who would
+be quite her counterpart, and undoubtedly we could meet one who
+would be handsomer."
+
+Donald punched his pillow viciously.
+
+"That's nice talk," he said, "and it may be true talk.  But in
+the first place I wish that Peter Morrison would let my girl
+alone, and in the second place I don't care if there are a
+thousand just as nice girls or even better-looking girls than
+Linda, though any girl would be going some if she were nicer and
+better looking than Linda.  But I am telling you that when my
+foot gets better I am going to Lilac Valley and tell him where to
+head in, and I'll punch his head if he doesn't do it promptly."
+
+"Of course you will," said his mother reassuringly; "and I'll go
+with you and we'll see to it that he attends strictly to his own
+affairs."
+
+Donald burst out laughing, exactly as his mother in her heart had
+hoped that he would.
+
+"Yes, I've got a hand-painted picture of myself starting to Lilac
+Valley to fight a man who is butting in with my girl, and taking
+my mother along to help me beat him up," he said.
+
+Mrs. Whiting put her arms around her boy, kissed him tenderly,
+and smoothed his hair, and then turned out the lights and slipped
+from the room.  But in the clear moonlight as she closed the door
+she could see that a boyish grin was twisting his lips, and she
+went down to tell the Judge that he need not worry.  If his boy
+were irreparably hurt anywhere, it was in his foot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.  How the Wasp Built Her Nest
+
+The following weeks were very happy for Linda.  When the cast was
+removed from Donald's foot and it was found that a year or two of
+care would put him even on the athletic fields and the dancing
+floor again, she was greatly relieved.
+
+She lacked words in which to express her joy that Marian was
+rapidly coming into happiness.  She was so very busy with her
+school work, with doing all she could to help Donald with his,
+with her "Jane Meredith" articles, with hunting and working out
+material for her book, that she never had many minutes at a time
+for introspection.  When she did have a few she sometimes
+pondered deeply as to whether Marian had been altogether sincere
+in the last letter she had written her in their correspondence,
+but she was so delighted in the outcome that if she did at times
+have the same doubt in a fleeting form that had not been in the
+least fleeting with Peter Morrison, she dismissed it as rapidly
+as possible.  When things were so very good as they were at that
+time, why try to improve them?
+
+One evening as she came from school, thinking that she would take
+Katy for a short run in the Bear Cat before dinner, she noticed a
+red head prominent in the front yard as she neared home.  When
+she turned in at the front walk and crossed the lawn she would
+have been willing to wager quite a sum that Katy had been crying.
+
+"Why, old dear," said Linda, putting her arms around her, "if
+anything has gone wrong with you I will certainly take to the
+warpath, instanter.  I can't even imagine what could be troubling
+you."  Linda lowered her voice.  "Nothing has come up about Oka
+Sayye?"
+
+Katy shook her head.
+
+"I thought not," said Linda.  "Judge Whiting promised me that
+what use he made of that should be man's business and exploited
+wholly for the sake of California and her people.  He said we
+shouldn't be involved.  I haven't been worried about it even,
+although I am willing to go upon the stand and tell the whole
+story if it will be any help toward putting right what is at
+present a great wrong to California."
+
+"Yes, so would I," said Katy.  "I'm not worryin' meself about the
+little baste any more than I would if it had been a mad dog
+foaming up that cliff at ye."
+
+"Then what is it?" asked Linda.  "Tell me this minute."
+
+"I dunno what in the world you're going to think," said Katy "I
+dunno what in the world you're going to do."
+
+Her face was so distressed that Linda's nimble brain flew to a
+conclusion.  She tightened her arm across Katy's shoulder.
+
+"By Jove, Katy!" she said breathlessly.  "Is Eileen in the
+house?"
+
+Katy nodded.
+
+"Has she been to see John and made things right with him?"
+
+Katy nodded again.
+
+"He's in there with her waitin' for ye," she said.
+
+It was a stunned Linda who slowly dropped her arm, stood erect,
+and lifted her head very high.  She thought intently.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me," she said, "that you have been CRYING
+over her?"
+
+Katy held out both hands.
+
+"Linda," she said, "she always was such a pretty thing, and her
+ma didn't raise her to have the sense of a peewee.  If your pa
+had been let take her outdoors and grow her in the sun and the
+air, she would have been bigger and broader, an' there would have
+been the truth of God's sunshine an' the glory of His rain about
+her.  Ye know, Linda, that she didn't ever have a common decent
+chance.  It was curls that couldn't be shook out and a nose that
+dassen't be sunburned and shoes that mustn't be scuffed and a
+dress that shouldn't be mussed, from the day she was born.  Ye
+couldn't jist honest say she had ever had a FAIR chance, now
+could ye?"
+
+"No," said Linda conclusively' "no, Katherine O'Donovan, you
+could not.  But what are we up against?  Does she want to come
+back?  Does she want to stay here again?"
+
+"I think she would like to," said Katy.  "You go in and see her
+for yourself, lambie, before ye come to any decision."
+
+"You don't mean," said Linda in a marveling tone, "that she has
+been homesick, that she has come back to us because she would
+like to be with us again?"
+
+"You go and see her for yourself; and if you don't say she is the
+worst beat out and the tiredest mortal that ye have ever seen
+you'll be surprisin' me.  My God, Linda, they ain't nothin' in
+bein' rich if it can do to a girl what has been done to Eileen!"
+
+"Oh, well," said Linda impatiently, "don't condemn all money
+because Eileen has not found happiness with it.  The trouble has
+been that Eileen's only chance to be rich came to her through the
+wrong kind of people."
+
+"Well, will ye jist tell me, then," said Katy, "how it happened
+that Eileen's ma was a sister to that great beef of a man, which
+same is hard on self-rayspectin' beef; pork would come nearer."
+
+"Yes," said Linda, "I'll tell you.  Eileen's mother had a big
+streak of the same coarseness and the same vulgarity in HER
+nature, or she could not have reared Eileen as she did.  She
+probably had been sent to school and had better advantages than
+the boy through a designing mother of her own.  Her first husband
+must have been a man who greatly refined and educated her.  We
+can't ever get away from the fact that Daddy believed in her and
+loved her."
+
+"Yes," said Katy, "but he was a fooled man.  She wasn't what we
+thought she was.  Many's the time I've stood injustice about the
+accounts and household management because I wouldn't be wakin'
+him up to what he was bound to for life."
+
+"That doesn't help us," said Linda.  "I must go in and face
+them."
+
+She handed her books to Katy, and went into the living room She
+concentrated on John Gilman first, and a wee qualm of disgust
+crept through her soul when she saw that after weeks of suffering
+he was once more ready to devote himself to Eileen.  Linda
+marveled at the power a woman could hold over a man that would
+force him to compromise with his intellect, his education and
+environment.  Then she turned her attention to Eileen, and the
+shock she received was informing.  She studied her an instant
+incredulously, then she went to her and held out her hand.
+
+"How do you do?" she said as cordially as was possible to
+her."This is unexpected."
+
+Her mind was working rapidly, yet she could not recall ever
+having seen a woman quite so beautiful as Eileen.  She was very
+certain that the color on her cheeks was ebbing and rising with
+excitement; it was no longer so deep as to be stationary.  She
+was very certain that her eyes had not been darkened as to lids
+or waxed as to lashes.  Her hair was beautifully dressed in
+sweeping waves with scarcely any artificial work upon it.  Her
+dress was extremely tasteful and very expensive.  There was no
+simper on her lips, nothing superficial.  She was only a tired,
+homesick girl.  As Linda looked at her she understood why Katy
+had cried over her.  She felt tears beginning to rise in her own
+heart.  She put both arms protectingly around Eileen.
+
+"Why, you poor little thing," she said wonderingly, "was it so
+damn' bad as all that?"
+
+Eileen stood straight.  She held herself rigidly.  She merelY
+nodded.  Then after a second she said:  "Worse than anything you
+could imagine, Linda.  Being rich with people who have grown rich
+by accident is a dreadful experience."
+
+"So I have always imagined," said Linda.  And then in her usual
+downright way she asked:  "Why did you come, Eileen?  Is there
+anything you wanted of me?"
+
+Eileen hesitated.  It was not in Linda's heart to be mean.
+
+"Homesick, little sister?" she asked lightly "Do you want to come
+here while you're getting ready to make a home for John?  Is that
+it?"
+
+Then Eileen swayed forward suddenly, buried her face in Linda's
+breast, and for the first time in her life Linda saw and heard
+her cry, not from selfishness, not from anger, not from greed,
+but as an ordinary human being cries when the heart is so full
+that nature relieves itself with tears.  Linda closed her arms
+around her and smiled over her head at John Gilman.
+
+"Finish all of it before you stop," she advised.  "It's all
+right.  You come straight home.  You didn't leave me any word,
+and I didn't know what to do with your things, but I couldn't
+feel that you would want to give up such beautiful things that
+you had so enjoyed.  We had planned for Marian to spend her
+summer vacation here so I put her things in your suite and I had
+moved mine into the guest room, but I have had my room done over
+and the guest room things are in there, and every scrap of yours
+is carefully put away.  If that will do, you are perfectly
+welcome to it."
+
+Eileen wiped her eyes.
+
+"Anything," she sobbed.  "I'd rather have Katy's room than be
+shamed and humiliated and hurt any further.  Linda, I would
+almost like you to know my Aunt Callie, because you will never
+understand about her if you don't.  Her favorite pastime was to
+tell everyone we met how much the things I wore cost her."
+
+Linda released Eileen with a slight shake.
+
+"Cheer up !" she said.  "We'll all have a gorgeous time together. 
+I haven't the slightest ambition to know more than that about
+your Aunt Callie.  If my brain really had been acting properly I
+would never have dismantled your room.  I would have known that
+you could not endure her, and that you would come home just as
+you should.  It's all right, John, make yourself comfortable.  I
+don't know what Katy has for dinner but she can always find
+enough for an extra couple.  Come Eileen, I'll help you to
+settle.  Where is your luggage?"
+
+"I brought back, Linda, just what I have on," said Eileen.  "I
+will begin again where I left off.  I realize that I am not
+entitled to anything further from the Strong estate, but Uncle
+was so unhappy and John says it's all right--really I am the only
+blood heir to all they have; I might as well take a comfortable
+allowance from it.  I am to go to see them a few days of every
+month.  I can endure that when I know I have John and you to come
+back to."
+
+When Eileen had been installed in Linda's old room Linda went
+down to the kitchen, shut the door behind her, and leaning
+against it, laid her hand over her mouth to suppress a low laugh.
+
+"Katy," she said, "I've been and gone and done it; I have put the
+perfect lady in my old room.  That will be a test of her
+sincerity--even dainty and pretty as it is since it's been done
+over.  If she is sincere enough to spend the summer getting ready
+to marry John Gilman--why that is all right, old girl.  We can
+stand it, can't we?"
+
+"Yes," said Katy, "it's one of them infernal nuisances but we can
+stand it.  I'm thinkin', from the looks of John Gilman and his
+manner of spakin', that it ain't goin' to be but a very short
+time that he'll be waitin'."
+
+"Katy," said Linda, "isn't this the most entertaining world? 
+Doesn't it produce the most lightning-like changes, and don't the
+most unexpected things happen?  Sort of dazes me.  I had planned
+to take a little run with you and the Cat.  Since we are
+having--no, I mustn't say guests--since John and Eileen have come
+home, I'll have to give up that plan until after dinner, and then
+we'll go and take counsel with our souls and see if we can figure
+out how we are going to solve this equation; and if you don t
+know what an equation is, old dear heart, it's me with a war-club
+and you with a shillalah and Eileen between us, and be 'damned'
+to us if we can't make an average, ordinary, decent human being
+out of her.  Pin an apron on her in the morning, Katy, and hand
+her a dust cloth and tell her to industrialize.  We will help her
+with her trousseau, but she SHALL help us with the work."
+
+"Ye know, lambie," whispered Katy suddenly, "this is a burnin'
+shame.  The one thing I DIDN'T think about is that book of yours. 
+What about it?"
+
+"I scarcely know," said Linda; "it's difficult to say.  Of course
+we can't carry out the plans we had made to work here, exactly as
+we had intended, with Eileen in the house preparing to be
+married.  But she tells me that her uncle has made her a generous
+allowance, so probably it's environment and love she is needing
+much more than help.  It is barely possible, Katy, that after I
+have watched her a few days, if I decide she is in genuine,
+sincere, heart-whole earnest, I might introduce her and John to
+my friend, 'Jane.' It is probable that if I did, Eileen would not
+expect me to help her, and at the same time she wouldn't feel
+that I was acting indifferently because I did not.  We'll wait
+awhile, Katy, and see whether we skid before we put on the
+chains."
+
+"What about Marian?" inquired Katy.
+
+"I don't know," said Linda thoughtfully.  "If Marian is big
+enough to come here and spend the summer under the same roof with
+Eileen and John Gilman, and have a really restful, enjoyable time
+out of it, she is bigger than I am.  Come up to the garret; I
+think Eileen has brought no more with her than she took away. 
+We'll bring her trunk down, put it in her room and lay the keys
+on top.  Don't begin by treating her as a visitor; treat her as
+if she were truly my sister.  Tell her what you want and how you
+want it, exactly as you tell me and as I tell you.  If you see
+even a suspicion of any of the former objectionable tendencies
+popping up, let's check them quick and hard, Katy."
+
+For a week Linda watched Eileen closely.  At the end of that time
+she was sincere in her conviction that Eileen had been severely
+chastened.  When she came in contact with Peter Morrison or any
+other man they met she was not immediately artificial.  She had
+learned to be as natural with men as with other women.  There
+were no pretty postures, no softened vocal modulations, no
+childish nonsense on subjects upon which the average child of
+these days displays the knowledge of the past-generation
+grandmother.  When they visited Peter Morrison's house it was
+easy to see that Eileen was interested, more interested than any
+of them ever before had seen her in any subject outside of
+clothing and jewels.  Her conduct in the Strong home had been
+irreproachable.  She had cared for her own room, quietly
+undertaken the duties of dusting and arranging the rooms and
+cutting and bringing in flowers.  She had gone to the kitchen and
+wiped dishes and asked to be taught how to cook things of which
+John was particularly fond.  She had been reasonable in the
+amount of time she had spent on her shopping, and had repeatedly
+gone to Linda and shown interest in her concerns.  The result was
+that Linda at once displayed the same interest in anything
+pertaining to Eileen.
+
+One afternoon Linda came home unusually early.  She called for
+Eileen, told her to tie on her sunshade and be ready for a short
+ride.  Almost immediately she brought around the Bear Cat and
+when they were seated side by side headed it toward the canyon. 
+She stopped at the usual resting place, and together she and
+Eileen walked down the light-dappled road bed.  She pointed out
+things to Eileen, telling her what they were, to what uses they
+could be put, while at the same time narrowly watching her.  To
+her amazement she found that Eileen was interested, that she was
+noticing things for herself, asking what they were.  She wanted
+to know the names of the singing birds.  When a big bird trailed
+a waving shadow in front of her Linda explained how she might
+distinguish an eagle from a hawk, a hawk from a vulture, a sea
+bird from those of the land.  When they reached the bridge Linda
+climbed down the embankment to gather cress.  She was moved to
+protest when Eileen followed and without saying a word began to
+assist her, but she restrained herself, for it suddenly occurred
+to her that it would be an excellent thing for Eileen to think
+more of what she was doing and why she was doing it than about
+whether she would wet her feet or muddy her fingers.  So the
+protest became an explanation that it was rather late for cress: 
+the leaves toughened when it bloomed and were too peppery.  The
+only way it could be used agreeably was to work along the edges
+and select the small tender shoots that had not yet matured to
+the flowering point.  When they had an armload they went back to
+the car, and without any explanation Linda drove into Los Angeles
+and stopped at the residence of Judge Whiting, not telling Eileen
+where she was.
+
+"Friends of mine," said Linda lightly as she stepped from the
+car.  "Fond of cress salad with their dinner.  They prepare it
+after the Jane Meredith recipe to which you called my attention,
+in Everybody's Home last winter.  Come along with me."
+
+Eileen stepped from the car and followed.  Linda led the way
+round the sidewalk to where her quick ear had located voices on
+the side lawn.  She stopped at the kitchen door, handed in the
+cress, exchanged a few laughing words with the cook, and then
+presented herself at the door of the summerhouse.  Inside, his
+books and papers spread over a worktable, sat Donald Whiting. 
+One side of him his mother was busy darning his socks; on the
+other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk and
+small squares of gaily colored linen.  Linda entered with exactly
+the same self-possession that characterized her at home.  She
+shook hands with Mrs. Whiting, Mary Louise, and Donald, and then
+she said quietly:  "Eileen and I were gathering cress and we
+stopped to leave you some for your dinner."  With this
+explanation she introduced Eileen to Mrs. Whiting.  Mary Louise
+immediately sprang up and recalled their meeting at Riverside. 
+Donald remembered a meeting he did not mention.  It was only a
+few minutes until Linda was seated beside Donald, interesting
+herself in his lessons.  Eileen begged to be shown the pretty
+handkerchiefs that Mary Louise was making.  An hour later Linda
+refused an invitation to dinner because Katy would be expecting
+them.  When she arose to go, Eileen was carrying a small square
+of blue-green linen.  Carefully pinned to it was a patch of white
+with a spray of delicate flowers outlined upon it, and a skein of
+pink silk thread.  She had been initiated into the thrillingly
+absorbing feminine accomplishment of making sport handkerchiefs. 
+When they left Eileen was included naturally, casually,
+spontaneously, in their invitation to Linda to run in any time
+she would.  Mary Louise had said she would ride out with Donald
+in few days and see how the handkerchiefs were coming on, and 
+more instruction and different stitches and patterns were
+necessary, she would love to teach them.  So Linda realized that
+Mary Louise had been told about the trousseau.  She knew, even
+lacking as she was in feminine sophistication, that there were
+two open roads to the heart of a woman.  One is a wedding and the
+other is a baby.  The lure of either is irresistible.
+
+As the Bear Cat glided back to Lilac Valley, Eileen sat silent. 
+For ten years she had coveted the entree to the Whiting home 
+perhaps more than any other in the city.  Merely by being simple
+and natural, by living her life as life presented itself each
+day, Linda with no effort whatever had made possible to Eileen
+the thing she so deeply craved.  Eileen was learning a new lesson
+each day--some days many of them--but none was more amazing more
+simple, or struck deeper into her awakened consciousness.  As she
+gazed with far-seeing eye on the blue walls of the valley Eileen
+was taking a mental inventory of her former self.  One by one she
+was arraigning all the old tricks she had used in her trade of
+getting on in the world.  One by one she was discarding them in
+favor of honesty, unaffectedness, and wholesome enjoyment.
+
+Because of these things Linda came home the next afternoon and
+left a bundle on Eileen's bed before she made her way to her own
+room to busy herself with a head piece for Peter's latest
+article.  She had taken down the wasp picture and while she had
+not destroyed it she had turned the key of a very substantial
+lock upon it.  She was hard at work when she heard steps on the
+stairs.  When Eileen entered, Linda smiled quizzically and then
+broke into an unaffected ejaculation.
+
+"Ripping!" she cried.  "Why, Eileen, you're perfectly topping."
+
+Eileen's face flamed with delight.  She was a challenging little
+figure.  None of them was accustomed to her when she represented
+anything more substantial than curls and ruffles.
+
+Linda reached for the telephone, called Gilman, and asked him if
+he could go to the beach for supper that evening.  He immediately
+replied that he would.  Then she called Peter Morrison and asked
+him the same question and when Peter answered affirmatively she
+told him to bring his car.  Then she hastily put on her own field
+clothes and ran to the kitchen to fill the lunch box.  To Katy's
+delight Linda told her there would be room for her and that she
+needed her.
+
+It was evening and the sun was moving slowly toward the horizon
+when they stopped the cars and went down on the white sands of
+Santa Monica Bay.  Eileen had been complimented until she was in
+a glow of delight.  She did not notice that in piling things out
+of the car for their beach supper Linda had handed her a shovel
+and the blackened iron legs of a broiler.  Everyone was loaded
+promiscuously as they took up their march down to as near the
+water's edge as the sands were dry.  Peter and John gathered
+driftwood.  Linda improvised two cooking places, one behind a
+rock for herself, the other under the little outdoor stove for
+Katy.  Eileen was instructed as to how to set up the beach table,
+spread the blankets beside it, and place the food upon it.  While
+Katy made coffee and toasted biscuit Linda was busy introducing
+her party to brigand beefsteak upon four long steel skewers.  The
+day had been warm.  The light salt breeze from the sea was like a
+benediction.  Friendly gulls gathered on the white sands around
+them.  Cunning little sea chickens worked in accord with the
+tide:  when the waves advanced they rose above them on wing; when
+they retreated they scampered over the wet sand, hunting any
+small particles of food that might have been carried in.  Out
+over the water big brown pelicans went slowly fanning homeward;
+and white sea swallows drew wonderful pictures on the blue night
+sky with the tips of their wings.  For a few minutes at the
+reddest point of its setting the sun painted a marvelous picture
+in a bank of white clouds.  These piled up like a great rosy
+castle, and down the sky roadway before it came a long procession
+of armored knights, red in the sun glow and riding huge red
+horses.  Then the colors mixed and faded and a long red bridge
+for a short time spanned the water, ending at their feet.  The
+gulls hunted the last scrap thrown them and went home.  The
+swallows sought their high cliffs.  The insidiously alluring
+perfume of sand verbena rose like altar incense around them. 
+Gilman spread a blanket, piled the beach fire higher, and sitting
+beside Eileen, he drew her head to his shoulder and put his arm
+around her.  Possibly he could have been happier in a careless
+way if he had never suffered.  It is very probable that the
+poignant depth of exquisite happiness he felt in that hour never
+would have come to him had he not lost Eileen and found her again
+so much more worth loving.  Linda wandered down the beach until
+she reached the lighthouse rocks.  She climbed on a high one and
+sat watching the sea as it sprayed just below.  Peter Morrison
+followed her.
+
+"May I come up?" he asked.
+
+"Surely," said Linda, "this belongs to the Lord; it isn't mine."
+
+So Peter climbed up and sat beside her.
+
+"How did the landscape appeal to you when you left the campfire?"
+inquired Linda.
+
+"I should think the night cry might very well be Eight o'clock
+and all's well," answered Peter.
+
+"'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world?'" Linda put it
+in the form of a question.
+
+"It seems to be for John and Eileen," said Peter.
+
+"It is for a number of people," said Linda.  "I had a letter from
+Marian today.  I had written her to ask if she would come to us
+for the summer, in spite of the change in our plans; but Mr. Snow
+has made some plans of his own.  He is a very astute individual. 
+He wanted Marian to marry him at once and she would not, so he
+took her for a short visit to see his daughter at her
+grandmother's home in the northern part of the state.  Marian
+fell deeply in love with his little girl, and of course those
+people found Marian charming, just as right-minded people would
+find her.  When she saw how the little girl missed her father and
+how difficult it was for him to leave her, and when she saw how
+she would be loved and appreciated in that fine family, she
+changed her mind.  Peter, we are going to be invited to San
+Francisco to see them married very shortly.  Are you glad or
+sorry?"
+
+"I am very glad," said Peter heartily.  "I make no concealment of
+my admiration for Miss Thorne but I am very glad indeed that it
+is not her head that is to complete the decoration when you start
+the iris marching down my creek banks."
+
+"Well, that's all right," said Linda.  "Of course you should have
+something to say about whose head finished that picture.  I can't
+contract to do more than set the iris.  The thing about this I
+dread is that Marian and Eugene are going to live in San
+Francisco, and I did so want her to make her home in Lilac
+Valley."
+
+"That's too bad," said Peter sympathetically.  "I know how you
+appreciate her, how deeply you love her.  Do you think the valley
+will ever be right for you without her, Linda?"
+
+"It will have to be," said Linda.  "I've had to go on without
+Father, you know.  If greater happiness seems to be in store for
+Marian in San Francisco, all I can do is to efface myself and say
+'Amen.' When the world is all right for Marian, it is about as
+near all right as it can be for me.  And did you ever see much
+more sincerely and clearly contented people than John and Eileen
+are at the present minute?"
+
+Peter looked at Linda whimsically.  He lowered his voice as if a
+sea urchin might hear and tattle.
+
+"What did you do about the wasp, Linda?" he whispered.
+
+"I delicately erased the stinger, fluffed up a ruffle, and put
+the sketch under lock and key.  I should have started a fire with
+it, but couldn't quite bring myself to let it go, yet."
+
+"Is she going to hold out?" asked Peter.
+
+"She'll hold out or get her neck wrung," said Linda.  "I truly
+think she has been redeemed.  She has been born again.  She has a
+new heart and a new soul and a new impulse and a right conception
+of life.  Why, Peter, she has even got a new body.  Her face is
+not the same."
+
+"She is much handsomer," said Peter.
+
+"Isn't she?" cried Linda enthusiastically.  "And doesn't having a
+soul and doesn't thinking about essential things make the most
+remarkable difference in her?  It is worth going through a fiery
+furnace to come out new like that.  I called her Abednego the
+other day, but she didn't know what I meant."
+
+ Then they sat silent and watched the sea for a long time.  By
+and by the night air grew chill.  Peter slipped from the rock and
+went
+
+up the beach and came back with an Indian blanket.  He put it
+very carefully around Linda's shoulders, and when he went to
+resume his seat beside her he found one of her arms stretching it
+with a blanket corner for him.  So he sat down beside her and
+drew the corner over his shoulder; and because his right arm was
+very much in his way, and it would have been very disagreeable if
+Linda had slipped from the rock and fallen into the cold, salt,
+unsympathetic Pacific at nine o'clock at night--merely to dispose
+of the arm comfortably and to ensure her security, Peter put it
+around Linda and drew her up beside him very close.  Linda did
+not seem to notice.  She sat quietly looking at the Pacific and
+thinking her own thoughts.  When the fog became damp and chill,
+she said they must be going, and so they went back to their cars
+and drove home through the sheer wonder of the moonlight, through
+the perfume of the orange orchards, hearing the night song of the
+mockingbirds.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.  The Lady of the Iris
+
+A few days later Linda and Peter went to San Francisco and helped
+celebrate the marriage of Marian and Eugene Snow.  They left
+Marian in a home carefully designed to insure every comfort and
+convenience she ever had planned, furnished in accordance with
+her desires.  Both Linda and Peter were charmed with little
+Deborah Snow; she was a beautiful and an appealing child.
+
+"It seems to me," said Linda, on the train going home, "that
+Marian will get more out of life, she will love deeper, she will
+work harder, she will climb higher in her profession than she
+would have done if she had married John.  It is difficult
+sometimes, when things are happening, to realize that they are
+for the best, but I really believe this thing has been for the
+level best.  I think Marian is going to be a bigger woman in San
+Francisco than she ever would have been in Lilac Valley.  With
+that thought I must reconcile myself."
+
+"And what about John?" asked Peter.  "Is he going to be a bigger
+man with Eileen than he would have been with Marian?"
+
+"No," said Linda, "he is not.  He didn't do right and he'll have
+penalty to pay.  Eileen is developing into a lovable and truly
+beautiful woman, but she has not the intellect, nor the
+education, nor the impulse to stimulate a man's mental processes
+and make him outdo himself the way Marian will.  John will
+probably never know it, but he will have to do his own
+stimulating; he will have to vision life for himself.  He will
+have to find his high hill and climb it with Eileen riding
+securely on his shoulders.  It isn't really the pleasantest thing
+in the world, it isn't truly the thing I wanted to do this
+summer--helping them out--but it has seemed to be the work at
+hand, the thing Daddy probably would have wanted me to do, so
+it's up to me to do all I can for them, just as I did all I could
+for Donald.  One thing I shall always be delighted about.  With
+my own ears I heard the pronouncement:  Donald had the Jap
+beaten; he was at the head of his class before Oka Sayye was
+eliminated.  The Jap knew it.  His only chance lay in getting rid
+of his rival.  Donald can take the excellent record he has made
+in this race to start on this fall when he commences another
+battle against some other man's brain for top honors in his
+college."
+
+"Will he start with the idea that he wants to be an honor man?"
+
+Linda laughed outright.
+
+"I think," she said, "his idea was that if he were one of fifty
+or one hundred leading men it would be sufficient, but I insisted
+that if he wanted to be first with me, he would have to be first
+in his school work."
+
+"I see," said Peter.  "Linda, have you definitely decided that
+when you come to your home-making hour, Donald is the man with
+whom you want to spend the remainder of your life?"
+
+"Oh, good gracious!" said Linda.  "Who's talking about 'homes'
+and 'spending the remainder of lives'?  Donald and I are school
+friends, and we are good companions.  You're as bad as Eileen. 
+She's always trying to suggest things that nobody else ever
+thought of, and now Katy's beginning it too."
+
+"Sapheads, all!" said Peter.  "Well, allow me to congratulate you
+on having given Donald his spurs.  I think it's a very fine thing
+for him to start to college with the honor idea in his head. 
+What about your Saturday excursions?"
+
+"They have died an unnatural death," said Linda.  "Don and I
+fought for them, but the Judge and Mrs. Whiting and Mary Louise
+were terrified for fear a bone might slip in Don's foot, or some
+revengeful friend or relative of Oka Sayye lie in wait for us. 
+They won't hear of our going any more.  I go every Saturday and
+take Donald for a very careful drive over a smooth road with the
+Bear Cat cursing our rate of speed all the way.  All the fun's
+spoiled for all three of us."
+
+"Think I would be any good as a substitute when it comes to field
+work?" inquired Peter casually.  "I have looked at your desert
+garden so much I would know a Cotyledon if I saw it.  I believe I
+could learn."
+
+"You wouldn't have time to bother," objected Linda.  "You're a
+man, with a man's business to transact in the world.  You have to
+hustle and earn money to pay for the bridge and changing the
+brook."
+
+"But I had money to pay for the brook and the bridge before I
+agreed to them," said Peter.
+
+"Well, then," said Linda, "you should begin to hunt old mahogany
+and rugs."
+
+"I hadn't intended to," said Peter; "if they are to be old, I
+won't have to do more than to ship them.  In storage in Virginia
+there are some very wonderful old mahogany and rosewood and rugs
+and bric-a-brac enough to furnish the house I am building.  The
+stuff belonged to a little old aunt of mine who left it to me in
+her will, and it was with those things in mind that I began my
+house.  The plans and finishing will fit that furniture
+beautifully."
+
+"Why, you lucky individual!" said Linda.  "Nowhere in the world
+is there more beautiful furniture than in some of those old homes
+in Virginia.  There are old Flemish and Dutch and British and
+Italian pieces that came into this country on early sailing
+vessels for the aristocrats.  You don't mean that kind of stuff,
+do you, Peter?"
+
+"That is precisely the kind of stuff I do mean," answered Peter.
+
+"Why Peter, if you have furniture like that," cried Linda, "then
+all you need is Mary Louise."
+
+"Linda," said Peter soberly, "you are trespassing on delicate
+ground again.  You selected one wife for me and your plan didn't
+work.  When that furniture arrives and is installed I'll set
+about inducing the lady of my dreams to come and occupy my dream
+house, in my own way.  I never did give you that job.  It was
+merely assumed on your part."
+
+"So it was," said Linda.  "But you know I could set that iris and
+run that brook with more enthusiasm if I knew the lady who was to
+walk beside it."
+
+"You do," said Peter.  "You know her better than anyone else,
+even better than I.  Put that in your mental pipe and smoke it!"
+
+"Saints preserve us!" cried Linda.  "I believe the man is
+planning to take Katy away from me."
+
+"Not FROM you," said Peter, "WITH you."
+
+"Let me know about it before you do it," said Linda with a
+careless laugh.
+
+"That's what I'm doing right now," said Peter.
+
+"And I'm going to school," said Linda.
+
+"Of course," said Peter, "but that won't last forever."
+
+Linda entered enthusiastically upon the triple task of getting
+Donald in a proper frame of mind to start to college with the
+ambition to do good work, of marrying off Eileen and John Gilman,
+and of giving her best brain and heart to Jane Meredith.  When
+the time came, Donald was ready to enter college comfortable and
+happy, willing to wait and see what life had in store for him as
+he lived it.
+
+When she was sure of Eileen past any reasonable doubt Linda took
+her and John to her workroom one evening and showed them her book
+contract and the material she had ready, and gave them the best
+idea she could of what yet remained to be done.  She was not
+prepared for their wholehearted praise, for their delight and
+appreciation.
+
+Alone, they took counsel as to how they could best help her, and
+decided that to be married at once and take a long trip abroad
+would be the best way.  That would leave Linda to work in quiet
+and with no interruption to distract her attention.  They could
+make their home arrangements when they returned.
+
+When they had gone Linda worked persistently, but her book was
+not completed and the publishers were hurrying her when the fall
+term of school opened.  By the time the final chapter with its
+exquisite illustration had been sent in, the first ones were
+coming back in proof, and with the proof came the materialized
+form of Linda's design for her cover, and there was no Marian to
+consult about it.  Linda worked until she was confused.  Then she
+piled the material in the Bear Cat and headed up Lilac Valley. 
+As she came around the curve and turned from the public road she
+saw that for the first time she might cross her bridge; it was
+waiting for her.  She heard the rejoicing of the water as it fell
+from stone to stone where it dipped under the road, and as she
+swung across the bridge she saw that she might drive over the
+completed road which had been finished in her weeks of absence. 
+The windows told another story.  Peter's furniture had come and
+he had been placing it without telling her.  She found the front
+door standing wide open, so she walked in.  With her bundle on
+her arm she made her way to Peter's workroom.  When he looked up
+and saw her standing in his door he sprang to his feet and came
+to meet her.
+
+"Peter," she said, "I've taken on more work than I can possibly
+finish on time, and I'm the lonesomest person in California
+today."
+
+"I doubt that," said Peter gravely.  "If you are any lonesomer
+than I am you must prove it."
+
+"I have proved it," said Linda quietly.  "If you had been as
+lonesome as I am you would have come to me.  As it is, I have
+come to you."
+
+"I see," said Peter rather breathlessly.  "What have you there,
+Linda?  Why did you come?"
+
+"I came for two reasons," said Linda.  "I want to ask you about
+this stuff.  Several times this summer you have heard talk about
+Jane Meredith and the Everybody's Home articles.  Ever read any
+of them, Peter?"
+
+"Yes," said Peter, "I read all of them.  Interested in home stuff
+these days myself."
+
+"Well," said Linda, dumping her armload before Peter, "there's
+the proof and there's the illustration and there's the cover
+design for a book to be made from that stuff.  Peter, make your
+best boy and say 'pleased to meet you' to Jane Meredith."
+
+Peter secured both of Linda's hands and held them.  First he
+looked at her, then he looked at the material she had piled down
+in front of him.
+
+"Never again," said Peter in a small voice, "will I credit myself
+with any deep discernment, any keen penetration.  How I could
+have read that matter and looked at those pictures and not seen
+you in and through and over them is a thing I can't imagine. 
+It's great, Linda, absolutely great! Of course I will help you
+any way in the world I can.  And what else was it you wanted? 
+You said two things."
+
+"Oh, the other doesn't amount to much," said Linda.  "I only
+wanted the comfort of knowing whether, as soon as I graduate, I
+may take Katy and come home, Peter."
+
+From previous experience with Linda, Peter had learned that a
+girl reared by men is not as other women.  He had supposed the
+other thing concerning which she had wanted to appeal to him was
+on par with her desire for sympathy and help concerning her book. 
+At her question, with her eyes frankly meeting his, Peter for an
+instant felt lightheaded.  He almost dodged, he was so sweepingly
+taken unawares.  Linda was waiting and his brain was not working. 
+He tried to smile, but he knew she would not recognize as natural
+the expression of that whirling moment.  She saw his hesitation.
+
+"Of course, if you don't want us, Peter--"
+
+Peter found his voice promptly.  Only his God knew how much he
+wanted Linda, but there were conditions that a man of Peter's
+soul-fiber could not endure.  More than life he wanted her, but
+he did not want her asleep.  He did not want to risk her
+awakening to a spoiled life and disappointed hopes.
+
+"But you remember that I told you coming home from San Francisco
+that you knew the Lady of my Iris better than anyone else, and
+that I was planning to take Katy, not from you, but with you."
+
+"Of course I remember," said Linda.  "That is why when Marian and
+Eileen and Donald and all my world went past and left me standing
+desolate, and my work piled up until I couldn't see my way, I
+just started right out to ask you if you would help me with the
+proof.  Of course I knew you would be glad to do that and I
+thought if you really meant in your heart that I was the one to
+complete your iris procession, it would be a comfort to me during
+the hard work and the lonesome days to have it put in
+two-syllable English.  Marian said that was the only real way--"
+
+"And Marian is eminently correct.  You will have to give me an
+ordinary lifetime, Linda, in which to try to make you understand
+exactly what this means to me.  Perhaps I'll even have to invent
+new words in which to express myself."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Linda.  "It means a lot to me too. 
+I can't tell you how much I think of you.  That first day, as
+soon as I put down the Cotyledon safely and tucked in my blouse,
+I would have put my hand in yours and started around the world,
+if you had asked me to.  I have the very highest esteem for you,
+Peter."
+
+"Esteem, yes," said Peter slowly.  "But Linda-girl, isn't the
+sort of alliance I am asking you to enter with me usually based
+on something a good bit stronger than 'esteem'?"
+
+"Yes, I think it is," said Linda.  "But you needn't worry.  I
+only wanted the comfort of knowing that I was not utterly alone
+again, save for Katy.  I'll stick to my book and to my fight for
+Senior honors all right."
+
+Peter was blinking his eyes and fighting to breathe evenly.  When
+he could speak he said as smoothly as possible:  "Of course,
+Linda.  I'll do your proof for you and you may put all your time
+on class honors.  It merely occurred to me to wonder whether you
+realized the full and ultimate significance of what we are
+saying; exactly what it means to me and to you."
+
+ "Possibly not, Peter," said Linda, smiling on him with utter
+confidence.  "Everyone says I am my father's daughter, and Father
+didn't live to coach me on being your iris decoration, as a woman
+would; but, Peter, when the time comes, I have every confidence
+in your ability to teach me what you would like me to know
+yourself.  Don't you agree with me, Peter?"
+
+Making an effort to control himself Peter gathered up the
+material Linda had brought and taking her arm he said casually: 
+"I thoroughly agree with you, dear.  You are sanely and health
+fully and beautifully right.  Now let's go and take Katy into our
+confidence, and then you shall show me your ideas before I begin
+work on your proof.  And after this, instead of you coming to me
+I shall always come to you whenever you can spare a minute for
+me."
+
+Linda nodded acquiescence.
+
+"Of course! That would be best," she said. "Peter, you are so
+satisfyingly satisfactory."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Her Father's Daughter, by Porter
+
+
+
+
+
+Proofer: this has been spell-checked but the checker seems to
+have a mindset and missed some sections - most scanner errors
+were e for c.  Watch for gaps between pages. There may be some
+extraneous Is and Js which showed up when the scanner saw the
+bindery threads in the gutters. May need to add 2 spaces after !
+and ? if at the end of sentence that's not an internal quote.
+Watch for  missing ". The caps are emphasis italics.
+
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