Her Father's Daughter
by Gene Stratton Porter
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

     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: