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Her Father's Daughter

by Gene Stratton-Porter · English · Gutenberg #904 · 733,334 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Her Father's Daughter

Author: Gene Stratton-Porter


        
Release date: May 1, 1997 [eBook #904]
                Most recently updated: June 9, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/904

Credits: Dianne Bean and David Widger, updated by Robert Tonsing


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER ***




                      HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER

                               By
                      Gene Stratton-Porter




                            Contents


       I. “What Kind of Shoes are the Shoes You Wear?”
      II. Cotyledon of Multiflores Canyon
     III. The House of Dreams
      IV. Linda Starts a Revolution
       V. The Smoke of Battle
      VI. Jane Meredith
     VII. Trying Yucca
    VIII. The Bear-cat
      IX. One Hundred Per Cent. Plus
       X. Katy to the Rescue
      XI. Assisting Providence
     XII. The Lay of the Land
    XIII. Leavening the Bread of Life
     XIV. Saturday’s Child
      XV. Linda’s Hearthstone
     XVI. Producing the Evidence
    XVII. A Rock and a Flame
   XVIII. Spanish Iris
     XIX. The Official Bug-Catcher
      XX. The Cap Sheaf
     XXI. Shifting the Responsibility
    XXII. The End of Marian’s Contest
   XXIII. The Day of Jubilee
    XXIV. Linda’s First Party
     XXV. Buena Moza
    XXVI. A Mouse Nest
   XXVII. The Straight and Narrow
  XXVIII. Putting It Up to Peter
    XXIX. Katy Unburdens Her Mind
     XXX. Peter’s Release
    XXXI. The End of Donald’s Contest
   XXXII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest
  XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris




                       List of Characters


  Linda Strong, her Father’s Daughter
  Dr. Alexander Strong, a great Nerve Specialist
  Mrs. Strong, his Wife
  Eileen Strong, having Social Aspirations
  Mr. and Mrs. Thorne, neighbors of the Strongs
  Marian Thorne, a Dreamer of Houses
  John Gilman, a Man of Law
  Peter Morrison, an Author
  Henry Anderson, an Architect
  Donald Whiting, a High School Senior
  Mary Louise Whiting, his Sister
  Judge and Mrs. Whiting, a Man of Law and a Woman of Culture
  Katherine O’Donovan, the Strong Cook
  Oka Sayye, a High School Senior
  James Heitman, accidentally rich
  Mrs. Caroline Heitman, his Wife




                           CHAPTER I

          “What Kind of Shoes Are the Shoes You Wear?”


“What makes you wear such funny shoes?”

Linda Strong thrust forward a foot and critically examined the narrow
vamp, the projecting sole, the broad, low heel of her well-worn brown
calf-skin 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 mocking-bird 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. “I 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 tongues 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 knew, 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 her psychology that Father did not know, so there were two
reasons why he selected my footwear as he did. One was because he be
believed high heels and pointed toes an outrage against the nervous
system of a woman that would in time bring her within his 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
suitable 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.

“Half way,” 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 matinée. 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 use them.”

“What are you getting at, anyway?” asked Donald, with more than a hint
of asperity in his voice.

“I am getting at the fact,” said Linda, “that a boy as big as you and
as strong as you and with as good brain and your opportunities has
allowed a little brown Jap to cross the Pacific Ocean and in 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 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 firmly 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 sun-faded, stained, and disreputable? Was
it right that Eileen should occupy their father’s 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 work table 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 to-night, 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 to-night
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
to-day, 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 honour?”

“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 honour.”

“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 war-path 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 plant, she had passed. She
was familiar with many members of the 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 sketch-book 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 corner a few
simoleons with you. You are becoming better looking every minute.”

For a touch of colour she margined one side of her drawing with a
little spray of Pentstemon whose bright tubular flowers the canyon knew
as “humming-bird’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 humming bird, 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 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
pulverulenta, 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 down
town 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 flower-like 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 coloured, 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 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 heart 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 to-night.”

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 parfect 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 to-night?”

“On the contrary,” answered Marian, “an invitation to dinner to-night
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 preëmpted.”

“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 six as nicely as any
one. 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 to-night. 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 colour 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 modelled 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 to-day.”

“But that does not prove that Eileen mentioned it to me,” answered
Linda quietly; “so you must find your places from the cards I could
prepare in a hurry.”

This same preparation of cards at the round table placed Eileen between
the architect and the author, Marian between the author and John
Gilman, and Linda between Gilman and the architect, which added one
more tiny gale to the storm of fury that was raging in the breast of
white-faced Eileen. The situation was so strained that without fully
understanding it, Marian, who was several years older than either of
the Strong sisters, knew that although she was tired to the point of
exhaustion she should muster what reserve force she could to the end
of making the dinner party particularly attractive, because she was
deeply interested in drawing to the valley every suitable home seeker
it was possible to locate there. It was the unwritten law of the valley
that whenever a home seeker passed through, every soul who belonged
exerted the strongest influence to prove that the stars hung lower and
shone bigger and in bluer heavens than anywhere else on earth; that
nowhere could be found air to equal the energizing salt breezes from
the sea, snow chilled, perfumed with almond and orange; that the sun
shone brighter more days in the year, and the soil produced a greater
variety of vegetables and fruits than any other spot of the same size
on God’s wonderful footstool. This could be done with unanimity and
enthusiasm by every resident of Lilac Valley for the very simple reason
that it was the truth. The valley stood with its steep sides raying
blue from myriad wild lilacs; olives and oranges sloped down to the
flat floor, where cultivated ranches and gardens were so screened by
eucalyptus and pepper trees, palm and live oak, myriads of roses of
every colour 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
straight-forwardly 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, room-mates, and no doubt he has told you that
we graduated with the same class. He has found his location here
and I would particularly enjoy having a home near him. They tell me
there are well-trained servants to look after a house and care for a
bachelor, so I truly feel that if I can find a location I would like,
and if Henry can plan me a house, and I can stretch my purse to cover
the investment, that there is a very large possibility that somewhere
within twenty miles of Los Angeles I may find the home of my dreams.”

“One would almost expect,” said Marian, “that a writer would say
something more original. This valley is filled with people who came
here saying precisely what you have said; and the lure of the land won
them and here they are, shameless boosters of California.”

“Why shameless?” inquired Henry Anderson.

“Because California so verifies the wildest statement that can be made
concerning her that one may go the limit of imagination without shame,”
laughed Marian. “I try in all my dealings to stick to the straight and
narrow path.”

“Oh, Kid, don’t stick to the straight and narrow,” broke in Linda,
“there’s no scenery.”

Eileen laid down her fork and stared in white-lipped amazement at the
two girls, but she was utterly incapable of forgetting herself and
her neatly arranged plans to have the three cultivated and attractive
young men all to herself for the evening. She realized too, from the
satisfaction betrayed in the glances these men were exchanging among
each other, the ease with which they sat, and the gusto with which they
ate the food Katy was deftly serving them, that something was happening
which never had happened at the Strong table since she had presided as
its head, her sole endeavor having been to flatter her guests or to
extract flattery for herself from them.

“That is what makes this valley so adorable,” said Marian when at last
she could make herself heard. “It is neither straight nor narrow. The
wing of a white sea swallow never swept a lovelier curve on the breast
of the ocean than the line of this valley. My mother was the dearest
little woman, and she used to say that this valley was outlined by a
gracious gesture from the hand of God in the dawn of Creation.”

Peter Morrison deliberately turned in his chair, his eyes intent on
Marian’s earnest face.

“You almost make me want to say, in the language of an old hymn I used
to hear my mother sing, ‘Here will I set up my rest.’ With such a name
as Lilac Valley and with such a thought in the heart concerning it, I
scarcely feel that there is any use in looking further. How about it,
Henry? Doesn’t it sound conclusive to you?”

“It certainly does,” answered Henry Anderson, “and from what I could
see as we drove in, it looks as well as it sounds.”

Peter Morrison turned to his friend.

“Gilman,” he said, “you’re a lawyer; you should know the things I’d
like to. Are there desirable homesites still to be found in the valley,
and does the inflation of land at the present minute put it out of my
reach?”

“Well, that is on a par with the average question asked a lawyer,”
answered Gilman, “but part of it I can answer definitely and at once.
I think every acre of land suitable for garden or field cultivation is
taken. I doubt if there is much of the orchard land higher up remaining
and what there is would command a rather stiff price; but if you would
be content with some small plateau at the base of a mountain where you
could set any sort of a house and have—say two or three acres, mostly
of sage and boulders and greasewood and yucca around it——”

“Why in this world are you talking about stones and sage and
greasewood?” cried Linda. “Next thing they’ll be asking about mountain
lions and rattlesnakes.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Gilman, “I fear none of us has remembered to
present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist. She got her start from her
father who was one of the greatest nerve specialists the world ever
has known. She knows every inch of the mountains, the canyons and the
desert. She always says that she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe,
while her father hunted the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland.
What should I have said when describing a suitable homesite for Peter,
Linda?”

“You should have assumed that immediately, Peter,”—Linda lifted her
eyes to Morrison’s face with a sparkle of gay challenge, and by way of
apology interjected—“I am only a kid, you know, so I may call John’s
friend Peter—you should have assumed that sage and greasewood would
simply have vanished from any home location chosen by Peter, leaving
it all lacy blue with lilac, and misty white with lemonade bush, and
lovely gold with monkey flower, and purple with lupin, and painted
blood red with broad strokes of Indian paint brush, and beautifully
lighted with feathery flames from Our Lord’s Candles, and perfumy as
altar incense with wild almond.”

“Oh, my soul,” said Peter Morrison. “Good people, I have located. I
have come to stay. I would like three acres but I could exist with
two; an acre would seem an estate to me, and my ideas of a house,
Henry, are shriveling. I did have a dream of something that must have
been precious near a home. There might have been an evanescent hint of
flitting draperies and inexperienced feet in it, but for the sake of
living and working in such a location as Miss Linda describes, I would
gladly cut my residence to a workroom and a sleeping room and kitchen.”

“Won’t do,” said Linda. “A house is not a house in California without
a furnace and a bathroom. We are cold as blue blazes here when the sun
goes down and the salty fog creeps up from the sea, and the icy mist
rolls down from the mountains to chill our bones; and when it has not
rained for six months at a stretch, your own private swimming pool is
a comfort. This to add verisimilitude to what everyone else in Lilac
Valley is going to tell you.”

“I hadn’t thought I would need a fire,” said Peter, “and I was
depending on the ocean for my bath tub. 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 to-day
that infinitely superior lighting and heating and living facilities
could be installed at much less expense and far greater convenience,
don’t you think that one would want to change? Isn’t life a series of
changes? Mustn’t one be changing constantly to keep abreast of one’s
day and age?”

“Why, surely,” answered Gilman, “and no doubt therein lies at least
part of the answer to Anderson’s question.”

“And then,” added Marian, “things happen in families. Sometimes more
babies than they expect come to newly married people and they require
more room.”

“My goodness, yes!” broke in Linda. “Just look at Sylvia Townsend—twins
to begin with.”

“Linda!” breathed Eileen, aghast.

“So glad you like my name, dear,” murmured Linda sweetly.

“And then,” continued Marian, “changes come to other people as they
have to me. I can’t say that I had any fault to find with either the
comforts or the conveniences of Hawthorne House until Daddy and Mother
were swept from it at one cruel sweep; and after that it was nothing
to me but a haunted house, and I don’t feel that I can be blamed for
wanting to leave it. I will be glad to know that there are people
living in it who won’t see a big strong figure meditatively smoking
before the fireplace and a gray dove of a woman sitting on the arm
of his chair. I will be glad, if Fate is kind to me and people like
my houses, to come back to the valley when I can afford to and build
myself a home that has no past—a place, in fact, where I can furnish my
own ghost, and if I meet myself on the stairs then I won’t be shocked
by me.

“I don’t think there is a soul in the valley who blames you for selling
your home and going, Marian,” said Linda soberly. “I think it would be
foolish if you did not.”

The return to the living room brought no change. Eileen pouted while
Linda and Marian thoroughly enjoyed themselves and gave the guests a
most entertaining evening. So disgruntled was Eileen, when the young
men had gone, that she immediately went to her room, leaving Linda
and Marian to close the house and make their own arrangements for the
night. Whereupon Linda deliberately led Marian to the carefully dusted
and flower-garnished guest room and installed her with every comfort
and convenience that the house afforded. Then bringing her brushes from
her own room, she and Marian made themselves comfortable, visiting far
into the night.

“I wonder,” said Linda, “if Peter Morrison will go to a real estate man
in the morning and look over the locations remaining in Lilac Valley.”

“Yes, I think he will,” said Marian conclusively.

“It seems to me,” said Linda, “that we did a whole lot of talking about
homes to-night; which reminds me, Marian, in packing have you put in
your plans? Have you got your last draught 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 honour 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
whole-heartedly 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,
so resembling 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 war-path, 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 minute. 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 colourless 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 news-stand,” 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 colour 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 colour 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 coloured
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 odour 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 odour 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 favoured 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 colour to
the hills in the sunniest wild spots. The panicles of mahonia bloom
were showing their gold colour. 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 coloured 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 centre, so that from a distance the waxen
  torch takes on very much the appearance of a flaming candle. For
  this reason, in Mexico, where the plant flourishes in even greater
  abundance than in California, with the exquisite poetry common
  to the tongue and heart of the Spaniard, Yucca Whipplei has been
  commonly named “Our Lord’s Candle.” At the most delicate time of
  their growth these candlesticks were roasted and eaten by the
  Indians. Based upon this knowledge, I would recommend two dishes,
  almost equally delicious, which may be prepared from this plant.

  Take the most succulent young bloom stems when they have exactly
  the appearance of an asparagus head at its moment of delicious
  perfection. With a sharp knife, cut them in circles an inch in
  depth. Arrange these in a shallow porcelain baking dish, sprinkle
  with salt, dot them with butter, add enough water to keep them
  from sticking and burning. Bake until thoroughly tender. Use a
  pancake turner to slide the rings to a hot platter, and garnish
  with circles of hard-boiled egg. This you will find an extremely
  delicate and appetizing dish.

  The second recipe I would offer is to treat this vegetable
  precisely as you would creamed asparagus. Cut the stalks in
  six-inch lengths, quarter them to facilitate cooking and handling,
  and boil in salted water. Drain, arrange in a hot dish, and pour
  over a carefully made cream sauce. I might add that one stalk would
  furnish sufficient material for several families. This dish should
  be popular in southwestern states where the plant grows profusely;
  and to cultivate these plants for shipping to Eastern markets
  would be quite as feasible as the shipping of asparagus, rhubarb,
  artichokes, or lettuce.

  I have found both these dishes peculiarly appetizing, but I should
  be sorry if, in introducing Yucca as a food, I became instrumental
  in the extermination of this universal and wonderfully beautiful
  plant. For this reason I have hesitated about including Yucca among
  these articles; but when I see the bloom destroyed ruthlessly by
  thousands who cut it to decorate touring automobiles and fruit and
  vegetable stands beside the highways, who carry it from its native
  location and stick it in the parching sun of the seashore as a
  temporary shelter, I feel that the bloom stems might as well be
  used for food as to be so ruthlessly wasted.

  The plant is hardy in the extreme, growing in the most unfavourable
  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 pin-cushions 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 To-morrow 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 work table. 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 odour 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 de’ilish 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 to-day? 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.

“Hist, 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 the day?
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. To-day it gets a bath and a facial treatment, and
when I have thought up some way to meet my big problem, you’re going to
have a ride, Katy, that will quite uplift your soul. We’ll go scooting
through the canyons, and whizzing around the mountains, and roaring
along the beach, as slick as a white sea swallow.”

“Now, easy, lambie, easy,” said Katy. “Ye’re planning to speed that
thing before ye’ve got it off the jacks.”

“No, that was mere talk,” said Linda. “But, Katy, this is my great day.
I feel in my bones that I shall have enough money by night to get me
some new tires, which I must have before I can start out in safety.”

“Of course ye must, honey. I would just be tickled to pieces to let ye
have what ye need.”

Linda slid her hand across Katy’s lips and gathered her close in her
arms.

“You blessed old darling,” she said. “Of course you would, but I don’t
need it, Katy. I can sit on the floor to work, if I must, and instead
of taking the money from the billiard table to buy a work table, 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 mechanician. 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. To-day 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 to-morrow.”

Then she took the stairway at a bound, and ran to her room. In a very
short time she emerged, clad in a clean blouse and breeches’ her
climbing boots, her black hair freshly brushed and braided.

“I ought to have something,” said Linda, “to shade my eyes. The glare’s
hard on them facing the sun.”

Going down the hall she came to the storeroom, opened a drawer, and
picked out a fine black felt Alpine hat that had belonged to her
father. She carried it back to her room and, standing at the glass,
tried it on, pulling it down on one side, turning it up at the other,
and striking a deep cleft across the crown. She looked at herself
intently for a minute, and then she reached up and deliberately
loosened the hair at her temples.

“Not half bad, all things considered, Linda,” she said. “But, oh, how
you do need a tich of colour.”

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 colour 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 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 mechanician 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 colour 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 any one
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 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 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
mechanician. 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 colour in the boy’s cheeks.

“I did smoke an occasional cigarette,” he said lightly, “up to the day,
not a thousand years ago, when a very emphatic young lady who should
have known, insinuated that it was bad for the nerves, and going on
the presumption that she knew, I haven’t smoked a cigarette since and
I’m not going to until I find out whether I can do better work without
them.”

Linda folded napkins and packed away accessories thoughtfully. Then she
looked into the boy’s eyes.

“Now we reach the point of our being here together,” she said. “It’s
time to fight, and I am sorry we didn’t go at it gas and bomb the
minute we met. You’re so different from what I thought you were. If
anyone had told me a week ago that you would take off your coat and
mess with my automobile engine, or wear Katy’s apron and squeeze lemons
in our kitchen I would have looked him over for Daddy’s high sign of
hysteria, at least. It’s too bad to I have such a good time as I have
had this afternoon, and then end with a fight.”

“That’s nothing,” said Donald. “You couldn’t have had as good a time as
I have had. You’re like another boy. A fellow can be just a fellow with
you, and somehow you make everything you touch mean something it never
meant before. You have made me feel that I would be about twice the man
I am if I had spent the time I have wasted in plain jazzing around,
hunting Cotyledon or trap-door spiders’ nests.”

“I get you,” said Linda. “It’s the difference between a girl reared in
an atmosphere of georgette and rouge, and one who has grown up in the
canyons with the oaks and sycamores. One is natural and the other is
artificial. Most boys prefer the artificial.”

“I thought I did myself,” said Donald, “but to-day 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 colour so far in the
history of the world, but it is written in the Books that when the men
of colour 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 honourable 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
favour 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 egg-beaters 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, pother!” 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 coloured races. The thing is to get the boys and girls of to-day
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 humming bird 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 colour 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: “To-morrow 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 to-morrow 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 to-morrow, 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 colour, matching the stockings. Then she
hurried to one of the big dry-goods 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
gasolene 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 colour. 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 colours
in the High School to-day. 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 re-arranged
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 burs

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