Saturday’s Child
Throughout the week Linda had worked as never during her life
previously, in order to save Saturday for Donald Whiting. She ran the
Bear-cat down to the garage and had it looked over once more to be sure
that everything was all right. Friday evening, on her way from school,
she stopped at a grocery where she knew Eileen kept an account, and for
the first time ordered a few groceries. These she carried home with
her, and explained to Katy what she wanted.
Katy fully realized that Linda was still her child, with no thought in
her mind save standing at the head of her classes, carrying on the work
she had begun with her father, keeping up her nature study, and getting
the best time she could out of life in the open as she had been taught
to do from her cradle.
Katy had not the slightest intention of opening her lips to say one
word that might put any idea into the head of her beloved child, but
she saw no reason why she herself should not harbor all the ideas she
pleased.
Whereupon, actuated by a combination of family pride, love, ambition in
her chosen profession, Katy made ready to see that on the morrow the
son of Frederick Whiting should be properly nourished on his outing
with Linda.
At six o’clock Saturday morning Linda ran the Bear-cat to the back
door, where she and Katy packed it. Before they had finished, Donald
Whiting came down the sidewalk, his cheeks flushed with the exercise of
walking, his eyes bright with anticipation, his cause forever won—in
case he had a cause—with Katy, because she liked the wholesome, hearty
manner in which he greeted Linda, and she was dumbfounded when he held
out his hand to her and said laughingly: “Blessed among women, did you
put in a fine large consignment of orange punch?”
“No,” said Katy, “I’ll just tell ye flat-footed there ain’t going to be
any punch, but, young sir, you’re eshcortin’ a very capable young lady,
and don’t ye bewail the punch, because ye might be complimenting your
face with something ye would like a hape better.”
“Can’t be done, Katy,” cried Donald.
“Ye must have a poor opinion of us,” laughed Katy, “if ye are thinking
ye can get to the end of our limitations in one lunch. Fourteen years
me and Miss Linda’s been on this lunch-box stunt. Don’t ye be thinkin’
ye can exhaust us in any wan trip, or in any wan dozen.”
So they said good-bye to Katy and rolled past Eileen’s room on the way
to the desert. Eileen stood at the window watching them, and never had
her heart been so full of discontent and her soul the abiding place
of such envy or her mind so busy. Just when she had thought life was
going to yield her what she craved, she could not understand how or why
things should begin to go wrong.
As the Bear-cat traversed Lilac Valley, Linda was pointing out Peter
Morrison’s location. She was telling Donald Whiting where to find
Peter’s articles, and what a fine man he was, and that he had promised
to think how he could help with their plan to make of Donald a better
scholar than was Oka Sayye.
“Well, I call that mighty decent of a stranger,” said Donald.
“But he is scarcely more of a stranger than I am,” answered Linda. “He
is a writer. He is interested in humanity. It’s the business of every
man in this world to reach out and help every boy with whom he comes in
contact into the biggest, finest manhood possible. He only knows that
you’re a boy tackling a big job that means much to every white boy to
have you succeed with, and for that reason he’s just as interested as I
am. Maybe, when we come in this evening, I’ll run up to his place, and
you can talk it over with him. If your father helped you at one angle,
it’s altogether probable that Peter Morrison could help you at another.”
Donald Whiting rubbed his knee reflectively. He was sitting half turned
in the wide seat so that he might watch Linda’s hands and her face
while she drove.
“Well, that’s all right,” he said heartily. “You can write me down as
willing and anxious to take all the help I can get, for it’s going to
be no microscopic job, that I can tell you. One week has waked up the
Jap to the fact that there’s something doing, and he’s digging in and
has begun, the last day or two, to speak up in class and suggest things
himself. Since I’ve been studying him and watching him, I have come to
the conclusion that he is much older than I am. Something he said in
class yesterday made me think he had probably had the best schooling
Japan could give him before he came here. The next time you meet him
look for a suspicion of gray hairs around his ears. He’s too blamed
comprehensive for the average boy of my age. You said the Japs were the
best imitators in the world and I have an idea in the back of my head
that before I get through with him, Oka Sayye is going to prove your
proposition.”
Linda nodded as she shot the Bear-cat across the street-car tracks and
headed toward the desert. The engine was purring softly as it warmed
up. The car was running smoothly. The sun of early morning was shining
on them through bracing, salt, cool air, and even in the valley the
larks were busy, and the mocking birds, and from every wayside bush the
rosy finches were singing. All the world was coming to the exquisite
bloom of a half-tropical country. Up from earth swept the heavy odors
of blooming citrus orchards, millions of roses, and the overpowering
sweetness of gardens and cultivated flowers; while down from the
mountains rolled the delicate breath of the misty blue lilac, the
pungent odour of California sage, and the spicy sweet of the lemonade
bush. They were two young things, free for the day, flying down a
perfect road, adventuring with Providence. They had only gone a few
miles when Donald Whiting took off his hat, stuffed it down beside him,
and threw back his head, shaking his hair to the wind in a gesture
so soon to become familiar to Linda. She glanced across at him and
found him looking at her. A smile broke over her lips. One of her most
spontaneous laughs bubbled up in her throat.
“Topping, isn’t it!” she cried gaily.
“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” answered Donald Whiting
instantly. “Our car is a mighty good one and Dad isn’t mean about
letting me drive it. I can take it frequently and can have plenty of
gas and take my crowd; but lordy, I don’t believe there’s a boy or girl
living that doesn’t just positively groan when they see one of these
little gray Bear-cats go loping past. And I never even had a ride in
one before. I can’t get over the fact that it’s yours. It wouldn’t seem
so funny if it belonged to one of the fellows.”
With steady hand and gradually increasing speed, Linda put the Bear-cat
over the roads of early morning. Sometimes she stopped in the shade of
pepper, eucalyptus, or palm, where the larks were specializing in their
age-old offertory. And then again they went racing until they reached
the real desert. Linda ran the car under the shade of a tall clump of
bloom-whitened alders. She took off her hat, loosened the hair at her
temples, and looked out across the long morning stretch of desert.
“It’s just beginning to be good,” she said. She began pointing with
her slender hand. “That gleam you see over there is the gold of a
small clump of early poppies. The purple beyond it is lupin. All these
exquisite colours on the floor are birds’-eyes and baby blue eyes, and
the misty white here and there is forget-me-not. It won’t be long til
thousands and thousands of yucca plants will light their torches all
over the desert and all the alders show their lacy mist. Of course
you know how exquisitely the Spaniards named the yucca ‘Our Lord’s
Candles.’ Isn’t that the prettiest name for a flower, and isn’t it the
prettiest thought?”
“It certainly is,” answered Donald.
“Had any experience with the desert?” Linda asked lightly.
“Hunted sage hens some,” answered Donald.
“Oh, well, that’ll be all right,” said Linda. “I wondered if you’d go
murdering yourself like a tenderfoot.”
“What’s the use of all this artillery?” inquired Donald as he stepped
from the car.
“Better put on your hat. You’re taller than most of the bushes; you’ll
find slight shade,” cautioned Linda. “The use is purely a matter
of self-protection. The desert has got such a de’il of a fight for
existence, without shade and practically without water, that it can’t
afford to take any other chance of extermination, and so it protects
itself with needles here and spears there and sabers at other places
and roots that strike down to China everywhere. First thing we are
going to get is some soap.”
“Great hat!” exclaimed Donald. “If you wanted soap why didn’t you bring
some?”
“For all you know,” laughed Linda, “I may be going to education you up
a little. Dare you to tell me how many kinds of soap I can find to-day
that the Indians used, and where I can find it.”
“Couldn’t tell you one to save my life,” said Donald.
“And born and reared within a few miles of the desert!” scoffed Linda.
“Nice Indian you’d make. We take our choice to-day between finding
deer-brush and digging for amole, because the mock oranges aren’t ripe
enough to be nice and soapy yet. I’ve got the deer-brush spotted, and
we’ll pass an amole before we go very far. Look for a wavy blue-green
leaf like a wide blade of grass and coming up like a lily.”
So together they went to the deer-brush and gathered a bunch of flowers
that Linda bound together with some wiry desert grass and fastened to
her belt. It was not long before Donald spied an amole, and having
found one, discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way
past thorns and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they
reached a huge barrel cactus that she had located with the glasses.
Beside this bristling monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for
the axe, which Donald handed to her. She drew it lightly across the
armor protecting the plant.
“Short of Victrola needles?” she inquired. “Because if you are, these
make excellent ones. A lot more singing quality to them than the steel
needles, not nearly so metallic.”
“Well, I am surely going to try that,” said Donald. “Never heard of
such a thing.”
Linda chopped off a section of plant. Then she picked one of the knives
from the bucket and handed it to him.
“All right, you get what you want,” she said, “while I operate on the
barrel.”
She set her feet firmly in the sand, swung the axe, and with a couple
of deft strokes sliced off the top of the huge plant, and from the
heart of it lifted up half a bucketful of the juicy interior, with her
dipper.
“If we didn’t have drink, here is where we would get it, and mighty
good it is,” she said, pushing down with the dipper until she formed
a small pool in the heart of the plant which rapidly filled. “Have a
taste.”
“Jove, that is good!” said Donald. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Show you later,” laughed Linda. “Think I’ll take a sip myself.”
Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the car.
Once Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an extremely curious
little plant spreading over the ground, a tiny reddish vine with quaint
round leaves that looked as if a drop of white paint rimmed with maroon
had fallen on each of them.
“I never saw that before,” said Donald. “What are you going to do with
it?”
“Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite,” said Linda.
“That is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites you, score
each side of the wound with the cleanest, sharpest knife you have and
then bruise the plant and bind it on with your handkerchief, and forget
it.”
“Is that what you do?” inquired Donald.
“Why sure,” said Linda, “that is what I would do if a snake were so
ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn’t seem to be much of the
antagonistic element in my nature. I don’t go through the desert
exhaling the odour of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent or slip away
so silently that I never see them.”
“Now what on earth do you mean by that?” inquired Donald.
“Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he took me
to the mountains and the desert. If you are afraid, your system throws
off formic acid, and the animals need only the suspicion of a scent of
it to make them ready to fight. Any animal you encounter or even a bee,
recognizes it. One of the first things that I remember about Daddy was
seeing him sit on the running board of the runabout buckling up his
desert boots while he sang to me,
‘Let not your heart be troubled
Neither let it be afraid,’
as he got ready to take me on his back and go into the desert for our
first lesson; he told me that a man was perfectly safe in going to the
forest or the desert or anywhere he chose among any kind of animals
if he had sufficient self-control that no odour of fear emanated from
him. He said that a man was safe to make his way anywhere he wanted to
go, if he started his journey by recognizing a blood brotherhood with
anything living he would meet on the way; and I have heard Enos Mills
say that when he was snow inspector of Colorado he traveled the crest
of the Rockies from one end of the state to the other without a gun or
any means of self-defense.”
“Now, that is something new to think about,” said Donald.
“And it’s something that is very true,” said Linda. “I have seen it
work times without number. Father and I went quietly up the mountains,
through the canyons, across the desert, and we would never see a snake
of any kind, but repeatedly we would see men with guns and dogs out to
kill, to trespass on the rights of the wild, and they would be hunting
for sticks and clubs and firing their guns where we had passed never
thinking of lurking danger. If you start out in accord, at one with
Nature, you’re quite as safe as you are at home, sometimes more so. But
if you start out to stir up a fight, the occasion is very rare on which
you can’t succeed.”
“And that reminds me,” said Donald, with a laugh, “that a week ago I
came to start a fight with you. What has become of that fight we were
going to have, anyway?”
“You can search me,” laughed Linda, throwing out her hands in a
graceful gesture. “There’s not a scrap of fight in my system concerning
you, but if Oka Sayye were having a fight with you and I were anywhere
around, you’d have one friend who would help you to handle the Jap.”
Donald looked at Linda thoughtfully.
“By the great hocus-pocus,” he said, “you know, I believe you! If two
fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I know would
quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would stand by and help
a fellow if he needed it.”
“That I surely would,” said Linda; “but don’t you say ‘most of the
girls I know’ and then make a statement like that concerning girls,
because you prove that you don’t know them at all. A few years ago, I
very distinctly recall how angry many women were at this line in one of
Kipling’s poems:
The female of the species is more deadly than the male,
and there was nothing to it save that a great poet was trying to pay
womanhood everywhere the finest compliment he knew how. He always has
been fundamental in his process of thought. He gets right back to the
heart of primal things. When he wrote that line he was not really
thinking that there was a nasty poison in the heart of a woman or death
in her hands. What he was thinking was that in the jungle the female
lion or tiger or jaguar must go and find a particularly secluded cave
and bear her young and raise them to be quite active kittens before
she leads them out, because there is danger of the bloodthirsty father
eating them when they are tiny and helpless. And if perchance a male
finds the cave of his mate and her tiny young and enters it to do
mischief, then there is no recorded instance I know of in which the
female, fighting in defense of her young, has not been ‘more deadly
than the male.’ And that is the origin of the much-discussed line
concerning the female of the species, and it holds good fairly well
down the line of the wild. It’s even true among such tiny things as
guinea pigs and canary birds. There is a mother element in the heart of
every girl. Daddy used to say that half the women in the world married
the men they did because they wanted to mother them. You can’t tell
what is in a woman’s heart by looking at her. You must bring her face
to face with an emergency before you can say what she’ll do, but I
would be perfectly willing to stake my life on this: There is scarcely
a girl you know who would see you getting the worst of a fight, say
with Oka Sayye, or someone who meant to kill you or injure you, who
would not pick up the first weapon she could lay her hands on, whether
it was an axe or a stick or a stone, and go to your defense, and if she
had nothing else to fight with, I have heard of women who put up rather
a tidy battle with their claws. Sounds primitive, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds true,” said Donald reflectively. “I see, young lady, where
one is going to have to measure his words and think before he talks to
you.”
“Pretty thought!” said Linda lightly. “We’ll have a great time if you
must stop to consider every word before you say it.”
“Well, anyway,” said Donald, “when are we going to have that fight
which was the purpose of our coming together?”
“Why, we’re not ever going to have it,” answered Linda. “I have got
nothing in this world to fight with you about since you’re doing your
level best to beat Oka Sayye. I have watched your head above the
remainder of your class for three years and wanted to fight with you on
that point.”
“Now that’s a queer thing,” said Donald, “because I have watched you
for three years and wanted to fight with you about your drygoods, and
now since I’ve known you only such a short while, I don’t care two
whoops what you wear. It’s a matter of perfect indifference to me. You
can wear French heels or baby pumps, or go barefoot. You would still be
you.”
“Is it a truce?” asked Linda.
“No, ma’am,” said Donald, “it’s not a truce. That implies war and we
haven’t fought. It’s not armed neutrality; it’s not even watchful
waiting. It’s my friend, Linda Strong. Me for her and her for me, if
you say so.”
He reached out his hand. Linda laid hers in it, and looking into his
eyes, she said: “That is a compact. We’ll test this friendship business
and see what there is to it. Now come on; let’s run for the canyon.”
It was only a short time until the Bear-cat followed its trail of
the previous Saturday, and, rushing across the stream, stopped at
its former resting place, while Linda and Donald sat looking at the
sheer-walled little room before them.
“I can see,” said Linda, “a stronger tinge in the green. There are more
flowers in the carpet. There is more melody in the birds’ song. We are
going to have a better time than we had last Saturday. First let’s fix
up our old furnace, because we must have a fire to-day.”
So they left the car, and under Linda’s direction they reconstructed
the old fireplace at which the girl and her father had cooked when
botanizing in Multiflores. In a corner secluded from wind, using the
wall of the canyon for a back wall, big boulders the right distance
apart on each side, and small stones for chinking, Linda superintended
the rebuilding of the fireplace.
She unpacked the lunch box, set the table, and when she had everything
in readiness she covered the table, and taking a package, she carried
it on a couple of aluminium pie pans to where her fire was burning
crisply. With a small field axe she chopped a couple of small green
branches, pointed them to her liking, and peeled them. Then she made
a poker from one of the saplings they had used to move the rocks, and
beat down her fire until she had a bright bed of deep coals. When these
were arranged exactly to her satisfaction, she pulled some sprays of
deer weed bloom from her bundle and, going down to the creek, made
a lather and carefully washed her hands, tucking the towel she used
in drying them through her belt. Then she came back to the fire and,
sitting down beside it, opened the package and began her operations.
On the long, slender sticks she strung a piece of tenderloin beef,
about three inches in circumference and one fourth of an inch in
thickness, then half a slice of bacon, and then a slice of onion. This
she repeated until her skewer would bear no more weight. Then she
laid it across the rocks walling her fire, occasionally turning it
while she filled the second skewer. Then she brought from the car the
bucket of pulp she had taken from the barrel cactus, transferred it
to a piece of cheesecloth and deftly extracted the juice. To this she
added the contents of a thermos bottle containing a pint of sugar that
had been brought to the boiling point with a pint of water and poured
over some chopped spearmint to which had been added the juice of half
a dozen lemons and three or four oranges. From a small, metal-lined
compartment, Linda took a chunk of ice and dropped it into this mixture.
She was sitting on the ground, one foot doubled under her, the other
extended. She had taken off her hat; the wind and the bushes had
roughened her hair. Exercise had brought deep red to her cheeks and
her lips. Happiness had brought a mellow glow to her dark eyes. She
had turned back her sleeves, and her slender hands were fascinatingly
graceful in their deft handling of everything she touched. They were
a second edition of the hands with which Alexander Strong had felt
out defective nerve systems and made delicate muscular adjustments.
She was wholly absorbed in what she was doing. Sitting on the blanket
across from her Donald Whiting was wholly absorbed in her and he was
thinking. He was planning how he could please her, how he could earn
her friendship. He was admitting to himself that he had very little,
if anything, to show for hours of time that he had spent in dancing,
at card games, beach picnics, and races. All these things had been
amusing. But he had nothing to show for the time he had spent or the
money he had wasted. Nothing had happened that in any way equipped
him for his battle with Oka Sayye. Conversely, this girl, whom he had
resented, whom he had criticized, who had claimed his notice only by
her radical difference from the other girls, had managed, during the
few minutes he had first talked with her in the hall, to wound his
pride, to spur his ambition, to start him on a course that must end
in lasting and material benefit to him even if he failed in making
a higher record of scholarship than Oka Sayye. It was very certain
that the exercise he was giving his brain must be beneficial. He had
learned many things that were intensely interesting to him and he had
not even touched the surface of what he could see that she had been
taught by her father or had learned through experience and personal
investigation. She had been coming to the mountains and the canyons
alone, for four years doing by herself what she would have done under
her father’s supervision had he lived. That argued for steadfastness
and strength of character. She would not utter one word of flattery.
She would say nothing she did not mean. Watching her intently, Donald
Whiting thought of all these things. He thought of what she had said
about fighting for him, and he wondered if it really was true that
any girl he knew would fight for him. He hardly believed it when
he remembered some of his friends, so entirely devoted to personal
adornment and personal gratification. But Linda had said that all
women were alike in their hearts. She knew about other things. She
must know about this. Maybe all women would fight for their young or
for their men, but he knew of no other girl who could drive a Bear-cat
with the precision and skill with which Linda drove. He knew no other
girl who was master of the secrets of the desert and the canyons
and the mountains. Certainly he knew no other girl who would tug at
great boulders and build a fireplace and risk burning her fingers and
scorching her face to prepare a meal for him. So he watched Linda and
so he thought.
At first he thought she was the finest pal a boy ever had, and then he
thought how he meant to work to earn and keep her friendship; and then,
as the fire reddened Linda’s cheeks and she made running comments while
she deftly turned her skewers of brigand beefsteak, food that half the
Boy Scouts in the country had been eating for four years, there came an
idea with which he dallied until it grew into a luring vision.
“Linda,” he asked suddenly, “do you know that one of these days you’re
going to be a beautiful woman?”
Linda turned her skewers with intense absorption. At first he almost
thought she had not heard him, but at last she said quietly: “Do you
really think that is possible, Donald?”
“You’re lovely right now!” answered the boy promptly.
“For goodness’ sake, have an eye single to your record for truth and
veracity,” said Linda. “Doesn’t this begin to smell zippy?”
“It certainly does,” said Donald. “It’s making me ravenous. But honest,
Linda, you _are_ a pretty girl.”
“Honest, your foot!” said Linda scornfully. “I am not a pretty girl.
I am lean and bony and I’ve got a beak where I should have a nose.
Speaking of pretty girls, my sister, Eileen, is a pretty girl. She is a
downright beautiful girl.”
“Yes,” said Donald, “she is, but she can’t hold a candle to you. How
did she look when she was your age?”
“I can’t remember Eileen,” said Linda, “when she was not exquisitely
dressed and thinking more about taking care of her shoes than anything
else in the world. I can’t remember her when she was not curled, and
even when she was a tiny thing Mother put a dust of powder on her nose.
She said her skin was so delicate that it could not bear the sun. She
never could run or play or motor much or do anything, because she
has always had to be saved for the sole purpose of being exquisitely
beautiful. Talk about lilies of the field, that’s what Eileen is! She
is an improvement on the original lily of the field—she’s a lily of the
drawing room. Me, now, I’m more of a Joshua tree.”
Donald Whiting laughed, as Linda intended that he should.
A minute afterward she slid the savory food from a skewer upon one of
the pie pans, tossed back the cover from the little table, stacked
some bread-and-butter sandwiches beside the meat and handed the pan to
Donald.
“Fall to,” she said, “and prove that you’re a man with an appreciative
tummy. Father used to be positively ravenous for this stuff. I like it
myself.”
She slid the food from the second skewer to a pan for herself, settled
the fire to her satisfaction and they began their meal. Presently she
filled a cup from the bucket beside her and handed it to Donald. At the
same time she lifted another for herself.
“Here’s to the barrel cactus,” she said. “May the desert grow enough
of them so that we’ll never lack one when we want to have a Saturday
picnic.”
Laughingly they drank this toast; and the skewers were filled a second
time. When they could eat no more they packed away the lunch things,
buried the fire, took the axe and the field glasses, and started on a
trip of exploration down the canyon. Together they admired delicate
and exquisite ferns growing around great gray boulders. Donald tasted
hunters’ rock leek, and learned that any he found while on a hunting
expedition would furnish a splendid substitute for water. Linda told
him of rare flowers she lacked and what they were like and how he would
be able to identify what she wanted in case he should ever find any
when he was out hunting or with his other friends. They peeped into
the nesting places of canyon wrens and doves and finches, and listened
to the exquisite courting songs of the birds whose hearts were almost
bursting with the exuberance of spring and the joy of home making. When
they were tired out they went back to the dining room and after resting
a time, they made a supper from the remnants of their dinner. When they
were seated in the car and Linda’s hand was on the steering wheel,
Donald reached across and covered it with his own.
“Wait a bit,” he said. “Before we leave here I want to ask you a
question and I want you to make me a promise.”
“All right,” said Linda. “What’s your question?”
“What is there,” said Donald, “that I can do that would give you such
pleasure as you have given me?”
Linda could jest on occasions, but by nature she was a serious person.
She looked at Donald reflectively.
“Why, I think,” she said at last, “that having a friend, having someone
who understands and who cares for the things I do, and who likes to go
to the same places and to do the same things, is the biggest thing that
has happened to me since I lost my father. I don’t see that you are in
any way in my debt, Donald.”
“All right then,” said the boy, “that brings me to the promise I want
you to make me. May we always have our Saturdays together like this?”
“Sure!” said Linda, “I would be mightily pleased. I’ll have to work
later at night and scheme, maybe. By good rights Saturday belongs to me
anyway because I am born Saturday’s child.”
“Well, hurrah for Saturday! It always was a grand old day,” said
Donald, “and since I see what it can do in turning out a girl like you,
I’ve got a better opinion of it than ever. We’ll call that settled.
I’ll always ask you on Friday at what hour to come, and hereafter
Saturday is ours.”
“Ours it is,” said Linda.
Then she put the Bear-cat through the creek and on the road and,
driving swiftly as she dared, ran to Lilac Valley and up to Peter
Morrison’s location.
She was amazed at the amount of work that had been accomplished. The
garage was finished. Peter’s temporary work desk and his cot were in
it. A number of his personal belongings were there. The site for his
house had been selected and the cellar was being excavated.
Linda descended from the Bear-cat and led Donald before Peter.
“Since you’re both my friends,” she said, “I want you to know each
other. This is Donald Whiting, the Senior I told you about, Mr.
Morrison. You know you said you would help him if you could.”
“Certainly,” said Peter. “I am very glad to know any friend of yours,
Miss Linda. Come over to my workroom and let’s hear about this.”
“Oh, go and talk it over between yourselves,” said Linda. “I am going
up here to have a private conversation with the spring. I want it to
tell me confidentially exactly the course it would enjoy running so
that when your house is finished and I come to lay out your grounds I
will know exactly how it feels about making a change.”
“Fine!” said Peter. “Take your time and become extremely confidential,
because the more I look at the location and the more I hear the gay
chuckling song that that water sings, the more I am in love with your
plan to run it across the lawn and bring it around the boulder.”
“It would be a downright sin not to have that water in a convenient
place for your children to play in, Peter,” said Linda.
“Then _that’s_ all settled,” said Peter. “Now, Whiting, come this way
and we’ll see whether I can suggest anything that will help you with
your problem.”
“Whistle when you are ready, Donald,” called Linda as she turned away.
Peter Morrison glanced after her a second, and then he led Donald
Whiting to a nail keg in the garage and impaled that youngster on
the mental point of a mental pin and studied him as carefully as any
scientist ever studied a rare specimen. When finally he let him go, his
mental comment was: “He’s a mighty fine kid. Linda is perfectly safe
with him.”