Buena Moza
As soon as Peter had left her Linda took her box of candy flowers and
several of her finest roses and went to Katy’s room. She found Katy
in a big rocking chair, her feet on a hassock, reading a story in
_Everybody’s home_. When her door opened and she saw her young mistress
framed in it she tossed the magazine aside and sprang to her feet, but
Linda made her resume her seat. The girl shortened the stems of the
roses and put them in a vase on Katy’s dresser.
“They may clash with your colouring a mite, Mother Machree,” she said,
“but by themselves they are very wonderful things, aren’t they?”
Linda went over, and drawing her dress aside, sat down on the hassock
and leaning against Katy’s knee she held up the box of candy flowers
for amazed and delighted inspection.
“Ah, the foine gintleman!” cried Katy. “Sure ’twas only a pape I had
when ye opened the box, an’ I didn’t know how rare them beauties railly
was.”
“Choose the one you like best,” said Linda.
But Katy would not touch the delicate things, so Linda selected a
brushy hollyhock for her and then sat at her knee again.
“Katherine O’Donovan,” she said solemnly, “it’s up to a couple of young
things such as we are, stranded on the shoals of the Pacific as we have
been, to put our heads together and take counsel. You’re a host, Katy,
and while I am taking care of you, I’ll be just delighted to have you
go on looking after your black sheep; but it’s going to be lonely, for
all that. After Eileen has taken her personal possessions, what do you
say to fixing up that room with the belongings that Marian kept, and
inviting her to make that suite her home until such time as she may
have a home of her own again?”
“Foine!” cried Katy. “I’d love to be havin’ her. I’d agree to take
orders from Miss Marian and to be takin’ care of her jist almost the
same as I do of ye, Miss Linda. The one thing I don’t like about it is
that it ain’t fair nor right to give aven Marian the best. Ye be takin’
that suite yourself, lambie, and give Miss Marian your room all fixed
up with her things, or, if ye want her nearer, give her the guest room
and make a guest room of yours.”
“I am willing to follow either of the latter suggestions for myself,”
said Linda; “it might be pleasant to be across the hall from Marian
where we could call back and forth to each other. I wouldn’t mind a
change as soon as I have time to get what I’d need to make the change.
I’ll take the guest room for mine, and you may call in a decorator and
have my room freshly done and the guest things moved into it.”
Katy looked belligerent. Linda reached up and touched the frowning
lines on her forehead.
“Brighten your lovely features with a smile, Katherine me dear,” she
said gaily. “Don’t be forgetting that this is our Day of Jubilee.
We are free—I hope we are free forever—from petty annoyances and
dissatisfactions and little, galling things that sear the soul and
bring out all the worst in human nature. I couldn’t do anything to
Eileen’s suite, not even if I resorted to tearing out partitions and
making it new from start to finish, that would eliminate Eileen from
it for me. If Marian will give me permission to move and install her
things in it, I think she can use it without any such feeling, but I
couldn’t. It’s agreed then, Katy, I am to write to Marian and extend to
her a welcome on your part as well as on mine?”
“That ye may, lambie,” said Katy heartily. “And, as the boss used to
be sabin’, just to make assurance doubly sure, if YoU would address it
for me I would be writing’ a bit of a line myself, conveying’ to her me
sentiments on the subject.”
“Oh, fine, Katy; Marian would be delighted!” cried Linda, springing up.
“And, Katy dear, it won’t make us feel any more like mourning for
Eileen when I tell you that it developed at the bank yesterday and
to-day, that since she has been managing household affairs she has
deposited in a separate account all the royalties from Father’s books.
I had thought the matter closed at the bank when this fund was added
to the remainder of the estate, the household expenses set aside to
Eileen, and the remainder divided equally between us. I didn’t get
the proof that she was not my sister until after I came home. I think
it means that I shall have to go back to the bank, have the matter
re-opened, and unless she can produce a will or something proving that
she is entitled to it, it seems to me that what remains of my father’s
estate is legally mine. Of course, if it develops that he has made any
special provision for her, she shall have it; otherwise, Katy, we’ll be
in a position to install you as housekeeper and put some light-footed,
capable young person under you for a step-saver in any direction you
want to use her. It means, too, that I shall be able to repay your loan
immediately and to do the things that I wanted to do about the house.”
“Now I ain’t in any hurry about that money, lambie,” said Katy; “and
you understand of course that the dress you’re wearing’ I am given’ ye.”
“Of course, old dear, and you should have seen Peter Morrison light up
and admire it. He thinks you have wonderful taste, Katy.”
Katy threw up both her hands.
“Oh, my Lord, lambie!” she cried, aghast. “Was you telling’ him that
the dress ye were wearin’ was a present from your old cook?”
“Why, certainly I was,” said Linda, wide eyed with astonishment.
“Why shouldn’t I? I was proud to. And now, old dear, before I go,
the biggest secret of all. I had a letter, Katy, from the editor of
_Everybody’s Home_, and people like our articles, Katy; they are
something now and folk are letting the editor know about it, and he
wants all I can send him. He likes the pictures I make; and, Katy, you
won’t believe it till I show you my little bank book, but for the three
already published with their illustrations he pays me five hundred
nice, long, smooth, beautifully decorated, paper dollars!”
“Judas praste!” cried Katy, her hands once more aloft. “Ye ain’t manin’
it, lambie?”
“Yes, I are,” laughed Linda. “I’ve got the money; and for each
succeeding three with their pictures I am to have that much more, and
when I finish—now steady yourself, Katy, because this is going to be a
shock—when I finish, blessed old dear heart, he is going to make them
into a book! That will be my job for this summer, and you shall help
me, and it will be a part of our great secret. Won’t it be the most
fun?”
“My soul!” said Katy. “You’re jist crazy. I don’t belave a word you’re
telling’ me.”
“But I can prove it, because I have the letter and the bank book,” said
Linda.
Katy threw her arms around the girl and kissed the top of her head and
cried over her and laughed at the same time and patted her and petted
her and ended by saying: “Oh, lambie, if only the master could be
knowin’ it.”
“But he does know, Katy,” said Linda.
She went to her room, removed the beautiful dress and, arranging it on
a hanger, left it in her closet. Slipping into an old dressing gown,
she ran to her workroom and wrote a letter to Marian from herself.
She tried not to tell Marian the big, vital thing that was throbbing
in her heart all day concerning her work, the great secret that meant
such a wonderful thing to her, the thing that was beating in her heart
and fluttering behind her lips like a bird trying to escape its cage;
but she could tell her in detail of Eileen’s undoubted removal to San
Francisco; she could tell her enough of the financial transactions of
the day to make her understand what had been happening in the past; and
she could tell of her latest interview with John Gilman. Once, as she
sat with her pen poised, thinking how to phrase a sentence, Linda said
to herself: “I wonder in my heart if he won’t try to come crawfishing
back to Marian now, and if he does, I wonder, oh, how I wonder, what
she will do.” Linda shut her lips very tight and stared up through her
skylight to the stars, as she was fast falling into a habit of doing
when she wanted inspiration.
“Well, I know one thing,” she said to the shining things above her,
“Marian will do as she sees fit, of course, but if it were I, and any
man had discarded me as John Gilman discarded Marian, in case he ever
wanted to pick me up again he would find I was not there. Much as I
plan in my heart for the home and the man and the little people that I
hope to have some day, I would give up all of them before I would be
discarded and re-sought like that; and knowing Marian as I do, I have
a conviction that she will feel the same way. From the things she is
writing about this Snow man I think it is highly probable that he may
awake some day to learn that he is not so deeply grieved but that he
would like to have Marian to comfort him in his loneliness; and as for
his little girl I don’t see where he could find a woman who would rear
her more judiciously and beautifully than Marian would.”
She finished her letter, sealed and stamped it, and then, taking out a
fresh sheet, she lettered in at the top of it, “Indian Potatoes” and
continued:
And very good potatoes they are. You will find these growing
everywhere throughout California, blooming from May to July, their
six long, slender, white petals shading to gold at the base,
grayish on the outside, a pollen-laden pistil upstanding, eight or
ten gold-clubbed stamens surrounding it, the slender brown stem
bearing a dozen or more of these delicate blooms, springing high
from a base of leaves sometimes nearly two feet long and an inch
broad, wave margined, spreading in a circle around it. In the soil
of the plains and the dry hillsides you will find an amazingly
large solid bulb, thickly enwrapped in a coat of brown fiber,
the long threads of which can be braided, their amazing strength
making them suitable for bow strings, lariats, or rope of any kind
that must needs be improvised for use at the moment. The bulbs
themselves have many uses. Crushed and rubbed up in water they make
a delightful cleansing lather. The extracted juice, when cooked
down, may be used as glue. Of the roasted bulbs effective poultices
for bruises and boils may be made. It was an Indian custom to dam a
small stream and throw in mashed Amole bulbs, the effect of which
was to stupefy the fish so that they could be picked out by hand;
all of which does not make it appear that the same bulb would serve
as an excellent substitute for a baked potato; but we must remember
how our grandmothers made starch from our potatoes, used them to
break in the new ironware, and to purify the lard; which goes to
prove that one vegetable may be valuable for many purposes. Amole,
whose ponderous scientific name is _Chlorógalum pomeridianum_, is
at its best for my purposes when all the chlorophyll from flower
and stem has been driven back to the bulb, and it lies ripe and
fully matured from late August until December.
Remove the fibrous cover down to the second or third layer
enclosing the bulb. These jackets are necessary as they keep the
bulbs from drying out and having a hard crust. Roast them exactly
as you would potatoes. When they can easily be pierced with a
silver fork remove from the oven, and serve immediately with any
course with which you would use baked potatoes.
“And gee, but they’re good!” commented Linda as she re-read what she
had written.
After that she turned her attention to drawing a hillside whitened
here and there with amole bloom showing in its purity against the warm
grayish-tan background. The waving green leaves ran among big rocks
and overlapped surrounding growth. At the right of her drawing Linda
sketched in a fine specimen of monkey flower, deepening the yellow
from the hearts of the amole lilies for the almost human little monkey
faces. On the left one giant specimen of amole, reared from a base of
exquisitely waving leaves, ran up the side of the drawing and broke
into an airy and graceful head of gold-hearted white lilies. For a long
time Linda sat with poised pencil, studying her foreground. What should
she introduce that would be most typical of the location and give her
the desired splash of contrasting colour that she used as a distinctive
touch in the foreground of all her drawings?
Her pencil flew busily a few minutes while she sketched in a flatly
growing bush of prickly phlox, setting the flower faces as closely
as the overlapped scales of a fish, setting them even as they grow
in nature; and when she resorted to the colour box she painted these
faces a wonderful pink that was not wild rose, not cerise, not lilac,
but it made one think of all of them. When she could make no further
improvement on this sketch, she carefully stretched it against the wall
and tacked it up to dry.
Afterward she cleared her mental decks of all the work she could think
of in order to have Saturday free, because Saturday was the day upon
which she found herself planning in the back of her mind throughout
the strenuous week, to save for riding the King’s Highway with Donald
Whiting. Several times she had met him on the walks or in the hallways,
and always he had stopped to speak with her and several times he had
referred to the high hope in which he waited for Saturday. Linda
already had held a consultation with Katy on the subject of the lunch
basket. That matter being satisfactorily arranged, there was nothing
for her to do but to double on her work so that Saturday would be free.
Friday evening Linda was called from the dinner table to the telephone.
She immediately recognized the voice inquiring for her as that of Judge
Whiting, and then she listened breathlessly while he said to her: “You
will recognize that there is very little I may say over a telephone
concerning a matter to which you brought my attention. I have a very
competent man looking into the matter thoroughly, and I find that
your fear is amply justified. Wherever you go or whatever you do, use
particular care. Don’t have anything to do with any stranger. Just use
what your judgment and common sense tell you is a reasonable degree of
caution in every direction, no matter how trivial. You understand?”
“I do,” said Linda promptly. “Would you prefer that we do not go on any
more Saturday trips at present?”
The length of time that the Judge waited to answer proved that he had
taken time to think.
“I can’t see,” he said finally, “that you would not be safer on such a
trip where you are moving about, where no one knows who you are, than
you would where you are commonly found.”
“All right then,” said Linda. “Ask the party we are considering and
he will tell you where he will be to-morrow. Thank you very much for
letting me know. If anything should occur, you will understand that it
was something quite out of my range of foresight.”
“I understand,” said the Judge.
With all care and many loving admonitions Katy assisted in the start
made early Saturday morning. The previous Saturday Linda had felt that
all nature along the road she planned to drive would be at its best,
but they had not gone far until she modified her decision. They were
slipping through mists of early morning, over level, carefully made
roads like pavilion floors. If any one objection could have been made,
it would have been that the mists of night were weighting too heavily
to earth the perfume from the blooming orchards and millions of flowers
in gardens and along the roadside. At that hour there were few cars
abroad. Linda was dressed in her outing suit of dark green. She had
removed her hat and slipped it on the seat beside her. She looked at
Donald, a whimsical expression on her most expressive young face.
“Please to ’scuse me,” she said lightly, “if I step on the gas a mite
while we have the road so much to ourselves and are so familiar with
it. Later, when we reach stranger country and have to share with
others, we’ll be forced to go slower.”
“Don’t stint your speed on account of me,” said Donald. “I am just
itching to know what Kitty can do.”
“All right, here’s your chance,” said Linda. “Hear her purr?”
She settled her body a trifle tensely, squared her shoulders, and
gripped the steering wheel. Then she increased the gas and let the
Bear-cat roll over the smooth road from Lilac Valley running south into
Los Angeles. At a speed that was near to flying as a non-professional
attains, the youngsters traveled that road. Their eyes were shining;
their blood was racing. Until the point where rougher roads and
approaching traffic forced them to go slower, they raced, and when they
slowed down they looked at each other and laughed in morning delight.
“I may not be very wise,” said Linda, “but didn’t I do the smartest
thing when I let Eileen have the touring car and saved the Bear-cat for
us?”
“Nothing short of inspiration,” said Donald. “The height of my ambition
is to own a Bear-cat. If Father makes any mention of anything I would
like particularly to have for a graduation present, I am cocked and
primed as to what I shall tell him.”
“You’d better save yourself a disappointment,” said Linda soberly.
“You will be starting to college this fall, and when you do you will
be gone nine months out of the year, and I am fairly sure your father
wouldn’t think shipping a Bear-cat back and forth a good investment, or
furnishing you one to take to school with you. He would fear you would
never make a grade that would be a credit to him if he did.”
“My!” laughed Donald, “you’ve got a long head on your shoulders!”
“When you’re thrown on your own for four of the longest, lonesomest
years of your life, you learn to think,” said Linda soberly.
She was touching the beginning of Los Angeles traffic. Later she was
on the open road again. The mists were thinning and lifting. The
perfume was not so heavy. The sheeted whiteness of the orange groves
was broken with the paler white of plum merging imperceptibly into the
delicate pink of apricot and the stronger pink of peach, and there were
deep green orchards of smooth waxen olive foliage and the lacy-leaved
walnuts. Then came the citrus orchards again, and all the way on
either hand running with them were almost uninterrupted miles of roses
of every colour and kind, and everywhere homes ranging from friendly
mansions, all written over in adorable flower colour with the happy
invitation “Come in and make yourself at home,” to tiny bungalows along
the wayside crying welcome to this gay pair of youngsters in greetings
fashioned from white and purple wisteria, gold bignonia, every rose
the world knows, and myriad brilliant annual and perennial flower
faces gathered from the circumference of the tropical globe and homing
enthusiastically on the King’s Highway. Sometimes Linda lifted her hand
from the wheel to wave a passing salute to a particularly appealing
flower picture. Sometimes she whistled a note or cried a greeting to a
mocking bird, a rosy finch, or a song sparrow.
“Look at the pie timber!” she cried to Donald, calling his attention
to a lawn almost covered with red-winged blackbirds. “Four hundred and
twenty might be baked in _that_ pie,” she laughed.
Then a subtle change began to creep over the world. The sun peered over
the mountains inquiringly, a timid young thing, as if she were asking
what degree of light and warmth they would like for the day. A new
brilliancy tinged every flower face in this light, a throbbing ecstasy
mellowed every bird note; the orchards dropped farther apart, meadows
filled with grazing cattle flashed past them, the earthy scent of
freshly turned fields mingled with flower perfume, and on their right
came drifting in a cool salt breath from the sea. At mid-forenoon, as
they neared Laguna, they ran past great hills, untouched since the days
when David cried: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence
cometh my help.” At one particularly beautiful range, draped with the
flowing emerald of spring, decorated with beds of gold poppy, set
with flowering madrona and manzanita, with the gold of yellow monkey
flower or the rich red of the related species, with specimens of lupin
growing in small trees, here and there adventurous streams singing
and flashing their unexpected way to the mother breast of the waiting
ocean very near to the road which at one surprising turn carried them
to the never-ending wonder of the troubled sea, they drove as slowly
as the Bear-cat would consent to travel, so that they might study
great boulders, huge as many of the buildings they had passed, their
faces scarred by the wrack of ages. Studying their ancient records
one could see that they had been familiar with the star that rested
over Bethlehem. On their faces had shone the same moon that opened the
highways journeying into Damascus. They had stood the storms that had
beaten upon the world since the days when the floods subsided, the
land lifted above the face of the waters in gigantic upheavals that
had ripped the surface of the globe from north to south and forced up
the hills, the foothills, and the mountains of the Coast Range. They
had been born then, they had first seen the light of day, in glowing,
molten, red-hot, high-piled streams of lava that had gushed forth in
that awful evolution of birth.
Sometimes Linda stopped the car, they left it, and climbed over the
faces of these mighty upheavals. Once Linda reached her hand to Donald
and cried, half laughingly, half in tense earnest: “Oh, kid, we have
got to hurry. Compared with the age of these, we’ve only a few minutes.
It’s all right to talk jestingly about ‘the crack of doom’ but you know
there really was a crack of doom, and right here is where it cracked
and spewed out the material that hardened into these very rocks. Beside
them I feel as a shrimp must feel beside a whale, and I feel that we
must hurry.”
“And so we must,” said Donald. “I’m hungry as Lucullus when he waited
for them to find enough peacock tongues to satisfy his appetite.”
“I wonder what brand of home-brew made him think of that,” said Linda.
“Well, you know,” said Donald, “the world was only a smallish place
then. They didn’t have to go far to find everything to which they had
access, and it must have been rather a decent time in which to live.
Awful lot of light and colour and music and unique entertainment.”
“You’re talking,” said Linda, “from the standpoint of the king or the
master. Suppose you had lived then and had been the slave.”
“There you go again,” said Donald, “throwing a brick into the most
delicate mechanism of my profound thought. You ought to be ashamed to
round me up with something scientific and materialistic every time I go
a-glimmering. Don’t you think this would be a fine place to have lunch?”
“You wait and see where we lunch to-day, and you will have the answer
to that,” said Linda, starting back to the Bear-cat.
A few miles farther on they followed the road around the frowning
menace of an overhanging rock and sped out directly to the panorama of
the sea. The sun was shining on it, but, as always round the Laguna
shore, the rip tide was working itself into undue fury. It came dashing
up on the ancient rocks until one could easily understand why a poet of
long ago wrote of sea horses. Some of the waves did suggest monstrous
white chargers racing madly to place their feet upon the solid rock.
Through the village, up the steep inclines, past placid lakes, past
waving yellow mustard beds, beside highways where the breastplate
of Mother Earth gleamed emerald and ruby against the background of
billions of tiny, shining diamonds of the iceplant, past the old
ostrich tree reproduced by etchers of note the world over, with
grinding brakes, sliding down the breathless declivity leading to the
shore, Linda stopped at last where the rock walls lifted sheer almost
to the sky. She led Donald to a huge circle carpeted with cerise sand
verbena, with pink and yellow iceplant bloom, with jewelled iceplant
foliage, with the running blue of the lovely sea daisy, with the white
and pink of the sea fig, where the walls were festooned with ferns,
lichens, studded all over with flaming Our Lord’s Candles, and strange,
uncanny, grotesque flower forms, almost human in their writhing turns
as they twisted around the rocks and slipped along clinging to the
sheer walls. Just where the vegetation met the white, sea-washed sand,
Linda spread the Indian blanket, and Donald brought the lunch box.
At their feet adventurous waves tore themselves to foam on the sharp
rocks. On their left they broke in booming spray, tearing and fretting
the base of cliffs that had stood impregnable through aeons of such
ceaseless attack and repulse.
“I wonder,” said Donald, “how it comes that I have lived all my life
in California, and to-day it seems to me that most of the worth-while
things I know about her I owe to you. When I go to college this winter
the things I shall be telling the boys will be how I could gain a
living, if I had to, on the desert, in Death Valley, from the walls
of Multiflores Canyon; and how the waves go to smash on the rocks of
Laguna, not to mention cactus fish hooks, mescal sticks, and brigand
beefsteak. It’s no wonder the artists of all the world come here
copying these pictures. It’s no wonder they build these bungalows and
live here for years, unsatisfied with their efforts to reproduce the
pictures of the Master Painter of them all.”
“I wonder,” said Linda, “if anybody is very easily satisfied. I wonder
to-day if Eileen is satisfied with being merely rich. I wonder if we
are satisfied to have this golden day together. I wonder if the white
swallows are satisfied with the sea. I wonder if those rocks are
satisfied and proud to stand impregnable against the constant torment
of the tide.”
“I wonder, oh, Lord, how I wonder,” broke in Donald, “about Katherine
O’Donovan’s lunch box. If you want a picture of per feet satisfaction,
Belinda beloved, lead me to it!”
“Thank heaven you’re mistaken,” she said; “they spared me the ‘Be’—.
It’s truly just ‘Linda.’”
“Well, I’m not sparing you the ‘Be—’,” said Donald, busy with the
fastenings of the lunch basket. “Did you hear where I used it?”
“Yes, child, and I like it heaps,” said Linda casually. “It’s fine to
have you like me. Awfully proud of myself.”
“You have two members of our family at your feet,” said Donald soberly
as he handed her packages from the box. “My dad is beginning to
discourse on you with such signs of intelligence that I am almost led
to believe, from some of his wildest outbursts, that he has had some
personal experience in some way.”
“And why not?” asked Linda lightly. “Haven’t I often told you that my
father constantly went on fishing and hunting trips, that he was a
great collector of botanical specimens, that he frequently took his
friends with him? You might ask your father if he does not recall me as
having fried fish and made coffee and rendered him camp service when I
was a slip of a thing in the dawn of my teens.”
“Well, he didn’t just mention it,” said Donald, “but I can easily see
how it might have been.”
After they had finished one of Katy’s inspired lunches, in which a
large part of the inspiration had been mental on Linda’s part and
executive on Katy’s, they climbed rock faces, skirted wave-beaten
promontories, and stood peering from overhanging cliffs dipping down
into the fathomless green sea, where the water boiled up in turbulent
fury. Linda pointed out the rocks upon which she would sit, if she were
a mermaid, to comb the seaweed from her hair. She could hear the sea
bells ringing in those menacing depths, but Donald’s ears were not so
finely tuned. At the top of one of the highest cliffs they climbed,
there grew a clump of slender pale green bushes, towering high above
their heads with exquisitely cut blue-green leaves, lance shaped and
slender. Donald looked at the fascinating growth appraisingly.
“Linda,” he said, “do you know that the slimness and the sheerness and
the audacious foothold and the beauty of that thing remind me of you?
It is covered all over with the delicate frost-bloom you taught me to
see upon fruit. I find it everywhere but you have never told me what it
is.”
Linda laughingly reached up and broke a spray of greenish-yellow
tubular flowers, curving out like clustered trumpets spilling melody
from their fluted throats.
“You will see it everywhere. You will find these flowers every month
of the year,” she said, “and I am particularly gladsome that this
plant reminds you of me. I love the bluish-green ‘bloom’ of its sheer
foliage. I love the music these flower trumpets make to me. I love the
way it has traveled, God knows how, all the way from the Argentine and
spread itself over our country wherever it is allowed footing. I am
glad that there is soothing in these dried leaves for those who require
it. I shall be delighted to set my seal on you with it. There are two
little Spanish words that it suggests to the Mexican—_Buena moza_—but
you shall find out for yourself what they mean.”
Encountering his father that night at his library door, Donald Whiting
said to him: “May I come in, Dad? I have something I must look up
before I sleep. Have you a Spanish lexicon, or no doubt you have this
in your head.”
“Well, I’ve a halting vocabulary,” said the Judge. “What’s your phrase?”
“Linda put this flower on me to-day,” said Donald, “and she said she
was pleased because I said the tall, slender bush it grew on reminded
me of her. She gave me the Spanish name, but I don’t know the exact
significance of the decoration I am wearing until I learn the meaning
of the phrase.”
“Try me on it,” said the Judge.
“‘_Buena moza_,’” quoted Donald.
The Judge threw back his head and laughed heartily.
“Son,” he said, “you should know that from the Latin you’re learning.
You should translate it instinctively. I couldn’t tell you exactly
whether a Spaniard would translate ‘_Buena_’ ‘fine’ or ‘good.’ Knowing
their high-falutin’ rendition of almost everything else I would take my
chance on ‘fine.’ Son, your phrase means ‘a fine girl.’”
Donald looked down at the flower in his buttonhole, and then he looked
straight at his father.
“And only the Lord knows, Dad,” he said soberly, “exactly how fine
Linda-girl is.”