Her Father's Daughter Part 18

It was a new tone and a new question on nerves tensely strung.

"If you weren't blind you'd know without asking," retorted Eileen hotly.

"Then I am 'blind,' for I haven't the slightest notion. What have I done?"

"Isn't it just barely possible," asked Eileen, "that there might be other people who would annoy and exasperate me? I have not hinted that you have done anything, although I don't know that it's customary for a man calling on his betrothed to stop first for a visit with her sister."

"For the love of Mike!" said John Gilman. "Am I to be found fault with for crossing the lawn a minute to see how Linda's wild garden is coming on? I have dug and helped set enough of those plants to justify some interest in them as they grow."

"And the garden was your sole subject of conversation?" inquired Eileen, implied doubt conveyed nicely.

"No, it was not," answered Gilman, all the bulldog in his nature coming to the surface.

"As I knew perfectly," said Eileen. "I admit that I'm not feeling myself. Things began going wrong recently, and everything has gone wrong since. I think it all began with Marian Thorne's crazy idea of selling her home and going to the city to try to ape a man."

"Marian never tried to ape a man in her life," said John, instantly yielding to a sense of justice. "She is as strictly feminine as any woman I ever knew."

"Do you mean to say that you think studying architecture is a woman's work?" sneered Eileen.

"Yes, I do," said Gilman emphatically. "Women live in houses. They're in them nine tenths of the time to a man's one tenth. Next to rocking a cradle I don't know of any occupation in this world more distinctly feminine than the planning of comfortable homes for homekeeping people."

Eileen changed the subject swiftly. "What was Linda saying to you?" she asked.

"She was showing me a plant, a rare Echeveria of the Cotyledon family, that she tobogganed down one side of Multiflores Canyon and delivered safely on the roadway without its losing an appreciable amount of 'bloom' from its exquisitely painted leaves."

Eileen broke in rudely. "Linda has missed Marian. There's not a possible thing to make life uncomfortable for me that she is not doing. You needn't tell me you didn't see and understand her rude forwardness the other night!"

"No, I didn't see it," said John, "because the fact is I thought the kid was positively charming, and so did Peter and Henry because both of them said so. There's one thing you must take into consideration, Eileen. The time has come when she should have clothes and liberty and opportunity to shape her life according to her inclinations. Let me tell you she will attract attention in georgette and laces."

"And where are the georgette and laces to come from?" inquired Eileen sarcastically. "All outgo and no income for four years is leaving the Strong finances in mighty precarious shape, I can tell you."

"All right," said Gilman, "I'm financially comfortable now. I'm ready.

Say the word. We'll select our location and build our home, and let Linda have what there is of the Strong income till she is settled in life. You have pretty well had all of it for the past four years."

"Yes," said Eileen furiously, "I have 'pretty well' had it, in a few little dresses that I have altered myself and very frequently made entirely. I have done the best I could, s.h.i.+fting and skimping, and it's not accomplished anything that I have really wanted. According to men, the gas and the telephone and the electric light and the taxes and food and cook pay for themselves. All a woman ever spends money on is clothes!"

"Eileen," chuckled John Gilman, "this sounds exactly as if we were married, and we're not, yet."

"No," said Eileen, "thank heaven we're not. If it's come to the place where you're siding with everybody else against me, and where you're more interested in what my kid sister has to say to you than you are in me, I don't think we ever shall be."

Then, from stress of nerve tension and long practice, some big tears gushed up and threatened to overflow Eileen's lovely eyes. That never should happen, for tears are salt water and they cut little rivers through even the most carefully and skillfully constructed complexion, while Eileen's was looking its worst that evening. She hastily applied her handkerchief, and John Gilman took her into his arms; so the remainder of the evening it was as if they were not married. But when John returned to the subject of a home and begged Eileen to announce their engagement and let him begin work, she evaded him, and put him off, and had to have time to think, and she was not ready, and there were many excuses, for none of which Gilman could see any sufficient reason. When he left Eileen that night, it was with a heavy heart.

CHAPTER XIV. Sat.u.r.day's Child

Throughout the week Linda had worked as never during her life previously, in order to save Sat.u.r.day 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 cla.s.ses, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 antic.i.p.ation, 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 j.a.p 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s yesterday made me think he had probably had the best schooling j.a.pan 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 j.a.ps were the best imitators in the world and I have an idea in the back of my head that before I get through with him, Oka Sayye is going to prove your proposition."

Linda nodded as she shot the Bear Cat across the streetcar tracks and headed toward the desert. The engine was purring softly as it warmed up.

The car was running smoothly. The sun of early morning was s.h.i.+ning on them through bracing, salt, cool air, and even in the valley the larks were busy, and the mockingbirds, and from every wayside bush the rosy finches were singing. All the world was coming to the exquisite bloom of a half-tropical country. Up from earth swept the heavy odors of blooming citrus orchards, millions of roses, and the overpowering sweetness of gardens and cultivated flowers; while down from the mountains rolled the delicate breath of the misty blue lilac, the pungent odor of California sage, and the spicy sweet of the lemonade bush. They were two young things, free for the day, flying down a perfect road, adventuring with Providence. They had only gone a few miles when Donald Whiting took off his hat, stuffed it down beside him, and threw back his head, shaking his hair to the wind in a gesture so soon to become familiar to Linda.

She glanced across at him and found him looking at her. A smile broke over her lips. One of her most spontaneous laughs bubbled up in her throat.

"Topping, isn't it!" she cried gaily.

"It's the best thing that ever happened to me," answered Donald Whiting instantly. "Our car is a mighty good one and Dad isn't mean about letting me drive it. I can take it frequently and can have plenty of gas and take my crowd; but lordy, I don't believe there's a boy or girl living that doesn't just positively groan when they see one of these little gray Bear Cats go loping past. And I never even had a ride in one before. I can't get over the fact that it's yours. It wouldn't seem so funny if it belonged to one of the fellows."

With steady hand and gradually increasing speed, Linda put the Bear Cat over the roads of early morning. Sometimes she stopped in the shade of pepper, eucalyptus, or palm, where the larks were specializing in their age-old offertory. And then again they went racing until they reached the real desert. Linda ran the car under the shade of a tall clump of bloom-whitened alders. She took off her hat, loosened the hair at her temples, and looked out across the long morning stretch of desert.

"It's just beginning to be good," she said. She began pointing with her slender hand. "That gleam you see over there is the gold of a small clump of early poppies. The purple beyond it is lupin. All these exquisite colors on the floor are birds'-eyes and baby blue eyes, and the misty white here and there is forget-me-not. It won't be long til thousands and thousands of yucca plants will light their torches all over the desert and all the alders show their lacy mist. Of course you know how exquisitely the Spaniards named the yucca 'Our Lord's Candles.'

Isn't that the prettiest name for a flower, and isn't it the prettiest thought?"

"It certainly is," answered Donald.

"Had any experience with the desert?" Linda asked lightly.

"Hunted sage hens some," answered Donald.

"Oh, well, that'll be all right," said Linda. "I wondered if you'd go murdering yourself like a tenderfoot."

"What's the use of all this artillery?" inquired Donald as he stepped from the car.

"Better put on your hat. You're taller than most of the bushes; you'll find slight shade," cautioned Linda. "The use is purely a matter of self-protection. The desert has got such a devil of a fight for existence, without shade and practically without water, that it can't afford to take any other chance of extermination, and so it protects itself with needles here and spears there and sabers at other places and roots that strike down to China everywhere. First thing we are going to get is some soap."