第58章 Linda's Hearthstone(3)

out beside your desert garden and I come aven with him and I says to him: 'Them's the rare plants Miss Linda and her pa have been goin' to the deserts and the canyons, as long as he lived, to fetch in; and then Miss Linda went alone, and now the son of Judge Whiting, the biggest lawyer in Los Angeles, has begun goin'

with her. Ain't it the brightest, prettiest place?' I says to him. And he stood there lookin', and he says to me: 'No, Katy, that is a graveyard.' Now what in the name of raison was the man meanin' by that?"Linda stared at the hearth motto reflectively.

"A graveyard!" she repeated. "Well, if anything could come farther from a graveyard than that spot, I don't know how it would do it. I haven't the remotest notion what he meant. Why didn't you ask him?""Well, the truth is," said Katy, "that I proide myself on being able to kape me mouth shut when I should.""I'll leave to think over it," said Linda. "At present I have no more idea than you in what respect my desert garden could resemble a graveyard. Oh! yes, there's one thing I wanted to ask you, Katy. Has Eileen been around while this room was being altered?""She came in yesterday," answered Katy, "when the hammerin' and sawin' was goin' full blast.""What I wanted to find out'" said Linda, "was whether she had been here and seen this room or not, because if she hasn't and she wants to see it, now is her time. After I get things going here and these walls are covered with drying sketches this room is going to be strictly private. You see that you keep your key where nobody gets hold of it.""It's on a string round me neck this blessed minute," said Katy.

"I didn't see her come up here, but ye could be safe in bettin'

anything ye've got that she came."

"Yes, I imagine she did," said Linda. "She would be sufficiently curious that she would come to learn how much I have spent if she had no other interest in me."She looked at the fireplace reflectively.

"I wonder," she said, "what Eileen thought of that and I wonder if she noticed that little 'P. M.' tucked away down there in the corner.""Sure she did," said Katy. "She has got eyes like a cat. She can see more things in a shorter time than anybody I ever knew."So that evening at dinner Linda told Eileen that the improvements she had made for her convenience in the billiard room were finished, and asked her if she would like to see them.

"I can't imagine what you want to stick yourself off up there alone for," said Eileen. "I don't believe I am sufficiently interested in garret skylights and windows to climb up to look at them. What everybody in the neighborhood can see is that you have absolutely ruined the looks of the back part of the house.""Good gracious!" said Linda. "Have I? You know I never thought of that.""Of course! But all you've got to do is go on the cast lawn and take a look at that side and the back end of the house to see what you have done," said Eileen. "Undoubtedly you've cut the selling price of the house one thousand, at least. But it's exactly like you not to have thought of what chopping up the roof and the end of the house as you have done, would make it look like. You have got one of those single-track minds, Linda, that can think of only one thing at a time, and you never do think, when you start anything, of what the end is going to be.""Very likely there's a large amount of truth in that," said Linda soberly. "Perhaps I do get an idea and pursue it to the exclusion of everything else. It's an inheritance from Daddy, this concentrating with all my might on one thing at a time. But I am very sorry if I have disfigured the house.""What I want to know," said Eileen, "is how in this world, at present wages and cost of material, you're expecting to pay men for the work you have had done.""I can talk more understandingly about that," said Linda quietly, "day after tomorrow. I'll get home from school tomorrow as early as I can, and then we'll figure out our financial situation exactly."Eileen made no reply.