Her Father's Daughter Part 20

"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-b.u.t.ter 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 gla.s.ses, 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 subst.i.tute 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 Sat.u.r.days 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 Sat.u.r.day belongs to me anyway because I am born Sat.u.r.day's child."

"Well, hurrah for Sat.u.r.day! 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 Sat.u.r.day 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."

CHAPTER XV. Linda's Hearthstone

Early the following week Linda came from school one evening to find a load of sand and a heap of curiously marked stones beside the back door.

"Can it possibly be, Katy," she asked, "that those men are planning to begin work on my room so soon? I am scared out of almost seven of my five senses. I had no idea they would be ready to begin work until after I had my settlement with Eileen or was paid for the books."

"Don't ye be worried," said Katy. "There's more in me stocking than me leg, and you're as welcome to it as the desert is welcome to rain, an'

nadin' it 'most as bad."

"Anyway," said Linda, "it will surely take them long enough so that I can pay by the time they finish."

But Linda was not figuring that back of the projected improvements stood two men, each of whom had an extremely personal reason for greatly desiring to please her. Peter Morrison had secured a slab of sandstone.

He had located a marble cutter to whom he meant to carry it, and was spending much thought that he might have been using on an article in trying to hit upon exactly the right line or phrase to build in above Linda's fire--something that would convey to her in a few words a sense of friends.h.i.+p and beauty.

While Peter gazed at the unresponsive gray sandstone and wrote line after line which he immediately destroyed, Henry Anderson explored the mountain and came in, red faced and perspiring, from miles of climbing with a bright stone in each hand, or took the car to bring in small heaps too heavy to carry that he had collected near the roads. They were two men striving for the favor of the same girl. How Linda would have been amused had she understood the situation, or how Eileen would have been provoked, neither of the men knew nor did they care.

The workmen came after Linda left and went before her return. Having been cautioned to silence, Katy had not told her when work actually began; and so it happened that, going to her room one evening, she unlocked the door and stepped inside to face the completed fireplace.

The firebox was not very large but ample. The hearthstone was a big sheet of smooth gray sandstone. The sides and top were Henry's collection of brilliant boulders, carefully and artistically laid in blue mortar, and over the firebox was set Peter's slab of gray sandstone. On it were four deeply carved lines. The quaint Old English lettering was filled even to the surface with a red mortar, while the capitals were done in dull blue. The girl slowly read:

Voiceless stones, with Flame-tongues Preach Sermons struck from Nature's Lyre; Notes of Love and Trust and Hope Hourly sing in Linda's Fire.

In the firebox stood a squat pair of black andirons, showing age and usage. A rough eucalyptus log waited across them while the shavings from the placing of the mantel and the cutting of the windows were tucked beneath it. Linda stood absorbed a minute. She looked at the skylight, flooding the room with the light she so needed coming from the right angle. She went over to the new window that gave her a view of the length of the valley she loved and a most essential draft. When she turned back to the fireplace her hands were trembling.

"Now isn't that too lovely of them?" she said softly. "Isn't that altogether wonderful? How I wish Daddy were here to sit beside my fire and share with me the work I hope to do here."

In order to come as close to him as possible she did the next best thing. She sat down at her table and wrote a long letter to Marian, telling her everything she could think of that would interest her.

Then she re-read with extreme care the letter she had found at the Post Office that day in reply to the one she had written Marian purporting to come from an admirer. Writing slowly and thinking deeply, she answered it. She tried to imagine that she was Peter Morrison and she tried to say the things in that letter that she thought Peter would say in the circ.u.mstances, because she felt sure that Marian would be entertained by such things as Peter would say. When she finished, she read it over carefully, and then copied it with equal care on the typewriter, which she had removed to her workroom.