"What Miss Linda says is true. As a nation, our people are pampering themselves and living for their own pleasures. They won't take the trouble or endure the pain required to bear and to rear children; and the day is rolling toward us, with every turn of the planet one day closer, when we are going to be outnumbered by a combination of peoples who can take our own tricks and beat us with them. We must pass along the good word that the one thing America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES ANDHEARTS BIG ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our grandfathers, when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child in the family, and if you didn't have a dozen you weren't doing your manifest duty.""Well, if that is the way you see the light, we must enlarge this house. As designed, it included every feminine convenience anyway. But when I build my house I am going to build it for myself.""Then don't talk any more about being my bug-catcher," said Linda promptly, "because when I build my house it's going to be a nest that will hold six at the very least. My heart is perfectly set on a brood of six."Linda was quite unaware that the two men were studying her closely, but if she had known what was going on in their minds she would have had nothing to regret, because both of them found her very attractive, and both of them were wondering how anything so superficial as Eileen could be of the same blood as Linda.
"Are we keeping you too late?" inquired Peter.
"No," said Linda, "I am as interested as I can be. Finish everything you want to do before we go. I hope you're going to let me come over often and watch you with your building. Maybe Ican get an idea for some things I want to do. Eileen and I have our house divided by a Mason and Dixon line. On her side is Mother's suite, the dining room, the living room and the front door. On mine there's the garage and the kitchen and Katy's bedroom and mine and the library and the billiard room. At the present minute I am interested in adapting the library to my requirements instead of Father's, and I am emptying the billiard room and furnishing it to make a workroom. I have a small talent with a brush and pencil, and I need some bare walls to tack my prints on to dry, and I need numerous places for all the things Iam always dragging in from the desert and the canyons; and since I have the Bear Cat running, what I have been doing in that line with a knapsack won't be worthy of mention.""How did it come," inquired Henry Anderson, "that you had that car jacked up so long?""Why, hasn't anybody told you," asked Linda, "about our day of the Black Shadow?""John Gilman wrote me when it happened," said Peter softly, "but I don't believe it has been mentioned before Henry. You tell him."Linda turned to Henry Anderson, and with trembling lips and paling cheeks, in a few brief sentences she gave him the details.
Then she said to Peter Morrison in a low voice: "And that is the why of Marian Thorne's white head. Anybody tell you that?""That white head puzzled me beyond anything I ever saw," he said.
"I meant to ask John about it. He used to talk to me and write to me often about her, and lately he hasn't; when I came I saw the reason, and so you see I felt reticent on the subject.""Well, there's nothing the matter with my tongue," said Linda.
"It's loose at both ends. Marian was an expert driver. She drove with the same calm judgment and precision and graceful skill that she does everything else, but the curve was steep and something in the brakes was defective. It broke with a snap and there was not a thing she could do. Enough was left of the remains of the car to prove that. Ten days afterward her head was almost as white as snow. Before that it was as dark as mine.
But her body is just as young and her heart is just as young and her face is even more beautiful. I do think that a white crown makes her lovelier than she was before. I have known Marian ever since I can remember, and I don't know one thing about her that Icould not look you straight in the eye and tell you all about.
There is not a subterfuge or an evasion or a small mean deceit in her soul. She is the brainiest woman and the biggest woman Iknow.""I haven't a doubt of it," said Peter Morrison. "And while you are talking about nice women, we met a mighty fine one at Riverside on Sunday. Her name is Mary Louise Whiting. Do you know her?""Not personally," said Linda. "I don't recall that I ever saw her. I know her brother, Donald. He is the high-school boy who is having the wrestle with the Jap.""I liked her too," said Henry Anderson. "And by the way, Miss Linda, haven't bug-catchers any reputation at all as nest builders? Is it true that among feathered creatures the hen builds the home?""No, it's not," said Linda promptly. "Male birds make a splendid record carrying nest material. What is true is that in the majority of cases the female does the building.""Well, what I am getting at," said Henry Anderson, "is this. Is there anything I can do to help you with that billiard room that you're going to convert to a workroom? What do you lack in it that you would like to have? Do you need more light or air, or a fireplace, or what? When you take us to the station, suppose you drive us past your house and give me a look at that room and let me think over it a day or two. I might be able to make some suggestion that would help you.""Now that is positively sweet of you," said Linda. "I never thought of such a thing as either comfort or convenience. Ithought I had to take that room as it stands and do the best Icould with it, but since you mention it, it's barely possible that more air might be agreeable and also more light, and if there could be a small fireplace built in front of the chimney where it goes up from the library fireplace, it certainly would be a comfort, and it would add something to the room that nothing else could.
