Her Father's Daughter Part 48

"Yes, like fun she will," said Donald roughly.

"Have you asked her whether she loves you?" inquired Mrs. Whiting.

"Oh, that 'love' business," said Donald, "it makes me tired! Linda and I never did any mushing around. We had things of some importance to talk about and to do."

A bit of pain in Mrs. Whiting's heart eased. It was difficult to keep her lips quiet and even.

"You haven't asked her to marry you, then?" she said soberly. "Oh good Lord," cried Donald, "'marry!' How could I marry anyone when I haven't even graduated from high school and with college and all that to come?"

"That is what I have been trying to tell you," said his mother evenly.

"I don't believe you have been thinking about marriage and I am absolutely certain that Linda has not, but she is going to be made to think about it long before you will be in such financial position that you dare. That is the reason I am suggesting that you think about these things seriously and question yourself as to whether you would be doing the fair thing by Linda if you tried to tie her up in an arrangement that would ask her to wait six or eight years yet before you would be ready."

"Well, I can get around faster than that," said Donald belligerently.

"Of course you can," agreed his mother. "I made that estimate fully a year too long. But even in seven years Linda could do an awful lot of waiting; and there are some very wonderful girls that will be coming up six or seven years from now here at home. You know that hereafter all the girls in the world are going to be very much more Linda's kind of girls than they have been heretofore. The girls who have lived through the war and who have been intimate with its sorrow and its suffering and its terrible results to humanity, are not going to be such heedless, thoughtless, not nearly such selfish, girls as the world has known in the decade just past. And there is going to be more outdoor life, more nature study. There are going to be stronger bodies, better food, better-cared-for young people; and every year educational advantages are going to be greater. If you can bring yourself to think about giving up the idea of there ever existing any extremely personal thing between you and Linda, I am very sure I could guarantee to introduce you to a girl who would be quite her counterpart, and undoubtedly we could meet one who would be handsomer."

Donald punched his pillow viciously.

"That's nice talk," he said, "and it may be true talk. But in the first place I wish that Peter Morrison would let my girl alone, and in the second place I don't care if there are a thousand just as nice girls or even better-looking girls than Linda, though any girl would be going some if she were nicer and better looking than Linda. But I am telling you that when my foot gets better I am going to Lilac Valley and tell him where to head in, and I'll punch his head if he doesn't do it promptly."

"Of course you will," said his mother rea.s.suringly; "and I'll go with you and we'll see to it that he attends strictly to his own affairs."

Donald burst out laughing, exactly as his mother in her heart had hoped that he would.

"Yes, I've got a hand-painted picture of myself starting to Lilac Valley to fight a man who is b.u.t.ting in with my girl, and taking my mother along to help me beat him up," he said.

Mrs. Whiting put her arms around her boy, kissed him tenderly, and smoothed his hair, and then turned out the lights and slipped from the room. But in the clear moonlight as she closed the door she could see that a boyish grin was twisting his lips, and she went down to tell the Judge that he need not worry. If his boy were irreparably hurt anywhere, it was in his foot.

CHAPTER x.x.xII. How the Wasp Built Her Nest

The following weeks were very happy for Linda. When the cast was removed from Donald's foot and it was found that a year or two of care would put him even on the athletic fields and the dancing floor again, she was greatly relieved.

She lacked words in which to express her joy that Marian was rapidly coming into happiness. She was so very busy with her school work, with doing all she could to help Donald with his, with her "Jane Meredith"

articles, with hunting and working out material for her book, that she never had many minutes at a time for introspection. When she did have a few she sometimes pondered deeply as to whether Marian had been altogether sincere in the last letter she had written her in their correspondence, but she was so delighted in the outcome that if she did at times have the same doubt in a fleeting form that had not been in the least fleeting with Peter Morrison, she dismissed it as rapidly as possible. When things were so very good as they were at that time, why try to improve them?

One evening as she came from school, thinking that she would take Katy for a short run in the Bear Cat before dinner, she noticed a red head prominent in the front yard as she neared home. When she turned in at the front walk and crossed the lawn she would have been willing to wager quite a sum that Katy had been crying.

"Why, old dear," said Linda, putting her arms around her, "if anything has gone wrong with you I will certainly take to the warpath, instanter.

I can't even imagine what could be troubling you." Linda lowered her voice. "Nothing has come up about Oka Sayye?"

Katy shook her head.

"I thought not," said Linda. "Judge Whiting promised me that what use he made of that should be man's business and exploited wholly for the sake of California and her people. He said we shouldn't be involved. I haven't been worried about it even, although I am willing to go upon the stand and tell the whole story if it will be any help toward putting right what is at present a great wrong to California."

"Yes, so would I," said Katy. "I'm not worryin' meself about the little baste any more than I would if it had been a mad dog foaming up that cliff at ye."

"Then what is it?" asked Linda. "Tell me this minute."

"I dunno what in the world you're going to think," said Katy "I dunno what in the world you're going to do."

Her face was so distressed that Linda's nimble brain flew to a conclusion. She tightened her arm across Katy's shoulder.

"By Jove, Katy!" she said breathlessly. "Is Eileen in the house?"

Katy nodded.

"Has she been to see John and made things right with him?"

Katy nodded again.

"He's in there with her waitin' for ye," she said.

It was a stunned Linda who slowly dropped her arm, stood erect, and lifted her head very high. She thought intently.

"You don't mean to tell me," she said, "that you have been CRYING over her?"

Katy held out both hands.

"Linda," she said, "she always was such a pretty thing, and her ma didn't raise her to have the sense of a peewee. If your pa had been let take her outdoors and grow her in the sun and the air, she would have been bigger and broader, an' there would have been the truth of G.o.d's sunshine an' the glory of His rain about her. Ye know, Linda, that she didn't ever have a common decent chance. It was curls that couldn't be shook out and a nose that da.s.sen't be sunburned and shoes that mustn't be scuffed and a dress that shouldn't be mussed, from the day she was born. Ye couldn't jist honest say she had ever had a FAIR chance, now could ye?"

"No," said Linda conclusively, "no, Katherine O'Donovan, you could not.

But what are we up against? Does she want to come back? Does she want to stay here again?"

"I think she would like to," said Katy. "You go in and see her for yourself, lambie, before ye come to any decision."

"You don't mean," said Linda in a marveling tone, "that she has been homesick, that she has come back to us because she would like to be with us again?"

"You go and see her for yourself; and if you don't say she is the worst beat out and the tiredest mortal that ye have ever seen you'll be surprisin' me. My G.o.d, Linda, they ain't nothin' in bein' rich if it can do to a girl what has been done to Eileen!"

"Oh, well," said Linda impatiently, "don't condemn all money because Eileen has not found happiness with it. The trouble has been that Eileen's only chance to be rich came to her through the wrong kind of people."

"Well, will ye jist tell me, then," said Katy, "how it happened that Eileen's ma was a sister to that great beef of a man, which same is hard on self-rayspectin' beef; pork would come nearer."

"Yes," said Linda, "I'll tell you. Eileen's mother had a big streak of the same coa.r.s.eness and the same vulgarity in HER nature, or she could not have reared Eileen as she did. She probably had been sent to school and had better advantages than the boy through a designing mother of her own. Her first husband must have been a man who greatly refined and educated her. We can't ever get away from the fact that Daddy believed in her and loved her."

"Yes," said Katy, "but he was a fooled man. She wasn't what we thought she was. Many's the time I've stood injustice about the accounts and household management because I wouldn't be wakin' him up to what he was bound to for life."

"That doesn't help us," said Linda. "I must go in and face them."

She handed her books to Katy, and went into the living room She concentrated on John Gilman first, and a wee qualm of disgust crept through her soul when she saw that after weeks of suffering he was once more ready to devote himself to Eileen. Linda marveled at the power a woman could hold over a man that would force him to compromise with his intellect, his education and environment. Then she turned her attention to Eileen, and the shock she received was informing. She studied her an instant incredulously, then she went to her and held out her hand.

"How do you do?" she said as cordially as was possible to her. "This is unexpected."

Her mind was working rapidly, yet she could not recall ever having seen a woman quite so beautiful as Eileen. She was very certain that the color on her cheeks was ebbing and rising with excitement; it was no longer so deep as to be stationary. She was very certain that her eyes had not been darkened as to lids or waxed as to lashes. Her hair was beautifully dressed in sweeping waves with scarcely any artificial work upon it. Her dress was extremely tasteful and very expensive. There was no simper on her lips, nothing superficial. She was only a tired, homesick girl. As Linda looked at her she understood why Katy had cried over her. She felt tears beginning to rise in her own heart. She put both arms protectingly around Eileen.

"Why, you poor little thing," she said wonderingly, "was it so d.a.m.n' bad as all that?"