a location John
Gilman blamed himself for not having found first. Certainly nature had
here grown and walled a dream garden in which to set a house of dreams.
So, past midnight, Gilman stood in the sunshine, looking at the face of
the girl he had asked to marry him and who had said that she would;
and a small doubt crept into his heart, and a feeling that perhaps life
might be different for him if Peter Morrison decided to come to Lilac
Valley to build his home. Then the sunlight faded, night closed in, but
as he went his homeward way John Gilman was thinking, thinking deeply
and not at all happily.

CHAPTER VIII. The Bear Cat

"Friday's child is loving and giving,
But Saturday's child must work for a living,"

Linda was chanting happily as she entered the kitchen early Saturday
morning.

"Katy, me blessing," she said gaily, "did I ever point out to you the
interesting fact that I was born on Saturday? And a devilish piece of
luck it was, for I have been hustling ever since. It's bad enough to
have been born on Monday and spoiled wash day, but I call Saturday the
vanishing point, the end of the extreme limit."

Katy laughed, and, as always, turned adoring eyes on Linda.

"I am not needing ye, lambie," she said. "Is it big business in the
canyon ye're having today? Shall I be ready to be cooking up one of them
God-forsaken Red Indian messes for ye when ye come back?"

Linda held up a warning finger.

"Hiss, Katy," she said. "That is a dark secret. Don't you be forgetting
yourself and saying anything like that before anyone, or I would be
ruined entirely."

"Well, I did think when ye began it," said Katy, "that of all the wild
foolishness ye and your pa had ever gone through with, that was the
worst, but that last mess ye worked out was so tasty to the tongue that
I thought of it a lot, and I'm kind o' hankering for more."

Linda caught Katy and swung her around the kitchen in a wild war dance.
Her gayest laugh bubbled clear from the joy peak of her soul.

"Katy," she said, "if you had lain awake all night trying to say
something that would particularly please me, you couldn't have done
better. That was a quaint little phrase and a true little phrase, and
I know a little spot that it will fit exactly. What am I doing today?
Well, several things, Katy. First, anything you need about the house.
Next, I am going to empty the billiard room and sell some of the excess
furniture of the library, and