up my mind."

"It's not the least mite I'm blaming you, honey," said Katy.

"Ye've got to be such a big girl that it's only fair things in this
house should go a good deal different."

"Is Marian to be here?" asked Linda as she stood beside the stove
peering into pans and kettles.

"Miss Eileen didn't say," replied Katy.

Linda's eyes reddened suddenly. She slammed down a lid with vicious
emphasis.

"That is another deal Eileen's engineered," she said, "that is just
about as wrong as anything possibly can be. What makes me the maddest
about it is that John Gilman will let Eileen take him by the nose and
lead him around like a ringed calf. Where is his common sense? Where is
his perception? Where is his honor?"

"Now wait, dearie," said Katy soothingly, "wait. John Gilman is a mighty
fine man. Ye know how your father loved him and trusted him and gave
him charge of all his business affairs. Ye mustn't go so far as to be
insinuating that he is lacking in honor."

"No," said Linda, "that was not fair. I don't in the least know that he
ever ASKED Marian to marry him; but I do know that as long as he was a
struggling, threadbare young lawyer Marian was welcome to him, and they
had grand times together. The minute he won the big Bailey suit and came
into public notice and his practice increased until he was independent,
that minute Eileen began to take notice, and it looks to me now as if
she very nearly had him."

"And so far as I can see," said Katy, "Miss Marian is taking it without
a struggle. She is not lifting a finger or making a move to win him
back."

"Of course she isn't!" said Linda indignantly. "If she thought he
preferred some other girl to her, she would merely say: 'If John has
discovered that he likes Eileen the better, why, that is all right;
but there wouldn't be anything to prevent seeing Eileen take John from
hurting like the deuce. Did you ever lose a man you loved, Katy?"

"That I did not!" said Katy emphatically. "We didn't do any four or
five years' philanderin' to see if a man 'could make good' when I was a
youngster. When a girl and her laddie stood up to each other and looked
each other straight in the eye and had the great understanding, there
weren't no question of whether he could do for her what her father and
mither had been doing, nor of how much he had to earn before they would
be able to begin life together. They just caught hands and hot-footed it
to the praste and told him to