Lord ever made; but I ain't thought so much of
him of late as I did before."

"Same holds good for me," said Linda.

"I've studied this Peter," continued Katy, "like your pa used to study
things under his microscope. He's the most come-at-able man. He's got
such a kind of a questionin' look on his face, and there's a bit of a
stoop to his shoulders like they had been whittled out for carryin'
a load, and there's a kind of a whimsy quiverin' around his lips that
makes me heart stand still every time he speaks to me, because I can't
be certain whether he is going to make me laugh or going to make me cry,
and when what he's sayin' does come with that little slow drawl, I can't
be just sure whether he's meanin' it or whether he's jist pokin' fun
at me. He said the quarest thing to me the other day when he was here
fiddlin' over the makin' of this fireplace. He was standin' out beside
your desert garden and I come aven with him and I says to him: 'Them's
the rare plants Miss Linda and her pa have been goin' to the deserts and
the canyons, as long as he lived, to fetch in; and then Miss Linda
went alone, and now the son of Judge Whiting, the biggest lawyer in Los
Angeles, has begun goin' with her. Ain't it the brightest, prettiest
place?' I says to him. And he stood there lookin', and he says to me:
'No, Katy, that is a graveyard.' Now what in the name of raison was the
man meanin' by that?"

Linda stared at the hearth motto reflectively.

"A graveyard!" she repeated. "Well, if anything could come farther from
a graveyard than that spot, I don't know how it would do it. I haven't
the remotest notion what he meant. Why didn't you ask him?"

"Well, the truth is," said Katy, "that I proide myself on being able to
kape me mouth shut when I should."

"I'll leave to think over it," said Linda. "At present I have no
more idea than you in what respect my desert garden could resemble a
graveyard. Oh! yes, there's one thing I wanted to ask you, Katy. Has
Eileen been around while this room was being altered?"

"She came in yesterday," answered Katy, "when the hammerin' and sawin'
was goin' full blast."

"What I wanted to find out'" said Linda, "was whether she had been here
and seen this room or not, because if she hasn't and she wants to see
it, now is her time. After I get things going here and these walls are
covered with drying sketches this room is going to be strictly private.
You see that you keep your key where nobody