s my guardian,
not yours. He'll be forced to do what the law says he must, and what
common decency tells him he must, no matter what his personal feelings
are; and I might as well tell you that your absence has done you no
good. You'd far better have come home, as you agreed to, and gone over
the books and made me a decent allowance, because in your absence John
came here to ask me where you were, and I know that he was anxious."

"He came here!" cried Eileen.

"Why, yes," said Linda. "Was it anything unusual? Hasn't he been coming
here ever since I can remember? Evidently you didn't keep him as well
posted this time as you usually do. He came here and asked for me."

"And I suppose," said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into her
white cheeks, "that you took pains to make things uncomfortable for me."

"I am very much afraid," said Linda, "that you are right. You have
made things uncomfortable for me ever since I can remember, for I can't
remember the time when you were not finding fault with me, putting me in
the wrong and getting me criticized and punished if you possibly could.
It was a fair understanding that you should be here, and you were not,
and I was seeing red about it; and just as John came in I found your
note in the living room and read it aloud.'

"Oh, well, there was nothing in that," said Eileen in a relieved tone.

"Nothing in the wording of it, no," said Linda, "but there was
everything in the intention back of it. Because you did not live up to
your tacit agreement, and because I had been on high tension for two or
three days, I lost my temper completely. I brought John Gilman up here
and showed him the suite of rooms in which you have done for yourself,
for four years. I gave him rather a thorough inventory of your dressing
table and drawers, and then I opened the closet door and called his
attention to the number and the quality of the garments hanging there.
The box underneath them I thought was a shoe box, but it didn't prove to
be exactly that; and for that I want to tell you, as I have already told
John, I am sorry. I wouldn't have done that if I had known what I was
doing."

"Is that all?" inquired Eileen, making a desperate effort at
self-control.

"Not quite," said Linda. "When I finished with your room, I took him
back and showed him mine in even greater detail than I showed him yours.
I thought the contrast would be more enlightening than anything either
one of us could say.