ave an especial dinner to serve, and never in
the world can I manage if ye don't help me!"

"Why, who is coming now?" asked Linda, seating herself on the nearest
chair and beginning to unfasten her boots slowly.

"Well, first of all, there is Mr. Gilman, of course."

"'Of course,'" conceded Linda. "If he tried to get past our house,
Eileen is perfectly capable of setting it on fire to stop him. She's got
him 'vamped' properly."

"Oh I don't know that ye should say just that," said Katy "Eileen is a
mighty pretty girl, and she is SOME manager."

"You can stake your hilarious life she is," said Linda, viciously
kicking a boot to the center of the kitchen. "She can manage to go
downtown for lunch and be invited out to dinner thirteen times a week,
and leave us at home to eat bread and milk, bread heavily stressed.
She can manage to get every cent of the income from the property in her
fingers, and a great big girl like me has to go to high school looking
so tacky that even the boys are beginning to comment on it. Manage, I'll
say she can manage, not to mention managing to snake John Gilman right
out of Marian's fingers. I doubt if Marian fully realizes yet that she's
lost her man; and I happen to know that she just plain loved John!"

The second boot landed beside the first, then Linda picked them both up
and started toward the back hall.

"Honey, are ye too bad hurt to help me any?" asked Katy, as she passed
her.

"Of course not," said Linda. "Give me a few minutes to take a bath and
step into my clothes and then I'll be on the job."

With a black scowl on her face, Linda climbed the dingy back stairway
in her stocking-feet. At the head of the stairs she paused one minute,
glanced at the gloom of her end of the house, then she turned and walked
to the front of the hall where there were potted ferns, dainty white
curtains, and bright rugs. The door of the guest room stood open and she
could see that it was filled with fresh flowers and ready for occupancy.
The door of her sister's room was slightly ajar and she pushed it open
and stood looking inside. In her state of disarray she made a shocking
contrast to the flowerlike figure busy before a dressing table. Linda
was dark, narrow, rawboned, overgrown in height, and forthright of
disposition. Eileen was a tiny woman, delicately moulded, exquisitely
colored, and one of the most perfectly successful tendrils from the
original clinging vine in her intercourse with m