Jane Meredith. She was
Linda Strong in the high school and for an hour or two at her studies.
She was Jane Meredith over the desert, through the canyons, beside the
sea, in her Multiflores kitchen or in Katherine O'Donovan's. But this
book offer opened a new train of thought, a new series of plans. She
could see her way--thanks to her father she had the material in her mind
and the art in her finger tips--to materialize what she felt would be
even more attractive in book form than anything her editor had been able
to visualize from her material. She knew herself, she knew her territory
so minutely. Frequently she smiled when she read statements in her
botanies as to where plants and vegetables could be found. She knew the
high home of the rare and precious snow plant. She knew the northern
limit of the strawberry cactus. She knew where the white sea swallow
nested. She knew where the Monarch butterfly went on his winter
migration. She knew where the trap-door spider, with cunning past
the cunning of any other architect of Nature, built his small, round,
silken-lined tower and hinged his trap door so cleverly that only he
could open it from the outside. She had even sat immovable and watched
him erect his house, and she would have given much to see him weave its
silver lining.

Linda was fast coming to the place where she felt herself to be one in
an interested group of fellow workers. She no longer gave a thought to
what kind of shoes she wore. Other girls were beginning to wear the
same kind. The legislatures of half a dozen states were passing
laws regulating the height of heel which might be worn within their
boundaries. Manufacturers were promising for the coming season that
suitable shoes would be built for street wear and mountain climbing, for
the sands of the sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of
canyons. The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the
extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down. A sane and sensible
wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country. Under the impetus of
Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and those of other
pupils to lead theirs a higher grade of scholarship was beginning to be
developed throughout the high school. Pupils were thinking less of what
they wore and how much amusement they could crowd in, and more about
making grades that would pass them with credit from year to year. The
horrors of the war and the disorders following it ha