supper of baked
ham and beans and bread and butter and pickled onions and little nut
cakes, still warm from Katy's oven. She was going to take Katy with her
in order that she might see Peter Morrison's location and the house for
his dream lady, growing at the foot of the mountain like a gay orchid
homing on a forest tree. To Linda it was almost a miracle, the rapidity
with which a house could be erected in California. In a few weeks' time
she had seen a big cellar scooped out of the plateau, had seen it lined
and rising to foundation height above the surface in solid concrete,
faced outside with cracked boulders. She had seen a framework erected,
a rooftree set, and joists and rafters and beams swinging into place.
Fretworks of lead and iron pipe were running everywhere, and wires for
electricity. Soon shingles and flooring would be going into place, and
Peter said that when he had finished acrobatic performances on beams
and girders and really stepped out on solid floors where he might tread
without fear of breaking any of his legs, he would perform a Peacock
Dance all by himself.

"Peter, you sound like a centipede," said Linda.

"Dear child," said Peter, "when I enter my front door and get to the
back on two-inch footing, I positively feel that I have numerous legs,
and I ache almost as badly in the fear that I shall break the two I
have, as I should if they were really broken."

And then he added a few words on a subject of which he had not before
spoken to Linda.

"It was like that in France. When we really got into the heat of things
and the work was actually being done, we were not afraid: we were too
busy; we were 'supermen.' The time when we were all legs and arms and
head, and all of them were being blown away wholesale was when the
shells whined over while we had a rest hour and were trying to sleep,
or in the cold, dim dawn when we stumbled out stiff, hungry, and sleepy.
It's not the REAL THING when it's really occurring that gets one. It's
the devils of imagination tormenting the soul. There is only one thing
in this world can happen to me that is really going to be as bad as the
things I dream."

Linda looked down Lilac Valley, her eyes absently focusing on Katy
busily setting supper on a store box in front of the garage. Then she
looked at Peter.

"Mind telling?" she inquired lightly.

Peter looked at her speculatively.

"And would a man be telling his heart's best secret to a kid like you?"
h