age and boulders and greasewood and yucca around it."

"Why in this world are you talking about stones and sage and
greasewood?" cried Linda. "Next thing they'll be asking about mountain
lions and rattlesnakes."

"I beg your pardon," said Gilman, "I fear none of us has remembered to
present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist. She got her start from her
father, who was one of the greatest nerve specialists the world ever
has known. She knows every inch of the mountains, the canyons and the
desert. She always says that she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe,
while her father hunted the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland.
What should I have said when describing a suitable homesite for Peter,
Linda?"

"You should have assumed that immediately, Peter,"--Linda lifted her
eyes to Morrison's face with a sparkle of gay challenge, and by way of
apology interjected--"I am only a kid, you know, so I may call John's
friend Peter--you should have assumed that sage and greasewood would
simply have vanished from any home location chosen by Peter, leaving it
all lacy blue with lilac, and misty white with lemonade bush, and lovely
gold with monkey flower, and purple with lupin, and painted blood red
with broad strokes of Indian paint brush, and beautifully lighted with
feathery flames from Our Lord's Candles, and perfumy as altar incense
with wild almond."

"Oh, my soul," said Peter Morrison. "Good people, I have located. I have
come to stay. I would like three acres but I could exist with two; an
acre would seem an estate to me, and my ideas of a house, Henry, are
shriveling. I did have a dream of something that must have been precious
near a home. There might have been an evanescent hint of flitting
draperies and inexperienced feet in it, but for the sake of living and
working in such a location as Miss Linda describes, I would gladly cut
my residence to a workroom and a sleeping room and kitchen."

"Won't do," said Linda. "A house is not a house in California without
a furnace and a bathroom. We are cold as blue blazes here when the sun
goes down and the salty fog creeps up from the sea, and the icy mist
rolls down from the mountains to chill our bones; and when it has not
rained for six months at a stretch, your own private swimming pool is
a comfort. This to add verisimilitude to what everyone else in Lilac
Valley is going to tell you."

"I hadn't thought I would need a fire," said Peter, "and I was depending
on the ocea