oyous!" said Linda. "I feel quite competent to manage the bread
question. We'll call that settled then. When I next cast an appraising
eye over my beloved valley, I shan't select the choicest spot in it for
Peter Morrison to write a book in; and I want to warn you people when
you go hunting to keep a mile away from Marian's plot. She has had her
location staked from childhood and has worked on her dream house until
she has it all ready to put the ice in the chest and scratch the match
for the living room fire-logs. The one thing she won't ever tell is
where her location is, but wherever it is, Peter Morrison, don't you
dare take it."

"I wouldn't for the world," said Peter Morrison gravely. "If Miss Thorne
will tell me even on which side of the valley her location lies, I will
agree to stay on the other side."

"Well there is one thing you can depend upon," said the irrepressible
Linda before Marian had time to speak. "It is sure to be on the sunny
side. Every living soul in California is looking for a place in the
sun."

"Then I will make a note of it," said Peter Morrison. "But isn't there
enough sun in all this lovely valley that I may have a place in it too?"

"You go straight ahead and select any location you like," said Marian.
"I give you the freedom of the valley. There's not one chance in ten
thousand that you would find or see anything attractive about the one
secluded spot I have always hoped I might some day own."

"This is not fooling, then?" asked Peter Morrison. "You truly have a
place selected where you would like to live?"

"She truly has the spot selected and she truly has the house on paper
and it truly is a house of dreams," said Linda. "I dream about it
myself. When she builds it and lives in it awhile and finds out all the
things that are wrong with it, then I am going to build one like it,
only I shall eliminate all the mistakes she has made."

"I have often wondered," said Henry Anderson, "if such a thing ever
happened as that people built a house and lived in it, say ten years,
and did not find one single thing about it that they would change if
they had it to build over again. I never have heard of such a case. Have
any of you?"

"I am sure no one has," said John Gilman meditatively, "and it's a queer
thing. I can't see why people don't plan a house the way they want it
before they build."

Marian turned to him--the same Marian he had fallen in love with when
they were children.

"