start in life."

"Now, don't ye be going too far, lambie," cautioned Katy "Ye young
things make such an awful serious business of life these days. In your
scramble to wring artificial joy out of it you miss all the natural joy
the good God provided ye."

"It seems to me, Katy," said Linda slowly, "that you should put that
statement the other way round. It seems that life makes a mighty serious
business for us young things, and it seems to me that if we don't get
the right start and have a proper foundation life Is going to be spoiled
for us. One life is all I've got to live in this world, and I would
like it to be the interesting and the beautiful kind of life that Father
lived."

Linda dropped to a chair.

"Katy," she said, leaning forward and looking intently into the earnest
face of the woman before her, "Katy, I have been thinking an awful lot
lately. There is a question you could answer for me if you wanted to."

"Well, I don't see any raison," said Katy, "why I shouldn't answer ye
any question ye'd be asking me."

Linda's eyes narrowed as they did habitually in deep thought She was
looking past Katy down the sunlit spaces of the wild garden that was her
dearest possession, and then her eyes strayed higher to where the blue
walls that shut in Lilac Valley ranged their peaks against the sky.
"Katy," she said, scarcely above her breath, "was Mother like Eileen?"

Katy stiffened. Her red face paled slightly. She turned her back and
slowly slid into the oven the pie she was carrying. She closed the door
with more force than was necessary and then turned and deliberately
studied Linda from the top of her shining black head to the tip of her
shoe.

"Some," she said tersely.

"Yes, I know 'some'," said Linda, "but you know I was too young to pay
much attention, and Daddy managed always to make me so happy that I
never realized until he was gone that he not only had been my father but
my mother as well. You know what I mean, Katy."

"Yes," said Katy deliberately, "I know what ye mean, lambie, and I'll
tell ye the truth as far as I know it. She managed your father, she
pampered him, but she deceived him every day, just about little things.
She always made the household accounts bigger than they were, and used
the extra money for Miss Eileen and herself--things like that. I'm
thinkin' he never knew it. I'm thinking he loved her deeply and trusted
her complete. I know what ye're getting at. She was not enough like