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 Eileen to make him unhappy with her. He might have been if he had known all there was to know, but for his own sake I was not the one to give her away, though she constantly made him think that I was extravagant and wasteful in me work.” Linda's eyes came back from the mountains and met Katy's straightly.
“Katy,” she said, “did you ever see sisters as different as Eileen and I are?”
“No, I don't think I ever did,” said Katy.
“It puzzles me,” said Linda slowly. “The more I think about it, the less I can understand why, if we are sisters, we would not accidentally resemble each other a tiny bit in some way, and I must say I can't see that we do physically or mentally.”
“No,” said Katy, “ye were just as different as ye are now when I came to this house new and ye were both little things.”
“And we are going to be as different and to keep on growing more different every day of our lives, because red war breaks out the minute Eileen comes home. I haven't a notion what she will say to me for what I did last night and what I am going to do in the future, but I have a definite idea as to what I am going to say to her.”
“Now, easy; ye go easy, lambie,” cautioned Katy.
“I wouldn't regret it,” said Linda, “if I took Eileen by the shoulders and shook her till I shook the rouge off her cheek, and the brilliantine off her hair, and a million mean little subterfuges out of her soul. You know Eileen is lovely when she is natural, and if she would be straight-off-the-bat square, I would be proud to be her sister. As it is, I have my doubts, even about this sister business.”
“Why, Linda, child, ye are just plain crazy,” said Katy. “What kind of notions are you getting into your head?”
“I hear the front door,” said Linda, “and I am going to march straight to battle. She's going up the front stairs. I did mean to short-cut up the back, but, come to think of it, I have served my apprenticeship on the back stairs. I believe I'll ascend the front myself. Good-bye, darlin', wish me luck.”
Linda swung Katy around, hugged her tight, and dropped a kiss on the top of her faithful head.
“Ye just stick right up for your rights,” Katy advised her. “Ye're a great big girl. 'Tain't going to be long till ye're eighteen. But mind your old Katy about going too far. If ye lose your temper and cat-spit, it won't get ye anywhere. The fellow that keeps the coolest can always do the best headwork.”
“I get you,” said Linda, “and that is good advice for which I thank you.”
CHAPTER V. The Smoke of Battle
Then Linda walked down the hall, climbed the front stairs, and presented herself at Eileen's door, there to receive one of the severest shocks of her young life. Eileen had tossed her hat and fur upon a couch, seated herself at her dressing table, and was studying her hair in the effort to decide whether she could fluff it up sufficiently to serve for the evening or whether she must take it down and redress it. At Linda's step in the doorway she turned a smiling face upon her and cried: “Hello, little sister, come in and tell me the news.”
Linda stopped as if dazed. The wonderment in which she looked at Eileen was stamped all over her. A surprised braid of hair hung over one of her shoulders. Her hands were surprised, and the skirt of her dress, and her shoes flatly set on the floor.
“Well, I'll be darned!” she ejaculated, and then walked to where she could face Eileen, and seated herself without making any attempt to conceal her amazement.
“Linda,” said Eileen sweetly, “you would stand far better chance of being popular and making a host of friends if you would not be so coarse. I am quite sure you never heard Mama or me use such an expression.”
For one long instant Linda was too amazed to speak. Then she recovered herself.
“Look here, Eileen, you needn't try any 'perfect lady' business on me,” she said shortly. “Do you think I have forgotten the extent of your vocabulary when the curling iron gets too hot or you fail to receive an invitation to the Bachelors' Ball?”
Linda never had been capable of understanding Eileen. At that minute she could not know that Eileen had been facing facts through the long hours of the night and all through the day, and that she had reached the decision that for the future her only hope of working Linda to her will was to conciliate her, to ignore the previous night, to try to put their relationship upon the old basis by pretending that there never had been a break. She laughed softly.
“On rare occasions, I grant it. Of course a little swear slips out sometimes. What I am trying to point out is that you do too much of it.”
“How did you ever get the idea,” said Linda, “that I wanted to be popular and have hosts of friends? What would I do with them if I had them?”
“Why, use them, my child, use them,” answered Eileen promptly.
“Let's cut this,” said Linda tersely. “I am not your child. I'm getting to the place where I have serious doubt as to whether I am your sister or not. If I am, it's not my fault, and the same clay never made two objects quite so different. I came up here to fight, and I'm going to see it through. I'm on the warpath, so you may take your club and proceed to battle.”
“What have we to fight about?” inquired Eileen.
“Every single thing that you have done that was unfair to me all my life,” said Linda. “Since all of it has been deliberate you probably know more about the details than I do, so I'll just content
