"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 Ishall 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 THINGwhen 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?" he asked.
"Now, I call that downright mean," said Linda. "Haven't you noticed that my braids are up? Don't you see a maturity and a dignity and a general matronliness apparent all over me today?""Matronliness" was too much for Peter. You could have heard his laugh far down the blue valley.
"That's good!" he cried.
"It is," agreed Linda. "It means that my braids are up to stay, so hereafter I'm a real woman."She lingered over the word an instant, glancing whimsically at Peter, a trace of a smile on her lips, then she made her way down a slant declivity and presently returned with an entire flower plant, new to Peter and of unusual beauty.
"And because I am a woman I shall set my seal upon you," she said.
In the buttonhole of his light linen coat she placed a flower of satin face of purest gold, the five petals rounded, but sharply tipped, a heavy mass of silk stamens, pollen dusted in the heart.
She pushed back the left side of his coat and taking one of the rough, hairy leaves of the plant she located it over Peter's heart, her slim, deft fingers patting down the leaf and flattening it out until it lay pasted smooth and tight. As she worked, she smiled at him challengingly. Peter knew he was experiencing a ceremony of some kind, the significance of which he must learn. It was the first time Linda had voluntarily touched him. He breathed lightly and held steady, lest he startle her.
"Lovely enough," he said, "to have come from the hills of the stars. Don't make me wait, Linda; help me to the interpretation.""Buena Mujer," suggested Linda.
"Good woman," translated Peter.
Linda nodded, running a finger down the leaf over his heart.
"Because she sticks close to you," she explained. Then startled by the look in Peter's eyes, she cried in swift change: "Now we are all going to work for a minute. Katy's spreading the lunch.
You take this pail and go to the spring for water and I shall tidy your quarters for you."With the eye of experience Linda glanced over the garage deciding that she must ask for clean sheets for the cot and that the Salvation Army would like the heap of papers. Studying the writing table she heard a faint sound that untrained ears would have missed.
"Ah, ha, Ma wood mouse," said Linda, "nibbling Peter's dr, goods are you?"Her cry a minute later answered the question. She came from the garage upon Katherine O'Donovan rushing to meet her, holding a man's coat at the length of her far-reaching arm.
"I wish you'd look at that pocket. I don't know how long this coat has been hanging there, but there is a nest of field mice in it," she said.
Katy promptly retreated to the improvised dining table, seated herself upon an end of it, and raised both feet straight into the air.
"Small help I'll be getting from you," said Linda laughingly.
She went to the edge of the declivity that cut back to the garage and with a quick movement reversed the coat catching it by the skirts and shaking it vigorously.
