"Well," she returned, retreating, "I've always believed I could write a play as good as anybody else for those here emotion pictures, and this'd be a splendid story, with Lambert Barry for the villain, and his beautiful daughter believin' in him; don't you think so? I'd make her beautiful, you know."
Jerry Holt's lips twitched as he gathered up the reins.
"Well, one thing sure, Nature's saved ye the trouble there, Luella. Git ap, Molly."
Luella looked after the wagon, her mouth open in her interest. Her friend's meaning slowly percolated. Then she hurried toward the house, removing aprons as she went, to inform her boarders of the arrival.
CHAPTER XIV
BLANCHE AURORA
When Linda waked next morning, she had been dreamless for nine hours; sunk so deep in slumber after weeks of restless, fitful naps that the return to earth was a slow, scarcely credible process. A soothing, rhythmic sweep of sound seemed saying, "Sleep on, Sleep on"; but a song sparrow perched on the corner of the sloping roof above her window was loudly declaring that it was ecstasy to waken. The rapturous burst, often repeated, won her slow attention. The sun shone through the rosy curtains and a breeze fanned her opening eyes. She turned her face into her pillow. Her first thought as ever of her father, she seemed to commune with him.
"I'm here in your room, dear. I dare think about you. The insults are going to cease, dearest, dearest!"
Her rested brain recalled those sentences in one of Mrs. Porter's letters, prophetic words of what the public verdict would be when truth began to appear. Then had come King's reassurance. She knew each phrase of both letters by heart.