Linda said nothing; she just couldn't be enthusiastic about wasting three months in that fashion. When she had been hoping to stay at home and enroll for a course at the Spring City Flying School!
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, dear?" persisted Miss Carlton, as Linda steered her car through the wide gates of their spacious estate. "You could swim and drive and play tennis and dance to your heart's content! With Louise—and—and—the Claverings! Mrs. Haydock told me they are going there too. Why, you'd meet all the right people!"
Linda sighed. Aunt Emily's ideas of the right people were not exactly hers—particularly at the present time. She wanted to meet flyers, men and women noted in the field of aviation, not merely wealthy society folk. But she could not say that to her aunt; the latter was afraid of airplanes, and had only grudgingly given her consent that Linda go up in one. Naturally she had never mentioned her accident.
"Well, we'll talk our plans over later," said Miss Carlton, when Linda failed to make a reply. "I guess you're too tired to think about anything now. And," she added as she stepped from the car, "don't you want to leave your car here, and let Thomas put it away?"
"No, thank you, Auntie," she replied, for she did not like even so capable a chauffeur as Thomas to touch her precious roadster. "It'll only take a minute."
As Linda walked slowly back to the house, she was thinking of Ted Mackay. For she believed those wilted flowers at her waist were his. There had been no card, but they had come from a small flower shop at the other end of Spring City—not the expensive shop that most of her friends patronized. She would go over to the school soon, and thank him. But she would have to tell him that she was obliged to give up her own plans for the summer! Tears of disappointment came into her eyes, and she wondered if there weren't some way it could be arranged. Maybe if she asked her father....
The thought of her father drove everything out of her mind. He hadn't even bothered to come home! Nothing else seemed to matter.
As she entered the living-room, she found her aunt waiting for her.
"Come in, dear—and get some rest," said Miss Carlton. "You look so tired that you actually seem unhappy."
Linda forced a smile.