So that evening at dinner Linda told Eileen that the improvements she had made for her convenience in the billiard room were finished, and asked her if she would like to see them.
“I can’t imagine what you want to stick yourself off up there alone for,” said Eileen. “I don’t believe I am sufficiently interested in garret skylights and windows to climb up to look at them. What everybody in the neighborhood can see is that you have absolutely ruined the looks of the back part of the house.”
“Good gracious!” said Linda. “Have I? You know I never thought of that.”
“Of course! But all you’ve got to do is go on the east lawn and take a look at that side and the back end of the house to see what you have done,” said Eileen. “Undoubtedly you’ve cut the selling price of the house one thousand, at least. But it’s exactly like you not to have thought of what chopping up the roof and the end of the house as you have done, would make it look like. You have got one of those single-track minds, Linda, that can think of only one thing at a time, and you never do think, when you start anything, of what the end is going to be.”
“Very likely there’s a large amount of truth in that,” said Linda soberly. “Perhaps I do get an idea and pursue it to the exclusion of everything else. It’s an inheritance from Daddy, this concentrating with all my might on one thing at a time. But I am very sorry if I have disfigured the house.”
“What I want to know,” said Eileen, “is how in this world, at present wages and cost of material, you’re expecting to pay men for the work you have had done.”
“I can talk more understandingly about that,” said Linda quietly, “day after to-morrow. I’ll get home from school to-morrow as early as I can, and then we’ll figure out our financial situation exactly.”
Eileen made no reply.
CHAPTER XVI
Producing the Evidence