When Linda hurried home the next evening, her first word to Katy was to ask if Eileen were there.
“No, she isn’t here,” said Katy, “and she’s not going to be.”
“Not going to be!” cried Linda, her face paling perceptibly.
“She went downtown this morning and she telephoned me about three sayin’ she had an invoitation to go with a motor party to Pasadena this afternoon, an’ she wasn’t knowin’ whether she could get home the night or not.”
“I don’t like it,” said Linda. “I don’t like it at all.”
She liked it still less when Eileen came home for a change of clothing the following day, and again went to spend the night with a friend, without leaving any word whatever.
“I don’t understand this,” said Linda, white lipped and tense. “She does not want to see me. She does not intend to talk business with me if she can possibly help it. She is treating me as if I were a four-year-old instead of a woman with as much brain as she has. If she appears while I am gone to-morrow and starts away again, you tell her—— Come to think of it, you needn’t tell her anything; I’ll give you a note for her.”
So Linda sat down and wrote:
Dear Eileen:
It won’t be necessary to remind you of our agreement night before last to settle on an allowance from Father’s estate for me. Of course I realize that you are purposely avoiding seeing me, for what reason I can’t imagine; but I give you warning, that if you have been in this house and have read this note, and are not here with your figures ready to meet me when I get home to-morrow night, I’ll take matters into my own hands, and do exactly what I think best without the slightest reference to what you think about it. If you don’t want something done that you will dislike, even more than you dislike seeing me, you had better heed this warning.
Linda.
She read it over slowly: “My, that sounds melodramatic!” she commented. “It’s even got a threat in it, and it’s a funny thing to threaten my own sister. I don’t think that it’s a situation that occurs very frequently, but for that matter I sincerely hope that Eileen isn’t the kind of sister that occurs frequently.”