“Good-bye!” said Linda. “On the strength of that I’ll jazz that sketch all up, bluey and red-purple and jade-green. I’ll make it as glorious as a Catalina sunset.”
As she swung the car around the sharp curve at the boulders she looked back and laughingly waved her hand at Peter, and Peter experienced a wild desire to shriek lest she lose control of the car and plunge down the steep incline. A second later, when he saw her securely on the road below, he smiled to himself.
“Proves one thing,” he said conclusively. “She is over the horrors. She is driving unconsciously. Thank God she knew that curve so well she could look the other way and drive it mentally.”
CHAPTER XIX
The Official Bug-Catcher
Not a mile below the exit from Peter’s grounds, Linda perceived a heavily laden person toiling down the roadway before her and when she ran her car abreast and stopped it, Henry Anderson looked up at her with joyful face.
“Sorry I can’t uncover, fair lady,” he said, “but you see I am very much otherwise engaged.”
What Linda saw was a tired, disheveled man standing in the roadway beside her car, under each arm a boulder the size of her head, one almost jet-black, shot through with lines of white and flying figures of white crossing between these bands that almost reminded one of winged dancers. The other was a combination stone made up of matrix thickly imbedded with pebbles of brown, green, pink, and dull blue.
“For pity’s sake!” said Linda. “Where are you going and why are you personally demonstrating a new method of transporting rock?”
“I am on my way down Lilac Valley to the residence of a friend of mine,” said Henry Anderson. “I heard her say the other day that she saved every peculiarly marked boulder she could find to preserve coolness and moisture in her fern bed.”