“Oh, yes,” said Linda, leaning farther forward, a lovely colour sweeping up into her cheeks, her eyes a-shine. She had missed the fact that the Judge was jesting. She had thought him in sober, scientific earnest.
“It’s an awfully nice thing if you dig a plant or soil your hands in hunting, or anything like that, to know that there are four or five different kinds of vegetable soap where you can easily reach them, if you know them. If you lose your way or have a long tramp, it’s good to know which plants will give you drink and where they are. And if you’re short of implements, you might at any time need a mescal stick, or an arrow shaft or an arrow, even. If Donald were lost now, he could keep alive for days, because he would know what wood would make him a bow and how he could take amole fiber and braid a bow string and where he could make arrows and arrow points so that he could shoot game for food. I’ve taught him to make a number of snares, and he knows where to find and how to cook his greens and potatoes and onions and where to find his pickles and how to make lemonade and tea, and what to use for snake bite. It’s been such fun, Judge Whiting, and he has been so interested.”
“Yes, I should think he would be,” said the Judge. “I am interested myself. If you would take an old boy like me on a few of those trips, I would be immensely pleased.”
“You’d like brigand beefsteak,” suggested Linda, “and you’d like cress salad, and I am sure you’d like creamed yucca.”
“Hm,” said the Judge. “Sounds to me like Jane Meredith.”
Linda suddenly sat straight. A dazed expression crossed her face. Presently she recovered.
“Will you kindly tell me,” she said, “what a great criminal judge knows about Jane Meredith?”
“Why, I hear my wife and daughter talking about her,” said the Judge.
“I wonder,” said Linda, “if a judge hears so many secrets that he forgets what a secret is and couldn’t possibly keep one to save his life.”
“On the other hand,” said Judge Whiting, “a judge hears so many secrets that he learns to be a very secretive person himself, and if a young lady just your size and so like you in every way as to be you, told me anything and told me that it was a secret, I would guarantee to carry it with me to my grave, if I said I would.”