“I think so,” said Linda, “but I want you to see Peter’s house for yourself, since I understand that according to your contract the rights to reproduce these particular plans remained with you after you had paid prize money for them.”
“Most certainly,” said Mr. Snow. “We should have that much to show for our share of the transaction.”
“It’s a queer thing,” said Linda. “You would have to know me a long time, and perhaps know under what conditions I have been reared in order to understand a feeling that I frequently have concerning people. I tobogganed down a sheer side of Multiflores Canyon one day without my path having been previously prepared, and I very nearly landed in the automobile that carried Henry Anderson and Peter Morrison on their first trip to Lilac Valley. I was much interested in preserving the integrity of my neck. I fervently hoped not to break more than a dozen of my legs and arms, and was forced to bring down intact the finest Cotyledon pulverulenta that Daddy or I had found in fourteen years of collecting in California. I am telling you all this that you may see why I might have been excused for not having been minutely observant of my surroundings when I landed. But what I did observe was a chilly, caterpillary sensation chasing up my spine the instant I met the eyes of Henry Anderson. In that instant I said to myself that I would not trust him, that I did not like him.”
“And what about his companion?” asked Eugene Snow lightly.
“Oh, Peter?” said Linda. There was a caress in her pronunciation of the name. “Why, Peter is a rock. The instant I deposited my Cotyledon in a safe place I would have put my hand in Peter Morrison’s and started around the world if he had asked me to go. There is only one Peter. You will recognize that the instant you meet him.”
“I am altogether willing to take your word for it,” said Mr. Snow.
“And there is one thing about this disagreeable business,” said Linda. “It was not Peter’s coat that had the plan in it. He knew nothing about it. He has had his full service of stiff war work, and he has been knocking around big cities in newspaper work, and now he has come home to Lilac Valley to ‘set up his rest,’ as in the hymn book, you know. He built his garage first and he is living in it because he so loves this house of his that he has to be present to watch it grow in minute detail. Once on a time I saw a great wizard walking along the sidewalk, and he looked exactly like any man. He might have been you so far as anything different from other men in his appearance w as concerned.”
Linda cut down the Bear-cat to its slowest speed.
“What is on my mind is this,” she said. “I don’t think Peter could quite afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building. I think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with him. Now can’t you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the Sea clinging to his back? Do you think, Mr. Eugene Snow, that you’re enough of a wizard to examine this house and to satisfy yourself as to whether it’s an infringement of your plans or not, without letting Peter know the things about it that would spoil it for him?”
Eugene Snow reached across and closed a hand over the one of Linda’s nearest him on the steering wheel.