“Will the lady of the house dine with us this evening?” she asked as she stood eating an apple in the kitchen.
“She didn’t say,” answered Katy. “Have ye had it out about last night yet?”
“No,” answered Linda. “That is why I was asking about her. I want to clear the atmosphere before I make my new start in life.”
“Now, don’t ye be going too far, lambie,” cautioned Katy “Ye young things make such an awful serious business of life these days. In your scramble to wring artificial joy out of it you miss all the natural joy the good God provided ye.”
“It seems to me, Katy,” said Linda slowly, “that you should put that statement the other way round. It seems that life makes a mighty serious business for us young things, and it seems to me that if we don’t get the right start and have a proper foundation, life Is going to be spoiled for us. One life is all I’ve got to live in this world; and I would like it to be the interesting and the beautiful kind of life that Father lived.”
Linda dropped to a chair.
“Katy,” she said, leaning forward and looking intently into the earnest face of the woman before her, “Katy, I have been thinking an awful lot lately. There is a question you could answer for me if you wanted to.”
“Well, I don’t see any raison,” said Katy, “why I shouldn’t answer ye any question ye’d be asking me.”
Linda’s eyes narrowed as they did habitually in deep thought She was looking past Katy down the sunlit spaces of the wild garden that was her dearest possession, and then her eyes strayed higher to where the blue walls that shut in Lilac Valley ranged their peaks against the sky.
“Katy,” she said, scarcely above her breath, “was Mother like Eileen?”