Linda arose, and walking over to a table, picked up a magazine lying among some small packages that Eileen evidently had placed there on entering her room.
“Are you subscribing to this?” she asked.
She turned in her hands and leafed through the pages of a most attractive magazine, Everybody’s Home. It was devoted to poetry, good fiction, and everything concerning home life from beef to biscuits, and from rugs to roses.
“I saw it on a news-stand,” said Eileen. “I was at lunch with some girls who had a copy and they were talking about some articles by somebody named something—Meredith, I think it was—Jane Meredith, maybe she’s a Californian, and she is advocating the queer idea that we go back to nature by trying modern cooking on the food the aborigines ate. If we find it good then she recommends that we specialize on the growing of these native vegetables for home use and for export—as a new industry.”
“I see,” said Linda. “Out-Burbanking Burbank, as it were.”
“No, not that,” said Eileen. “She is not proposing to evolve new forms. She is proposing to show us how to make delicious dishes for luncheon or dinner from wild things now going to waste. What the girls said was so interesting that I thought I’d get a copy and if I see anything good I’ll turn it over to Katy.”
“And where’s Katy going to get the wild vegetables?” asked Linda sceptically.
“Why you might have some of them in your wild garden, or you could easily find enough to try—all the prowling the canyons you do ought to result in something.”
“So it should,” said Linda. “I quite agree with you. Did I understand you to say that I should be ready to go to the bank with you to arrange about my income next week?”
Again the colour deepened in Eileen’s face, again she made a visible effort at self-control.