“That being the case,” said Linda, “walk home with me and I’ll take you to your place in mine and bring you back to the cars, if you only want to stay an hour or two.”
“Why, that would be fine,” said Peter. “You didn’t mention, the other evening, that you had a car.”
“No,” said Linda, “I had been trying to keep cars out of my thought for a long time, but I could endure it no longer the other day, so I got mine out and tuned it up. If you don’t mind stacking up a bit, three can ride in it very comfortably.”
That was the way it happened that Linda walked home after school that afternoon between Peter Morrison and his architect, brought out the Bear-cat, and drove them to Peter’s location.
All that day, workmen had been busy under the management of a well-instructed foreman, removing trees and bushes and stones and clearing the spot that had been selected for the garage and approximately for the house.
The soft brownish gray of Linda’s dress was exactly the colour to intensify the darker brown of her eyes. There was a fluctuating red in her olive cheeks, a brilliant red framing her even white teeth. Once dressed so that she was satisfied with the results, Linda immediately forgot her clothes, and plunged into Morrison’s plans.
“Peter,” she said gravely, with Peter perfectly cognizant of the twinkle in her dark eyes, “Peter, you may save money in a straight-line road, but you’re going to sin against your soul if you build it. You’ll have to economize in some other way, and run your road around the base of those boulders, then come in straight to the line here, and then you should swing again and run out on this point, where guests can have one bewildering glimpse of the length of our blue valley, and then whip them around this clump of perfumy lilac and elders, run them to your side entrance, and then scoot the car back to the garage. I think you should place the front of your house about here.” Linda indicated where. “So long as you’re buying a place like this you don’t want to miss one single thing; and you do want to make the very most possible out of every beauty you have. And you mustn’t fail to open up and widen the runway from that energetic, enthusiastic spring. Carry it across your road, sure. It will cost you another little something for a safe bridge, but there’s nothing so artistic as a bridge with a cold stream running under it. And think what a joyful time I’ll have, gathering specimens for you of every pretty water plant that grows in my particular canyon. Any time when you’re busy in your library and you hear my car puffing up the incline and around the corner and rattling across the bridge, you’ll know that I am down here giving you a start of watercress and miners’ lettuce and every lovely thing you could mention that likes to be nibbled or loved-up, while it dabbles its toes in the water.”
Peter Morrison looked at Linda reflectively. He looked for such a long moment that Henry Anderson reached a nebulous conclusion. “Fine!” he cried. “Every one of those suggestions is valuable to an inexperienced man. Morrison, shan’t I make a note of them?”
“Yes, Henry, you shall,” said Peter. “I am going to push this thing as fast as possible, so far as building the garage is concerned and getting settled in it. After that I don’t care if I live on this spot until we know each other by the inch, before I begin building my home. At the present minute it appeals to me that ‘home’ is about the best word in the language of any nation. I have a feeling that what I build here is going to be my home, very possibly the only one I shall ever have. We must find the spot on which the Lord intended that a house should grow on this hillside, and then we must build that house so that it has a room suitable for a workshop in which I may strive, under the best conditions possible, to get my share of the joy of life and to earn the money that I shall require to support me and entertain my friends; and that sounds about as selfish as anything possibly could. It seems to be mostly ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ and it’s not the real truth concerning this house. I don’t believe there is a healthy, normal man living who has not his dream. I have no hesitation whatever in admitting that I have mine. This house must be two things. It has got to be a concrete workshop for me, and it has got to be an abstract abiding place for a dream. It’s rather difficult to build a dream house for a dream lady, so I don’t know what kind of a fist I am going to make of it.”
Linda sat down on a boulder and contemplated her shoes for a minute. Then she raised her ever-shifting, eager, young eyes to Peter, and it seemed to him as he looked into them that there were little gold lights flickering at the bottom of their darkness.