“Isn’t it just barely possible,” asked Eileen, “that there might be other people who would annoy and exasperate me? I have not hinted that you have done anything, although I don’t know that it’s customary for a man calling on his betrothed to stop first for a visit with her sister.”
“For the love of Mike!” said John Gilman. “Am I to be found fault with for crossing the lawn a minute to see how Linda’s wild garden is coming on? I have dug and helped set enough of those plants to justify some interest in them as they grow.”
“And the garden was your sole subject of conversation?” inquired Eileen, implied doubt conveyed nicely.
“No, it was not,” answered Gilman, all the bulldog in his nature coming to the surface.
“As I knew perfectly,” said Eileen. “I admit that I’m not feeling myself. Things began going wrong recently, and everything has gone wrong since. I think it all began with Marian Thorne’s crazy idea of selling her home and going to the city to try to ape a man.”
“Marian never tried to ape a man in her life,” said John, instantly yielding to a sense of justice. “She is as strictly feminine as any woman I ever knew.”
“Do you mean to say that you think studying architecture is a woman’s work?” sneered Eileen.
“Yes, I do,” said Gilman emphatically. “Women live in houses. They’re in them nine tenths of the time to a man’s one tenth. Next to rocking a cradle I don’t know of any occupation in this world more distinctly feminine than the planning of comfortable homes for homekeeping people.”
Eileen changed the subject swiftly. “What was Linda saying to you?” she asked.
“She was showing me a plant, a rare Echeveria of the Cotyledon family, that she tobogganed down one side of Multiflores Canyon and delivered safely on the roadway without its losing an appreciable amount of ‘bloom’ from its exquisitely painted leaves.”