e fads and the foibles and the sins and the foolishness and the
extravagances of humanity, it's all very well. But if you ever get
in trouble or if ever your heart hurts, or you get mad enough to kill
somebody, that mouth of yours is going to be a most awfully revealing
feature, Peter. You will have hard work to settle it down into
hard-and-fast noncommittal lines."

Peter looked at the girl steadily.

"Have you specialized on my mouth?" he asked.

"Huh-umph!" said Linda, shaking her head vigorously. "When I specialize I
use a pin and a microscope and go right to the root of matters as I was
taught. This is superficial. I am extemporizing now."

"Well, if this is extemporizing," said Peter, "God help my soul if you
ever go at me with a pin and a microscope."

"Oh, but I won't!" cried Linda. "It wouldn't be kind to pin your friends
on a setting board and use a microscope on them. You might see things
that were strictly private. You might see things they wouldn't want you
to see. They might not be your friends any more if you did that. When
I make a friend I just take him on trust like I did Donald. You're my
friend, aren't you, Peter?"

"Yes, Linda," said Peter soberly. "Put me to any test you can think of
if you want proof."

"But I don't believe in PROVING friends, either," said Linda. "I believe
in nurturing them. I would set a friend in my garden and water his feet
and turn the sunshine on him and tell him to stay there and grow. I
might fertilize him, I might prune him, and I might use insecticide on
him. I might spray him with rather stringent solutions, but I give you
my word I would not test him. If he flourished under my care I would
know it, and if he did not I would know it, and that would be all I
would want to know. I have watched Daddy search for the seat of
nervous disorders, and sometimes he had to probe very deep to find what
developed nerves unduly but he didn't ever do any picking and raveling
and fringing at the soul of a human being merely for the sake of finding
out what it was made of; and everyone says I am like him."

"I wish I might have known him," said Peter.

"Don't I wish it!" said Linda. "Now then, Peter, go ahead. Read your
article."

Peter opened a packing case, picked out a sheaf of papers, and sitting
opposite Linda, began to read. He was dumbfounded to find that he, a man
who had read and talked extemporaneously before great bodies of learned
men, should have cold feet and