ng at the window, straining
her eyes down Lilac Valley. She was not looking at its helpful hills,
at its appealing curves, at its brilliant colors. She was watching the
roadway. When Katy rang to call her to lunch, she told her to put the
things away; she was expecting people who would take her out to lunch
presently. In the past years she had occasionally written to her uncle.
Several times when he had had business in Los Angeles she had met him at
his hotel and dined with him. She reasoned that he would come straight
to the house and get her, and then they would go to one of the big
hotels for lunch before they started.

"I shan't feel like myself," said Eileen, "until we are well on the way
to San Francisco."

At one o'clock she was walking the floor. At two she was almost frantic.
At half past she almost wished that she had had the good sense to have
some lunch, since she was very hungry and under tense nerve strain. Once
she paused before the glass, but what she saw frightened her. Just when
she felt that she could not endure the strain another minute, grinding
brakes, the blast of a huge Klaxon, and the sound of a great voice arose
from the street. Eileen rushed to the window. She took one look, caught
up the suitcase and raced down the stairs. At the door she met a bluff,
big man, gross from head to foot. It seemed to Eileen strange that she
could see in him even a trace of her mother, and yet she could. Red
veins crossed his cheeks and glowed on his nose. His tired eyes
were watery; his thick lips had an inclination to sag; but there was
heartiness in his voice and earnestness in the manner in which he picked
her up.

"What have they been doing to you down here?" he demanded. "Never should
have left you this long. Ought to have come down and taken you and
showed you what you wanted, and then you would have known whether you
wanted it or not."

At this juncture a huge woman, gross in a feminine way as her husband
was in his, paddled up the walk.

"I'm comin' in and rest a few minutes," she said. "I'm tired to death
and I'm pounded to pieces."

Her husband turned toward her. He opened his lips to introduce Eileen.
His wife forestalled him.

"So this is the Eileen you have been ravin' about for years," she said.
"I thought you said she was a pretty girl."

Eileen's soul knew one sick instant of recoil. She looked from James
Heitman to Caroline, his wife, and remembered that he had a habit
of calling her