e asked.

"Now, I call that downright mean," said Linda. "Haven't you noticed that
my braids are up? Don't you see a maturity and a dignity and a general
matronliness apparent all over me today?"

"Matronliness" was too much for Peter. You could have heard his laugh
far down the blue valley.

"That's good!" he cried.

"It is," agreed Linda. "It means that my braids are up to stay, so
hereafter I'm a real woman."

She lingered over the word an instant, glancing whimsically at Peter,
a trace of a smile on her lips, then she made her way down a slant
declivity and presently returned with an entire flower plant, new to
Peter and of unusual beauty.

"And because I am a woman I shall set my seal upon you," she said.

In the buttonhole of his light linen coat she placed a flower of satin
face of purest gold, the five petals rounded, but sharply tipped, a
heavy mass of silk stamens, pollen dusted in the heart. She pushed back
the left side of his coat and taking one of the rough, hairy leaves
of the plant she located it over Peter's heart, her slim, deft fingers
patting down the leaf and flattening it out until it lay pasted smooth
and tight. As she worked, she smiled at him challengingly. Peter knew he
was experiencing a ceremony of some kind, the significance of which he
must learn. It was the first time Linda had voluntarily touched him. He
breathed lightly and held steady, lest he startle her.

"Lovely enough," he said, "to have come from the hills of the stars.
Don't make me wait, Linda; help me to the interpretation."

"Buena Mujer," suggested Linda.

"Good woman," translated Peter.

Linda nodded, running a finger down the leaf over his heart.

"Because she sticks close to you," she explained. Then startled by the
look in Peter's eyes, she cried in swift change: "Now we are all going
to work for a minute. Katy's spreading the lunch. You take this pail and
go to the spring for water and I shall tidy your quarters for you."

With the eye of experience Linda glanced over the garage deciding that
she must ask for clean sheets for the cot and that the Salvation Army
would like the heap of papers. Studying the writing table she heard a
faint sound that untrained ears would have missed.

"Ah, ha, Ma wood mouse," said Linda, "nibbling Peter's dr. goods are
you?"

Her cry a minute later answered the question. She came from the garage
upon Katherine O'Donovan rushing to meet her, holding a man's coat at
the lengt