"The good Lord airly in the mornin' of creation
thought them out when He was jist fresh from rist, and the material was
none shopworn. They ain't ladies like 'em anywhere else in the whole of
California, and belave me, a many rale ladies have I seen in my time.
Ye can jist make up your mind that Miss Linda is the broth of the earth.
She is her father's own child and she is like him as two pase in the
pod. And Marian growed beside her, and much of a hand I've had in her
raisin' meself, and well I'm knowin' how fine she is and what a juel
she'd be, set on any man's hearthstone. I'm wonderin'," said Katy
challengingly, "if you're the Mr. Snow at whose place she is takin' her
lessons, and if ye are, I'm wonderin' if ye ain't goin' to use the good
judgment to set her, like the juel she would be, in the stone of your
own hearth."

Eugene Snow looked at Katy intently. He was not accustomed to discussing
his affairs with household helpers, but he could not look at Katy
without there remaining in his vision the forte of Linda standing beside
her, a reassuring arm stretched across her shoulders, the manner in
which she had presented her and then left her that she might be free
to answer as she chose with out her young mistress even knowing exactly
what was asked of her. Such faith and trust and love were unusual.

"I might try to do that very thing," he said, "but, you know, a
wonderful woman is an animated jewel. You can't manufacture a setting
and put her in and tighten the clasps without her consent."

"Then why don't you get it?" said Katy casually.

Eugene Snow laughed ruefully.

"But suppose," he said, "that the particular jewel you're discussing
prefers to select her own setting, and mine does not please her."

"Well, they's jist one thing," said Katy. Her heels left the floor
involuntarily; she arose on her tiptoes; her shoulders came up, and
her head lifted to a height it never had known before. "They's jist one
thing," she said. "Aside from Miss Linda, who is my very own child that
I have washed and I have combed and I have done for since she was a
toddlin' four-year-old, they ain't no woman in this world I would go
as far for as I would for Miss Marian; but I'm tellin' ye now, ye Mr.
Eujane Snow, that they's one thing I don't lend no countenance to. I am
sorry she has had the cold, cruel luck that she has, but I ain't sorry
enough that I'm goin' to stand for her droppin' herself into the place
where she doesn't b