rted the car. She backed in front of
the garage and turned. She was still thinking deeply as she stopped.
Once again she extended a hand to Peter.

"Thank you a thousand times for not reading these letters, Peter," she
said. "I can't express how awfully fine I think it is of you. And if
it's all right with you, perhaps there's not any real reason why you
should not run that brook and drive that road the way I think they
should go. Somebody is going to design them. Why shouldn't I, if it
pleases you to have me?"

"It pleases me very greatly," said Peter--"more than anything else I can
think of in all the world at this minute."

And then he did a thing that he had done once or twice before. He bent
back Linda's fingers and left another kiss in the palm of her hand, and
then he closed her fingers very tightly over it.

CHAPTER XXXI. The End of Donald's Contest

The middle of the week Linda had told Katy that she intended stocking
up the Bear Cat for three and that she would take her along on the next
Saturday's trip to her canyon kitchen. It was a day upon which she had
planned to gather greens, vegetables, and roots, and prepare a dinner
wholly from the wild. She was fairly sure exactly where in nature she
would find the materials she wanted, but she knew that the search would
be long and tiring. It would be jolly to have Katy to help her prepare
the lunch. It would please Katy immensely to be taken; and the original
things she said in her quaint Irish brogue greatly amused Donald. The
arrangement had been understood among them for some time, so they all
started on their journey filled with happy expectations. They closed the
house and the garage carefully. Linda looked over the equipment of the
Bear Cat minutely making sure that her field axe, saw, knives, and her
field glasses were in place. Because more food than usual was to be
prepared in the kitchen they took along a nest of cooking vessels and a
broiler. They found Donald waiting before either of them were ready, and
in great glee, with much laughing and many jests they rolled down the
valley in the early morning. They drove to the kitchen, spread their
blankets, set up their table, and arranged the small circular opening
for their day's occupancy. While Katy and Linda were busy with these
affairs Donald took the axe and collected a big heap of wood. Then they
left Katy to burn the wood and have a deep bed of coals ready while they
started out to collect f