u." Linda lowered her
voice. "Nothing has come up about Oka Sayye?"

Katy shook her head.

"I thought not," said Linda. "Judge Whiting promised me that what use he
made of that should be man's business and exploited wholly for the
sake of California and her people. He said we shouldn't be involved. I
haven't been worried about it even, although I am willing to go upon
the stand and tell the whole story if it will be any help toward putting
right what is at present a great wrong to California."

"Yes, so would I," said Katy. "I'm not worryin' meself about the little
baste any more than I would if it had been a mad dog foaming up that
cliff at ye."

"Then what is it?" asked Linda. "Tell me this minute."

"I dunno what in the world you're going to think," said Katy "I dunno
what in the world you're going to do."

Her face was so distressed that Linda's nimble brain flew to a
conclusion. She tightened her arm across Katy's shoulder.

"By Jove, Katy!" she said breathlessly. "Is Eileen in the house?"

Katy nodded.

"Has she been to see John and made things right with him?"

Katy nodded again.

"He's in there with her waitin' for ye," she said.

It was a stunned Linda who slowly dropped her arm, stood erect, and
lifted her head very high. She thought intently.

"You don't mean to tell me," she said, "that you have been CRYING over
her?"

Katy held out both hands.

"Linda," she said, "she always was such a pretty thing, and her ma
didn't raise her to have the sense of a peewee. If your pa had been let
take her outdoors and grow her in the sun and the air, she would have
been bigger and broader, an' there would have been the truth of God's
sunshine an' the glory of His rain about her. Ye know, Linda, that she
didn't ever have a common decent chance. It was curls that couldn't be
shook out and a nose that dassen't be sunburned and shoes that mustn't
be scuffed and a dress that shouldn't be mussed, from the day she was
born. Ye couldn't jist honest say she had ever had a FAIR chance, now
could ye?"

"No," said Linda conclusively, "no, Katherine O'Donovan, you could not.
But what are we up against? Does she want to come back? Does she want to
stay here again?"

"I think she would like to," said Katy. "You go in and see her for
yourself, lambie, before ye come to any decision."

"You don't mean," said Linda in a marveling tone, "that she has been
homesick, that she has come back to us because she would like t