"
"All right then, we'll agree that this is a surprise party, but
if John Gilman has told you so much about them, you must have
been expecting them, and in a measure prepared for them at any
time. Haven't you talked it over with Marian, and told her that
you would want her when they came?"
Eileen was extremely busy with another wave of hair. She turned
her back and her voice was not quite steady as she answered.
"Ever since Marian got this 'going to the city to study' idea in
her head I have scarcely seen her. She had an awful job to empty
the house, and pack such things as she wants to keep, and she is
working overtime on a very special plan that she thinks maybe
she'll submit in a prize competition offered by a big firm of San
Francisco architects, so I have scarcely seen her for six weeks."
"And you never once went over to help her with her work, or to
encourage her or to comfort her? You can't think Marian can
leave this valley and not be almost heartbroken," said Linda.
"You just make me almost wonder at you. When you think of the
kind of friends that Marian Thorne's father and mother, and our
father and mother were, and how we children were reared together,
and the good times we have had in these two houses--and then the
awful day when the car went over the cliff, and how Marian clung
to us and tried to comfort us, when her own health was broken--
and Marian's the same Marian she has always been, only nicer
every day--how you can sit there and say you have scarcely seen
her in six of the hardest weeks of her life, certainly surprises
me.
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