"Next thing they'll be asking about
mountain lions and rattlesnakes."
"I beg your pardon," said Gilman, "I fear none of us has
remembered to present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist. She got
her start from her father, who was one of the greatest nerve
specialists the world ever has known. She knows every inch of
the mountains, the canyons and the desert. She always says that
she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe, while her father hunted
the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland. What should 1
have said when describing a suitable homesite for Peter, Linda?"
"You should have assumed that immediately, Peter,"--Linda lifted
her eyes to Morrison's face with a sparkle of gay challenge, and
by way of apology interjected--"I am only a kid, you know, so I
may call John's friend Peter--you should have assumed that sage
and greasewood would simply have vanished from any home location
chosen by Peter, leaving it all lacy blue with lilac, and misty
white with lemonade bush, and lovely gold with monkey flower, and
purple with lupin, and painted blood red with broad strokes of
Indian paint brush, and beautifully lighted with feathery flames
from Our Lord's Candles, and perfumy as altar incense with wild
almond."
"Oh, my soul," said Peter Morrison. "Good people, I have
located. I have come to stay. I would like three acres but I
could exist with two; an acre would seem an estate to me, and my
ideas of a house, Henry, are shriveling.
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