Her red face paled slightly. She turned her
back and slowly slid into the oven the pie she was carrying.
She closed the door with more force than was necessary and then
turned and deliberately studied Linda from the top of her
shining black head to the tip of her shoe.
"Some," she said tersely.
"Yes, I know 'some'," said Linda, "but you know I was too young
to pay much attention, and Daddy managed always to make me so
happy that I never realized until he was gone that he not only
had been my father but my mother as well. You know what I mean,
Katy."
"Yes," said Katy deliberately, "I know what ye mean, lambie, and
I'll tell ye the truth as far as I know it. She managed your
father, she pampered him, but she deceived him every day, just
about little things. She always made the household accounts
bigger than they were, and used the extra money for Miss Eileen
and herself--things like that. I'm thinkin' he never knew it.
I'm thinking he loved her deeply and trusted her complete. I
know what ye're getting at. She was not enough like Eileen to
make him unhappy with her. He might have been if he had known
all there was to know, but for his own sake I was not the one to
give her away, though she constantly made him think that I was
extravagant and wasteful in me work."Linda's eyes came back from
the mountains and met Katy's straightly.
"Katy," she said, "did you ever see sisters as different as
Eileen and I are?"
"No, I don't think I ever did," said Katy.
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