"I presume," said Eileen at last, "that you and Katy would call
the process through which you are going right now, 'taking the
bit in your teeth,' or some poetic thing like that, but I can't
see that you are getting much out of it. I don't hear the old
laugh or the clatter of gay feet as I did before all this war of
dissatisfaction broke out. This minute if you haven't either
cried, or wanted to, I miss my guess."
"You win," said Linda. "I have not cried, because I make it a
rule never to resort to tears when I can help it; so what you see
now is unshed tears in my heart. They in no way relate to what
you so aptly term my 'war of dissatisfaction'; they are for
Marian. She has lost again, this time the Nicholson and Snow
prize in architecture."
"Serves her right," said Eileen, laughing contemptuously. "The
ridiculous idea of her trying to compete in a man's age-old
occupation! As if she ever could learn enough about joists and
beams and girders and installing water and gas and electricity to
build a house. She should have had the sense to know she
couldn't do it."
"But," said Linda quietly, "Marian wasn't proposing to be a
contractor, she only wants to be an architect. And the man who
beat her is Peter Morrison's architect, Henry Anderson, and he
won by such a narrow margin that her plans were thrown out of
second and third place, because they were so very similar to his.
Doesn't that strike you as curious?"
"That is more than curious," said Eileen slowly.
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