"Well, you know," said Donald, "the world was only a smallish
place then. They didn't have to go far to find everything to
which they had access, and it must have been rather a decent time
in which to live. Awful lot of light and color and music and
unique entertainment."
"You're talking," said Linda, "from the standpoint of the king or
the master. Suppose you had lived then and had been the slave."
"There you go again," said Donald, "throwing a brick into the
most delicate mechanism of my profound thought. You ought to be
ashamed to round me up with something scientific and
materialistic every time I go a-glimmering. Don't you think this
would be a fine place to have lunch?"
"You wait and see where we lunch today, and you will have the
answer to that," said Linda, starting back to the Bear Cat.
A few miles farther on they followed the road around the frowning
menace of an overhanging rock and sped out directly to the
panorama of the sea. The sun was shining on it, but, as always
round the Laguna shore, the rip tide was working itself into
undue fury. It came dashing up on the ancient rocks until one
could easily understand why a poet of long ago wrote of sea
horses. Some of the waves did suggest monstrous white chargers
racing madly to place their feet upon the solid rock.
Through the village, up the steep inclines, past placid lakes,
past waving yellow mustard beds, beside highways where the
breastplate of Mother Earth gleamed emerald and ruby against the
background of billions of tiny, shining diamonds of the iceplant,
past the old ostrich tree reproduced by etchers of note the world
over, with grinding brakes, sliding down the breathless declivity
leading to the shore, Linda stopped at last where the rock walls
lifted sheer almost to the sky.
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