Her Father's Daughter. Stratton-Porter Gene

said Linda. “It's about the only thing on earth that is peculiarly and particularly mine. I haven't a doubt there are improved models, but Daddy had driven this car only about nine months. It was going smooth as velvet, and there's no reason why it should not keep it up, though I suspect that by this time there are later models that could outrun it.”

      “Oh, I don't know,” said the boy. “It looks like some little old car to me. I bet it can just skate.”

      “I know it can,” said Linda, “if I haven't neglected something. We'll start carefully, and we'll have the inspector at the salesrooms look it over.”

      Then Linda entered the kitchen door to find Katy with everything edible that the house afforded spread before her on the table.

      “Why, Katy, what are you doing?” she asked.

      “I was makin' ready,” explained Katy, “to fix ye the same kind of lunch I would for Miss Eileen. Will ye have it under the live oak, or in the living room?”

      “Neither,” said Linda. “Come upstairs with me, and in the storeroom you'll find the lunch case and the thermos bottles and don't stint yourself, Katy. This is a rare occasion. It never happened before. Probably it will never happen again. Let's make it high altitude while we are at it.”

      “I'll do my very best with what I happen to have,” said Katy; “but I warn you right now I am making a good big hole in the Sunday dinner.”

      “I don't give two whoops,” said Linda, “if there isn't any Sunday dinner. In memory of hundreds of times that we have eaten bread and milk, make it a banquet, Katy, and we'll eat bread and milk tomorrow.”

      Then she took the stairway at a bound, and ran to her room. In a very short time she emerged, clad in a clean blouse and breeches' her climbing boots, her black hair freshly brushed and braided.

      “I ought to have something,” said Linda, “to shade my eyes. The glare's hard on them facing the sun.”

      Going down the hall she came to the storeroom, opened a drawer' and picked out a fine black felt Alpine hat that had belonged to her father. She carried it back to her room and, standing at the glass, tried it on, pulling it down on one side, turning it up at the other, and striking a deep cleft across the crown. She looked at herself intently for a minute, and then she reached up and deliberately loosened the hair at her temples.

      “Not half bad, all things considered, Linda,” she said. “But, oh, how you do need a tich of color.”

      She ran down the hall and opened the door to Eileen's room, and going to her chiffonier, pulled out a drawer containing an array of gloves, veils, and ribbons. At the bottom of the ribbon stack, her eye caught the gleam of color for which she was searching, and she deftly slipped out a narrow scarf of Roman stripes with a deep black fringe at the end. Sitting down, she fitted the hat over her knee, picked up the dressing-table scissors, and ripped off the band. In its place she fitted the ribbon, pinning it securely and knotting the ends so that the fringe reached her shoulder. Then she tried the hat again. The result was blissfully satisfactory. The flash of orange, the blaze of red, the gleam of green, were what she needed.

      “Thank you very much, sister mine,” she said, “I know you I would be perfectly delighted to loan me this.”