This served exactly the purpose Linda had intended. It dislodged the mouse nest and dropped it three feet below her level, but it did something else upon which Linda had no time to count. It emptied every pocket in the coat and sent the contents scattering down the rough declivity.
"Oh my gracious!" gasped Linda. "Look what I have done! Katy, come help me quickly; I have to gather up this stuff; but it's no use; I'll have to take it to Peter and tell him. I couldn't put these things back in the pockets where his hand will reach for them, because I don't know which came from inside and which came from out."Linda sprang down and began hastily gathering up everything she could see that had fallen from the coat pockets. She had almost finished when her fingers chanced upon a very soiled, befigured piece of paper whose impressed folds showed that it had been carried for some time in an inner pocket. As her fingers touched this paper her eyes narrowed, her breath came in a gasp. She looked at it a second, irresolute, then she glanced over the top of the declivity in the direction Peter had taken. He was standing in front of the building, discussing some matter with the contractor. He had not yet gone to the spring. Shielded by the embankment with shaking fingers Linda opened the paper barely enough to see that it was Marian's lost sheet of plans; but it was not as Marian had lost it. It was scored deeply here and there with heavy lines suggestive of alterations, and the margin was fairly covered with fine figuring. Linda did not know Peter Morrison's writing or figures. His articles had been typewritten and she had never seen his handwriting. She sat down suddenly on account of weakened knees, and gazed unseeingly down the length of Lilac Valley, her heart sick, her brain tormented. Suddenly she turned and studied the house.
"Before the Lord!" she gasped. "I THOUGHT there was something mighty familiar even about the skeleton of you! Oh, Peter, Peter, where did you get this, and how could you do it?"For a while a mist blurred her eyes. She reached for the coat and started to replace the things she had gathered up, then she shut her lips tight.
"Best time to pull a tooth," she said tersely to a terra cotta red manzanita bush, "is when it aches."When Peter returned from the spring he was faced by a trembling girl, colorless and trying hard to keep her voice steady. She held out the coat to him with one hand, the package of papers with the other, the folded drawing conspicuous on the top. With these she gestured toward the declivity.
"Mouse nest in your pocket, Peter," she said thickly. "Reversed the coat to shake it out, and spilled your stuff."Then she waited for Peter to be confounded. But Peter was not in the faintest degree troubled about either the coat or the papers.
What did trouble him was the face and the blazing eyes of the girl concerning whom he would not admit, even to himself, his exact state of feeling.
"The mouse did not get on you, Linda?" he asked anxiously.
Linda shook her head. Suddenly she lost her self-control.
"Oh, Peter," she wailed, "how could you do it?"Peter's lean frame tensed suddenly.
"I don't understand, Linda," he said quietly. "Exactly what have I done?"Linda thrust the coat and the papers toward him accusingly and stood there wordless but with visible pain in her dark eyes.
peter smiled at her reassuringly.
"That's not my coat, you know. If there is anything distressing about it, don't lay it to me.""Oh, Peter!" cried Linda, "tell the truth about it. Don't try any evasions. I am so sick of them."A rather queer light sprang into Peter's eyes. He leaned forward suddenly and caught the coat from Linda's fingers.
"Well, if you need an alibi concerning this coat," he said, "Ithink I can furnish it speedily."As he talked he whirled the garment around and shot his long arms into the sleeves. Shaking it into place on his shoulders, he slowly turned in front of Linda and the surprised Katy. The sleeves came halfway to his wrists and the shoulders slid down over his upper arms. He made such a quaint and ridiculous figure that Katy burst out laughing. She was very well trained, but she knew Linda was deeply distressed.
"Wake up, lambie!" she cried sharply. "That coat ain't belonging to Mr. Pater Morrison. That gairment is the property of that bug-catchin' architect of his."Peter shook off the coat and handed it back to Linda.
"Am I acquitted?" he asked lightly; but his surprised eyes were searching her from braid to toe.
Linda turned from him swiftly. She thrust the packet into a side pocket and started to the garage with the coat. As she passed inside she slipped down her hand, slid the sheet of plans from the other papers, and slipped it into the front of her blouse.
She hung the coat back where she had found it, then suddenly sat down on the side of Peter Morrison's couch, white and shaken.
Peter thought he heard a peculiar gasp and when he strayed past the door, casually glancing inward, he saw what he saw, and it brought him to his knees beside Linda with all speed.
"Linda-girl," he implored, "what in this world has happened?"Linda struggled to control her voice; but at last she buried her face in her hands and frankly emitted a sound that she herself would have described as "howling." Peter knelt back in wonder.
"Of all the things I ever thought about you, Linda," he said, "the one thing I never did think was that you were hysterical."If there was one word in Linda's vocabulary more opprobrious than "nerves," which could be applied to a woman, it was "hysterics."The great specialist had admitted nerves; hysterics had no standing with him. Linda herself had no more use for a hysterical woman than she had for a Gila monster. She straightened suddenly, and in removing her hands from her face she laid one on each of Peter's shoulders.
