And if, as you gather it, you should see a vision of a white head, a thin, ascetic, old face, a lean figure trailing a brown robe, slender white hands clasping a heavy cross; if you should hear the music of worship ascending from the throats of Benedictine fathers leading a clamoring choir of the blended voices of Spaniard, Mexican, and Indian, combining with the music of the bells and the songs of the mocking birds, nest making among the Tunas, it will be good for your soul in the line of purging it from selfishness, since in this day we are not asked to give all of life to the service of others, only a reasonable part of it.
Linda read this over, working in changes here and there, then she picked up her pencil and across the top of her sheet indicated an open sky with scarcely a hint of cloud.

Across the bottom she outlined a bit of Sunland Desert she well remembered, in the foreground a bed of flat-leaved nopal, flowering red and yellow, the dark red prickly pears, edible, being a near relative of the fruits she had used in her salad.
After giving the prickly pear the place of honor to the left, in higher growth she worked in the slender, cylindrical, jointed stems of the Cholla, shading the flowers a paler, greenish yellow.

On the right, balancing the Cholla, she drew the oval, cylindrical columns of the hedgehog cactus, and the color touch of the big magenta flowers blended exquisitely with the color she already had used.

At the left, the length of her page, she drew a gigantic specimen of Opuntia Tuna, covered with flowers, and well-developed specimens of the pears whose coloring ran into the shades of the hedgehog cactus.
She was putting away her working materials when she heard steps and voices on the stairs, so she knew that Eileen and John Gilman were coming.

She did not in the least want them, yet she could think of no excuse for refusing them admission that would not seem ungracious.