am getting at the fact," said Linda, "that a boy as big as you and as
strong as you and with as good brain and your opportunity has allowed
a little brown Jap to cross the Pacific Ocean and a totally strange
country to learn a language foreign to him, and, and, with the same
books and the same chances, to beat you at your own game. You and every
other boy in your classes ought to thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.
Before I would let a Jap, either boy or girl, lead in my class, I would
give up going to school and go out and see if I could beat him growing
lettuce and spinach."

"It's all very well to talk," said Donald hotly.

"And it's better to make good what you say," broke in Linda, with equal
heat. "There are half a dozen Japs in my classes but no one of them is
leading, you will notice, if I do wear peculiar shoes."

"Well, you would be going some if you beat the leading Jap in the senior
class," said Donald.

"Then I would go some," said Linda. "I'd beat him, or I'd go straight up
trying. You could do it if you'd make up your mind to. The trouble with
you is that you're wasting your brain on speeding an automobile, on
dances, and all sorts of foolishness that is not doing you any good in
any particular way. Bet you are developing nerves smoking cigarettes.
You are not concentrating. Oka Sayye is not thinking of a thing except
the triumph of proving to California that he is head man in one of the
Los Angeles high schools. That's what I have got against you, and every
other white boy in your class, and in the long run it stacks up bigger
than your arraignment of my shoes."

"Oh, darn your shoes!" cried Donald hotly. "Forget 'em! I've got to move
on or I'll be late for trigonometry, but I don't know when I've had such
a tidy little fight with a girl, and I don't enjoy feeling that I have
been worsted. I propose another session. May I come out to Lilac
Valley Saturday afternoon and flay you alive to pay up for my present
humiliation?"

"Why, if your mother happened to be motoring that way and would care to
call, I think that would be fine," said Linda.

"Well, for the Lord's sake!" exclaimed the irate senior. "Can't a fellow
come and fight with you without being refereed by his mother? Shall I
bring Father too?"

"I only thought," said Linda quietly, "that you would like your mother
to see the home and environment of any girl whose acquaintance you made,
but the fight we have coming will in all probability be