he can build an addition as his needs increase."

"Messy idea," said Linda promptly. "Thing to do, when you build a house,
is to build it the way you want it for the remainder of your life,
so you don't have to tear up the scenery every few years, dragging in
lumber for expansion. And I'll tell you another thing. If the homemakers
of this country don't get the idea into their heads pretty soon that
they are not going to be able to hold their own with the rest of the
world, with no children, or one child in the family, there's a sad day
of reckoning coming. With the records at the patent office open to
the world, you can't claim that the brain of the white man is not
constructive. You can look at our records and compare them with those
of countries ages and ages older than we are, which never discovered
the beauties of a Dover egg-beater or a washing machine or a churn or
a railroad or a steamboat or a bridge. We are head and shoulders above
other nations in invention, and just as fast as possible, we are falling
behind in the birth rate. The red man and the yellow man and the brown
man and the black man can look at our egg-beaters and washing machines
and bridges and big guns, and go home and copy them; and use them while
rearing even bigger families than they have now. If every home in Lilac
Valley had at least six sturdy boys and girls growing up in it with the
proper love of country and the proper realization of the white man's
right to supremacy, and if all the world now occupied by white men could
make an equal record, where would be the talk of the yellow peril? There
wouldn't be any yellow peril. You see what I mean?"

Linda lifted her frank eyes to Peter Morrison.

"Yes, young woman," said Peter gravely, "I see what you mean, but this
is the first time I ever heard a high-school kid propound such ideas.
Where did you get them?"

"Got them in Multiflores Canyon from my father to start with," said
Linda, "but recently I have been thinking, because there is a boy in
high school who is making a great fight for a better scholarship record
than a Jap in his class. I brood over it every spare minute, day or
night, and when I say my prayers I implore high Heaven to send him an
idea or to send me one that I can pass on to him, that will help him to
beat that Jap."

"I see," said Peter Morrison. "We'll have to take time to talk this
over. It's barely possible I might be able to suggest something."

"You let that kid