roughened black head down
the gold-brown of her dress to her slender, well-shod feet. The last
part of that glance Linda caught. She slightly lifted one of the feet
under inspection, thrust it forward and looked at the Judge with a gay
challenge in her dark eyes.

"Are you interested in them too?" she asked.

The Judge was embarrassed. A flush crept into his cheeks. He was
supposed to be master of any emergency that might arise, but one had
arisen in connection with a slip of a schoolgirl that left him wordless.

"It is very probable," said Linda, "that if my shoes had been like
most other girls' shoes I wouldn't be here today. I was in the same
schoolroom with your son for three years, and he never saw me or spoke
to me until one day he stopped me to inquire why I wore the kind of
shoes I did. He said he had a battle to wage with me because I tried to
be a law to myself, and he wanted to know why I wasn't like other girls.
And I told him I had a crow to pick with HIM because he had the kind of
brain that would be content to let a Jap beat him in his own school,
in his own language and in his own country; so we made an engagement to
fight to a finish, and it ended by his becoming the only boy friend I
have and the nicest boy friend a girl ever had, I am very sure. That's
why I'm here."

Linda lifted her eyes and Judge Whiting looked into them till he saw the
same gold lights in their depths that Peter Morrison had seen. He came
around the table and placed a big leather chair for Linda. Then he went
back and resumed his own.

"Of course," said the Judge in his most engaging manner. "I gather from
what Donald has told me that you have a reason for being here, and I
want you to understand that I am intensely interested in anything you
have to say to me. Now tell me why you came."

"I came," said Linda, "because I started something and am afraid of the
possible result. I think very likely if, in retaliation for what Donald
said to me about my hair and my shoes, I had not twitted him about the
use he was making of his brain and done everything in my power to drive
him into competition with Oka Sayye in the hope that a white man would
graduate with the highest honors, he would not have gone into this
competition, which I am now certain has antagonized Oka Sayye."

Linda folded her slim hands on the table and leaned forward.

"Judge Whiting," she said earnestly, "I know very little about men. The
most I know was what