Her Father's Daughter

by Gene Stratton-Porter

“Been rolling that to the top of the mountain,” he said lightly.

Linda’s eyes narrowed, her face grew speculative. She looked at Donald intently.

“Is it as difficult as that?” she asked in a lowered voice as if the surf and the sea chickens might hear.

“It is just as difficult as that,” said Donald. “While you’re talking about peculiar things, I’ll tell you one. In class I came right up against Oka Sayye on the solution of a theorem in trigonometry. We both had the answer, the correct answer, but we had arrived at it by widely different routes, and it was up to me to prove that my line of reasoning was more lucid, more natural, the inevitable one by which the solution should be reached. We got so in earnest that I am afraid both of us were rather tense. I stepped over to his demonstration to point out where I thought his reasoning was wrong. I got closer to the Jap than I had ever been before; and by gracious, Linda! scattered, but nevertheless still there, and visible, I saw a sprinkling of gray hairs just in front of and over his ears. It caught me unawares, and before I knew what I was doing, before the professor and the assembled classroom I blurted it out: ‘Say, Oka Sayye, how old are you?’ If the Jap had had any way of killing me, I believe he would have done it. There was a look in his eyes that was what I would call deadly. It was only a flash and then, very courteously, putting me in the wrong, of course, he remarked that he was ‘almost ninekleen’; and it struck me from his look and the way he said it that it was a lie. If he truly was the average age of the rest of the class there was nothing for him to be angry about. Then I did take a deliberate survey. From the settled solidity of his frame and the shape of his hands and the skin of his face and the set of his eyes in his head, I couldn’t see that much youth. I’ll bet he’s thirty if he’s a day, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he has graduated at the most worth-while university in Japan, before he ever came to this country to get his English for nothing.”

Linda was watching a sea swallow now, and slowly her lean fingers were gathering handfuls of sand and sifting them into a little pyramid she was heaping beside her. Again almost under her breath she spoke.

“Donald, do you really believe that?” she asked. “Is it possible that mature Jap men are coming here and entering our schools and availing themselves of the benefits that the taxpayers of California provide for their children?”

“Didn’t you know it?” asked Donald. “I hadn’t thought of it in connection with Oka Sayye, but I do know cases where mature Japs have been in grade schools with children under ten.”

“Oh, Donald!” exclaimed Linda. “If California is permitting that or ever has permitted it, we’re too easy. We deserve to become their prey if we are so careless.”

“Why, I know it’s true,” said Donald. “I have been in the same classes with men more than old enough to be my father.”

“I never was,” said Linda, industriously sifting sand. “I have been in classes with Japs ever since I have been at school, but it was with girls and boys of our gardeners and fruit dealers and curio-shop people, and they were always of my age and entitled to be in school, since our system includes the education of anybody who happens to be in California and wants to go to school.”