“I 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 opportunities has allowed a little brown Jap to cross the Pacific Ocean and in 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 such a pitched battle that when I go over the top, you won’t ever care to follow me and start another issue on the other side. You’re dying right now to ask why I wear my hair in braids down my back instead of in cootie coops over my ears.”
“I don’t give a hang,” said Donald ungallantly, “as to how you wear your hair, but I am coming Saturday to fight, and I don’t think Mother will take any greater interest in the matter than to know that I am going to do battle with a daughter of Doctor Strong.”