“I never believed,” said Henry Anderson, “in counting your chickens before they are hatched. There are a couple of acres around Peter’s house, and 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 fight his own battles,” said Henry Anderson roughly. “He’s no proper bug-catcher. I feel it in my bones.”
For the first time, Linda’s joy laugh rang over Peter Morrison’s possession.
“I don’t know about that,” she said gaily. “He’s a wide-awake specimen; he has led his class for four years when the Jap didn’t get ahead of him. But, all foolishness aside, take my word for it, Peter, you’ll be sorry if you don’t build this house big enough for your dream lady and for all the little dreams that may spring from her heart.”
“Nightmares, you mean,” said Henry Anderson. “I can’t imagine a bunch of kids muddying up this spring and breaking the bushes and using slingshots on the birds.”