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."

"Yes," said Linda with scathing sarcasm, "and wouldn't our government be
tickled to death to have a clear spring and a perfect bush and a singing
bird, if it needed six men to go over the top to handle a regiment of
Japanese!"

Then Peter Morrison laughed.

"Well, your estimate is too low, Linda," he said in his nicest drawling
tone of voice. "Believe me, one U. S. kid will never march in a whole
regiment of Japanese. They won't lay down their guns and walk to
surrender as bunches of Germans did. Nobody need ever think that. They
are as good fighters as they are imitators. There's nothing for you to
do, Henry, but to take to heart what Miss Linda has said. Plan the house
with a suite for a dream lady, and a dining room, a sleeping porch and a
nursery big enough for the six children allotted to me."

"You're not really in earnest?" asked Henry Anderson in doubting
astonishment.

"I am in the deepest kind of earnest," said Peter Morrison. "What Miss
Linda says is true. As a nation, our people are pampering themselves and
living for their own pleasures. They won't take the trouble or endure
the pain required to bear and to rear children; and the day is rolling
toward us, with every turn of the planet one day closer, when we are
going to be outnumbered by a combination of peoples who can take our own
tricks and beat us with them. We must pass along the good word that the
one thing America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES AND
HEARTS BIG ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our grandfathers,
when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child in the family, and if
you didn't have a dozen you weren't doing your manifest duty."

"Well, if that is the way you see the light, we must enlarge this house.
As designed, it inc