shaking hands and a hammering heart
because he was trying to read an article on America for Americans before
a high-school Junior. But presently, as the theme engrossed him, he
forgot the vision of Linda interesting herself in his homemaking, and
saw instead a vision of his country threatened on one side by the red
menace of the Bolshevik, on the other by the yellow menace of the
Jap, and yet on another by the treachery of the Mexican and the slowly
uprising might of the black man, and presently he was thundering his
best-considered arguments at Linda until she imperceptibly drew back
from him on the packing case, and with parted lips and wide eyes she
listened in utter absorption. She gazed at a transformed Peter with
aroused eyes and a white light of patriotism on his forehead, and a
conception even keener than anything that the war had brought her young
soul was burning in her heart of what a man means when he tries to
express his feeling concerning the land of his birth. Presently, without
realizing what she was doing, she reached for her pad and pencils and
rapidly began sketching a stretch of peaceful countryside over which
a coming storm of gigantic proportions was gathering. Fired by Peter's
article, the touch of genius in Linda's soul became creative and she
fashioned huge storm clouds wind driven, that floated in such a manner
as to bring the merest suggestion of menacing faces, black faces,
yellow faces, brown faces, and under the flash of lightning, just at the
obscuring of the sun, a huge, evil, leering red face. She swept a stroke
across her sheet and below this she began again, sketching the same
stretch of country she had pictured above, strolling in cultivated
fields, dotting it with white cities, connecting it with smooth
roadways, sweeping the sky with giant planes. At one side, winging in
from the glow of morning, she drew in the strong-winged flight of a
flock of sea swallows, peacefully homing toward the far-distant ocean.
She was utterly unaware when Peter stopped reading. Absorbed, she bent
over her work. When she had finished she looked up.

"Now I'll take this home," she said. "I can't do well on color
with pencils. You hold that article till I have time to put this on
water-color paper and touch it up a bit here and there, and I believe it
will be worthy of starting and closing your article."

She pushed the sketches toward him.

"You little wonder!" said Peter softly.

"Yes, 'little' is g