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."

"Did my being late spoil any particular plan you had made, Linda?"

"Yes," said Linda, "it did."

"Oh, I am so sorry!" cried Donald. "I certainly shall try to see that it
doesn't occur again. Could we do it next Saturday?"

"I am hoping so," said Linda.

"I told Dad," said Donald, "where I wanted to go and what I wanted to
do, and he was awfully sorry but he said it was business and it would
take only a few minutes and he thought I could do it and be on time. If
he had known I would be detained I don't believe he would have asked it
of me. He's a grand old peter, Linda."

"Yes, I know," said Linda. "There's not much you can tell me about
peters of the grand sort, the real, true flesh-and-blood, bighearted,
human-being fathers, who will take you to the fields and the woods and
take the time to teach you what God made and how He made it and why
He made it and what we can do with it, and of the fellowship and
brotherhood we can get from Nature by being real kin. The one thing that
I have had that was the biggest thing in all this world was one of these
real fathers."

Donald watched as she raised the pyramid higher and higher.

"Did you tell your father whom you were to go with?" she asked.