Her Father's Daughter Part 29

"I quite agree with you," said the Judge. "That has been done in the grades, but there is nothing fair in bringing a boy under twenty in compet.i.tion with a man graduated from the inst.i.tutions of another country, even in the high schools. If this be the case--"

"You can be certain that it is," said Linda, "because Donald whispered to me as he pa.s.sed me half an hour ago, coming from the school building, that TODAY Oka Sayye's hair is a uniform, shining black, and he also thought that he had used a lipstick and rouge in an effort at rejuvenation. Do you think, from your knowledge of Donald, that he would imagine that?"

"No," said Judge Whiting, "I don't think such a thing would occur to him unless he saw it."

"Neither do I," said Linda. "From the short acquaintance I have with him I should not call him at all imaginative, but he is extremely quick and wonderfully retentive. You have to show him but once from which cactus he can get Victrola needles and fishing hooks, or where to find material for wooden legs."

The Judge laughed. "Doesn't prove much," he said. "You wouldn't have to show me that more than once either. If anyone were giving me an intensive course on such interesting subjects, I would guarantee to remember, even at my age."

Linda nodded in acquiescence. "Then you can regard it as quite certain,"

she said, "that Oka Sayye is making up in an effort to appear younger than he is which means that he doesn't want his right questioned to be in our schools, to absorb the things that we are taught, to learn our language, our government, our inst.i.tutions, our ideals, our approximate strength and our only-too-apparent weakness."

The Judge leaned forward and waited attentively.

"The other matter," said Linda, "was relative to Sat.u.r.day. There may not be a thing in it, but sometimes a woman's intuition proves truer than what a man thinks he sees and knows. I haven't SEEN a thing, and I don't KNOW a thing, but I don't believe your gardener was sick last week.

I believe he had a dirty job he wanted done and preferred to save his position and avoid risks by getting some other j.a.p who had no family and no interests here, to do it for him. I don't BELIEVE that your car, having run all right Friday night, was shot to pieces Sat.u.r.day morning so that Donald went smash with it in a manner that might very easily have killed him, or sent him to the hospital for months, while Oka Sayye carried off the honors without compet.i.tion I want to ask you to find out whether your regular gardener truly was ill, whether he has a family and interests to protect here, or whether he is a man who could disappear in a night as j.a.ps who have leased land and have families cannot. I want to know about the man who took your gardener's place, and I want the man who is repairing your car interviewed very carefully as to what he found the trouble with it."

Linda paused. Judge Whiting sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda.

"I see," he said at last. "Thank you very much for coming to me. All these things and anything that develops from them shall be handled carefully. Of course you know that Donald is my only son and you can realize what he is to me and to his mother and sister."

"It is because I do realize that," said Linda, "that I am here. I appreciate his friendship, but it is not for my own interests that I am asking to have him taken care of while he wages his mental war with this j.a.p. I want Donald to have the victory, but I want it to be a victory that will be an inspiration to any boy of white blood among any of our allies or among peoples who should be our allies. There's a showdown coming between the white race and a mighty aggregation of colored peoples one of these days, and if the white man doesn't realize pretty soon that his supremacy is not only going to be contested but may be lost, it just simply will be lost; that is all there is to it."

The Judge was studying deeply now. Finally he said: "Young lady, I greatly appreciate your coming to me. There may be NOTHING in what you fear. It MIGHT be a matter of national importance. In any event, it shows that your heart is in the right place. May Mrs. Whiting and I pay you a visit some day soon in your home?"

"Of course," said Linda simply. "I told Donald to bring his mother the first time he came, but he said he did not need to be chaperoned when he came to see me, because my father's name was a guarantee to his mother that my home would be a proper place for him to visit."

"I wonder how many of his other girl friends invited him to bring his mother to see them," said the Judge.

"Oh, he probably grew up with the other girls and was acquainted with them from tiny things," said Linda.

"Very likely," conceded the Judge. "I think, after all, I would rather have an invitation to make one of those trips with you to the desert or the mountains. Is there anything else as interesting as fish hooks and Victrola needles and wooden legs to be learned?"

"Oh, yes," said Linda, leaning farther forward, a lovely color sweeping up into her cheeks, her eyes a-shine. She had missed the fact that the Judge was jesting. She had thought him in sober, scientific earnest.

"It's an awfully nice thing if you dig a plant or soil your hands in hunting, or anything like that, to know that there are four or five different kinds of vegetable soap where you can easily reach them, if you know them. If you lose your way or have a long tramp, it's good to know which plants will give you drink and where they are. And if you're short of implements, you might at any time need a mescal stick, or an arrow shaft or an arrow, even. If Donald were lost now, he could keep alive for days, because he would know what wood would make him a bow and how he could take amole fiber and braid a bow string and where he could make arrows and arrow points so that he could shoot game for food. I've taught him to make a number of snares, and he knows where to find and how to cook his greens and potatoes and onions and where to find his pickles and how to make lemonade and tea, and what to use for snake bite. It's been such fun, Judge Whiting, and he has been so interested."

"Yes, I should think he would be," said the Judge. "I am interested myself. If you would take an old boy like me on a few of those trips, I would be immensely pleased."

"You'd like brigand beefsteak," suggested Linda, "and you'd like cress salad, and I am sure you'd like creamed yucca."

"Hm," said the Judge. "Sounds to me like Jane Meredith."

Linda suddenly sat straight. A dazed expression crossed her face.

Presently she recovered.

"Will you kindly tell me," she said, "what a great criminal judge knows about Jane Meredith?"

"Why, I hear my wife and daughter talking about her," said the Judge.

"I wonder," said Linda, "if a judge hears so many secrets that he forgets what a secret is and couldn't possibly keep one to save his life."

"On the other hand," said Judge Whiting, "a judge hears so many secrets that he learns to be a very secretive person himself, and if a young lady just your size and so like you in every way as to be you, told me anything and told me that it was a secret, I would guarantee to carry it with me to my grave, if I said I would."

One of Linda's special laughs floated out of the windows. Her right hand slipped across the table toward the Judge.

"Cross your heart and body?" she challenged.

The Judge took the hand she offered in both of his own.

"On my soul," he said, "I swear it."

"All right," bubbled Linda. "Judge Whiting, allow me to present to you Jane Meredith, the author and originator of the Aboriginal Cookery articles now running in Everybody's Home."

Linda stood up as she made the presentation and the Judge arose with her. When she bowed her dark head before him the Judge bowed equally as low, then he took the hand he held and pressed it against his lips.

"I am not surprised," he said. "I am honored, deeply honored, and I am delighted. For a high school girl that is a splendid achievement."

"But you realize, of course," said Linda, "that it is vicarious. I really haven't done anything. I am just pa.s.sing on to the world what Alexander Strong found it interesting to teach his daughter, because he hadn't a son."

"I certainly am fortunate that my son is getting the benefit of this,"

said Judge Whiting earnestly. "There are girls who make my old-fashioned soul shudder, but I shall rest in great comfort whenever I know that my boy is with you."

"Sure!" laughed Linda. "I'm not vamping him. I don't know the first principles. We're not doing a thing worse than sucking 'hunters' rock leek' or roasting Indian potatoes or fishing for trout with cactus spines. I have had such a lovely time I don't believe that I'll apologize for coming. But you won't waste a minute in making sure about Oka Sayye?"

"I won't waste a minute," said the Judge.

CHAPTER XXII. The End of Marian's Contest

Coming from school a few days later on an evening when she had been detained, Linda found a radiant Katy awaiting her.

"What's up, old dear?" cried Linda. "You seem positively illumined."

"So be," said Katy. "It's a good time I'm havin'. In the first place the previous boss of this place ain't nowise so bossy as sue used to be, an'

livin' with her is a dale aisier. An' then, when Miss Eileen is around these days, she is beginning to see things, and she is just black with jealousy of ye. Something funny happened here the afternoon, an' she was home for once an' got the full benefit of it. I was swapin' the aist walk, but I know she was inside the window an' I know she heard. First, comes a great big loaded automobile drivin' up, and stopped in front with a flourish an' out hops as nice an' nate a lookin' lad as ever you clapped your eyes on, an' up he comes to me an' off goes his hat with a swape, an' he hands me that bundle an' he says: 'Here's something Miss Linda is wantin' bad for her wild garden.'"

Katy handed Linda a bundle of newspaper, inside which, wrapped in a man's handkerchief, she found several plants, carefully lifted, the roots properly balled, the heads erect, crisp, although in full flower.

"Oh, Katy!" cried Linda. "Look, it's Gallito, 'little rooster'!" "Now ain't them jist yellow violets?" asked Katy dubiously.

"No," said Linda, "they are not. They are quite a bit rarer. They are really a wild pansy. Bring water, Katy, and help me."

"But I've something else for ye," said Katy.

"I don't care what you have," answered Linda. "I am just compelled to park these little roosters at once."