I would know it, and that would be all I would want to know. I
have watched Daddy search for the seat of nervous disorders, and
sometimes he had to probe very deep to find what developed nerves
unduly but he didn't ever do any picking and raveling and
fringing at the soul of a human being merely for the sake of
finding out what it was made of; and everyone says I am like
him."

"I wish I might have known him," said Peter.

"Don't I wish it!" said Linda. "Now then, Peter, go ahead. Read
your article."

Peter opened a packing case, picked out a sheaf of papers, and
sitting opposite Linda, began to read. He was dumbfounded to
find that he, a man who had read and talked extemporaneously
before great bodies of learned men, should have cold feet and
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