第76章 The Cap Sheaf(3)

"Well," said Donald, "it's a queer thing about you, Linda. Itake any liberty I pretty nearly please with most of the girls Ihave been associated with. I tie their shoes and pull their hair--down if I want to--and hand them round 'most any way the notion takes me, and they just laugh and take the same liberties with me, which proves that I am pretty much a girl with them or they are pretty much boys with me. But it wouldn't occur to me to touch your hair or your shoe lace or the tips of your fingers;which proves that you're more feminine than any other girl Iknow, because if you were not I would be treating you more like another boy. I thought, the first day we were together, that you were like a boy, and I said so, and I thought it because you did not tease me and flirt with me, but since I have come to know you better, you're less like a boy than any other girl I ever have known.""Don't get psychological, Donald," said Linda. "Go on with the Jap. I haven't got an answer yet to what I really want to know.

Have you made the least progress this week? Can you beat him?"Donald hesitated, studying over the answer.

"Beat him at that trig proposition the other day," he said. "Got an open commendation before the class. There's not a professor in any of my classes who isn't 'hep' to what I'm after by this time, and if I would cajole them a little they would naturally be on my side, especially if their attention were called to that incident of yesterday; but you said I have to beat him with my brains, by doing better work than he does; so about the biggest thing I can honestly tell you is that I have held my own. I have only been ahead of him once this week, but I haven't failed in anything that he has accomplished. I have been able to put some additional touches to some work that he has done for which he used to be marked A which means your One Hundred. Double A which means your plus I made in one instance. And you needn't think that Oka Sayye does not realize what I am up to as well as any of the rest of the class, and you needn't think that he is not going to give me a run for my brain. All I've got will be needed before we finish this term.""I see," said Linda, slowly nodding her head.

"I wish," said Donald, "that we had started this thing two years ago, or better still, four. But of course you were not in the high school four years ago and there wasn't a girl in my class or among my friends who cared whether I beat the Jap or not. They greatly preferred that I take them motoring or to a dance or a picture show or a beach party. You're the only one except Mother and Louise who ever inspired me to get down to business."Linda laid her palm on the top of the sand heap and pressed it flat. She looked at Donald with laughing eyes.

"Symbolical," she announced. "That sand was the Jap." She stretched her hand toward him. "That was you. Did you see yourself squash him?"Donald's laugh was grim.

"Yes, I saw," he said. "I wish it were as easy as that.""That was not easy," said Linda; "make a mental computation of all the seconds that it took me to erect that pyramid and all the millions of grains of sand I had to gather."Donald was deeply thoughtful, yet a half smile was playing round his lips.

"Of all the queer girls I ever knew, you're the cap sheaf, Linda," he said.

Linda rose slowly, shook the sand from her breeches and stretched out her hand.

"Let's hotfoot it down to the African village and see what the movies are doing that is interesting today," she proposed.