You're dying right now to ask why I wear my hair in braids down my back instead of in cootie coops over my ears." "I don't give a hang," said Donald ungallantly, "as to how you; wear your hair, but I am coming Saturday to fight, and I don't think Mother will take any greater interest in the matter than to know that I am going to do battle with a daughter of Doctor I Strong." "That is a very nice compliment to my daddy, thank you, said Linda, turning away and proceeding in the direction of her own classrooms.
There was a brilliant sparkle in her eyes and she sang in a muffled voice, yet distinctly enough to be heard: "The shoes I wear are common-sense shoes, And you may wear them if you choose." "By gracious! She's no fool," he said to himself.

In three minutes' unpremeditated talk the "Junior Freak," as he mentally denominated her, had managed to irritate him, to puncture his pride, to entertain and amuse him.
"I wonder--" he said as he went his way; and all day he kept on wondering, when he was not studying harder than ever before in all his life.
That night Linda walked slowly along the road toward home.

She was not seeing the broad stretch of Lilac Valley, on every hand green with spring, odorous with citrus and wild bloom, blue walled with lacy lilacs veiling the mountain face on either side; and she was not thinking of her plain, well-worn dress or her common-sense shoes.

What she was thinking was of every flaying, scathing, solidly based argument she could produce the following Saturday to spur Donald Whiting in some way to surpass Oka Sayye.

His chance remark that morning, as they stood near each other waiting a few minutes in the hall, had ended in his asking to come to see her, and she decided as she walked homeward that his first visit in all probability would be his last, since she had not time to spare for boys, when she had so many different interests involved; but she did decide very finely in her own mind that the would make that visit a memorable one for him.
In arriving at this decision her mind traveled a number of devious roads.