"I know a white apologist for the Japanese who in a million pamphlets and from a thousand rostrums has cried that it is false that Japanese women labor in the fields," Farrel told his guests. "You have seen a thousand of them laboring in this valley. Hundreds of them carry babies on their backs or set them to sleep on a gunnysack between the rows of vegetables. There is a sixteen-year-old girl struggling with a one-horse cultivator, while her sisters and her mother hold up their end with five male Japs in the gentle art of hoeing potatoes." "They live in wretched little houses," Kay ventured to remark. "Anything that will shelter a horse or a chicken is a palace to a Jap, Kay. The furnishings of their houses are few and crude. They rise in the morning, eat, labor, eat, and retire to sleep against another day of toil. They are all growing rich in this valley, but have you seen one of these aliens building a decent home, or laying out a flower garden? Do you see anything inspiring or elevating to our nation due to the influence of such a race?" "Yonder is a schoolhouse," Mrs. Parker suggested. "Let us visit it." "The American flag floats over that little red school-house, at any rate," Parker defended. William halted the car in the schoolhouse yard and Farrel got out and walked to the schoolhouse door. An American school-teacher, a girl of perhaps twenty, came to the door and met him with an inquiring look. "May we come in?" Farrel pleaded. "I have some Eastern people with me and I wanted to show them the sort of Americans you are hired to teach." She smiled ruefully. "I am just about to let them out for recess," she replied. "Your friends may remain in their car and draw their own conclusions." "Thank you." Don Mike returned to the car. "They're coming out for recess," he confided. "Future American citizens and citizenesses. Count 'em." Thirty-two little Japanese boys and girls, three Mexican or Indian children and four of undoubted white parentage trooped out into the yard and gathered around the car, gazing curiously. The school-teacher bade them run away and play and, in her role of hostess, approached the car. "I am Miss Owens," she announced, "and I teach this school because I have to earn a living. It is scarcely a task over which one can enthuse, although I must admit that Japanese children are not unintelligent and their parents dress them nicely and keep them clean." "I suppose, Miss Owens," Farrel prompted her, having introduced himself and the Parkers, "that you have to contend with the native Japanese schools."