She
inquired about the man who had taken his place, and wanted most
particularly to know what the garage men had found the trouble
with a car that ran perfectly on Friday night and broke down in
half a dozen different places on Saturday morning. Finally
Donald looked at her, laughingly quizzical.
"Linda," he said, "you're no nerve specialist and no naturalist.
You're the cross examiner for the plaintiff. What are you trying
to get at? Make out a case against Yogo Sani?"
"Of course it's all right," said Linda, watching a distant
pelican turn head down and catapult into the sea. "It has to be
all right, but you must admit that it looks peculiar. How have
you been getting along this week?"
Donald waved his hand in the direction of a formation of stone
the size of a small house.
"Been rolling that to the top of the mountain," he said lightly.
Linda's eyes narrowed, her face grew speculative. She looked at
Donald intently.
"Is it as difficult as that?" she asked in a lowered voice as if
the surf and the sea chickens might hear.
"It is just as difficult as that," said Donald. "While you're
talking about peculiar things, I'll tell you one. In class I
came right up against Oka Sayye on the solution of a theorem in
trigonometry. We both had the answer, the correct answer, but we
had arrived at it by widely different routes, and it was up to me
to prove that my line of reasoning was more lucid, more natural,
the inevitable one by which the solution should be reached.
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