We
got so in earnest that I am afraid both of us were rather tense.
I stepped over to his demonstration to point out where I thought
his reasoning was wrong. I got closer to the Jap than I had ever
been before; and by gracious, Linda! scattered, but nevertheless
still there, and visible, I saw a sprinkling of gray hairs just
in front of and over his ears. It caught me unawares, and before
I knew what I was doing, before the professor and the assembled
classroom I blurted it out: 'Say, Oka Sayye, how old are you?'
If the Jap had had any way of killing me, I believe he would have
done it. There was a look in his eyes that was what I would call
deadly. It was only a flash and then, very courteously, putting
me in the wrong, of course, he remarked that he was 'almost
ninekleen'; and it struck me from his look and the way he said it
that it was a lie. If he truly was the average age of the rest
of the class there was nothing for him to be angry about. Then I
did take a deliberate survey. From the settled solidity of his
frame and the shape of his hands and the skin of his face and the
set of his eyes in his head, I couldn't see that much youth.
I'll bet he's thirty if he's a day, and I shouldn't be a bit
surprised if he has graduated at the most worthwhile university
in Japan, before he ever came to this country to get his English
for nothing."
Linda was watching a sea swallow now, and slowly her lean fingers
were gathering handfuls of sand and sifting them into a little
pyramid she was heaping beside her.
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