ut 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. 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