of Chinese poems, he seemed to be very popular even with those stalwarts, the jujitsu and single-sticking champions, who hated English itself. So when he said this, one of those stalwarts, fingering a mitt, replied with a shyness unnatural to him,
“Er—he’s not too—what shall I say? Everybody says he’s not too good.”
Then Tamba Sensei, dusting the sand off his trousers with his handkerchief, smiled proudly and said,
“Is he worse than you are?”
“Of course he’s better than I am.”
“Then you have nothing to complain of, have you?”
The stalwart, scratching his head with his mitted hand, withdrew weakly. But the English genius of our class, adjusting his strong myopic spectacles, protested in a pert tone, unbecoming his years,
“But Sensei, as most of us mean to take the entrance examinations to higher schools, we want to be taught