“That’s all right.”
Without so much as looking at Ryōtetsu, Sōshun filled his pipe again. And when he had smoked it up, he threw back the pouch with a suppressed yawn and said,
“Faw, that’s bad tobacco. A nice pipe-fancier, you!”
Ryōtetsu put away his tobacco pouch hurriedly.
“Nonsense! In a gold pipe, it’d taste pretty good, all right.”
“H’m, that pipe again?” said Sōshun for the second time. “If you think so much of pure gold, why don’t you go and ask him to give you the pipe?”
“Ask him to give me the pipe?”
“Yes.”
Even Ryōtetsu seemed surprised at Sōshun’s audacity.
“However avaricious I may be—at least, if it were silver, it would be different. But it’s pure gold, that pipe.”
“Of course it is. That’s just why you ought to ask for it. Who’d ever go and get anybody to give him a brass pipe?”
“But I’d be a bit ashamed.”
Ryōtetsu gave his closely shaven pate one tap and struck a posture of reverential awe.
“If you don’t get it, I will. See? Don’t be envious afterwards.”
So saying, Kōchiyama, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, shrugged his shoulders and laughed derisively.