He went back to the writer again:
In order to learn the conditions and the customs more quickly, I have taken a job which will keep me in touch with the Kimonians. I find them to be a fine people, but sometimes a little hard to understand. I have no doubt that before too long I shall get to understand them and have a genuine liking for them.
He pushed back his chair and stared at what he'd written.
It was, he told himself, like any one of a thousand other letters he had read.
He pictured in his mind those other thousand people, sitting down to write their first letter from Kimon, searching in their minds for the polite little fables, for the slightly colored lie, for the balm that would salve their pride. Hunting for the words that would not reveal the entire truth:
I have a job of entertaining and amusing a certain family. I tell them stories and let them laugh at me. I do this because I will not admit that the fable of Kimon is a booby trap and that I've fallen into it -
No, it would never do to write like that.
Nor to write:
I'm sticking on in spite of them. So long as I make a hundred a day, they can laugh as much as they want to laugh. I'm staying here and cleaning up no matter what -
Back home he was one of the thousand. Back home they talked of him in whispers because he made the grade.