"I am sorry. You have not quite recovered your strength yet, or you would not have fallen so heavily. But you do well; it is good exercise, for body and mind too. A little rest, and we will try another throw."
Kenneth Amory was seated on a bench on the lawn where, in summer, Mr. Kishimaru instructed his pupils in the fine art of jujutsu. He wore a loose white belted tunic and shorts: head and legs were bare. Mr. Kishimaru, a wiry little Japanese of about thirty-five, similarly clad, walked up and down, expounding the principles of his art.
A bell rang in the house. The garden door opened, and a tall young fellow of some twenty years came with quick step on to the lawn.
"Hullo, Kishimaru!" he cried. "How do? Have you got a minute?" He glanced towards the figure on the bench, but did not wait for an answer. "Just back from Canada--to enlist. Got to smash the Germans, you know. But look here; just spare a minute to show me the Koshinage, will you? I was in a lumber camp, you know, out west; lumbering's hard work; no cricket or anything else; had to do something; taught 'em jujutsu, odd times, you know. But the Koshinage--I fairly came to grief over that: tried it on a big chap, and came a regular cropper. Made me look pretty small; I'd been explaining that I'd throw any fellow, no matter how big. Somehow it didn't come off: must have forgotten something, I suppose. I've only got a few minutes; have to catch the 4.30 at St. Pancras; just put me through it once or twice, there's a good chap."
Mr. Kishimaru rubbed his hands all through this impetuous address. He was always pleased to see an old pupil, and Harry Randall, voluble, always in a hurry, had been one of his best pupils a year or two before.
"I am delighted to see you, Mr. Randall," he said. "If you will change----"
"No time for that. I'll strip to my shirt, be ready in a winking."
He threw off coat and waistcoat, wrenched off his collar, with some peril to the stud, and knotting his braces about his waist, stood ready. Meanwhile Mr. Kishimaru had stepped to the bench.
"The Koshinage is the exercise we have been practising, Mr. Amory," he said. "Perhaps you will be good enough to go through it with Mr. Randall, an old pupil. I will watch, and criticise if necessary."
Amory sprang up. In the newcomer he had at once recognised a schoolfellow--Randy, they used to call him; a fellow everybody liked; impulsive, generous, easy-going, always in scrapes, always ready to argue with boys or masters. They had left school at the same time, and had not seen each other since.