His English was almost perfect, but in words containing a rolled “r” he often substituted an “l.”
“I understand enough to keep away from Japan, a place where they have an earthquake every five minutes, and people live in paper houses. Besides, look at the size of your women-folk. Just imagine me, Mr. Brett, walking about among those little dolls, like a turkey among tom-tits.”
“We give fat people much admilation,” said Jiro.
“Nummie, I do hate that word fat. I can’t help being tall and well developed; but it is only short women who become ‘fat’.”
She hissed the word venomously, as if she possessed the scorpion’s fabled power to sting herself. Evidently Mrs. Jiro dreaded corpulence more than earthquakes.
Brett had never previously met such a strangely assorted couple. He would willingly have prolonged his visit for mere amusement, but he was compelled to return to the cause of his presence. Unless he asked direct questions he would make no progress. He took from his pocket-book the drawing made in the Black Museum, and handed it to the Japanese, saying:
“Would you mind telling me the meaning of that?”
Jiro screwed his queer little eyes upon the scrawling characters. The methods of writing in the Far East, being pictorial and inexact, require scrutiny of the context before a given sentence can be correctly interpreted.
The little man made no trouble about it, however.
“They are old chalacters,” he said. “In Japan we joke a lot. Evely sign has sevelal meanings. This can be lead two ways. It is a plovelb, and says, ‘A new field gives a small clop,’ or ‘Human life is but fifty years.’ Where did you see it?”