Nodding his head in acknowledgment, the old gentleman took up a kyusu tea-pot and poured—no—permitted a few drops of yellowish green liquid to trickle, in turns, into four tea cups, producing faint echoes of pure sweet flavour on my olfactory organ.
“You must feel lonesome, alone in a country place like this?” The priest began to speak to me.
“Haa,” I answered in a most equivocal sort of way; for a “yes” would have told a lie; but if I said “no,” it would have required a long string of explanations.
“No, Osho-san,” interposed my host “this gentleman has come out here for painting. He is even keeping himself busy.”
“Oh, so, that is good. Of the Nanso school?”
“No, Osho-san,” I replied this time. I thought he would not understand, if I said oil painting, and I did not say so.
“No”, the old one again took it upon himself to complete information, “his is that oil painting.”
“Ah, I see, the Western painting, which Kyuichi-san, here works at? I saw the kind, for the first time, in his production; it was very beautifully done.”
The young one opened his mouth at length and most diffidently asserted that “It was a poor affair.”
“You showed some of your stuff to Osho-san?” asked the old man. Judging by the tone in which this was said and the attitude assumed by the old one towards the young, they would seem to be relatives.