He thumped the table lightly with his maimed hand.

“I knew he was just a coolie dressed up.”

She reached for an olive.

“Go as far as you like, native son.  He’s no friend of mine.”

“Well, in that case, I’ll spare his life,” he countered boldly.  “And I’ve always wanted to kill a Japanese potato baron.  Do you not think it would be patriotic of me to immolate myself and reduce the cost of spuds?”

“I never eat them.  They’re very fattening.  Now, if you really wish to be a humanitarian, why not search out the Japanese garlic king?”

“I dare not.  His demise would place me in bad odor.”

She laughed merrily.  Evidently she was finding him amusing company.  She looked him over appraisingly and queried bluntly,

“Were you educated abroad?”

“I was not.  I’m a product of a one-room schoolhouse perched on a bare hill down in San Marcos County.”

“But you speak like a college man.”

“I am.  I’m a graduate of the University of California Agricultural College, at Davis.  I’m a sharp on pure-bred beef cattle, pure-bred swine, and irrigation.  I know why hens decline to lay when eggs are worth eighty cents a dozen, and why young turkeys are so blamed hard to raise in the fall.  My grandfather and my father were educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and were sharps on Latin and Greek, but I never figured the dead languages as much of an aid to a man doomed from birth to view cows from the hurricane-deck of a horse.”

“But you have such a funny little clipped accent.”

He opened his great black eyes in feigned astonishment.

“Oh, didn’t you know?” he whispered.

“Know what?”

“Unfortunate young woman!” he murmured to his water-glass.  “No wonder she sits in public with that pudgy son of a chrysanthemum, when she isn’t even able to recognize a greaser at a glance.  Oh, Lord!”

“You’re not a greaser,” she challenged.

“No?” he bantered.  “You ought to see me squatting under an avocado tree, singing the ‘Spanish Cavalier’ to a guitar accompaniment.  Listen:  I’ll prove it without the accompaniment.”  And he hummed softly: 

“The Spanish cavalier, Went out to rope a steer, Along with his paper cigar-o, ‘Car-ramba!’ says he. ’Manana you will be Mucho bueno carne par mio!’”

Her brown eyes danced.

“That doesn’t prove anything except that you’re an incorrigible Celt.  When you stooped down to kiss the stone at Blarney Castle, you lost your balance and fell in the well.  And you’ve dripped blarney ever since.”

“Oh, not that bad, really!  I’m a very serious person ordinarily.  That little forget-me-not of language is a heritage of my childhood.  Mother taught me to pray in Spanish, and I learned that language first.  Later, my grandfather taught me to swear in English with an Irish accent, and I’ve been fearfully balled up ever since.  It’s very inconvenient.”