Neil suspected that both of them nervously wanted to know what he had come for, and he understood that very well, since he rather wanted to know it himself. They chatted about the weather and city politics, in that small room that was the more cramped with a venerable typewriter sitting on a homemade and unpainted table, and books of history and theology and anthropology on seismographic old chairs.

Winthrop was glad to see a male visitor who might know something about electricity. He demanded, “Were you ever a radio ham?”

“No, but I used to sit in with a friend who was.”

“Come down to the basement and see my set.”

Neil regretted that to him the collection of wires and tubes in that tiny cellar looked like a junk pile, and when Winthrop boasted, “I get Miami, right along!” he was impressed.

“Have you any favorite ham that you talk to?”

“Yeh, a fellow in Dallas, Texas.”

“Is he colored?”

“I’ve never asked! I guess maybe he’s white—anyway, he’s silly about the Civil War. But what difference does it make?” Winthrop rebuked, and Neil felt humble.

“What do you and he chat about?”

“Mostly about jai alai. I want to learn it, some day. But naturally, what I’m really interested in now is radar. Don’t you think that’s the coming thing?”

“I certainly do,” said Neil, who knew of radar only that it had something to do with fooling icebergs.

Winthrop rattled, “I want to get into electricity as soon as they’ll let me, at the U. I’m going there this fall.”

“I went to the University, too,” said Neil.

“Swell!”

“Aren’t you a little young for it?”

“Golly no! Why, I’m seventeen! Did you know I was salutatorian in high school this spring?” Winthrop spoke not priggishly but with artless pride. “But of course I was lucky, having Dad to coach me. We did four years math in two. Say, look, Mr. Kingsblood, you must do a lot of fishing in the Arrowhead country.”

“I used to. Northern pike in Sawbill Lake.”

“If I could only do that—camp and swim and fish—zowie! Instead of having to sit around and listen to all this race-talk. What’s the use of it? These days, everybody except a hillbilly knows that colored and white folks are exactly alike, same as black and white kittens are. Didn’t you always know that?”

“No, not—uh—not entirely.” Neil hastily tried to get out of his examination with an enthusiastic, “Why don’t you spend a summer in the Arrowhead? I could tell you some fine places.”