s nose and chin were witch-like, the nostrils large and elastic; the
lips, drawn tight together, curved downwards, indifferently captious; a
short white beard grew sparsely on the chin; the skin of the narrow neck
was fantastically drawn and creased. His limbs were thin, the knees and
elbows sharpened to a fine point; the hands very long, with blue, corded
veins. As a rule his clothes were a distressing combination of black and
dark blue; either the coat, the waistcoat, or the trousers would be
black, the rest blue; the trousers had the old-fashioned flap-pockets,
like a sailor's, with a complex apparatus of buttons. He wore loose
white cuffs that were continually slipping down the wrist, a starched
dickey, a collar of too lenient flexure, and a black necktie with a
'made' bow that was fastened by means of a button and button-hole under
the chin to the right; twenty times a day Meshach had to secure this
precarious cravat. Lastly, the top and bottom buttons of his waistcoat
were invariably loose.

He was of that small and lonely minority of men who never know ambition,
ardour, zeal, yearning, tears; whose convenient desires are capable of
immediate satisfaction; of whom it may be said that they purchase a
second-rate happiness cheap at the price of an incapacity for deep
feeling. In his seventh decade, Meshach Myatt could look back with calm
satisfaction at a career of uninterrupted nonchalance and idleness. The
favourite of a stern father and of fate, he had never done a hard day's
work in his life. When he and Hannah came into their inheritance, he
realised everything except the house and invested the proceeds in
Consols. With a roof, four hundred a year from the British Empire, a
tame capable sister, and notoriously good health, he took final leave of
care at the age of thirty-two. He wanted no more than he had. Leisure
was his chief luxury; he watched life between meals, and had time to
think about what he saw. Being gifted with a vigorous and original mind
that by instinct held formulas in defiance, he soon developed a
philosophy of his own; and his reputation as a 'character' sprang from
the first diffident, wayward expressions of this philosophy. Perceiving
that the town not unadmiringly deemed him odd, he cultivated oddity.
Perceiving also that it was sometimes astonished at the extent of his
information about hidden affairs, he cultivated mystery, the knowledge
of other people's business, and the trick of unexpe