t up, and balanced
the--the residue.
Nothing at all businesslike, either, about him--nothing in the least
like those gentlemen who consider that to go in to the "office" every
morning is the sum total of life. A most unbusinesslike young fellow.
A clay pipe in his mouth, a jar of tobacco on another chair beside him,
a glass of whiskey for a paper-weight on his telegrams. An idle,
lounging, "bad lot;" late hours, tobacco, whiskey, and ballet-dancers
writ very large indeed on his broad face. In short, a young "gent" of
the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Not the slightest sign of "blue blood" anywhere; not even in the cut of
his coat, no Brummel-like elegance; hardly a Bond Street coat at
all--rough, large, coarse cloth. If he had stood at the door of a shop
he would have done very well indeed for a shopkeeper, the sort that
drives about in a cart for orders.
Of his character nothing could be learned from his features. His face
was broad, rather flat, with a short but prominent nose; in spite of
indulgence, he kept a good, healthy, country colour. His neck was thick,
his figure stout, his hands big--a jovial, good-tempered looking man.
His neck was _very_ thick, tree-like; a drover's neck, no refinement or
special intelligence indicated there; great power to eat, drink, and
sleep--belly energy.
But let no one, therefore, suppose that the members of the upper ten
thousand are any thicker in the neck, or more abdominal in their
proclivities, or beneath the culture of the day. Take five hundred
"blue bloods," and you will find among them a certain proportion of
thick-necked people; take five hundred very common commoners, and you
may count exactly the same number interspersed.
The Pamments were simply Englishmen, and liable to be born big, with
broad faces, thick necks, and ultimate livers. It was no disgrace to
Raleigh, that jolly neck of his.
Unless you are given to aesthetic crockery, or Francesco de Rimini, I
think you would rather have liked him; a sort of fellow who would lend
you his dogs, or his gun, or his horse, or his ballet-dancer, or his
credit--humph!--at a moment's notice. But he was a very "bad lot;" they
whispered it even in dutiful Woolhorton.
He got rid of money in a most surprising way, and naturally had nothing
to show for it. The wonderful manner in which coin will disappear in
London, like water into deep sand, surpasses the mysteries of the skies.
It slips, it slides, it gli
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