Our gentleman, whose name was John Lavender,
had until the days of the Great War passed one of those curious
existences are sometimes to be met with, in doing harm to nobody. He
had been brought up to the Bar, but like most barristers had never
practised, and had spent his time among animals and the wisdom of the
past. At the period in which this record opens he owned a young female
sheep-dog called Blink, with beautiful eyes obscured by hair; and was
attended to by a thin and energetic housekeeper, in his estimation
above all weakness, whose name was Marian Petty, and by her husband, his
chauffeur, whose name was Joe.
It was the ambition of our hero to be, like all public men, without fear
and without reproach. He drank not, abstained from fleshly intercourse,
and habitually spoke the truth. His face was thin, high cheek-boned, and
not unpleasing, with one loose eyebrow over which he had no control; his
eyes, bright and of hazel hue, looked his fellows in the face without
seeing what was in it. Though his moustache was still dark, his thick
waving hair was permanently white, for his study was lined from floor to
ceiling with books, pamphlets, journals, and the recorded utterances
of great mouths.
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