No, he wasn't not to say
STOUT. If anything, lean rather.'
I need not go on with the infuriating interview. It ended as it
began, except that Rowley was in tears, and that I had acquired one
fact. The man was drawn for me as being of any height you like to
mention, and of any degree of corpulence or leanness; clean-shaved
or not, as the case might be; the colour of his hair Rowley 'could
not take it upon himself to put a name on'; that of his eyes he
thought to have been blue--nay, it was the one point on which he
attained to a kind of tearful certainty. 'I'll take my davy on
it,' he asseverated. They proved to have been as black as sloes,
very little and very near together. So much for the evidence of
the artless! And the fact, or rather the facts, acquired? Well,
they had to do not with the person but with his clothing. The man
wore knee-breeches and white stockings; his coat was 'some kind of
a lightish colour--or betwixt that and dark'; and he wore a 'mole-
skin weskit.' As if this were not enough, he presently haled me
from my breakfast in a prodigious flutter, and showed me an honest
and rather venerable citizen passing in the Square.
'That's HIM, sir,' he cried, 'the very moral of him! Well, this
one is better dressed, and p'r'aps a trifler taller; and in the
face he don't favour him noways at all, sir.
Pages:
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404