He was too large for everything, because he was lively as well as large.
By a fortunate physical provision, most very substantial creatures
are also reposeful; and middle-class boarding-houses in the lesser
parts of London are not built for a man as big as a bull and excitable
as a kitten.
When Inglewood followed the stranger into the boarding-house,
he found him talking earnestly (and in his own opinion privately)
to the helpless Mrs. Duke. That fat, faint lady could only
goggle up like a dying fish at the enormous new gentleman,
who politely offered himself as a lodger, with vast gestures
of the wide white hat in one hand, and the yellow Gladstone bag
in the other. Fortunately, Mrs. Duke's more efficient niece
and partner was there to complete the contract; for, indeed,
all the people of the house had somehow collected in the room.
This fact, in truth, was typical of the whole episode.
The visitor created an atmosphere of comic crisis; and from
the time he came into the house to the time he left it, he somehow
got the company to gather and even follow (though in derision)
as children gather and follow a Punch and Judy. An hour ago,
and for four years previously, these people had avoided
each other, even when they had really liked each other.
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