"Rummy go! profit and loss; profit, one sister with bicycle
complete, wot offers?--cheap for tooth and 'air brush, vests,
night-shirt, stockings, and sundries.

"Make the best of it," and presently, when it came to
hair-brushing, he had to smooth his troubled locks with his
hands. It was a poor result. "Sneak out and get a shave, I
suppose, and buy a brush and so on. Chink again! Beard don't show
much."

He ran his hand over his chin, looked at himself steadfastly for
some time, and curled his insufficient moustache up with some
care. Then he fell a-meditating on his beauty. He considered
himself, three-quarter face, left and right. An expression of
distaste crept over his features. "Looking won't alter it,
Hoopdriver," he remarked. "You're a weedy customer, my man.
Shoulders narrow. Skimpy, anyhow."

He put his knuckles on the toilet table and regarded himself with
his chin lifted in the air. "Good Lord!" he said. "WHAT a neck!
Wonder why I got such a thundering lump there."

He sat down on the bed, his eye still on the glass. "If I'd been
exercised properly, if I'd been fed reasonable, if I hadn't been
shoved out of a silly school into a silly shop--But there! the
old folks didn't know no better. The schoolmaster ought to have.
But he didn't, poor old fool!--Still, when it comes to meeting a
girl like this--It's 'ARD.

"I wonder what Adam'd think of me--as a specimen. Civilisation,