self-consciousness of the little man that made me look at him. And he
caught me looking at him; he blushed, caught himself blushing and smiled
to himself with the most delicious appreciation of his own absurdity. And
as he stood there fumbling, and holding me up while he argued with the
gate-keeper, who didn't know him, I got his engaging twinkle. It was as
if he looked at me and said, "See me swank just then? Funny, wasn't it?"

He hung about on the edge of the crowd for a while with his hands in his
pockets, sucking his little blond moustache and looking dreamy and rather
incompetent. I was a full-blown journalist even then, and I remember
feeling a sort of pity for his youth. He was so obviously on his maiden
trip, and obviously, I fancied, doomed never to arrive in any port.

Well--well; I came upon him afterwards at a crisis in the game. He was
taking notes in shorthand with a sort of savagery between his tense and
concentrated glares at the scrimmage that was then massed in the centre
of the field. Woolwich Arsenal and East Kent, locked in each other's
bodies, now struggled and writhed and butted like two immense beasts
welded together by the impact of their battle, now swayed and quivered
and snorted as one beast torn by a solitary and mysterious rage.

Self-consciousness had vanished from my man. He stood, leaning forward
with his legs a little apart. His boyish face was deeply flushed; he had
sucked and bitten his blond moustache into a wisp; he was breathing
heavily, with his mouth ajar; his very large and conspicuous blue eyes
glittered with a sort of passion. (He wore those eyes in his odd little
ugly face like some inappropriate decoration.)

All these symptoms declared that he was "on." They made up a look that I
was soon to know him by.