time he had attempted to formulate a meet apostrophe to that God of
his Forlorn Destiny; and now he chewed the bitter cud of realisation
that all his eloquence had proved hopelessly poor and lame and
halting.

Perched on the polished seat of a very tall stool, his slender legs
fraternising with its legs in apparently inextricable intimacy; sharp
elbows digging into the nicked and ink-stained bed of a counting-house
desk; chin some six inches above the pages of a huge leather-covered
ledger, hair rumpled and fretful, mouth doleful, eyes disconsolate--he
gloomed...

On this the eve of his thirty-second birthday and likewise the tenth
anniversary of his servitude, the appearance of P. Sybarite was
elaborately normal--varying, as it did, but slightly from one
year's-end to the other.

His occupation had fitted his head and shoulders with a deceptive but
none the less perennial stoop. His means had endowed him with a single
outworn suit of ready-made clothing which, shrinking sensitively on
each successive application of the tailor's sizzling goose, had come
to disclose his person with disconcerting candour--sleeves too short,
trousers at once too short and too narrow, waistcoat buttons straining
over his chest, coat buttons refusing to recognise a buttonhole save
that at the waist. Circumstances these that added measurably to his
apparent age, lending him the semblance of maturity attained while
still in the shell of youth.

The ruddy brown hair thatching his well-modelled head, his sanguine
colouring, friendly blue eyes and mobile lips suggested Irish lineage;