Meeting her inquiring eyes I said in a low voice:

"I am not sure why, but I don't seem to care very much for that man,
Grue. Do you?"

She glanced at the water's edge, where Grue stood, immovable, his back
still turned to us.

"I never liked him," she said under her breath.

"Why?" I asked cautiously.

She merely shrugged her shoulders. She did it gracefully.

I said:

"Have you any particular reason for disliking him?"

"He's dirty."

"He _looks_ dirty, yet every day he goes into the sea and swims about. He
ought to be clean enough."

She thought for a moment, then:

"He seems, somehow, to be fundamentally unclean--I don't mean that he
doesn't wash himself. But there are certain sorts of animals and birds
and other creatures from which one instinctively shrinks--not, perhaps,
because they are materially unclean--"