He was a short and corpulent man, with a very large head and no
neck. In his earlier middle age he had been distressed by this
absence of neck, but was comforted by reading in Balzac's "Louis
Lambert" that all the world's great men have been marked by the
same peculiarity, and for a simple and obvious reason: Greatness
is nothing more nor less than the harmonious functioning of the
faculties of the head and heart; the shorter the neck, the more
closely these two organs approach one another; argal...It was
convincing.

Mr. Barbecue-Smith belonged to the old school of journalists. He
sported a leonine head with a greyish-black mane of oddly
unappetising hair brushed back from a broad but low forehead.
And somehow he always seemed slightly, ever so slightly, soiled.
In younger days he had gaily called himself a Bohemian. He did
so no longer. He was a teacher now, a kind of prophet. Some of
his books of comfort and spiritual teaching were in their hundred
and twentieth thousand.

Priscilla received him with every mark of esteem. He had never
been to Crome before; she showed him round the house. Mr.
Barbecue-Smith was full of admiration.

"So quaint, so old-world," he kept repeating. He had a rich,
rather unctuous voice.

Priscilla praised his latest book. "Splendid, I thought it was,"
she said in her large, jolly way.

"I'm happy to think you found it a comfort," said Mr. Barbecue-