negligently gave the parents the same assurance he had given the
daughters, but murmured another form of greeting to the out-of-town
uncle, whom he had never seen before. This person George absently
took note of as a "queer-looking duck." Undergraduates had not yet
adopted "bird." It was a period previous to that in which a sophomore
would have thought of the Sharon girls' uncle as a "queer-looking
bird," or, perhaps a "funny-face bird." In George's time, every human
male was to be defined, at pleasure, as a "duck"; but "duck" was not
spoken with admiring affection, as in its former feminine use to
signify a "dear"--on the contrary, "duck" implied the speaker's
personal detachment and humorous superiority. An indifferent
amusement was what George felt when his mother, with a gentle
emphasis, interrupted his interchange of courtesies with the nieces to
present him to the queer-looking duck their uncle. This emphasis of
Isabel's, though slight, enabled George to perceive that she
considered the queer-looking duck a person of some importance; but it
was far from enabling him to understand why. The duck parted his
thick and longish black hair on the side; his tie was a forgetful
looking thing, and his coat, though it fitted a good enough middle-
aged figure, no product of this year, or of last year either. One of
his eyebrows was noticeably higher than the other; and there were
whimsical lines between them, which gave him an apprehensive
expression; but his apprehensions were evidently more humorous than
profound, for his prevailing look was that of a genial man of affairs,
not much afraid of anything whatever Nevertheless, observing only his
unfashionable hair, his eyebrows, his preoccupied tie and his old
coat, the olympic George set him down as a queer-looking duck, and
having thus completed his portrait, took no interest in him.

The Sharon girls passed on, taking the queer-looking duck with them,