Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/209

Rh Hunt, however, was too thoroughly accustomed to the rooms and too indifferent to dirt to be much or long depressed by them. Having turned up the gas, he took off both his coat and his waistcoat, for the close office was already uncomfortably warm. Yet it was bitterly cold without, as became the last night of a March most lion-like in its departure. Then from his soiled shirt he removed the perfectly clean and highly polished collar and cuffs. For neat keeping he placed these in the same drawer in which he stored his tobacco. Thence he drew forth the next moment a big briar-wood pipe. Having first regarded this companion of his nights with much affection, and rubbed the bowl against his nose to bring out the colour, he proceeded to fill it with tobacco, which he pressed down with a finely solicitous little finger, and lighted with deep satisfaction. As the first great puffs of smoke made vague his features, he threw away the match with a superb disregard of the inflammable piles of paper on the floor, and settled himself with some show of heartiness to his work.

He was a small fellow, and young. His black hair, cut in the style termed "pompadour," stood up over his forehead like the bristles of a blacking-brush. His small black eyes darted alertly everywhere and were full of humour. His tip-tilted nose seemed at some time to have been used as a handle for raising his upper lip, which was short and showed his teeth. His whole appearance was odd and saucy; you judged him knowing, cynical, and amusing, and smiled upon him at once with amusement and expectation. His nervous strength, which you saw at once was immense, was as yet unexhausted by a life divided between severe mental toil and vicious pleasure. From half-past seven in the evening until four in the morning he was at the office of the Dawn. Then he went to his lodging-house, there to sleep until twelve o'clock. The afternoon he passed at the Press Club— smoking,