Page:The wheels of chance -- a bicycling idyll.djvu/197

Rh and get a shave, I suppose, and buy a brush and so on. Chink again! Beard don't show much."

He ran his hand over his chin, looked at himself steadfastly for some time, and curled his insufficient moustache up with some care. Then he fell a-meditating on his beauty. He considered himself, three-quarter face, left and right. An expression of distaste crept over his features. "Looking won't alter it, Hoopdriver," he remarked. "You're a weedy customer, my man. Shoulders narrow. Skimpy, anyhow."

He put his knuckles on the toilet table and regarded himself with his chin lifted in the air. "Good Lord!" he said. "What a neck! Wonder why I got such a thundering lump there."

He sat down on the bed, his eye still on the glass. "If I'd been exercised properly, if I'd been fed reasonable, if I hadn't been shoved out of a silly school into a silly shop—But there! the old folks didn't know no better. The schoolmaster ought to have. But he didn't, poor old fool!—Still, when it comes to meeting a girl like this—It's 'ard.

"I wonder what Adam 'd think of me—as a specimen. Civilisation, eigh? Heir of the ages! I'm nothing. I know nothing. I can't do anything—sketch a bit. Why wasn't I made an artist?

"Beastly cheap, after all, this suit does look, in the sunshine."