*    *    *    *    *

He's engaged to be married to Stiffy Byng, and his long years of football
should prove an excellent preparation for setting up house with her.
The way I look at it is that when a fellow has had plug-uglies in cleated
boots doing a Shuffle-off-to-Buffalo on his face Saturday after Saturday
since he was a slip of a boy, he must get to fear nothing, not even marriage
with a girl like Stiffy, who from early childhood has seldom let the sun go
down without starting some loony enterprise calculated to bleach the hair
of one and all.

*    *    *    *    *

He made no reply, possibly because he wasn't there. He generally slides
discreetly off when the young master is entertaining the quality, and you
never see him go. He just evaporates.

*    *    *    *    *

"Stinko, is he?"
"Not perhaps stinko, but certainly effervescent."

*    *    *    *    *

Now his face was drawn and his general demeanor that of an incautious
luncher who discovers when there is no time to draw back that he has
swallowed a rather too elderly oyster.

*    *    *    *    *

I was expecting Pop Bassett to give an impersonation of a bomb falling
on an ammunition dump, but he didn't. Instead, he continued to exhibit
that sort of chilly stiffness which you see in magistrates when they're
fining people five quid for boyish peccadilloes.

*    *    *    *    *