*    *    *    *    *

He was a thin, tall chappie with a lot of light hair and pale-blue
goggly eyes which made him look like one of the rarer kinds of fish.

*    *    *    *    *

We all shook hands, and the policeman, having retrieved a piece of chewing-gum
from the underside of the chair, where he had parked it against a rainy day,
went off into a corner and began to contemplate the infinite.

*    *    *    *    *

At this juncture the small boy's eye hit me like a bullet and stopped me
in my tracks. It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes -
the kind that makes you reach up to see if your tie is straight: and he
looked at me as if I were some sort of unnecessary product which Cuthbert
the Cat had brought in after a ramble among the local ashcans. He was a
stoutish infant with a lot of freckles and a good deal of jam on his face.

*    *    *    *    *

"Fish-face!"
"Eh? What?" said Cyril.
The child, who had evidently been taught at his mother's knee
to speak the truth, made his meaning a trifle clearer.
"You've a face like a fish!"
He spoke as if Cyril was more to be pitied than censured, which I
am bound to say I thought rather decent and broad-minded of him.

*    *    *    *    *

He started to get pink in the ears, and then in the nose, and then in the cheeks,
till in about a quarter of a minute he looked pretty much like an explosion in a
tomato cannery on a sunset evening.

*    *    *    *    *

"What's that?" barked old Blumenfield. "Do you understand that this boy is my son?"
"Yes, I do," said Cyril. "And you both have my sympathy."

*    *    *    *    *