"You're a good walker ... we didn't expect you before Monday or Tuesday.... Jarvis, here's the poet-boy from the university."
My host, unseen within, turned off another Red Seal record he had just started, again to the accompaniment of the piano.... Kreisler's Caprice Viennoise....
Jarvis Alexander Mackworth came forth like a leisurely duck, waddling. He was very, very fat. He extended me a plump, white hand ... a slack hand-shake ... but not an unhearty one, rather a grip of easy welcome.
A kind, rubicund, moon-round face, full of large blue eyes smiling a gentle and kindly welcome ... if the face of Shelley's father, plump and methodic-oracular, could have been joined to the wild, shining ecstasy of Shelley's countenance itself—you would have had Mackworth's face before its time. I never beheld such spirituality in a fat man. His stoutness was not unpleasing.
"My boy ... come in ... my God, you're all wet ... you look frail, too." A pity shone in his eyes. "Minnie, call up Ally Merton ..." turning to me, "I have, as you can see, no clothes to fit you ... but Ally might have ... he's about your size, but he carries a trifle more meat on his bones....
"Come in and dry yourself before the fire till he gets over."
We sat before the gas-fire of artificial logs.
"Minnie, will you make a cup of tea for this—poor boy," and he lowered his voice at the last two words, realising that I was hearing, too.
"Yes, Jarv!"