Jeremy then was left entirely to himself and wandered about, looking for snowdrops under the trees, talking to himself, lost in a chain of ideas that included food and the sea and catapults and a sore finger and what school would be like and whether he could knock down the Dean's youngest, Ernest, whom he hated without knowing why.
He was lost in these thoughts, and had indeed wandered almost into the little wood that lies at the foot of the Orchards, when he heard a deep rich voice say:
“I suppose you 'aven't such a thing as a match upon you anywhere, young gentleman?”
He liked to be asked for a match, a manly thing to be supposed to possess, but, of course, he hadn't one, owing to the stupidity of elderly relations, so he looked up and said politely: “No, I'm afraid I haven't.” Then how his heart whacked beneath his waistcoat! There, standing in front of him, was the very figure of his dreams! Looking down upon Jeremy was a gentleman of middle-age whom experienced men of the world would have most certainly described as “seedy.”
Jeremy did not see his “seediness.” He saw first his face, which was of a deep brown copper colour, turning here and there to a handsome purple; ill-shaved, perhaps, but with a fine round nose and a large smiling mouth. He saw black curling hair and a yachting cap, faded this last and the white of it a dirty grey but set on jauntily at a magnificent angle. He saw a suit of dark navy blue, this again faded, spotted too with many stains, ragged at the trouser-ends and even torn in one place above the elbow, fitting also so closely to the figure that it must have been at bursting point. He saw round the neck a dark navy handkerchief, and down the front of the coat brass buttons that shook and trembled as their owner's chest heaved.
And what a chest! Jeremy had never conceived that any human being could be so thick and so broad. The back, spreading to the farthest limits of the shiny seams of the coat, was like a wall. The thighs were pillows, the arms bolsters and yet not fat, mind you, simply muscle, all of it. One could see in a minute that it was all muscle, the chest thrust forward, the legs spread wide, the bull-neck bursting the handkerchief, everything that Jeremy himself most wished to be. A sailor, a monument of strength, with the scent of his “shag” strong enough to smell a mile away, and—yes, most marvellous of all, gold rings in his ears! His chest would be tatooed probably, and perhaps his legs also!
There, on the back of his hand, was a blue anchor.... Jeremy looked up and trembled lest the vision should fade, then flung a hurried look around him to see whether Miss Jones were near. No one was about. He was alone with the desire of his life.
“I'm so so sorry I haven't a match,” he said. “I'm not allowed to have them, you know.”
“No, I suppose not,” said the vision. “Just my blamed luck. There I am with 'undreds of pounds lying around my room at 'ome careless as you please, and then held up for a bloomin' match. What's gold to a man like me? But a match... there you are... that's life.”
He looked at Jeremy with great interest; he took in, as Jeremy realised, every detail of his personal appearance.