Everyone laughed, and Soame Rivers suggested that they should begin by ascertaining his age, height, and fighting weight.
'Well,' said Hiram, 'I guess I can get out my facts without cross-examination.' He had lived a great deal in America, and his speech was full of American colloquialisms. For which reason the beautiful Duchess liked him much.
'He's not very tall, but you couldn't call him short; rather more than middling high; perhaps looks a bit taller than he is, he carries himself so straight. He would have made a good soldier.'
'He did make a good soldier,' the Duke suggested.
'That's true,' said Hiram thoughtfully. 'I was thinking of a man to whom soldiering was his trade, his only trade.'
'But you haven't half satisfied our curiosity,' said Mrs. Selwyn. 'You have only told us that he is a little over the medium height, and that he bears him stiffly up. What of his eyes, what of his hair—his beard? Does he discharge in either your straw-colour beard, your orange tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard, your perfect yellow?'
Hiram looked a little bewildered. 'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' he said. The Duke came to the rescue.
'Mrs. Selwyn's Shakespearean quotation expresses all our sentiments, Mr. Borringer. Give us a faithful picture of the hero of the hour.'
'As for his hair and beard,' Hiram resumed, 'why, they are pretty much like most people's hair and beard—a fairish brown—and his eyes match them. He has very much the sort of favour you might expect from the son of a very fair-haired man and a dark woman. His father was as fair as a Scandinavian, he told me once. He was descended from some old Danish Viking, he said.'
'That helps to explain his belligerent Berserker disposition,' said Sir Rupert.