He stretched out his arm for the poker, and with it, knocked the top of the bottle clean off and drank his beer with wholesome satisfaction.
When he had eaten and drunk enough, he pushed back his plate and glass, and took a bundle of quills and some MS. paper out of a small cabinet.
“Seemingly Tolly has found no use for these,” he thought, as he sharpened a quill.
He then produced a bundle of smudgy notes from an inner pocket and laid them by the paper.
“I’ll have a thorough good smoke,” he said, stretching his legs “and then I’ll be game for six hours’ work. I swear,” he continued, rubbing his hideous, inch-long, bristly, reddish beard, “I’ll not touch an individual bristle of this mat till Lynton has got his first consignment of ‘copy’, then I shall clean up and resume civilization.”
Strange was a good many things but he was above all others a traveller, he had neither nerves nor stomach, which is proof sufficient that he had been preordained to the rôle, and he had discovered his election very early in life.
At the opening of one of his Eton vacations, when to look at he was a mere chit of a child with a pair of gray eyes that were staggering from the sheer artlessness of them, he had dodged the parental eye at Waterloo, and instead of going down into Plowshire, he had taken ship at Rotherhithe, and had reached Amsterdam by the skin of his teeth, the tub being untrustworthy and nearly foundering in mid-channel.
When he came back, more artless than ever to look at, he knew as much of the life of the Hollanders of all classes and of every side of the life, moreover, as if he had dwelt among them for a round five years.
On his return to school he proceeded to record his experiences in the school organ, and on their appearance in that chaste journal, he was had up before his house master.
“Where did you hear all this, Strange?” demanded the scandalized gentleman.