“Whiskers stick out,” opined the English boy, and added: “His are the color of the soil of Hellerau.” It was true, for the ground was reddish yellow, and had glints of sunlight in it. “Hellerau means bright meadow,” Kurt explained.
II
The king of celebrities was then in his middle fifties, and the breeze that blew on that elevated spot tossed his whiskers, which stuck out. Tall and erect, he had eyes as gay as the bluebells on the meadow and teeth like the petals of the daisies. He wore an English tweed suit of brown with reddish threads in it, and when he threw his head back and laughed — which he did every time he made a joke — all the flowers on the bright meadow danced.
The trio stared until they thought maybe it wasn't polite any more, and then turned their eyes away. “Do you suppose he'd answer if we spoke to him?” ventured Lanny.
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Kurt, the most strictly brought up of the three.
“What would we say?” demanded Rick.
“We might think up something. You try; you're English.”
“English people don't ever speak without being introduced.”
“Think of something anyhow,” persisted Lanny. “It can't hurt to pretend.”
Rick was fifteen, and his father was a baronet who preferred to be known as a designer of stage sets. “Mr. Shaw,” he suggested, with Oxford accent and polished manner, “may I take the liberty of telling you how much I have enjoyed the reading of your prefaces?”