"Have you any friends at the hotel?" he asked, looking up at me darkly under the bushiest eyebrows I ever saw.
"I've got friends wherever I go," I answered. "I make friends."
"Are you going far?" he demanded, holding out a foot for his boy to pull a stocking on.
"That depends," I said.
"On what?"
"On whether I get employment."
I said that at random, without pausing to think what impression I might create. He pulled the night-shirt off over his head, throwing the helmet to the ground, and sat like a great hairy gorilla for the boy to hang day-clothes on him. He had the hairiest breast and arms I ever saw, hung with lumpy muscles that heightened his resemblance to an ape.
"I might give you work," he said presently, beginning to eat before the boy had finished dressing him.
"I want to travel" I said. "If I could find a job that would take me up and down the length and breadth of this land, that would suit me finely."
"That is the kind of a man I want," he said, eying me keenly. "I have a German, but I need an Englishman. Do you speak native languages?"