His face was seedy sallow and long. He had
bushy semi-circular eyebrows which drooped so much as to reduce his eyes
to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed that they leaned
inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of
preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of
falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin.
His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously.
His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse, from which hung a croix
de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks culminated in
bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of Ichabod Crane. His
neck was exactly like a hen's: I felt sure that when he drank he must
tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run their
throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain
spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah"
which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to
offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which
took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary
group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background of his
consciousness.
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