seeing his face gave me a great surprise.

It was as different from all the rest of the steerage faces as day is
from night, and somehow it gave me quite a shock that such a man should
be among those others, as if something must be wrong with the world, or
it could not happen. I had even a guilty sort of thrill, as if I had no
right to be well-dressed and prosperous, staring at him and his
companions as though they were a show which we others paid to
see--daring to amuse ourselves with the hard, strange conditions of
their lives.

I've heard Mother say that good blood is sure to prove itself; that a
gentleman can't look like a common man, even in rags. Stan disputes
that theory with her, when he isn't too lazy, and wants to bet he could
so disguise himself that she would take him for a green grocer or a
fishmonger, who have the air of being commoner than other men, I
think--at least in our village at Battlemead--because they wear fat
tufts of curls frothing out over their foreheads from under their caps,
which are always plaid and made of cloth.

Anyway, if Mother is right, this man in the steerage must have the
bluest of blood in his veins, for I never saw one with clearer, nobler
features. And yet, he doesn't give the impression of a broken-down
gentleman who has gone the pace and paid for it by stumbling into the
depths. I thought, as he looked up straight into my face that first
time, (and I think still) that no face could be finer or more manly
than his. Brown--deep brown it is, like bronze, and clean-shaved (not
rough and scrubby), with dark grey eyes (I knew at once they were grey
because the light struck into them) rimmed with black lashes, so long
you couldn't help noticing them; black eyebrows and hair short and
sleek like Stan's, or any other well-groomed man one knows. Besides,
commonness shows in people's mouths more than anywhere else; it's hard
to define, but it's there; and this man's mouth is the best part of his
face--unless it's the chin; or perhaps the nose, I'm not quite sure
which, though I've thought a good deal about them all, because of the
mystery of finding such a man in such an unsuitable place. It would be
just the same if you saw a tall palm suddenly shooting up in the
kitchen-garden, and couldn't find out how it had been planted there.

I'm afraid I must have shown how surprised I was, and admiring, too,
maybe (how can one keep from admiring what is fine and noble, whether
it's a stra