table. His flat, large ears
departed widely from the sides of his skull, which looked frail enough
for Ossipon to crush between thumb and forefinger; the dome of the
forehead seemed to rest on the rim of the spectacles; the flat cheeks, of
a greasy, unhealthy complexion, were merely smudged by the miserable
poverty of a thin dark whisker. The lamentable inferiority of the whole
physique was made ludicrous by the supremely self-confident bearing of
the individual. His speech was curt, and he had a particularly
impressive manner of keeping silent.

Ossipon spoke again from between his hands in a mutter.

"Have you been out much to-day?"

"No. I stayed in bed all the morning," answered the other. "Why?"

"Oh! Nothing," said Ossipon, gazing earnestly and quivering inwardly
with the desire to find out something, but obviously intimidated by the
little man's overwhelming air of unconcern. When talking with this
comrade--which happened but rarely--the big Ossipon suffered from a sense
of moral and even physical insignificance. However, he ventured another
question. "Did you walk down here?"

"No; omnibus," the little man answered readily enough. He lived far away
in Islington, in a small house down a shabby street, littered with straw
and dirty paper, where out of school hours a troop of assorted children
ran and squabbled with a shrill, joyless, rowdy clamour. His single back
room, remarkable for having an extremely large cupboard, he rented
furnished from two elderly spinsters, dressmakers in a humble way with a
clientele of servant girls mostly. He had a heavy padlock put on the
cupboard, but otherwise he was a model lodger, giving no trouble, and
requiring practically no attendance. His oddities were that he insisted
on being present when his room was being swept, and that when he went out
he locked his door, and took the key away with him.

Ossipon had a vision of these round black-rimmed spectacles progressing
along the streets on the top of an omnibus, their self-confident glitter
falling here and there on the walls of houses or lowered upon the heads
of the unconscious stream of people on the pavements. The ghost of a
sickly smile altered the set of Ossipon's thick lips at the thought of
the walls nodding, of people running for life at the sight of those
spectacles. If they had only known! What a panic! He murmured
interrogatively: "Been sitting long here?"

"An hour or more," answered the other