“C. Q.” or, In the Wireless House
heard the Algerian’s impassioned eulogy of his country, for he now bowed in his direction with a polite:
“Don’t let me interrupt you.”
The newcomer was dressed in faded but well-cut clothes of Scotch mixture, and he had a narrow, handsome, clean-cut English face, the high cheekbones of which were surmounted by bronzed temples and a forehead that ran well back over the crown until it met the rather thin but curly brown hair. Had it not been for the stubby beard, the face was such as you might have seen twenty times a day on the hunting field at Market Harboro or Melton Mowbray. Every distinctive feature of the sporting aristocrat was there—the flat, small ears, the ruddy skin, the clear blue eyes, the prominent arched nose, the large, white, even teeth—all but the chin, covered with that incongruous, grotesque beard. Such heads you see the world over, from Manitoba to Mombassa—sometimes even in the chorus of a comic opera, wherever the “younger son” is carving out his fate. But this man was not altogether true to type, for the skin about his eyes was dark and sunken, and he had the gaunt29
