Within, the room in which these two sat was much like other rooms of the
same standing; only, in this one case the walls were paneled with
white-painted deal. Three doors led out of it--two into a tiny bedroom
and a tinier dining-room respectively; the third on to the passage
leading to the lecture-rooms. Frank found it very convenient, since he
thus was enabled, at every hour of the morning when the lectures broke
up, to have the best possible excuse for conversing with his friends
through the window.
The room was furnished really well. Above the mantelpiece, where rested
an array of smoking-materials and a large silver cigarette-box, hung an
ancestral-looking portrait, in a dull gilded frame, of an aged man, with
a ruff round his neck, purchased for one guinea; there was a sofa and a
set of chairs upholstered in a good damask: a black piano by Broadwood;
a large oval gate-leg table; a bureau; shelves filled with very
indiscriminate literature--law books, novels, Badminton, magazines and
ancient school editions of the classics; a mahogany glass-fronted
bookcase packed with volumes of esthetic appearance--green-backed poetry
books with white labels; old leather tomes, and all the rest of the
specimens usual to a man who has once thought himself literary. Then
there were engravings, well framed, round the walls; a black iron-work
lamp, fitted for electric light, hung from the ceiling; there were a
couple of oak chests, curiously carved. On the stained floor lay three
or four mellow rugs, and the window-boxes outside blazed with geraniums.
The debris of tea rested on the window-seat nearest the outer door.
Frank Guiseley, too, lolling in the window-seat in a white silk shirt,
unbuttoned at the throat, and gray flannel trousers, and one white shoe,
was very pleasant to look upon. His hair was as black and curly as a
Neapolitan's; he had a smiling, humorous mouth, and black eyes--of an
extraordinary twinkling alertness. His clean-shaven face, brown in its
proper complexion as well as with healthy sunburning (he had played very
vigorous lawn-tennis for the last two months), looked like a boy's,
except for the very determined mouth and the short, straight nose. He
was a little below middle height--well-knit and active; and though,
properly speaking, he was not exactly handsome, he was quite
exceptionally delightful to look at.
Jack Kirkby, sitting in an arm-chair a yard away, and in the same sort
of costume--except that he wore both his shoes and a Third Trinity
blazer--was a complete contrast in appearance. The other had something
of a Southern Europe look; Jack was obviously English--wholesome red
cheeks, fair hair and a small mustache resembling spun silk. He was,
also, closely on six feet in height.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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