Then his attention was attracted by an elegant apparition, which alighted like a bird of paradise from a car on the edge of the curb. It was a boy-officer in the Scots Guards. He was very tall and languid, but held himself stiffly erect as though there was a cavity between his shoulder blades which he wished to keep closed. It was difficult to know how he ever washed his face, so rigid were the arms. His hat which had a brass peak and a red and white diced band, half buried his face, the chin receding underneath a hairless upper lip, delicate and curved. His painfully erect carriage seemed derived more from mechanism within than from the operation of will. His tunic suggested a theatrical tailor, so flawlessly did it fit, with an exaggerated waist-line that made an hour-glass of a human trunk. And as if in fear that it was just possible some one might mistake the young elegant for an ordinary officer in an ordinary regiment, the tailor had descended from fashion to eccentricity in the cut of the trousers, which, receiving inspiration from golfing breeches, bulged below the knees, where they were caught up by puttees that wound about two stick-like legs ending in enormous booted feet. The young man was evidently delighted with himself. He turned round three times in the sunshine, like a parrot on a perch. Then it happened that a square-shouldered country youth, in a coarse copy of the same uniform, but with ruder brass embellishments, saluted and passed. The immediate effect was wonderful, if startling; a swift spasm, as of a Titan struggling with tetanus, galvanised the young officer into movement. By a terrific jerk, he succeeded in bringing his out-turned palm behind his right ear where it locked for a moment before being hurled downwards to its former rigidity, the disturbed flesh subsiding again into calm dignity. A few minutes later he was joined by a brother officer, an even more splendid figure wrapped in a long greatcoat of gorgeous blue, double-breasted and broad lapelled, with two vertical rows of buttons and a glimpse of scarlet lining within, where it gaped about his knees. The waist line was identical, a similar hat hid a similar face. One felt there might be a thousand of these in a box somewhere.