A large bite of hot buttered toast threatened to impede conversation. “It’s the brown stuff,” Teddy mumbled; “she wanted to see if it ’ud make me wet.” “Kind of vivisection, eh? And did it?” “All over--like in a bath playing ship-wrecked sailors.” The excavation of an egg absorbed the little boy’s attention. His father seated himself on the edge of the bed. He was a large childish man, unconsciously unconventional His brown velvet jacket smelt strongly of tobacco and varnish. It was spotted with bright colors, especially on the left sleeve between the wrist and elbow, where he had tested his paints instead of on his palette. His trousers bagged at the knees from neglect rather than from wear; their shabbiness was made up for by an extravagant waistcoat, sprigged with lilac. Double-breasted and cut low in a V shape, it exposed a soft silk shirt and a large red tie with loosely flowing ends. His head was magnificent--the head of a rebel enthusiast, too impatient to become a leader of men. It was broad in the forehead and heavy with a mane of coal-black ringlets. His mouth was handsome--a rare thing in a man. His nose was roughly molded, Cromwellian, giving to his face a look of rude strength and purpose. A tuft of hair immediately beneath his lower lip bore the same relation to his mustache that a tail bears to a kite--it lent to his expression balance. It was his eyes that astonished--they ought to have been fiercely brown to be in keeping with the rest of his gypsy appearance; instead they were a clear gray, as though with gazing into cloudy distances, as are the eyes of men who live by seafaring. He had made repeated efforts to curb his picturesqueness; he knew that it didn’t pay in an age when the ideal for males is to be undecorative. He knew that his appearance appealed as affectation and bred distrust in the minds of the escutcheoned tradesmen who are England’s art patrons. When they came to confer a favor, they liked to find a gentlemanly shopkeeper--not a Phoenician pirate, with a voice like a gale. His untamedness impressed them as immorality. He always felt that they left him thoroughly convinced that he and Dearie were not married.