'He doesn't look a bit like a tree-climber,' I thought. The girth of the great cedar prevented my seeing the species of ladder-stairway which had been built against its far side. I had breakfasted as the sun rose this fine Sunday morning, and walked no more than a couple of miles since, so that the majority of Dursley's inhabitants had probably not begun to think of breakfast yet. My 'arboracious' gentleman, anyhow, was still in his pyjamas, the pattern and colouring of which were, for that period, quite remarkably daring and bright. 'Well, young peripatater, I suppose you're wondering now if I've got a tail, hey? No, sir, I am fundamentally innocent--virginacious, in fact. But, all the same, if you like to just go on peripatating till you get to my side gate, and then come straight along to this arboracious retreat, I will a tale unfold that may appeal greatly to your matutinatal fancy. So peri along, youngfellermelad, an' I'll come down to meet ye.' 'All right, sir, I'll come,' I told him. And those were the first words I spoke to him, though he seemed already to have said a good deal to me. By this time I had become seized with the idea that here was what is called 'a character.' I had, as it were, caught on to the whimsical oddity of the man, and liked it. Indeed, he would have been a singularly dull dog who failed to recognise this man's quaint good-humour as something jolly and kindly and well-meaning. The gentleman spoke by the aid, not alone of his mouth, but of his small, bright, twinkling eyes, his twitching, almost hairless brows, his hands and shoulders, and his whole, rosy, clean-shaved, multitudinously lined, puckered, and dimpled face. And then his words; the extraordinary manner in which he twisted and juggled with the longer and less familiar of them--arboreal, peripatetic, matutinal, and the like! He had an entirely independent and original way of pronouncing very many words, and of converting certain phrases, such as 'young fellow my lad,' into a single word of many syllables. I never met any one who could so clearly convey hyphens (or dispense with them) by intonation. Having passed through a small gateway, I skirted the side of a comfortable-looking house of the spreading, bungalow type, with wide verandahs; and so, by way of a shaded path, arrived at the foot of the big cedar, just as the rosy-faced gentleman reached the ground from his stairway.