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A whiff of foreign smell and a sound of foreign speech reached the passengers at about the same moment. The very houses looked unfamiliarly built, and even the letters of printed names of hotels and shops had a frivolous, spindly appearance elegant but frail. The air was different from English air.
Even his loosely-fitting khaki tunic did not conceal the massive chest with its supple muscles and the long, sinewy arms that knew how to swing to the rhythm of bayonet exercise. His legs, however, were thin and spindly. To any one not accustomed to the native build it would seem strange that the apparently puny lower limbs could support such a heavy frame.
He was no taller than he had been seven years ago, when he was not much more than twelve years old, but he made up in breadth, and his back and chest had grown into lumps like two great sacks. His legs were small and spindly, but his arms were as large as those of a well-grown man, with large brown hands, and long skinny fingers.
There was a bookcase of white wood ruled with gold lines, like the spindly chairs and tables, and here Bessie could study, if she pleased, the literary tastes of ancient ladies, matrons and virgins, long since departed this life in the odor of gentility and sanctity. The volumes were in bindings rich and solid, and the purchase or presentation of each had probably been an event.
Ridge was a rather wet blanket, to be sure, but Grandma was a timid old lady who did not like travelling in the dark. "I hope it will come out right I hope so," she repeated lugubriously. For a few fleeting moments Milly recalled the spindly horse and the scrubby boy of the delivery wagon, but for only a few moments. Then her natural buoyancy overcame any doubts.
"We couldn't have shipped her by mistake, either," he went on, confused. "For we'd sold her, that same day, to a kid in our town. I ought to know. Because the kid kept on pestering us every day for a month afterward, to find if she had come back to us. He said she ran away in the night. He still comes around, once a week or so, to ask. A spindly, weak, sick-looking little chap, he is.
Yes, that's what it is. Now, let's wait over by the front door, for that's the way he goes in." Five minutes later the front door of the empty house opened, and a tall boy, with spindly legs, came slily out. He stopped to turn a key in the lock. Then, as he wheeled, it was to find himself facing two fellows who were probably the very last boys in Stanhope he expected to see.
"I'll have to get another ship," said Dick, watching the small spindly figure as it backed down the companion-ladder. "I never was on a ship afore where the boy could do as he liked." Sam shook his head and sighed. "It's the best ship I was ever on, barrin' that," he said sternly. "What'll 'e be like when he grows up?" demanded Dick, as he lost himself in the immensity of the conjecture.
They saw a small furry biped, some twelve inches tall, which waddled insanely in the exact line of their progress and with no apparent hope of outdistancing them. They saw a gauzy creature with incredibly spindly legs. It flew from one tree-trunk to another, clinging to rough bark on each in turn.
His long legs, thin as a crow's, in shepherd's plaid trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and glistening tapered nails. Beside him, on a low stool, stood a half-finished glass of negus, bedewed with beads of heat. There he had been sitting, with intervals for meals, all day.
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