Blyth always enjoying the discomfiture
and astonishment of every new victim, as thoroughly as if the practical
joke had been a perfectly new one on each successive occasion.
Such was the interior condition of the painting-room, after the owner
had inhabited it for a period of little more than two months!
The church-clock of the suburb has just struck ten, when quick, light
steps approach the studio door. A gentleman enters--trips gaily over
the imitative pen and brush--and, walking up to the fire, begins to
warm his back at it, looking about him rather absently, and whistling
"Drops of Brandy" in the minor key. This gentleman is Mr. Valentine
Blyth.
He looks under forty, but is really a little over fifty. His face is
round and rosy, and not marked by a single wrinkle in any part of it.
He has large, sparkling black eyes; wears neither whiskers, beard, nor
mustache; keeps his thick curly black hair rather too closely cut; and
has a briskly-comical kindness of expression in his face, which it is
not easy to contemplate for the first time without smiling at him. He
is tall and stout, always wears very tight trousers, and generally
keeps his wristbands turned up over the cuffs of his coat. All his
movements are quick and fidgety.
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