looked at himself steadfastly for some time

"Make the best of it," and presently, when it came to hair-brushing, he had to smooth his troubled locks with his hands. It was a poor result. "Sneak out and get a shave, I suppose, and buy a brush and so on. Chink again! Beard don't show much." He ran his hand over his chin, looked at himself steadfastly for some time, and curled his insufficient moustache up with some care. Then he fell a-meditating on his beauty. He considered himself, three-quarter face, left and right. An expression of distaste crept over his features. "Looking won't alter it, Hoopdriver," he remarked. "You're a weedy customer, my man. Shoulders narrow. Skimpy, anyhow." He put his knuckles on the toilet table and regarded himself with his chin lifted in the air. "Good Lord!" he said. "WHAT a neck! Wonder why I got such a thundering lump there." He sat down on the bed, his eye still on the glass. "If I'd been exercised properly, if I'd been fed reasonable, if I hadn't been shoved out of a silly school into a silly shop--But there! the old folks didn't know no better. The schoolmaster ought to have. But he didn't, poor old fool!--Still, when it comes to meeting a girl like this--It's 'ARD. "I wonder what Adam'd think of me--as a specimen. Civilisation, eigh? Heir of the ages! I'm nothing. I know nothing. I can't do anything--sketch a bit. Why wasn't I made an artist? "Beastly cheap, after all, this suit does look, in the sunshine." "No good, Hoopdriver. Anyhow, you don't tell yourself any lies about it. Lovers ain't your game,--anyway. But there's other things yet. You can help the young lady, and you will--I suppose she'll be going home--And that business of the bicycle's to see to, too, my man. FORWARD, Hoopdriver! If you ain't a beauty, that's no reason why you should stop and be copped, is it?" And having got back in this way to a gloomy kind of self-satisfaction, he had another attempt at his hair preparatory to leaving his room and hurrying on breakfast, for an early departure. While breakfast was preparing he wandered out into South Street and refurnished himself with the elements of luggage again. "No expense to be spared," he murmured, disgorging the half-sovereign.