They twinkle in the morning light, and he leans downward in
the window, innocently displaying the widening parting on his pink
scalp. He purses his lips in a silent whistle as he cons his shining
trifles and varies his plan of display every day.
Now a modern realist (we have a painful suspicion) if he were
describing this pleasant man would deal rather roughly with him. You
know exactly how it would be done. He would be a weary, saddened,
shabby figure: his conscientious attention to the jewels in his care
would be construed as the painful and creaking routine of a victim
of commercial greed; a bitter irony would be distilled from the
contrast of his own modest station in life and the huge value of the
lucid crystals and carbons under his hands. His hands--ah, the
realist would angrily see some brutal pathos or unconscious
naughtiness in the crook of the old mottled fingers. How that
widening parting in the gray head would be gloated upon. It would be
very easy to do, and it would be (if we are any judge) wholly false.
For we have watched the little old gentleman many times, and we
have quite an affection for him. We see him as one perfectly happy
in the tidy and careful round of his tasks; and when his tenderly
brushed gray poll leans above his treasures, and he gently devises
new patterns by which the emeralds or the gold cigarette cases will
catch the slant of 9 o'clock sunlight, we seem to see one who is
enjoying his own placid conception of beauty, and who is not a
figure of pity or reproach, but one of decent honour and excellent
fidelity.
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