Involuntarily Polly turned her head towards the distant door, through which a man in a light overcoat was even now quickly passing.  That man had certainly sat at the next table to hers, when she first sat down to her coffee and scone:  he had finished his luncheon—­whatever it was—­moment ago, had paid at the desk and gone out.  The incident did not appear to Polly as being of the slightest consequence.

Therefore she did not reply to the rude old man, but shrugged her shoulders, and called to the waitress to bring her bill.

“Do you know if he was tall or short, dark or fair?” continued the man in the corner, seemingly not the least disconcerted by the young girl’s indifference.  “Can you tell me at all what he was like?”

“Of course I can,” rejoined Polly impatiently, “but I don’t see that my description of one of the customers of an A.B.C. shop can have the slightest importance.”

He was silent for a minute, while his nervous fingers fumbled about in his capacious pockets in search of the inevitable piece of string.  When he had found this necessary “adjunct to thought,” he viewed the young girl again through his half-closed lids, and added maliciously: 

“But supposing it were of paramount importance that you should give an accurate description of a man who sat next to you for half an hour to-day, how would you proceed?”

“I should say that he was of medium height—­”

“Five foot eight, nine, or ten?” he interrupted quietly.

“How can one tell to an inch or two?” rejoined Polly crossly.  “He was between colours.”

“What’s that?” he inquired blandly.

“Neither fair nor dark—­his nose—­”

“Well, what was his nose like?  Will you sketch it?”

“I am not an artist.  His nose was fairly straight—­his eyes—­”

“Were neither dark nor light—­his hair had the same striking peculiarity—­he was neither short nor tall—­his nose was neither aquiline nor snub—­” he recapitulated sarcastically.

“No,” she retorted; “he was just ordinary looking.”

“Would you know him again—­say to-morrow, and among a number of other men who were ’neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, aquiline nor snub-nosed,’ etc.?”

“I don’t know—­I might—­he was certainly not striking enough to be specially remembered.”

“Exactly,” he said, while he leant forward excitedly, for all the world like a Jack-in-the-box let loose.  “Precisely; and you are a journalist—­call yourself one, at least—­and it should be part of your business to notice and describe people.  I don’t mean only the wonderful personage with the clear Saxon features, the fine blue eyes, the noble brow and classic face, but the ordinary person—­the person who represents ninety out of every hundred of his own kind—­the average Englishman, say, of the middle classes, who is neither very tall nor very short, who wears a moustache which is neither fair nor dark, but which masks his mouth, and a top hat which hides the shape of his head and brow, a man, in fact, who dresses like hundreds of his fellow-creatures, moves like them, speaks like them, has no peculiarity.