A brusque question caused him to stutter to the point of suffocation.

When startled by anything perplexing he used to squint horribly.

However, he never had any fits (which was encouraging); and before the natural outbursts of impatience on the part of his father he could always, in his childhood's days, run for protection behind the short skirts of his sister Winnie.

On the other hand, he might have been suspected of hiding a fund of reckless naughtiness.

When he had reached the age of fourteen a friend of his late father, an agent for a foreign preserved milk firm, having given him an opening as office-boy, he was discovered one foggy afternoon, in his chief's absence, busy letting off fireworks on the staircase.