Ninth Avenue

Blanche joined in the laughter now and then—Campbell’s humor was hard to resist. A stocky man of medium height, whose feet were always tapping the floor as though they had a light itch to be dancing, he rarely ever departed from the bon-mots that constituted his chief stock-in-trade. His mind was intelligent in worldly[50] ways, and a blank otherwise, but he was quite aware of his ignorances and careful not to expose them. He had a long, narrow face, with a slanting nose, mobile lips, and a twinkling, lazy cruelty in his eyes. His thick brown hair was burnished and pasted down on his head, and he wore the latest, loose-trousered clothes, in shades of gray and brown, with multicolored scarves, and a diamond ring on one of his fingers.