This particular example of the species was in every way up to grade and sample.  A happy combination of open air, open pores and open casegoods gave to his face the exact color of a slice of rare roast beef; it also had the expression of one.  With a dab of English mustard in the lobe of one ear and a savory bit of watercress stuck in his hair for a garnish, he could have passed anywhere for a slice of cold roast beef.

He was reasonably exclusive too.  Not until the day we landed did he and the Honorable member of the legation learn—­quite by chance —­that they were third cousins—­or something of that sort—­to one another.  And so, after the relationship had been thoroughly established through the kindly offices of a third party, they fraternized to the extent of riding up to London on the same boat-train, merely using different compartments of different carriages.  The English aristocrat is a tolerably social animal when traveling; but, at the same time, he does not carry his sociability to an excess.  He shows restraint.

Also, we had with us the elderly gentleman of impaired disposition, who had crossed thirty times before and was now completing his thirty-first trip, and getting madder and madder about it every minute.  I saw him only with his clothes on; but I should say, speaking offhand, that he had at least fourteen rattles and a button.  His poison sacs hung ’way down.  Others may have taken them for dewlaps, but I knew better; they were poison sacs.

It was quite apparent that he abhorred the very idea of having to cross to Europe on the same ocean with the rest of us, let alone on the same ship.  And for persons who were taking their first trip abroad his contempt was absolutely unutterable; he choked at the bare mention of such a criminal’s name and offense.  You would hear him communing with himself and a Scotch and soda.

“Bah!” he would say bitterly, addressing the soda-bottle.  “These idiots who’ve never been anywhere talking about this being rough weather!  Rough weather, mind you!  Bah!  People shouldn’t be allowed to go to sea until they know something about it.  Bah!”

By the fourth day out his gums were as blue as indigo, and he was so swelled up with his own venom he looked dropsical.  I judged his bite would have caused death in from twelve to fourteen minutes, preceded by coma and convulsive rigors.  We called him old Colonel Gila Monster or Judge Stinging Lizard, for short.

There was the spry and conversational gentleman who looked like an Englishman, but was of the type commonly denominated in our own land as breezy.  So he could not have been an Englishman.  Once in a while there comes along an Englishman who is windy, and frequently you meet one who is drafty; but there was never a breezy Englishman yet.

With that interest in other people’s business which the close communion of a ship so promptly breeds in most of us, we fell to wondering who and what he might be; but the minute the suspect came into the salon for dinner the first night out I read his secret at a glance.  He belonged to a refined song-and-dance team doing sketches in vaudeville.  He could not have been anything else—­he had jet buttons on his evening clothes.