Under the well-meant banterings of friends he
became conscious of it, but to cast it off was to cast off the thing he
was. He tried to learn to recreate, and took Saturday-evening street-car
rides to Forest Park Highlands and joined a bowling club. He paid ten
dollars in advance for a course of six dancing lessons, too, and only
took four of them.
There had never been a woman, a perfume, or a regret in his life. In the
period of ten years since his migration from the paternal farm ten miles
outside of Sparta, Missouri, he had worked for one firm, boarded with
one landlady, and eaten about three thousand quick lunches in the Old
Rock Bakery at Lucas Avenue and Broadway. To further account for the
state of existing hiatus in Mr. Penny's scheme of things would be
tautology.
A short femur line gave him an entirely false appearance of stockiness.
On the contrary, he stood a full five feet ten, was thewed with fine
compactness and solid with clean living and clean with solid living.
Even the fiber of his remarkably fine hair was strong. It was the
brilliant honey color of full-moon shine, lay off his brow, but not
down, lending him a look of distinction to which he was hardly entitled.
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