"He's brought
enough ironmongery with him."
"'Wouldn't be a Chinn if he didn't. Watch him blowin' his nose.
'Regular Chinn beak. 'Flourishes his handkerchief like his father.
It's the second edition - line for line."
"'Fairy tale, by Jove!" said the Major, peering through the slats
of the jalousies. "If he's the lawful heir, he'll .... Now
old Chinn could no more pass that chick without fiddling with it
than ...."
"His son!" said the Colonel, jumping up.
"Well, I be blowed!" said the Major. The boy's eye had been
caught by a split-reed screen that hung on a slew between the
veranda pillars, and, mechanically, he had tweaked the edge to
set it level. Old Chinn had sworn three times a day at that
screen for many years; he could never get it to his satisfaction.
His son entered the anteroom in the middle of a fivefold silence.
They made him welcome for his father's sake and, as they took stock
of him, for his own. He was ridiculously like the portrait of the
Colonel on the wall, and when he had washed a little of the dust
from his throat he went to his quarters with the old man's short,
noiseless jungle-step.
"So much for heredity," said the Major.
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