His face was _very_ hot. It dripped.
"Energetic as usual," observed Uncle Felix, while Tim poked among the
bushes to see what he had been after, and Judy offered him a very
dirty handkerchief to mop his forehead with. His bald head shone and
glistened. Wisps of dark hair lay here and there upon it like the
feathers of a crow's torn wing.
"Thanks, dear," he said stiffly, using the few inches of ragged
cambric and then tucking the article absent-mindedly into a pocket of
his shooting coat. "I've been up very early--since dawn. Since dawn,"
he repeated in a much louder voice, "got up, in fact, with the sun."
He meant to justify his extreme and violent activity. He glanced at
the Tramp with a curious air of respect. Tim thought he saluted him,
but Judy declared afterwards he was only wiping "the hot stuff off the
side of his dear old head."
"Wonderful moment,--dawn, ain't it, General?" said the Tramp. "Best in
the whole day when you come to think of it."
"It is, sir," replied Stumper, as proud as though a Field-Marshal had
addressed him, "and the first." He looked more closely at the Tramp;
he rubbed his eyes, and then produced the scrap of cambric and rubbed
them again more carefully than before.
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