Post by david on Mar 14, 2010 2:08:55 GMT 1
He was a tall, rawboned, rangy young fellow with a face so tanned by wind and sun you had the impression that his skin would feel like leather if you could affect the impertinence to test it by the sense of touch. Not that you would like to encourage this bit of impudence after a look into his devil-may-care eyes; but you might easily imagine something much stronger than brown wrapping paper and not quite so passive as burnt clay. His clothes fit him loosely and yet were graciously devoid of the bagginess which characterises the appearance of extremely young men whose frames are not fully set and whose joints are still parading through the last stages of college development. This fellow, you could tell by looking at him, had been out of college from two to five years; you could also tell, beyond doubt or contradiction, that he had been in college for his full allotted time and had not escaped the usual number of "conditions" that dismay but do not discourage the happy-go-lucky undergraduate who makes two or three teams with comparative ease, but who has a great deal of difficulty with physics or whatever else he actually is supposed to acquire between the close of the football season and the opening of baseball practice.
This tall young man in the black hat and grey flannels was David Val'Lauren, embryo globe-trotter and searcher after the treasures of Romance. Somewhere up near the slytherin tower, in one of the fashionable chairs. It is worthy of passing notice, and that is all, that his father was a manufacturer; more than that, he was something of a power in the financial world. His mother was not strictly a social queen in the great metropolis of London, but she was what we might safely call one of the first "ladies in waiting." Which is quite good enough for the wife of a manufacturer; especially when one records that her husband was a manufacturer of spell-binds. It is also a matter of no little consequence that David's mother was more or less averse to the spell-binding business as a heritage for her son. Be it understood, here and now, that she intended David for the diplomatic service: as far removed from the sordid spell-binding as the London post office is from the United States of America.
David sighed as he tossed his hat into the fire and growled lightly, he was in a very sour mood and there was very few things that could solve his hate at the moment. There was no woman around yet so he'd have to wait.
This tall young man in the black hat and grey flannels was David Val'Lauren, embryo globe-trotter and searcher after the treasures of Romance. Somewhere up near the slytherin tower, in one of the fashionable chairs. It is worthy of passing notice, and that is all, that his father was a manufacturer; more than that, he was something of a power in the financial world. His mother was not strictly a social queen in the great metropolis of London, but she was what we might safely call one of the first "ladies in waiting." Which is quite good enough for the wife of a manufacturer; especially when one records that her husband was a manufacturer of spell-binds. It is also a matter of no little consequence that David's mother was more or less averse to the spell-binding business as a heritage for her son. Be it understood, here and now, that she intended David for the diplomatic service: as far removed from the sordid spell-binding as the London post office is from the United States of America.
David sighed as he tossed his hat into the fire and growled lightly, he was in a very sour mood and there was very few things that could solve his hate at the moment. There was no woman around yet so he'd have to wait.
