Mr Stimson was a thick-set, moustached, virile, middle-aged man, of medium height, with a red face (redder now because of the cold outside), tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, false teeth, a heavy overcoat, a woollen scarf, gloves and a bowler hat.

Above all things Mr Stimpson was middle-aged. Merely to look at him was to think of middle age. Few other men in the world, of his years, which amounted to fifty-one, could have given forth this impression so strongly and quickly. He bounced with middle age; he had clearly been born, and would die, middle-aged, and furthermore, he somehow seemed to glory in all this.

It is not easy to say exactly why or how he gave this overwhelming impression. One simply does not think of the age of countless other men of fifty-one. Perhaps it was because he was so intensely and overbearingly middle-class – in his social origins, in his profession, in his thoughts, and in his utterances. He was vehemently, formidably, almost dangerously ‘middle’ in every way.