His bulbous nose was the size and shape of a turnip. His eyelids
bulged and his blue eyes bulged in competition with them. In many
places the seams of his garments had parted across the bulges of
body. His calves grew into his feet, for the broken elastic sides
of his Congress gaiters were swelled full with the fat of him. One
arm only he sported, from the shoulder of which was suspended a
small and tattered bundle with the mud caked dry on the outer
covering from the last place he had pitched his doss. He advanced
with tentative caution, made sure of the harmlessness of the man
beside the fire, and joined him.

"Hello, grandpa," the new-comer greeted, then paused to stare at
the other's flaring, sky-open nostril. "Say, Whiskers, how'd ye
keep the night dew out of that nose o' yourn?"

Whiskers growled an incoherence deep in his throat and spat into
the fire in token that he was not pleased by the question.

"For the love of Mike," the fat man chuckled, "if you got caught
out in a rainstorm without an umbrella you'd sure drown, wouldn't
you?"

"Can it, Fatty, can it," Whiskers muttered wearily. "They ain't
nothin' new in that line of chatter. Even the bulls hand it out to
me."

"But you can still drink, I hope"; Fatty at the same time mollified
and invited, with his one hand deftly pulling the slip-knots that
fastened his bundle.