Re: At the end of the street under the lights; Hugh M./cobbled
It was a lie to say they weren't used to that look on the faces of men that were more gentle than he was, that little pause where they were expecting something else, and when faced with him their faces were frozen there as he was built for neither wealth nor taste -- though there were certain benefits of both that he craved.
This man here, his belly probably never rumbled, and he never had to chose between piss-swill and pies made of unknown meats.
He probably had a pocket watch.
The urchin didn't want it.
"No, can't say I do," he said. "But I seen people do it before. And not just now, with what you're doin'." Picture him, his grimy little face with his dirty mitts pressed up to a window with snow around the edges, staring into a ballroom. It probably happened something like that, anyway.
"How do you know who's the right partner?" His eyes narrowed into a squint, as if he could figure out the answer simply by looking at Hugh's face. No answer was there, not in his eyebrows, nor the tip of his nose, or the dark center of his eyes.