Idio~

Mr Rice gazed at her. He was a heavy lumbering man, with so flat a face that it seemed to have been created by some sculptor who, experimenting in the art of low relief could go without disappearing altogether. Thousands of years of ice and blizzard, of scorching suns and withering sandstorms could not have reduced a marble face to anything like so featureless a thing as he had achieved by the simple means of being Mr Rice. His was the family face, and the rumour that he had had it trodden on by an elephant when young was quite untrue. All the Rices were the same. They had no profiles.