The boys are of the same age--fifteen or thereabout--but they are dissimilar in stature and in almost every other respect. Algy is short and small, plump and sturdy, while Cecil is inclined to run. He is tall for his age, and very thin. His body is as flat as a man’s hand; he has no more substance than a herring. Algy’s features are round, regular, and pleasant; he is quite a handsome boy. His forehead slopes a little, his nose is perfect in shape. He has frank, grey eyes sparkling with fun and good-nature, a girlish mouth, and small, pretty teeth. Cecil, on the other hand, is not what one would style handsome. He has thin, hollow cheeks and small, hard features. His forehead is narrow, and his eyes are rather large and searching--expressing strength and keenness. His mouth is stern, and his lips pout a little: they are best represented by the French _s’allonger--les lèvres s’allongent_, as Monsieur Jourdain’s did in Molière, when he pronounced the vowel sound of u. He has a particularly fine set of teeth, and he has a way of grizzing them together and showing them when in the act of making a special exertion that gives him a savage expression.
Both boys are pale. Algy’s face, when it is clean, shines like a glass bottle; Cecil’s skin is inclined to be yellow. Both have dark rings around the eyes, especially Cecil, who is the more delicate of the two--they are neither very robust-looking. Their hair is very long, and it stands out well from underneath their cloth caps and stretches down the cheeks before the ears. They are consequently often assailed with the cry--“Get yer ’air cut,” or--“You be robbin’ the barber of tuppence,“ or--”Tell yer mother to use the basin,” suggesting that the boys’ hair is cut at home. It is a common charge to lay to small boys in the shed that their mothers used to put a basin over their heads and cut the hair around the outside of it. Both boys wax indignant at being taunted about the basin, and reply to the other remark with, “You gi’ me the tuppence, then, an’ I’ll have it cut.” Occasionally, more by way of being sarcastic than out of any desire to show good-nature, the stampers will make a collection towards defraying the barber’s expenses, and the next morning the boys will turn up at the shed nearly bald: they have had their hair cut this time with a vengeance.