The sobriquet coming from such a source acquires peculiar significance.

The god-fathers of Nickie the Kid were all experts, and obtained bed and board mainly by exercising the art of dissimulation.

To stand out conspicuously as a specialist in such company one needed to possess very bright and peculiar qualities.
Mr.Nicholas Crips was blonde, bony man perhaps five feet nine in height, but looking taller because of the spareness of his limbs.

This spareness was not cultivated, as Nickie the Kid was partial to creature comforts, but was of great assistance to him in a profession in which it was often necessary to profess chronic sickness and touching physical decrepitude.
Mr Crips despised whiskers, but, as shaving was an extravagant indulgence, his slightly cadaverous countenance was often littered with a crisp, pale stubble, not unlike dry grass.
To-day Nickie wore a suit of black cloth.

It had once been a very imposing suit, and had adorned a great person, but having fallen on evil days, was dusty and rusty, while the knees of Mr.Crips poked familiarly through a long slit in each leg of the stained trousers.