Nobody knew why he was called the Cook, though perhaps he might have been one in his youth when he was sailing the oceans on a merchant ship. He was an old man now, with a white beard and red cheeks, and he smoked a small stubby pipe. He was sitting on a bench outside his house when Iain called on him, and taking his pipe out of his mouth, he said, “Hullo, Iain, where have you been for such a long time? I haven’t seen you for weeks.” “I wasn’t doing anything,” said Iain. “Nothing particular.” The Cook’s teeth were yellow because of the tobacco he smoked and there was a smell from his clothes which Iain could never identify. “I came to ask you,” said Iain, and then he stopped, for the Cook had begun to speak. “You never come without asking for something,” he said. “Why don’t you come and see me anyway?” As Iain didn’t have an answer to this he didn’t say anything: but the answer that he might have given if he had been bold enough was that he didn’t very much like talking to old people, for he didn’t know what to say and a lot of the time he used to sit on a chair looking down at his feet and kicking them together while he could hear the clock ticking, and he couldn’t think of any excuse for leaving.
