Ice cream

Three children sat at a table looking out of the window of an ice cream parlour, one pistachio, one chocolate orange and one vanilla.  A tramp caught their eyes. He was a short man, in a combat jacket and matching hat with a long grey wavy beard and quite clearly no longer the full shilling.  He looked back at them and stuck his tongue out.  Then he moved away the tables in front of the shop to make a passage to the window and leant right up against the glass and stuck his tongue out all the way.  The children were from the country and they were not used to this sort of thing but it was warm in the shop and their aunt was there, so they carried on looking, carried on licking, one pistachio, one chocolate orange and one vanilla.  The tramp stepped back and, with a flourish, pulled off his hat to reveal an unexpected baldness .  Now he looked like Tolstoy.  In a combat jacket.  After a lobotomy.  But the indifference of the children began to bore him and his mind turned instead to cigarettes and they watched him shuffle off in search of a man who seemed to know his name and sometimes treated him to a smoke.  He had forgotten their faces before he was out of sight.