Sharp, short, and decisive; that was his motto.

No "longae ambages" for him.

The whip was in his hand, as he thought, and he could best master the team by using it.
And yet Sir Thomas lived and bore it.

As he sat there half stupefied, numbed as it were by the intensity of his grief, he wondered at his own power of endurance.

"She is Mrs.M., you know; ain't she now ?" He could sit there and hear that, and yet live through it.