He was a loose-limbed, round-shouldered man, with a fine open countenance, and a great disorderly moustache; his hair might have been shorter, and his dress-coat shone where it caught the light.

Rachel put the screw upon her courage.
"These cards," she said, with a glimpse of her own colonial self, "are very handy when one hasn't been introduced.

Your name is not very common, is it ?" "Not very," he answered, "spelt like that." "Yes it's spelt the same way as the Mr.Langholm who writes." "It is." "Then are you any relation ?" "I am the man himself," said Langholm, with quite a hearty laugh, accompanied by a flush of pleasurable embarrassment.

He was not a particularly popular writer, and this did not happen to him every day.
"I hoped you were," said Rachel, as she helped herself to the first _entree_.
"Then you haven't read my books," he chuckled, "and you never must." "But I have," protested Rachel, quite flushed in her turn by the small excitement.

"I read heaps of them in Tauchnitz when we were abroad.