He was eight and twenty years old; he had a short, slight, well-made figure.

Though he bore a noticeable resemblance to his sister, he was a better favored person: fair-haired, clear-faced, witty-looking, with a delicate finish of feature and an expression at once urbane and not at all serious, a warm blue eye, an eyebrow finely drawn and excessively arched--an eyebrow which, if ladies wrote sonnets to those of their lovers, might have been made the subject of such a piece of verse--and a light moustache that flourished upwards as if blown that way by the breath of a constant smile.

There was something in his physiognomy at once benevolent and picturesque.

But, as I have hinted, it was not at all serious.

The young man's face was, in this respect, singular; it was not at all serious, and yet it inspired the liveliest confidence.
"Be sure you put in plenty of snow," said his sister.