One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.

Some, it is true, take ineffaceable impressions of character at once.

Others dally, loiter, and get blown this way and that.

Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character.

A cat will always go to a good man, they say; but then, Mrs.Whitehorn, Jacob's landlady, loathed cats.
There is also the highly respectable opinion that character-mongering is much overdone nowadays.