To call a place dull is often a confession of dulness." He laughed--still in that somewhat unnatural manner, as if desirous of filling up time.

He had spent the latter years of his life in doing nothing else.

The man's method was so different to what Jocelyn Gordon had met with in Loango, where men were all in deadly earnest, pursuing souls or wealth, that it struck her forcibly, and she remembered it long after Meredith had forgotten its use.
"I have no idea," she continued, "how the place strikes the passing traveller; he usually passes by on the other side; but I am afraid there is nothing to arouse the smallest interest." "But, Miss Gordon, I am not the passing traveller." She looked up with a sudden interest.
"Indeed! I understood from Maurice that you were travelling down the coast without any particular object." "I have an object--estimable, if not quite original." "Yes ?" "I want to make some money.

I have never made any yet, so there is a certain novelty in the thought which is pleasant." She smiled with the faintest suspicion of incredulity.
"I know what you are thinking," he said; "that I am too neat and tidy--too namby-pamby to do anything in this country.

That my boots are too narrow in the toe, my hair too short and my face too clean.