A stout, black-bearded man lounged carelessly on a sofa, supporting himself with one huge hand as the vessel kicked awkwardly.

He looked as if he had been born with a smile, and every line of his great face was disposed so as to express vast contentment and good-humour.

You could not call him finely bred, but when he observed, in terrific bass tones, "Hah! Miss Dearsley, you have gazed on the what's-his-name; you love the storm; you find it fahscinating--oh! fahscinating; ah! fahscinating! I like an ignoble cabin and a pipe, but the what's-his-name is fahscinating--ah! fahscinating." His infectious good-humour was better than any graces.

Then his pride in his phrases was very fine to behold, and he regarded his repetition of his sonorous adjective as quite an original thing in the way of pure rhetoric.

Tom Lennard was by inheritance a merchant, by choice a philanthropist; he was naturally religious, but he could not help regarding his philanthropic work as a great frolic, and he often scandalized reformers of a more serious disposition.