He had very nearly broken down at the onset, but, as the reader will have observed, had recovered himself.
"You are very good," she said; and then, as he had been some time standing with his right hand presented to her, she just touched it with her own.
"There's nothing I hate so much as stuff and nonsense," said Archie.

To this remark she simply bowed, remaining awfully quiet.

Captain Clavering felt that her silence was in truth awful.

She had always been good at talking, and he had paused for her to say something; but when she bowed to him in that stiff manner--"doosed stiff she was; doosed stiff, and impudent, too," he told Doodles afterward--he knew that he must go on himself.

"Stuff and nonsense is the mischief, you know." Then she bowed again.