His voice was undertoned, but mellow and
agreeable.
Mrs. Eunice Billings, of nearly equal age, was a good specimen of the
wide-awake New-England woman. Her face had a piquant smartness of
expression, which might have been refined into a sharp edge, but for her
natural hearty good-humor. Her head was smoothly formed, her face a full
oval, her hair and eyes blond and blue in a strong light, but brown and
steel-gray at other times, and her complexion of that ripe fairness into
which a ruddier color will sometimes fade. Her form, neither plump nor
spare, had yet a firm, elastic compactness, and her slightest movement
conveyed a certain impression of decision and self-reliance.
As for J. Edward Johnson, it is enough to say that he was a tall,
thin gentleman of forty-five, with an aquiline nose, narrow face, and
military whiskers, which swooped upwards and met under his nose in a
glossy black moustache. His complexion was dark, from the bronzing of
fifteen summers in New Orleans. He was a member of a wholesale hardware
firm in that city, and had now revisited his native North for the first
time since his departure. A year before, some letters relating to
invoices of metal buttons, signed "Foster, Kirkup, & Co., per Enos
Billings," had accidentally revealed to him the whereabouts of the old
friend of his youth, with whom we now find him domiciled. The first
thing he did, after attending to some necessary business matters in New
York, was to take the train for Waterbury.
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