There wasn't a great deal I could tell him. Bill listened till I got to the end of my string, with a perfectly wooden expression on his homely countenance. Then for the first, last and only time he expressed his opinion of Russell Davidson.
"Humph!" said he. And after a long pause: "Humph!"
You may think that a grunt doesn't express an opinion, but as a matter of fact it's one of the most expressive monosyllables in any language. It can be made to mean almost anything. A ten-minute speech with a lot of firecracker adjectives wouldn't have made Bill's meaning any clearer.
The two grunts which came out of Bill's system were fairly dripping with disapproval.
"It's a wonderful night." I felt the need of saying something. "Must be quite a relief after all that humidity in the East."
"Uh huh."
"I understand you played pretty good golf on the college team, Bill."
"Uh huh."
"We've made a lot of improvements out at the club. You won't know the last nine now."
"Uh huh."