"Is that his letter? May I look?"
Mr. Langham read the letter through very carefully. Then he said, looking at her over the tops of his thick glasses:
"I don't know if you know it, but I have made quite a study of handwritings. The writer of this letter is a gentleman—a Southern gentleman, if I am not mistaken. Accepting this premise, we may assume that his friend Mr. Robert Middleton Jonstone is also a Southern gentleman. Middleton, in fact, is pure South Carolinian."
"But if they are from South Carolina, wouldn't our terms stagger them? I've always understood that Southern gentlemen lost all their money in the war."
"Nevertheless," said Mr. Langham, "this is the writing of a rich man."
"How can you know that?"
"I tell you that I have made a study of handwriting. It is also the writing of a horse-loving, war-loving, much-travelled man—in the late twenties."
"You will tell me next that he is about five feet ten inches tall, has blue eyes, and is handsome as an angel."
"You take the words out of my mouth, Miss Maud."
"Tell me more." She was laughing now.