[NPPF] Canto Three: The British stuff.. hullo

[s~Z]

Technically speaking, the narrator's art of integrating telephone
conversations still lags far behind that of rendering dialogues conducted
from room to room, or from window to window across some narrow blue alley in
an ancient town with water so precious, and the misery of donkeys, and rugs
for sale, and minarets, and foreigners and melons, and the vibrant morning
echoes. When Joan, in her brisk long-limbed way, got to the compelling
instrument before it gave up, and said hullo (eyebrows up, eyes roaming), a
hollow quiet greeted her; all she could hear was the informal sound of a
steady breathing; presently the breather's voice said, with a cosy foreign
accent: 'One moment, excuse me' - this was quite casual, and he continued to
breathe and perhaps hem and hum or even sigh a lime to the accompaniment of
a crepitation that evoked the turning over of small pages.
          'Hullo!' she repeated.
          'You are,' suggested the voice warily, 'Mrs Fire?'


(from PNIN)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, hullo, V.," he said looking up. "This is my brother, Miss Bishop. Sit
down and make yourself comfortable." She was pretty in a quiet sort of way
with a pale faintly freckled complexion, slightly hollowed cheeks, blue-gray
near-sighted eyes, a thin mouth. She wore a gray tailor-made with a blue
scarf and a small three-cornered hat. I believe her hair was bobbed.

(from Sebastian Knight)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------