She could not have gazed at him with a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child and he a saucer of ice cream.

I laughed derisively. "For goodness' sake, don't start gargling now. This is serious." "I was laughing." "Oh, were you? Well, I'm glad to see you taking it in this merry spirit." "Derisively," I explained.

What you want, my lad, and what you're going to get are two very different things.

Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.

I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover-the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all.

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.

I remember her telling me once that rabbits were the gnomes in attendance to the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course.