Ha!' said the tall man drily. 'He was in high luck. Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.

He smiles but rarely and watches other men to see when they laugh and then does the same.

He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.

After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of colour blue.

It is also true that his hair had a reddish tinge and, as everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.

I mean that two of any thing is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough. But two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The eyes of all the world will be on two, uncertain which of them to follow.