The coffee having arrived (how hard it is to write without the ablative absolute!) we guzzled genteelly for a while... - Kyril Bonfiglioli

"You would now be an enemy, in the third class, of my own organization."
"Only third class?" I asked in the indignant tones which Queen Victoria surely used when she received the Abyssinian Order of Chastity, Second Class.

He had made one mistake in an otherwise flawless performance: he hadn't told me his name. Have you ever exchanged three words with an American without being told his name?

The cold pork in the fridge was wilting at the edges; it and I exchanged looks of mutual contempt, like two women wearing the same hat in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.