Anybody can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me int… - P. G. Wodehouse

It seemed to me, thinking quick, that the only way of solving the am-parce [impasse] was to sacrifice Shorty. Like Russian peasants with their children, you know, when they are pursued by wolves and it becomes imperative to lighten the sledge.

I had not failed to interpret the significance of that dark frown, that bitten lip and those flashing eyes, nor the way the willowy figure had quivered, indicating, unless she had caught a chill, that she was as sore as a sunburned neck.

I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.