[From Michael Innes's Honeybath's Haven]:

Honeybath remembered that the third-person-singular treatment was administered by Melissa only in a standing position.

***

[From Appleby Talks Again]:

***

"We hear him approaching with a sinister limp.... Your bravado deserts you. Out of compassion for your pitiable condition, I consent to our hiding in a cupboard. And there the man finds us."

"I never heard such rot. Such a thing has never happened to us. Or only once."

***

"Old Josiah Hopcutt," Appleby said, "was a prosperous manufacturer. And he continued prosperous when he had ceased to manufacture anything except large-scale tedium for the people looking after him."

***

[From Appleby and Honeybath]:

***

The books were all outsize folios, and bulky at that. They looked as if they had come into being at the hands of Johann Guttenberg in Mainz round about the middle of the fifteenth century and had been putting on weight ever since.

***

"A matter of untransacted business, as it were."

"Untransacted fiddlesticks!"

***

Miss Arne, Appleby reflected, drew ink-horn terms from one willy-nilly.

***

[From Michael Innes's The Long Farewell]:

"If, one day, something very surprising turned up about him, you wouldn't—so to speak—be very surprised. And yet this circumstance—that you wouldn't be surprised by a surprise—was surprising in itself."