unearths some literary gems.
***
Sheep and pigs...and cows...bleated, grunted and lowed, according to their persuasion.
***
He was in the early fifties, clean-shaven, with thick greying hair brushed back from his forehead, large well-kept hands—but it will be as well if we return to our interrupted narrative.
***
"That's the trouble with you," said Charlton severely. "You haven't mastered the art of digression."
***
"We do know that all the persons who supplied the names in your copper-plate records are as innocent as a new-born babe or any other revolting simile that may occur to us."
***
Martin murmured something about angles that would have pained Euclid.
***
"Have you ever caught yourself taking an intense interest in anything written upside down?"
***
To the best of her belief, the lettering on the side of it said:
"Something about somebody's biscuits."
***
Mr. Muttigen smiled deprecatingly.
"The 'g' is hard, as in 'tiger,'" he said, as if the phonetic anomaly was entirely his fault.
***
She suggested rather testily that he came [sic] inside, instead of standing there like, to use her own phrase, that.
***
"I shall tell 'im just what I think, Mrs. Simmonds, and if you don't like it, you can do the other thing." [I guess the unmentionable "other thing" would be lumping it?]
***
"Thank you, Miss Higgins," smiled Charlton.
"Iggens is the name," repeated the cook with an impatient flounce, "and Iggens is what I said. There's no haitch."
***
"I'd 'ave given in me notice and packed me trunk before you could say--"
"But surely," threw in Charlton, who was sick of the gentleman she was about to mention.
"Jack Robinson," said Miss Iggens triumphantly.
[Unlike Charlton, I don't find I encounter Mr. Robinson all that often; but it happened that Jack R. also popped up around the same time in The Good Companions, which I was reading concurrently--and with some hat eating, for good measure.
"If we're not up, right at top o't'tree, a'most afore you can say Jack Robi'son, nay, I'll eat this cap."]
***
"There are twenty-three Geoffrey Somebodies."
***
[Falling in Love with Your Own Characters department, Editorial "We" division]
As John Rutherford was to say, she had dark shingled hair, an incontrovertibly tip-tilted nose, big brown eyes and a voice like the sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets. He was madly in love with the girl, of course, but then, if it comes to that, so are we.
***
"There are now anxiously waiting for me a large assortment of ailing ladies, who have been at death's door for so many years that I really don't think there's anyone at home!"
***
[Blank Maps to Nonexistent Risqué Poetry dept. The protagonists are looking over what is presumably a specimen of "dirty" verse, which is not shared with the reader.]
"That line doesn't scan," he said. "Listen to this."
He read the first few stanzas aloud, beating the rhythm with his hand.
"There, that's wrong, isn't it? If they'd put 'mournfully' instead of 'sadly' it would have made all the difference."
"Or 'disconsolately,'" suggested Charlton, falling in with the spirit of the thing.
"That's it!" said the Super enthusiastically. "'Disconsolately dumti-dumti-dum.'"
***
"You say that it didn't matter to the Sniper whether 'e shot Ransome or the Four 'Orsemen of the Apoca-how-much."
***
"I laugh only at my own jokes before lunch," said Weston severely.
***
