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unearths some literary gems.
From A Going Concern, by Catherine Aird:
***[Vis-a-vis this book's firm of solicitors: "Messrs Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery"]Amelia's mind had gone off at a complete tangent, trying to work out however many Puckles there must be in the firm. The old saw about thrift came into her mind: "Many a mickle makes a muckle..." Could it be a case of many a client making a Puckle?***She struggled for the right words. She must say something that had no connection at all with Cock Robin.***Detective Inspector Sloan said nothing at all rather loudly.***Amelia used to describe her father as absentminded until Phoebe Plantin had explained that he wasn't absentminded at all, but single-minded, which was quite different but had the same effect.***"Shouldn't be surprised," said Phoebe Plantin, who had ceased to be surprised long ago.***Miller...was...thin as a yard of rainwater.[I guess a yard of rainwater is even thinner than a yard of ale, because ale is thicker than water. Btw, "thin as a yard of rainwater" appears to have no currency outside of this book.]***She was either too young or too old for the works of Evelyn Waugh.***"I dare say both companies are pretty big fish in your neck of the woods...""It's a small pond," conceded Sloan, who could mix a metaphor as well as the next man.***Mr Henryson looked up with the mild uninterest of the secondhand bookseller as Amelia entered.***"I think that they--whoever they might have been--can't have found what they were searching for at the Grange...""Whatever that might have been," said Leeyes, whose highly idiosyncratic approach to algebra had never--without argument--got past the point of letting a equal one thing and b another. He was a little better at allowing the letter x stand for the unknown quantity: but not much.***"Ah!"Sloan couldn't remember the name of the man who had said "But me no buts" but he felt a considerable fellow-feeling towards him, and would have liked himself to have said "Ah me no ahs" to the superintendent but didn't think he should.[Tangent: Back in the mid-1980s, I wrote a short story called "The 'Ah' Sound."]***[Bonus: An offstage character named Perpetua. She's long deceased, but I guess a name like that has indefinite staying power!]
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