unearths some literary gems.
The rest of the area was hung with truly awful artwork, paintings whose subjects--owl, hare, human--shared expressions of surprise, their looks in a kind of stasis as if needing to react but hesitating, as if the paintings were about to sneeze.
[Btw, I see that Google images brings up plenty of artwork depicting sneezing, including some fine-art paintings...but what I was hoping to find, yet didn't, would have been cartoonish sneezing paintings in the vein of what you've called "haunted paintings"--where the painting on the wall isn't *normally* sneezing, but sneezes because someone in the room is shaking out a carpet, or whatever.]
***
"Never mind about us."
It looked as if she would mind all over the place.
***
[Bonus: A minor character called Amy Dudgeon.]
