“I remembered a piece of sisterly advice, which Feely once gave Daffy and me:"If ever you're accosted by a man," she'd said, "kick him in the Casanovas and run like blue blazes!"Although it had sounded at the time like a useful bit of intelligence, the only problem was that I didn't know where the Casanovas were located.I'd have to think of something else.”

“I knew that Feely and Daffy would never condescend to respond to a bell “So utterly Pavlovian,” Feely said”

“Excuse me,' I said. 'I've just remembered something.' It was true. What I'd remembered was this: While I was not in the least afraid of the dead, there were those among the living who gave me the creeping hooly-goolies...”

“I reached out and touched his hands and they stilled at once. I had observed—although I did not often make use of the fact—that there were times when a touch could say things that words could not.”

“As Daffy once said, the best place to hide a glum countenance is onstage at the opera.”

“But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to that third-floor ironmonger's shop in Farringdon Street, where I would be strapped to a board like Boris Karloff as various bits of ironmongery were shoved into my mouth, screwed in, and bolted to my gums.”

“I shot him a broad smile, a smile wide enough to present him with a good view of the wire braces that caged my teeth. Although they gave me the look of a dirigible with the skin off, Father always liked being reminded that he was getting his money's worth.”