“I remembered that Johnson had declared portrait painting to be an improper employment for a woman. “Public practice of any art and staring in men’s faces is very indelicate in a female,” he had said. Well I’d seen Dr. Johnson’s face in the book’s frontispiece and I couldn’t imagine anyone male or female wanting to stare into it for any length of time —the man was an absolute toad.”

“I had to make water ” I said. It was the classic female excuse and no male in recorded history had ever questioned it. “I see ” the Inspector said and left it at that. Later I would have a quick piddle behind the caravan for insurance purposes. No one would be any the wiser.”

“The woman was putting her purse in the drawer and settling down behind the desk, and I realized I had never seen her before in my life. Her face was as wrinkled as one of those forgotten apples you sometimes find in the pocket of last year's winter jacket.Yes?" she said, peering over her spectacles. They teach them to do that at the Royal Academy of Library Science.”

“Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths by heavy-footed dray horses. There is never any doubt that they will, despite wind and weather, reach their destinations by following a simple series of connected lines.But the female mind, even in my limited experience, seems more of a vast and teeming swamp, but a swamp that knows in an instant whenever a stranger--even miles away--has so much as dipped a single toe into her waters. People who talk about this phenomenon, most of whom know nothing whatsoever about it, call it "woman's intuition.”

“I had learned by personal experience that grumblers are deaf to any voices but their own.”

“And Miss Ophelia?" he asked, getting round to her at last. "Miss Ophelia? Well, to tell you the truth, Ned, we're all rather worried about her." Ned recoiled as if a wasp had gone up his nose. "Oh? What's the trouble? Nothing serious, I hope." "She's gone all green," I said. "I think it's chlorosis. Dr. Darby thinks so too.”

“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.”