“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window - ”

“He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.”

“And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:Sredni Vashtar went forth,His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.”

“The censorious said she slept in a hammock and understood Yeats's poems, but her family denied both stories.”

“everyone is a russian communist”

“Find yourself a cup of tea,the teapot is behind you.Now tell me abouthundreds of things.”