“Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?”

“Mr. Carlisle became brisk. "Baby," he said, as Napoleon might have said to one of his Marshals when instructing him in his latest plan of campaign . . .”

“She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.”

“Didn't Frankenstein get married?""Did he?" said Eggy. "I don't know. I never met him. Harrow man, I expect.”

“I left him thinking it over. If I were a bookie, I should feel justified in offering a hundred to eight against.""You can't have approached him properly. I might have known you would muck it up," said young Bingo. Which, considering what I had been through for his sake, struck me as a good bit sharper than the serpent's tooth.”

“No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.”

“The years fell away from him till, in an instant, from being a rather poorly preserved, liverish greybeard of sixty-five or so, he became a sprightly lad of twenty-one in a world of springtime and flowers and laughing brooks. In other words, taking it by and large, George felt pretty good. The impossible had happened; Heaven had sent him an adventure, and he didn't care if it snowed.”