“She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape.”

“The hotel which had had the bad luck to draw Aunt Agatha's custom was the Splendide, and by the time I got there there wasn't a member of the staff who didn't seem to be feeling it deeply. I sympathized with them. I've had experience of Aunt Agatha at hotels before. Of course, the real rough work was all over when I arrived, but I could tell by the way everyone grovelled before her that she had started by having her first room changed because it hadn't a southern exposure and her next because it had a creaking wardrobe and that she had said her say on the subject of the cooking, the waiting, the chambermaiding and everything else, with perfect freedom and candour. She had got the whole gang nicely under control by now. The manager, a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, simply tied himself into knots whenever she looked at him.”

“They walked on in silence. Katie's heart was beating with a rapidity that forbade speech. Nothing like this very direct young man had ever happened to her before. She had grown so accustomed to regarding herself as something too insignificant and unattractive for the notice of the lordly male that she was overwhelmed. She had a vague feeling that there was a mistake somewhere. It surely could not be she who was proving so alluring to this fairy prince. The novelty of the situation frightened her.”

“I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything's nice and matey.”

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". ”

“Young Bingo was too busy introducing the mob to take much notice. They were a very C3 collection. Comrade Butt looked like one of those things that come out of dead trees after the rain; moth-eaten was the word I should have used to described old Rowbotham; and as for Charlotte, she seemed to take me straight into another and a dreadful world.”

“But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there's a most corking links near here."He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank."You don't mean honestly she said that?""She said you said it was better than St. Andrews.""So I did. Was that all she said I said?""Well, wasn't it enough?""She didn't happen to mention that I added the words, 'I don't think'?""No, she forgot to tell me that.""It's the worst course in Great Britain.”