“We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight.”

“It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for?”

“Say what you will, there is something fine about our old aristocracy. I'll bet Trotsky couldn't hit a moving secretary with an egg on a dark night.”

“I say, Bertie," he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter."Hallo!""Do you like the name Mabel?""No.""No?""No.""You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?""No."He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up."Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren't you?""Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all.”

“Tea, pa!" said Charlotte, starting at the word like the old war-horse who hears the bugle; and we got down to it.”

“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.”

“My name's Bassington-Bassington, and the jolly old Bassington-Bassingtons - I mean the Bassington-Bassingtons aren't accustomed - "Old Blumenfeld told him in a few brief words pretty much what he thought of the Bassington-Bassingtons and what they weren't accustomed to. ..."You got to work good for my pop!" said the stout child, waggling his head reprovingly at Cyril."I don't want any bally cheek from you!" said Cyril, gurgling a bit."What's that?" barked old Blumenfeld. "Do you understand that this boy is my son?""Yes, I do," said Cyril. "And you both have my sympathy!""You're fired!" bellowed old Blumenfeld, swelling a good bit more. "Get out of my theatre!”