Not in style this season

 He was dressed, this accident case of Doody's, in a thick overcoat of yellow camel's hair, with pigskin gloves on his somewhat small hands and bright tan shoes on his feet. The brim of a crushed felt hat protruded from beneath one shoulder, and a cigarette still burned merrily into the furry overcoat lapel where it must have dropped from lips now black and contorted.

A snappy dresser, this accident case, But there as one detail of his array which did not jibe with Doody's ideas of what the well dressed young man will wear this season. Around his neck, just above the soft pinned collar and the blue-gold tie of printed silk, was another and heavier cravat - a noose of twisted hempen rope!

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

Not the last of the great lovers

 A woman who has told a man in the moonlight, with nightingales singing their heads off in the background, that she is very, very lonely and has received in response the words, "Oh, ah," is scarcely to be blamed for feeling a momentary pang of discouragement. Mrs. Spottsworth had once owned a large hound dog of lethargic temperament who could be induced to go out for his nightly airing only by a succession of sharp kicks. She was beginning to feel now as she had felt when her foot thudded against this langourous animal's posterior. The same depressing sense of trying in vain to move an immovable mass. She loved the White Hunter. She admired him. But when you set out to kindle the spark of passion in him, you certainly had a job on your hands. In a moment of bitterness she told herself that she had known oysters on the half-shell with more divine fire in them.

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Peas with his knife?!

     "There's something up, old girl, and it has to do with this chap Biggar. Did you notice Bill at dinner?"

    "Not particularly. What was he doing? Eating peas with his knife?"

    "No, but every time he caught Biggar's eye, he quivered like and Ouled Nail stomach dancer. For some reason Biggar affects him like an egg-whisk. Why? That's what I want to know. Who is this mystery man? Why had he come here? What is there between him and Bill that makes Bill leap and quake and shiver whenever he looks at him? I don't like it, old thing. When you married me, you never said anything about fits in the family, and I consider I have been shabbily treated. I mean to say, it's a bit thick, going to all the trouble and expense of wooing and winning the girl you love, only to discover shortly after the honeymoon that you've become brother-in-law to a fellow with St. Vitus's Dance."

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Would not be tolerated!

     The procession passed through the door, and Rory, having scrutinized it in his slow, thorough way, turned to Jeevs with a shrug of the shoulders.

    "Potty, what?"

    "The lady does appear to diverge somewhat from the generally accepted norm, Sir Roderick."

    "She's as crazy as a bed bug. I'll tell you something, Jeeves. That sort of thing wouldn't be tolerated at Harrige's."

    "No, sir?"

    "Not for a moment. If this Mrs. Dogsbody, or whatever her name is, came into - say Cakes, Biscuits and General Confectionry and started acting that way, the store detectives would have her by the seat of the trousers and be giving her the old heave-ho before the first gibber had proceeded from her lips."

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

One of those Hemingway sorts

He seemed to her like someone out of Ernest Hemingway, and she had always had a weakness for those rough, tough, devil-may-care Hemingway characters. Spiritual herself, she was attracted by roughness and toughness in the male. Clifton Besemer had had those qualities. So had A. B. Spottsworth. What had first impressed her in Clifton Bessemer had been the way he had swatted a charging fly with a rolled-up evening paper at the studio party where they had met, and in the case of A. B. Spottsworth the spark had been lit when she heard him one afternoon in conversation with a Paris taxi driver who had expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of his fare.

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He can't hide his feelings

 Inasmuch as Captain Biggar, as we have seen, had not spoken his love but had let concealment like a worm i' the bud feed on his tomato-coloured cheek, it may seem strange that Mrs. Spottsworth should have known anything about the way he felt. But a woman can always tell. When she sees a man choke up and look like an embarrassed beetroot every time he catches her eye over the eland steaks and lime juice, she soon forms an adequate diagnosis of his case.

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Talk sense!

     "It was merely because nothing of a suitable nature had presented itself by the time we reached the T's that I suggested Turf Accountant faute de mieux."

    "Faute de what?"

    "Mieux, m'lord. A French expression. We should say "for want of anything better."

    "What asses these Frenchmen are! Why can't they talk English?"

    "They are possibly more to be pitied than censured, m'lord. Early upbringing no doubt has a good deal to do with it."

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)