Under Aunt Agatha's thumb

 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's hotels before. Of course, the real rough work was all over when I arrived, but I could tell by the way everyone groveled 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 chamber-maiding 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.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The good old days

     A resilient bird, Bingo. He may be down, but he is never out. While these little love affairs of his are actually on, nobody could be more earnest and blighted; but once the fuse has blown out and the girl has handed him his hat and begged him as a favour never to let her see him again, up he bobs as merry and bright as ever. If I've seen it happen once, I've seen it happen a dozen times.

    So I didn't worry about Bingo. Or about anything else, as a matter of fact. What with one thing and another, I can't remember ever having been chirpier than at about this period in my career. Everything seemed to be going right. On three separate occasions horses on which I'd invested a sizeable amount won by lengths instead of sitting down to rest in the middle of the race, as horses usually do when I've got money on them.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Murder is murder

     "I'd like you to come, Jean," Patrick insisted.

    "If you think I'm playing guinea pig - "

    "Please!"

    "It goes against the grain," I said. "Of all the people mixed up in this business, the doctor's the one I feel sorriest for. I don't suppose he's much, maybe he's been nothing but a shadow of a doctor all his life, but maybe that's Mrs. Lake's fault. If he did it, I say let him go and good luck!"

    "Jeanie," Patrick said, and his voice had a tender note, "if it relieves your mind any, I feel sorry for him myself."

    Instantly, because of the way he said it, all the pieces of the puzzle flowed together, each in its place. The clues led to Annie, Claire continued to be a mystery, Val might or might not be guilty of manslaughter, Ernest Fabian was the one my mind wanted to pin murder on, or Emma, but Dr. Fearheiley was the answer to all the questions.

    I got out and followed Patrick up the brick walk. I didn't like it, but murder is murder.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

I'm not THAT interested

     Earnest warmed up. "You know birds, Mr. Abbott? How amazing! But I wish you wouldn't call the screech-owl common. It certainly isn't rare, but so little is known about the habits of this interesting bird, that when I discovered one close by I have given night after night to observing this little fellow and making notes which will be a real contribution, I hope, to ornithology. I wish you'd told me you knew birds."

    "My knowledge is most superficial, compared to yours, Mr. Fabian. But please go on. I'm interested to know what you learn that is worth the discomfort you must suffer - "

    Earnest waved one of the hands. "The discomfort is nothing, if you're interested."

    He talked for twenty minutes about owls. I've got nothing against owls, but I'm almost willing to all them wise and let it go at that.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

Making childen into idols

     I nodded. "I seem to have heard somewhere that God's noblest creature is a devoted mother, but I can't see much difference between Emma and Mrs. Lake. With Mrs. Lake, it was Fabian and money. With Emma, it's her kids."

    "You're supposed to be like that about kids, Jean."

    "Maybe. But Emma's the kind that thinks hers are the only kids. There's no world to Emma outside that ugly little house and her kids. No great war. No social changes. No art and beauty - oh, skip it!"

    "Not being mothers," Peg said, as I started up, "maybe we aren't being entirely fair.

    I stopped again.

    "Maybe not. Anyhow, what I started out to say in the first place was that if Emma thought she had to do murder for her kid's sake, she'd do it. And think herself justified, even noble, because of it."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

It takes more than money

 She backed from the room. Patrick Abbott remained standing beside the chair she had assigned him, because he was a stranger and it was her best. I gave the room a onceover. It had the articles in it deemed necessary for the modern living room. They were not of specially inferior quality, but the room looked poor and barren. It was its mistress's poverty of taste and imagination which made it so. I've lived too long among artists to think it takes money to make an attractive home.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

Circassian walnut

 In her novel, The Golden Box, author Frances Crane refers to furniture that was "American walnut much carved and inlaid with the Circassian walnut." Even though I worked for a year in the furniture industry and we sold pieces of furniture with walnut laminate and stain on them, I do not recall the term "Circassian." The internet tells me that it is "a highly prized, slow-growing walnut species from the Caucasus region, renowned for its dense, fine-grained, and visually striking wood."