Orlo, as I had predicted, was in the bar having a gin and ginger. He lowered the beaker as I drew near and regarded me in a squiggle-eyed manner like a fastidious luncher observing a caterpillar in his salad.
"Oh, it's you," he said.
I conceded this, for he was right. No argument about it
(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
He pursed his lips.
"I'm afraid," he said, having unpursed them, "I couldn't do it as cheap as I'd like, sir. You see, what with them having discovered the animal's absence by this time, the hue and cry, as you might say, will be up and everybody at Mr. Cook's residence on the qui vive or alert. I'd be in the position of a spy in wartime carrying secret dispatches through the enemy's lines with every eye on the look-out for him. I'd have to make it twenty pounds."
I was relieved. I had been expecting something higher. He, too, seemed to feel that he had erred on the side of moderation for he immediately added:
"Or, rather, thirty."
"Thirty!"
"Thirty, sir."
"Let's haggle," I said.
But when I suggested twenty-five, a nicer-looking sort of number than thirty, he shook his grey head regretfully, so we went on haggling, and he haggled better than me so that eventually we settled on thirty-five.
It wasn't one of my best haggling days.
(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
She ignored my observation. This generally happens with me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you someone who is going to ignore my observations.
(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You mustn't mind Cook, Wooster. He's upset. He's been having a spot of domestic trouble. That's why he asked me to come and stay. He thought I might have advice to offer. He allowed his daughter Vanessa to go to London to study Art at the Slade, if that's the name of the place, and she got in with the wrong crowd, got pinched by the police and so on and so forth, upon which Cook did the heavy father and jerked her home and told her she had got to stay there till she learned a bit of sense. She doesn't like it, poor girl, but I tell her she's lucky not to be in equatorial Africa, because there if a daughter blots her copybook, her father chops her head off and buries her in the back garden."
(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Seated on the stile, his deportment rather like that of a young Hindu fakir lying for the first time on the traditional bed of spikes, Archie Gilpin seemed still to find a difficulty in clothing his thoughts in words. He cleared his throat a good deal and once more disturbed his hair with a fevered hand. He reminded Lord Ickenham of a nervous after-dinner speaker suddenly aware, after rising to his feet, that he has completely forgotten the story of the two Irishmen, Pat and mike, on which he had been relying to convulse his audience.
(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I say," said Archie, when he had finished panting. "Could you spare me a moment?"
"Dozens, my dear fellow. Help yourself."
"I don't want to interrupt you, if you're thinking about something."
"I am always thinking about something, but I can switch it off in a second, just like that. What seems to be the trouble?"
"Well, I'm in a bit of a jam, and my brother Ricky once told me that if ever I got into a jam of any kind you were the man to get me out of it. When it comes to fixing things, he said, you have to be seen to be believed."
Lord Ickenham was gratified, as any man would have been. One always likes a word of praise from the fans.
(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Lord Ickenham mused. This was a complication he had not taken into his calculations. "I see. Yes, I appreciate the difficulty."
"Me, too."
"This opens up a new line of thought. You'd better leave everything to me."
"I don't see that you can do anything."
"That is always a rash observation to make to an ickenham. As I once remarked to another young friend of mine, this sort of situation brings out the best in me. And when you get the best in Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of good old Ickenham, you've got something."
(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You mean why did I sack him? I'll tell you why I sacked him. He's a snake in the grass. He and the Briggs woman were plotting to steal my pig."
"What!"
"Are you deaf? I said they were plotting to steal the Empress."
"But, Clarence!"
"And if you say, 'But, Clarence!' once more, just once more," said Lord Emsworth sternly, "I'll know what to do about it. I suppose what you're trying to tell me is that you don't believe me."
"How can I believe you? Miss Briggs came with the highest testimonials. She is a graduate of the London School of Economics."
"Well, apparently the course she took there was the one on how to steal pigs."
(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"If Lord Emsworth rings up tomorrow and says he is in prison and wants bail, tell him to get in touch immediately with his solicitors. Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoesmith of Lincoln's Inn Fields."
(From Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
She was a pretty girl of the small, slim, slender type, who would have been prettier if she had been more cheerful. Her brow was furrowed, her lips drawn, and the large brown eyes which rested on George Cyril Wellbeloved had in them something of the sadness one sees in those of a dachshund which, coming to the dinner table to get its ten per cent, is refused a cut off the joint.
(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The sea had turned into a peculiar color, a glassy hue like that of a mirror in darkness. There was no moon, yet a sort of luminosity ran below the surface. This was a thing he had often seen when the Greenland ice was coming down. It was said among Gloucestermen that the rapid melting of the bergs and their gradual deposits of earth sometimes created this phosphorescence under sea. It often made the sea brilliant as opals, a brilliance that showed itself only when a keel drove through it. Otherwise it remained a dull sheen.
(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)
"But the Daniel, Maggie! The Daniel with the explosive aboard - why! it's no place for a girl. I can't -"
"A girl! I'm not a girl tonight, Patrick. I'm a nurse and I want a nurse's place. I have my duty and I know what it is. It doesn't lie where I am safe. Never! It's where men are fighting and dying. I must do my duty by my father. I cannot leave him. Nor you. Nor your men. I belong to them as they belong to me. No, I will not leave you. No matter what you say."
(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)
"That is why they are successful at work like this. They hate everything, suspect everything and everybody. Even themselves. One watches over the other."
(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)
It was then lying at ease in the handsome cabin, that he became conscious again that fishing would soon be over with him. He had taken his oath to go to war. The time of his departure was not far off. Once the Daniel Webster had a good stock of halibut aboard, he'd take her home, leave her, and might never return to her. His beautiful, swift ship! Doing her job in the old way, taking her power down from the winds, up from the tides and currents of the sea, going like a wild goose over the water. His eyes became a little misty with a tender regret, a yearning for the old peace, the seasons of hard work and hard-won ease ashore.
(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)
"Show me the seaman who doesn't sorry at sea, Conrad, and I'll show you a real fool. My father always said, 'A good seaman fears the sea.' Fears it, Conrad, but doesn't hate it. Understand?"
(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)
In the Sackett series of novels, Louis L'Amour frequently refers to Cornish style wrestling. Here is a Youtube spot that shows a demonstration of that type of wrestling.
Gustav von Seyffertitz was a German actor who was called "very embodiment of the Hideous Hun - America's notion of the merciless, atrocity-happy German military officer." He emigrated to the United States in 1896. Since he died in 1943, his role as The Typical German Officer applied more to the First World War than to the Second. He appeared in the stage production of The Brass Bottle in 1910, which show became the basis behind the TV show I Dream of Jeannie.
Mr. Duff was not in the frame of mind to respond to pep talks. He continued sombre. His resemblance to something carved by Epstein on the morning after a New Year's party had increased rather than diminished.
(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I had often wondered what lovers said to one another when they met again after long parting. Now I know."
"I wish you wouldn't call us lovers."
"Well, aren't you?"
"I tell you that's what I'm trying to figure out."
"Did she smooth your pillows?"
"No."
"What did she do?"
"She went arond to the drug store and brought me some stuff that tasted like weed killer. I'm not saying it didn't do me good. It did. But I'm still feeling as if someone had started a sewage plant in my mouth."
(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
From the suede shoes on his large, flat feet to the jaunty hat on his pumpkin-shaped head, Howard Steptoe was correct in every detail. Birds twittered in admiration of his quiet grey suit, bees drew in their breath sharply as they eyed that faultless shirt, bettles directed one another's attentin to the garenia in the buttonhole. And Mrs. Steptoe who had been expecting something that looked like a tramp cyclist, revised her views about dispensing with Joss's services. He might be a criminal, and as fresh a criminal as ever wisecracked with one hand while pocketing the spoons with the other, but to a man who could turn Howard Steptoe out like that all must be forgiven.
(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
To those who find themselvs marooned in Loose Chippings, about the only thing offered in the way of mental stimulus is the privilege of looking at the statue erected by a few friends and admirers to the memory of the late Anthony Briggs, J. P., for many years Parliamentary representative for the local division. You can walk up the High Street and look at it from the front, or you can walk down the High Street and look at it from the back. (By standing in the middle of the High Street you can also look at it sideways, but this is a technicality which need not detain us.)
(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I certainly think it would be advisable to notify the police, and have them institute enquiries into his antecedents."
"No, that's out," said Mrs. Steptoe, decidedly. Chibnall had agitated her, but even in her agitation she did not lose sight of that fact that Joss, if a peculiar - and possibly a criminal - valet, was an extremely efficient one. By what magic he had wrought the miracle, she could not say, but he had sent the hick Howard down to dinner on the previous night looking not merely respectable but refulgent. His shirt had shone like a lighthouse, so that Baronets gaped at the sight of it. So had his shoes. And as for his collar and tie, they could have been used as exhibits in a lecture on what the smart dresser should wear. It would be madness to put the police on the trail of this wonder-man.
(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
