By this time Hilary was hungry, and today she wasn't lunching on a bun and a glass of milk. You didn't pawn Aunt Arabella's ruby ring every day of the week, and when you did you didn't lunch on buns - you splashed out, had a two-course lunch, and cream in your coffee.
(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
In her novel The Case is Closed in the "Miss Silver" series, authoress Patricia Wentworth uses this sentence: "The Mercers would have to eat, and unless they went out and shopped for everything themselves, and paid for it on the nail and carried it home, one or other of these food shops would have their address."
The phrase "on the nail" is not one that is used commonly in American English. It means "immediately or without delay," similar to our common expression "cash on the barrelhead."
Hilary found her creamery and ate her bun - a peculiarly arid specimen. There were little black things in it which might once have been currants but were now quite definitely fossils. Not a good bun. Hilary's imp chanted mournfully:
How bitter when your only bun
Is not at all a recent one.
(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
What she wanted was someone to talk the whole thing over with. How could you think a thing like that out all by yourself? What you wanted was someone to say "Nonsense" in a loud commanding voice and having said it, to take up his stand on the hearth rug and lay down the law with that passionate indifference to argument or contradiction which was one of Henry's most marked characteristics.
But she probably wasn't ever going to see Henry again. She blinked hard and stared out of the window of the bus. There really did seem to be an unnecessary amount of misery in the world. She would never have believed that she could have thought with yearning of Henry laying down the law. What was the good of thinking about Henry when she wasn't going ever to see him again and couldn't possibly ask his advice?
(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
"A poorer spirited, more Peter-grievous kind of a creature I never come across nor never want to!" (from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
According to the website "Word Histories, "The humorous name Peter Grievous designates a person who whines or complains. This name is also used as an adjective meaning fretful, miserable, whining."
She didn't go in - it wasn't any use going in. The house was shut up, and three boards in a row proclaimed Bertie Everton's desire to sell it. Houses which have figured in a murder case do not sell very easily, but it is of course permissible to hope.
(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
Hilary was clearing the plates, coming and going between the living-room and the little kitchen of the flat. The bright chintz curtains were drawn across the windows. There was a row of china birds on the shelf above the glowing fire - blue, green, yellow, and brown, and the rose-coloured one with the darting beak which Geoff had christened Sophy. They all had names. Geoff always had to find a name for a thing as soon as he bought it. His last car was Samuel, and the birds were Octavius, Leonora, Ermengarde, sophy, and Erasmus.
(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
She was still in her outdoor things - the brown tweed coat which she had had in her trousseau, and the brown wool beret which Aunt Emmaline had crocheted for her. The coat was getting very shabby now, but anything that Marion wore took the lines of her long, graceful body. She was much, much too thin, but if she walked about in her bones she would still be graceful. With her dark hair damp from the fog, the beret pushed back, the grey eyes fixed in a daze of grief and fatigue, she had still the distinction which heightens beauty and survives it.
(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
Geoff, who had been so terribly full of life, and Marion, who loved him and had to go on living in a world which believed he was a murderer and had shut him up out of harm's way . . . . What was the good of saying, "I can't bear it," when it was going on, and must go on, and you had to bear it, whether you wanted to or not."
(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)
Aaron McDonald just sat there, because he had no place to run to. Had he been any man but the man he was, I'd have been sorry for him, for he had to stand alone before you realized how small he was.
Money and arrogance had brought him, for a time, a certain measure of power and authority. He still had the money, but there wasn't any store, anywhere, that would take it in exchange for what McDonald needed now, nor was there any store that could supply it.
(from Kowa Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
For a man riding a mule who was so well known by chuck-wagon yarns, the Dutchman managed to drop out of sight whenever he wanted. But he was known as a fast and deadly accurate shot with any kind of weapon. Handy with a pistol, though he relied more on a rifle or shotgun, both of which he habitually carried.
Nobody knew how many men he had killed; probably he didn't know himself. Does a butcher keep track of the beeves he slaughters?
(from Kiowa Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
My attack was too sudden for them, too unexpected. My first shot took an Indian between the shoulders; the second splattered sand; the third caught a leaping, running Indian in full stride, and he fell, throwing his rifle out before him.
An Indian is not under any compulsion to fight to the last man. When the odds are against him, he simply slips away, if it is possible to do so, and waits to fight another day.
(from Kiowa Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
Mrs. Waddington considered that in this instance her ally was carrying caution too far. She turned on him with a snort of annoyance: and, having turned, remained staring frozenly at something that had suddenly manifested itself in his lordship's rear.
This something was a long, stringy policeman: and though Mrs. Waddington had met this policeman only once in her life, the circumstances of that meeting had been such that the memory of him had lingered. She recognized him immediately: and, strong woman though she was, wilted like a snail that has just received a handful of salt between the eyes.
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"If I might excuse myself, madam, I am engaged on the concluding passages of the article to which you alluded just now, and I am anxious to complete it before Mr. Biffen's return."
Mrs. Waddington caused the eye before which Sigsbee H. had so often curled up and crackled like a burnt feather to blaze imperiously upon the butler. He met it with the easy aplomb of one who in his time has looked at dukes and made them feel that their trousers were bagging at the knees.
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
In supposing that the person or persons whom he had heard climbing up the fire-escape were in pursuit of himself, George Finch had made a pardonable error. Various circumstances had combined to render his departure from the Purple Chicken unobserved.
In the first place, just as Officer Garroway was on the point of releasing his head from the folds of the table-cloth, Giuseppe, with a loyalty to his employers which it would be difficult to over-praise, hit him in the eye with a coffee-pot. This had once more confused the policeman's outlook, and by the time he was able to think clearly again the lights went out.
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Mother still insists that you had known her before and that the story she told was true and that she only took the necklace as an afterthought. Isn't she funny!"
"Funny," said George heavily, "is not the word. She is one long scream from the rise of the curtain, and ought to be beaten over the head with a blackjack. If you want my candid and considered opinion of that zymotic scourge who has contrived to hook herself on to your family in the capacity of step-mother to you and general mischief-maker to the rest of the world, let me begin by saying . . . However, there is no time to go into that now."
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
[I like that term "zymotic scourge." That describes a lot of females I know.]
Fire-escapes, she knew, led, if followed long enough, to the ground: and she decided to climb to safety down this one. It was only when she had descended as far as the ninth floor that, glancing below her, she discovered that this particular fire-escape terminated not, as she had supposed, in some back-alley, but in the gaily-lighted out-door premises of a restaurant, half the tables of which were already filled.
This sight gave her pause. In fact, to be accurate, it froze her stiff. Nor was her agitation without reason. Those of the readers of this chronicle who have ever thrown pepper in a policeman's face, and skimmed away down a fire-escape, are aware that fire-escapes, considered as a refuge, have the defect of being uncomfortably exposed to view. At any moment, felt Mrs. Waddington, the policeman might come to the edge of the roof and look down; and to deceive him into supposing that she was merely a dust-bin or a milk-bottle was, she knew, beyond her histrionic powers.
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"All right, then. Wait for me at the Astor. Though it's kind of a swell place, isn't it?"
"Well, don't you want a swell place to dine at on your wedding night?"
"You're right."
"I'm always right," said Fanny, giving her husband's check a loving pinch. "That's the first thing you've got to get into your head, now you're a married man."
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
If George had been more in the frame of mind to analyse the looks of his future father-in-law, he might have seen in this one a sort of shuddering loathing. But he was not in the frame of mind. Besides, Sigsbee H. Waddington was not the kind of man whose looks one analysed. He was one of those negligible men one pushes out of sight and forgets about. George proceeded to forget about him almost immediately.
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
It should be noted that the "analyse" spelling - with an "s" - used above is as printed in the book. That is the British spelling of the word.
"Well, weren't you happy when you got married?"
"No, sir."
"Was Mrs. Ferris?"
"She appeared to take a certain girlish pleasure in the ceremony, sir, but it soon blew over."
"How do you account for that?"
"I could not say, sir."
"I'm sorry weddings depress you, Ferris. Surely when two people love each other and mean to go on loving each other . . . ."
"Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse."
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Nice day, Ferris."
"Yes, sir."
"Nice weather."
"Yes, sir."
"Nice country around here."
"No, sir."
George was somewhat taken aback. "Did y say, No, sir?"
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, Yes, Sir? I thought you said No, sir."
"Yes, sir. No, sir."
"You mean you don't like the country around here."
"No, sir."
"Why, not?"
"I disapprove of it, sir."
"Why?"
"It is not the sort of country to which I have been accustomed, sir. It is not like the country round Little-Seeping-in-the-Wold."
"Where's that?"
"In England, sir."
"I suppose the English country's nice?"
"I believe it gives uniform satisfaction, sir."
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Listen to me, you," said Hamilton Beamish, "and get me right! See? That'll be about all from you about this girl loving you, unless you want me to step across and bust you on the beezer. I love her, see? and she's going to marry me, see? And nobody else, see? And anyone who says different had better notify his friends where he wants his body sent, see? Love you, indeed? A swell chance! I'm the little guy she's going to marry, see? Me!"
And, folding his arms, the thinker paused for a reply. It did not come immediately. George Finch, unused to primitive emotions from this particular quarter, remained completely dumb. It was left for Madame Eulalie to supply comment.
"Jimmy!" she said faintly.
Hamilton Beamish caught her masterfully about the waist. He kissed her eleven times.
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Well, the whole difficulty is that at present George is in the position of having broken the engagement. So, when this May Stubbs arrives, I am going to get her to throw him over of her own free-will."
"And how do you propose to do that?"
"Quite simply. You see, we may take it for granted that she is a prude. I have, therefore, constructed a little drama, by means of which George will appear an abandoned libertine."
"George!"
"She will be shocked and revolted and will at once break off all relations with him."
"I see. Did you think all this out by yourself?"
"Entirely by myself."
"You're too clever for one man. You ought to incorporate."
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Did you and this girl quarrel before you separated?"
"No. We sort of drifted apart. I took it for granted that the thing was over and done with. And when I saw Molly . . ."
Hamilton Beamish laid a hand upon his arm. "George," he said, "I want you to give me your full attention: for we have arrived now at the very core of the matter. Were there any letters?"
"Dozens. And of course she has kept them. She used to sleep with them under her pillow."
"Bad!" said Hamilton Beamish, shaking his head. "Very bad!"
"And I remember her saying once that she believed in breach of promise suits."
Hamilton Beamish frowned. He seemed to be deploring the get-rich-quick spirit of the modern girl, who is not content to sit down and wait for her alimony.
(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Hamilton Beamish straightened himself. He was now in a position to see George steadily and see him whole: and the spectacle convinced him at once that something in the message he had just delivered must have got right in among his friend's ganglions. George Finch's agreeable features seemed to be picked out in a delicate Nile-green. His eyes were staring. His lower jaw had fallen. Nobody who had ever seen a motion-picture could have had the least doubt as to what he was registering. It was dismay.
(From The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse. This book was published in 1927, which was the year that the first sound movie was produced. Therefore, Wodehouse no doubt would have been referring to the over-stated facial expressions that were necessary in silent films to convey the emotions.)
