Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full of instinctive wisdom and natural good manners and unself-conscious grace and a deep, articulate understanding of death.

The German pilot had come up and was standing by smiling as Mr. Parker Pyne finished answering a long interrogation which he had not understood."What have I said?" he asked of the German"That your father's Christian name is Tourist, that your profession is Charles, that the maiden name of your mother is Baghdad, and that you have come from Harriet.

There were the years— years of childhood and innocence— when I had believed that carminative meant— well, carminative. And now, before me lies the rest of my life— a day, perhaps, ten years, half a century, when I shall know that carminative means windtreibend.

Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship

One day, and it may be long off, but one day there will be bacon again. It might be mouse bacon, but that will do for me.

It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.

Stop fretting and eat your Madeira Cake..