*    *    *    *    *

Directing an austere look at Tubby's receding back, she spoke in a cold crisp
voice which sounded in the drowsy stillness like ice tinkling in a pitcher.

*    *    *    *    *

...he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde
like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.

*    *    *    *    *

Through the glass door he had stared at her like a bear at a bun, and though his breeding
restrained him from doing so now, there was a stunned goggle implicit in his manner.

*    *    *    *    *

"You don't like the Princess?"
"I regard her as the sand in Civilization's spinach."

*    *    *    *    *

As always when in the depths, he yearned to get to his wife, so that
she might apply to his bruised soul the healing ointment of her placidity.

*    *    *    *    *

...with the spaniels, James and John, at her heels, Lady Abbott set out
for the houseboat Mignonette to have a word in season with the intruder,
looking like a stately galleon leaving port accompanied by a brace of stiffs.

*    *    *    *    *