#188

For it was a defect in Jimmy's character — one of his many defects — that he loathed and scorned minor poetry and considered minor poets, especially when feminine, an unnecessary affliction....It was the sort of stuff which long-haired blighters read alone to other long-haired blighters in English suburban drawing-rooms. It was the sort of stuff that — to be brief — gave him the Willies.

#186

To a man with his ingrained distaste for work in any shape the sight of those wage-slaves outside there in the outer office had, as he had told Mr Pett, been stimulating: but only because it filled him with a sort of spiritual uplift to think that he had not got to do that sort of thing. Consider them in the light of fellow-workers, and the spectacle ceased to stimulate and became nauseating.

#172

You want someone made of sterner stuff. You want as it were a sparring partner, someone with whom you can quarrel happily, with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick but will be there with the return of a wallop.

#170

Mr Pett is going to give me a job in his office. I am going to start at the bottom and work my way still farther down.

#167

That will be all then, I think. Wind a smile round your neck and recede.

#166

'I'll be straight with you, straight as a string.'
'Did you say string or spring?'
'And I'll expect you to be straight with me.'
'Are we to breathe confidences into each other's ears?'
Lord Wisbeach went to the door again and submitted the passage to a second examination.

#165

He perceived Lord Wisbeach's roving eye, and had no doubt at the conclusion of the meal he would find occasion for a little chat. Meanwhile, however, his duty was toward his tissues and their restoration.

#164

What's the matter, Jerry? You seem perturbed. You have the aspect of one whom Fate has smitten in the spiritual solar plexus, or of one who has been searching for the leak in life's gaspipe with a lighted candle.

#162

Well, he could go home. No, he couldn't. His pride revolted at that solution. Prodigal Son stuff was all very well in its way, but it lost its impressiveness if you turned up again two weeks after you had left. A decent interval among the husks and swine was essential.

#161

Jimmy's breakfast congealed on its tray, untouched. That boon which the gods so seldom bestow - of seeing ourselves as others see us - had been accorded to him in full measure.

#160

'Have you ever been in prison?'
Not yet.
And then a very difficult one. 'Are you a lunatic?'
Jimmy hesitated. The ink dried on his pen. He was wondering.