#194

'Miss Simmons, we must act! We must act!'
'Yes, but not like idiots,' replied the detective frostily.

#193

'Mr Baxter!'
'Yes, Miss Halliday?'
The Brain of Blandings looked abstractedly up from his desk. It was only some half-hour since luncheon had finished, but already he was in the library surrounded by large books like a sea-beast among rocks. Most of his time was spent in the library when the castle was full of guests, for his lofty mind was ill-attuned to the frivolous babblings of Society butterflies.

#192

'Sir?' cried Beach, startled out of his butlerian calm. He swallowed a little convulsively. For eighteen months and more, ever since Lady Constance Keeble had first begun to cast her fly and hook over the murky water of the artistic world and jerk its denizens on to the pile carpets of Blandings Castle, Beach had had his fill of eccentricity. But until this moment he had hoped that Psmith was going to prove an agreeable change from the stream of literary lunatics which had been coming and going all that weary time. And lo! Psmith's name lead all the rest. Even the man who had come for a week in April and had wanted to eat jam with his fish paled in comparison.
   'Prod him in the ribs, sir?' he quavered.
   'Prod him in the ribs,' said Psmith firmly. 'And at the same time whisper in his ear the word "Aha!" '
Beach licked his dry lips.
  'Aha, sir?'
  'Aha! And say it came from me.'
  'Very good, sir. The matter shall be attended to,' said Beach.
And with a muffled sound that was half a sigh, half a death-rattle, he tottered through the green-baize door.

#191

We must remind ourselves that it is Baxter's misfortune rather than his fault that he looks like a dyspeptic lizard.

#190

He thus missed encountering perhaps the keenest glance that had ever come through Rupert Baxter's spectacles. It was not a protracted glance, but while it lasted it was like the ray from an oxy-acetylene blowpipe.

#189

An agreeable scent of bacon floated over the scene like a benediction.

#185

The Efficient Baxter placed the letter on a pile beside his plate; and, having decapitated an egg, peered sharply into its interior as if hoping to surprise guilty secrets.

#184

Lord Emsworth, in a train moving in the direction of home, was behaving like a horse heading for his stable. He snorted eagerly, and spoke at length and with emotion of roses and herbaceous boarders....He examined Psmith across the compartment with something of the peering curiosity which he would have bestowed upon a new and unclassified shrub.

#183

The grunt which Lord Emsworth had taken for an exclamation of rapturous adhesion to his sentiments had been merely a sort of bubble of sound rising from the tortured depths of Mr McTodd's suffering soul - the cry, as the poet beautifully puts it, 'of some strong smoker in his agony.'

#182

'Are you really broke?'
'As broke as the Ten Commandments.'

#181

The rain had stopped when Psmith stepped out into the street, and the sun was shining again in that half blustering, half apologetic manner which it affects on its reappearance after a summer shower.

#180

'How old are your children, sir?' she asked
'I fear,' said Psmith, 'you are peeping into Volume Two. This romance has only just started.

#179

'Is that young lady a nurse?' he asked.
'Do you want a nurse?' inquired Miss Clarkson.
'I want that nurse,' said Psmith with conviction.

#178

'Between ourselves, I dropped about five hundred of the best. And I just want to ask you one simple question. Why did I drop it?'
'Because you were an infernal young ass.'
'Well,yes,' agreed Freddie, having considered the point, 'you might put it that way, of course. But why was I an ass?'
'Good God!' exclaimed the exasperated Mr Keeble. 'Am I a psycho-analyst?'

#177

'The fact is, Uncle Joe, I've got a scheme. I give you my word that, if you'll only put off having apoplexy for about three minutes,' said Freddie, scanning his fermenting relative with some anxiety, 'I can shove you onto a good thing.'

#176

'I think Aileen told me once that she was connected with the Rutlandshire Peaveys.'
'Never heard of them!' snapped Lord Emsworth. 'And, if they're anything like Miss Peavey, God help Rutlandshire!'

#175

Though genial enough when she got her way, on the rare occasions when people attempted to thwart her she was apt to comport herself in a manner reminiscent of Cleopatra on one of the latter's bad mornings.

#174

Lord Emsworth was so acutely spectacle-less; Rupert Baxter, his secretary, so pronouncedly spectacled. It was his spectacles that struck you first as you saw the man. They gleamed efficiently at you.

#173

At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth, that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain.