A Damsel in Distress quotes

Unfortunately, in these days of rush and hurry, a novelist works at a disadvantage. He must leap into the middle of his tale with as little delay as he would employ in boarding a moving tramcar.

He must get off the mark with the smooth swiftness of a jackrabbit surprised while lunching.

Otherwise, people throw him aside and go out to picture palaces.

Lord Marshmoreton was the most enthusiastic amateur gardener in a land of enthusiastic amateur gardeners. He lived for his garden.

The love which other men expend on their nearest and dearest Lord Marshmoreton lavished on seeds, roses and loamy soil.

The hatred which some of his order feel for Socialists and Demagogues Lord Marshmoreton kept for rose slugs, rose-beetles and the small, yellowish-white insect which is so depraved and sinister a character that it goes through life with an alias—being sometimes called a rose-hopper and …

Yet put him among the thrips, and he became a dealer-out of death and slaughter, a destroyer in the class of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan. Thrips feed on the underside of rose leaves, sucking their juice and causing them to turn yellow; and

Lord Marshmoreton’s views on these things were so rigid that he would have poured whale-oil solution on his grandmother if he had found her on the underside of one of his rose leaves sucking its juice.

The only time in the day when he ceased to be the horny-handed toiler and became the aristocrat was in the evening after dinner, when, egged on by Lady Caroline, who gave him no rest in the matter—he would retire to his private study and …

Reggie’s was a troubled spirit these days. He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his midiron.

He was practically a soul in torment.

“Lady Caroline asked me to tell you that she wishes to speak to you, Mr. Byng.”

Either he was in the grip of some divine discontent due to the highly developed condition of his soul, or else he had a grouch. One of the two. Or it might have been the reaction from the emotions of the previous night.

On the morning after an opening your sensitive artist is always apt to feel as if he had been dried over a barrel.

Besides, last night there had been a supper party after the performance at the flat which the comedian of the troupe had rented in Jermyn Street, a forced, rowdy supper party where a number of tired people with overstrained nerves had seemed to feel it …

She more than fulfilled the promise she had given at a distance. Had she been constructed to his own specifications, she would not have been more acceptable in George’s sight. And now she was going out of his life forever.

With an overwhelming sense of pathos, for there is no pathos more bitter than that of parting from someone we have never met, George hailed a taxicab

which crawled at the side of the road; and, with all the refrains of all the sentimental song hits he had ever composed ringing in his ears, he got in and passed away.

and, with all the refrains of all the sentimental song hits he had ever composed ringing in his ears, he got in and passed away.

“A rotten world,” he mused, as the cab, after proceeding a couple of yards, came to a standstill in a block of the traffic. “A dull, flat bore of a world, in which nothing happens or ever will happen. Even when you take a cab it just sticks and doesn’t move.”

At this point the door of the cab opened, and the girl in brown jumped in.

“A dull, flat bore of a world, in which nothing happens or ever will happen. Even when you take a cab it just sticks and doesn’t move.”

At this point the door of the cab opened, and the girl in brown jumped in.

“I’m so sorry,” she said breathlessly, “but would you mind hiding me, please?”

At this point the door of the cab opened, and the girl in brown jumped in.

“I’m so sorry,” she said breathlessly, “but would you mind hiding me, please?”

He wore a little moustache, which to George’s prejudiced eye seemed more a complaint than a moustache. His face was red, his manner dictatorial, and he was touched in the wind.

Take him for all in all he looked like a bit of bad news.

George had been educated at Lawrenceville and Harvard, and had subsequently had the privilege of mixing socially with many of New York’s most prominent theatrical managers; so he knew how to behave himself. No Vere de Vere could have exhibited greater repose of manner.

To bust the young man on the jaw, as promised, on the other hand, was not in George’s eyes a practical policy. Excellent a deterrent as the threat of such a proceeding might be, its actual accomplishment was not to be thought of.

Gaols yawn and actions for assault lie in wait for those who go about the place busting their fellows on the jaw.

No. Something swift, something decided and immediate was indicated, but something that stopped short of technical battery.

and a further softening of the face was effected by the nose, which seemed to have started out with the intention of being dignified and aristocratic but had defeated its purpose by tilting very slightly at the tip.

This was a girl who would take chances, but would take them with a smile and laugh when she lost.

George was but an amateur physiognomist, but he could read what was obvious in the faces he encountered; and the more he looked at this girl, the less he was able to understand the scene which had just occurred. The thing mystified him completely.

“You thought you had shaken me off! You thought you’d given me the slip! Well, you’re wrong!”

“I know what’s the matter with you,” he said. “Someone’s been feeding you meat.”

The young man bubbled with fury. His face turned a deeper scarlet. He gesticulated.

The young man shook a large, gloved fist in his face.

A rich, deep, soft, soothing voice slid into the heated scene like the Holy Grail sliding athwart a sunbeam.

A vast policeman had materialized from nowhere. He stood beside them, a living statue of Vigilant Authority. One thumb rested easily on his broad belt.

George awoke next morning with a misty sense that somehow the world had changed. As the last remnants of sleep left him, he was aware of a vague excitement. Then he sat up in bed with a jerk.

He had remembered that he was in love.

There was no doubt about it. A curious happiness pervaded his entire being. He felt young and active. Everything was emphatically for the best in this best of all possible worlds. The sun was shining.

There were only about three counties in which she could possibly live; and a man must be a poor fellow who is incapable of searching through a few small counties for the girl he loves. Especially a man with luck like his.

Luck is a goddess not to be coerced and forcibly wooed by those who seek her favours.

From such masterful spirits she turns away. But it happens sometimes that, if we put our hand in hers with the humble trust of a little child, she will have pity on us, and not fail us in our hour of need.

Yet, here he was, if the carefully considered reports in the daily press were to be believed, spending his time in the very spring-tide of his life running about London like a frenzied Hottentot, brutally assaulting the police.

Lady Caroline felt as a bishop might feel if he suddenly discovered that some favourite curate had gone over to the worship of Mumbo Jumbo.

“Explain?” she cried. “How can you explain? You—my nephew, the heir to the title, behaving like a common rowdy in the streets of London … your name in the papers …”

Lord Marshmoreton, who in his time had committed all the follies of youth, had come to look on his blameless son as scarcely human.

“It’s not as if you were wild. You’ve never got into any scrapes at Oxford. You’ve spent your time collecting old china and prayer rugs. You wear flannel next your skin⁠ ⁠…”

“Will you please be quiet,” said Lady Caroline impatiently. “Go on, Percy.”

A gentle smile played over Maud’s face.

“Love laughs at locksmiths,” she murmured softly, and passed from the room.

“What did she say?” asked Lord Marshmoreton, interested. “Something about somebody laughing at a locksmith? I don’t understand. Why should anyone laugh at locksmiths? Most respectable men. Had one up here only the day before yesterday, forcing open the drawer of my desk.

The shallow water is still there; the mud is still there; even the oyster-beds are still there; but not the oysters nor the little world of activity which had sprung up around them.

The glory of Belpher is dead; and over its gates Ichabod is written.

But, if it has lost in importance, it has gained in charm; and George, for one, had no regrets. To him, in his present state of mental upheaval, Belpher was the ideal spot.

Albert rose, not unwilling to call it a day. He was conscious of the need for a quiet cigarette.

He was fond of Maud, but a man can’t spend all his time with the women.

“Pigs squeal like billy-o, m’lady!” he observed by way of adding a parting treasure to Maud’s stock of general knowledge. “Oo! ’Ear ’em a mile orf, you can!”

she did not consider George’s feelings at all. He had offered to help her, and this was his job.

The world is full of Georges whose task it is to hang about in the background and make themselves unobtrusively useful.

She had reached this conclusion when Albert, who had taken a shortcut the more rapidly to accomplish his errand, burst upon her dramatically from the heart of a rhododendron thicket.

Your true golfer is a man who, knowing that life is short and perfection hard to attain, neglects no opportunity of practising his chosen sport, allowing neither wind nor weather nor any external influence to keep him from it.

There is a story, with an excellent moral lesson, of a golfer whose wife had determined to leave him forever.

“Will nothing alter your decision?” he says. “Will nothing induce you to stay? Well, then, while you’re packing, I think I’ll go out on the lawn and rub up my putting a bit.” George Bevan was of this turn of mind.

There was a tense silence. What Albert was thinking one cannot say.

The thoughts of Youth are long, long thoughts.

What George was thinking was that the late King Herod had been unjustly blamed for a policy which had been both statesmanlike and in the interests of the public.

“I was referring to the butler—what’s his name—Keggs.”

“ ’E ain’t a worm. ’E’s a serpint.”

Albert drew at his cigarette. His brow darkened. “ ’E does the drawing, Keggs does, and I’d like to know ’ow it is ’e always manages to cop the fav’rit!”

George did not know who Mr. Plummer was. He did not want to know. His only thought regarding Mr. Plummer was a passionate realization of the superfluity of his existence.

It is the presence on the globe of these Plummers that delays the coming of the Millennium.

His stunned mind leaped into sudden activity. He must not be found here, that was certain. Waiters who ramble at large about a feudal castle and are discovered in conversation with the daughter of the house excite comment.

“It’s no good saying, ‘Psst!’ ” rejoined George in an annoyed undertone.

“I could say ‘Psst!’ Any fool could say ‘Psst!’ ”

Albert, he considered, in leaning out of the window and saying “Psst!” was merely touching the fringe of the subject.

“And now,” said Albert, “for a quiet smoke in the scullery.”

These massive minds require their moments of relaxation.

An interval and the butler arrived. Unlike Lord Belpher late hours were no hardship to Keggs.

He was essentially a night-blooming flower.

His brow was as free from wrinkles as his shirtfront. He bore himself with the conscious dignity of one who, while he would have freely admitted he did not actually own the castle, was nevertheless aware that he was one of its most conspicuous ornaments.