An Infamous Army

The devil you have! There, it is off at last! You may have perceived that I have been tugging at your ring for the last ten minutes. It should, of course, have been cast at your feet some time ago, but the confounded thing was always too tight. Take it!

It’s awful, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes. The worst fight I ever was in.’ ‘Well, I’m glad I was in it, anyway. To tell you the truth, I haven’t liked it as much as I thought I should. It’s seeing one’s friends go, one after the other, and being so hellish frightened oneself.

I think the hardest thing of all is to be wise in our dealings with the people we love,’ he said. ‘I know I have found it so.

He did not want middle-aged men with distinguished records with him: they could be better employed elsewhere, and would, moreover, have bored him. He wanted polished young men of good families, who were of his own world, who knew how to make themselves pleasant in exalted circles, and could amuse his leisure moments with their adventures, and their fun, and their bubbling energy.

His lordship detested independently-minded subordinates. It was not the business of his officers to think for themselves.

It seems as though every joy that comes to one must have a grief to spoil it.' 'It is so, but think instead, dearest, that every grief has joy to lighten it. Nothing in this world is quite perfect, nor quite unbearable.

Of all the questions in the world I believe What are you thinking about? to be the most impertinent.

She gathered up the reins, and signed to her tiger to jump up behind.

Lady Barbara drove herself in a phaeton, with a tiger perched up behind;

the pièce de résistance for most of his guests was the appearance of La Catalani. His lordship described her as being as sharp as a Jew, and Colonel Fremantle had certainly found her so.

He took her face between his hands, staring down at her. She felt his fingers tremble slightly, and wondered what thoughts chased one another behind the trouble in his eyes. Suddenly his hands dropped to her shoulders, and thrust her away from him. ‘No!’ he said curtly.

I find myself at one with Dr Johnson, who declared—did he not?—that one green field was just like another!