BrokenTune

But, bein’ a wily old bird, you see, she kept her eyes on the looking-glass, and nipped round just in time to catch Mary stimulatin’ the thermometer to terrific leaps on the hot-water bottle.’

‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Parker.

‘So was Thorpe. All mother said was, that if he wasn’t too old a bird yet to be taken in by that hoary trick he’d no business to be gettin’ himself up as a grey-haired family practitioner.

 

---

 

Indeed, you know,’ said Peter, ‘I think if any of them start getting inquisitive, they’ll have mother down on them like a ton of bricks.’

 

---

 

“My dear child, you can give it a long name if you like, but I’m an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it’s so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.”

Lord Peter's mum, the Dowager Duchess, is brilliant. She much reminds me of the aunts in the Jeeves and Wooster stories.