The room was the typical bedroom of the typical boarding-house, furnished, insofar as it could be said to be furnished at all, with a severe simplicity. It contained two beds, a pine chest of drawers, a strip of faded carpet, and a wash basin. But there was that on the floor which set this room apart from a thousand rooms of the same kind. Flat on his back, with his hands tightly clenched and one leg twisted oddly under him and with his teeth gleaming through his grey beard in a horrible grin, Captain John Gunner stared up at the ceiling with eyes that saw nothing.

THERE were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham's attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her waltz, she had heard it almost subconsciously. The second stage set in when it became a physical pain like red-hot pincers wrenching her mind from her music. Finally, with a thrill in indignation, she knew it for what it was-an insult. The unseen brute disliked her playing, and was intimating his views with a boot-heel. Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck-almost...

"Jeeves," I said, "may I speak frankly?" "Certainly, sir." "What I have to say may wound you." "Not at all, sir." "Well, then--" No-wait. Hold the line a minute. I've gone off the rails.

"A gentleman called to see you when you were out last night, sir," said Mrs. Medley, my landlady, removing the last of the breakfast things. "Yes?" I said, in my affable way. "A gentleman," said Mrs. Medley meditatively, "with a very powerful voice." "Caruso?" "Sir?" "I said, did he leave a name?" "Yes, sir. Mr. Ukridge." "Oh, my sainted aunt " "Sir " "Nothing, nothing."

The supper room of the Savoy Hotel was all brightness and glitter and gayety. But Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, of the United Kingdom, looked round about him through the smoke of his cigarette, and felt moodily that this was a flat world, despite the geographers, and that he was very much alone in it.

Freddie Rooke gazed coldly at the breakfast-table. Through a gleaming eye-glass he inspected the revolting object which Parker, his faithful man, had placed on a plate before him. "Parker " His voice had a ring of pain. "Sir?" "What's this?" "Poached egg, sir." Freddie averted his eyes with a silent shudder. "It looks just like an old aunt of mine," he said. "Remove it " He got up, and, wrapping his dressing-gown about his long legs, took up a stand in front of the fireplace. From this position he surveyed the room, his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his calves pressing the club-fender....

It may be thought by some that in the pages which follow I have painted in too lurid colours the horrors of a foreign invasion of England. Realism in art, it may be argued, can be carried too far. I prefer to think that the majority of my readers will acquit me of a desire to be unduly sensational. It is necessary that England should be roused to a sense of her peril, and only by setting down without flinching the probable results of an invasion can this be done.

This novel takes place at the fictional "Beckford College," a private school for boys; it alludes to the arrival at the school of a mischievous young boy called Reginald Farnie, who turns out to be the uncle of the older "Bishop" Gethryn, a prefect, cricketer and popular figure in the school. His arrival, along with that of another youngster, Wilson, who becomes fag (the term means that younger pupils were required to act as personal servants to the most senior boys) to Gethryn, leads to much excitement and scandal in the school, and the disruption of some important cricket matches.

My Man Jeeves is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Of the eight stories in the collection, half feature the popular characters Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, while the others concern Reggie Pepper, an early prototype for Wooster.

"When we get licked tomorrow by half-a-dozen wickets," said Jimmy Silver, tilting his chair until the back touched the wall, "don't say I didn't warn you. If you fellows take down what I say from time to time in note-books, as you ought to do, you'll remember that I offered to give anyone odds that Kay's would out us in the final. I always said that a really hot man like Fenn was more good to a side than half-a-dozen ordinary men. He can do all the bowling and all the batting. All the fielding, too, in the slips."