Deny it if you can!" "I do deny it, Miss Pringle," said Lady Agatha, accompanying her words with a winsome smile.

But Miss Pringle was not to be won over so easily as all that; she met the smile with a look of steady reprobation.

And then she turned to Cleggett again.
"Mr.Cleggett," she said, "my birthday occurred a few days ago.

It was--I have nothing to conceal, Mr.Cleggett--it was my forty-ninth birthday.

Every year, for many years past, a niece of mine who lives in Flatbush sends me on my birthday a box of plum preserves.
"These preserves have for me, Mr.Cleggett, a value that they would not possess for anyone else; a value far above their intrinsic or, as one might say, culinary value.