“My work’s blew out the window, Miss. My work’s fell in the bin.
The leg’s dropped off my chair, Miss. The ceiling’s coming in.
I’ve ate a poison apple, Miss. I’ve held a poison pen! I think I’m being kidnapped, Miss! So . . . can we start again?”
″‘I was kidnapped by a huge octopus, whose prisoner I now am,’ said the king’s daughter. ‘Flee before it returns. But note that for three hours a day it changes into a red mullet and can be caught. But you have to kill the mullet at once, or it will change into a sea gull and fly away.‘”
Franz was too far off to hear what they said; but, without doubt, nothing hostile passed, for he saw Albert disappear arm-in-arm with the peasant girl.
Beppo told him he was going to take him to a villa a league from Rome; the Frenchman assured him he would follow him to the end of the world. The coachman went up the Via di Ripetta and the Porta San Paolo; and when they were two hundred yards outside, as the Frenchman became somewhat too forward, Beppo put a brace of pistols to his head, the coachman pulled up and did the same.