“Unfortunately the holiday turns out rather less lovely than Mum hoped. Marooned in a remote village with Auntie Joan, Uncle Peter and her dreadful cousin Robert (inventor of the patent caterpillar trap) and their garden full of domineering vegetables.”
“Bulbo had carried a rose in his mouth all the time of the dismal ceremony. It was a fairy rose, and he was told by his mother that he ought never to part with it. So he had kept it between his teeth, even when he laid his poor head upon the block, hoping vaguely that some chance would turn up in his favour.”