"Titus Groan"

[fiefoe]

Nanny Slagg has many curious endearments for her charges, like 'my caution', 'inkling' and 'my own ugliness', but Swelter has the most colorful speech by far.

__ 'Firshtly,' said the chef leaning forward and dropping each confidential word like a cannon ball smeared with syrup... 'To you, only to you, my core of curdled cat-bile. To you alone, sho hearken diligentiums.'
__ 'And why to you, my ray of addled sunshine?'
__ 'Oh, my adorable lights and liver, if it isn't the Flee itself.'
__ 'Baste me!'

<'Tradition playing its remorseless part'>

• Child-inheritor of... the autumn misery in petal, scale, and wing. Winter's white brilliance on a thousand turrets and summer's torpor among walls that crumble.
• If, for instance, his lordship, Sepulchrave,... had been three inches shorter, the costumes, gestures and even the routes would have differed from the ones described in the first tome.
• The technicalities demanding the devotion of a lifetime, though the sacred spirit of tradition implied by the daily manifestations was understood by all.
  

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