Gentleman Jack Quotes

JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

I have taken my fate into my own hands, believe nothing till I tell it to you myself. I know well enough what all of the world will think, but all the world may be wrong

Henry nodded. “May I ask you a question?” “Certainly, Your Grace.” He pointed at Jack. “Is he the Artful Dodger?” Mr. Dickens bent low. “I write fiction, Your Grace. The characters in my books do not really exist, but if they did”—he winked—“I do believe he would be the Artful Dodger.” “I knew it!” “And do you see that gentleman over there?” “Lord Claybourne?” Dickens nodded. “He would be Oliver.” “And what about Miss Frannie?” “She is every sweet girl who appears in the story.

The fire-eater? The swordsman? The gentleman who nearly drowns each night… do you believe they’d be welcomed into the circles you belong to?” He shook his head. “Society scorned them, turned them into freak shows and curiosities, and now they are only interested in cheering because of the glamour of those velvet curtains. The allure of magic and mysticism. Should they encounter those same performers on the street, they would not be so kind or accepting. It is a sad truth that we do not live in a world where differences are accepted. And until such a time, Miss Wadsworth, I will provide a home to the misfits and unwanteds, even if it means losing bits of my soul to that hungry, unsatisfied beast Mr. Barnum has called show business.

The tooth had belonged to a gentleman named Murphy from Ellis Ward, the one we lived in. I say “had belonged” because I had the badly broken and infected bicuspid out of Mr. Murphy’s head before he could have said Jack Robinson, though he was in such pain that he could barely recall his own name, let alone Jack’s. Mr.

Anthony Starkweather. An elderly, well preserved gentleman, slenderly built, showing all the signs of a man who has lived clean and has been almost an ascetic.

I had no need to ask or to wonder whether he would keep his word. He had freed me once from Wentworth, because he had given his word to do so. His word, once given, was his bond. Jack Randall was a gentleman.

… I was a great pickle, ’scaped my maid & got away among the workpeople. When my mother thought I was safe, I was running out in an evening. Saw curious scenes, bad women, etc …’ (Saturday 13th November 1824. Paris)

You have an unusual voice,' he says. 'Raspy. Quite fetching, really.' 'I damaged my vocal cords a long time ago,' I inform him. 'Screaming.' Oak steps between us, and I am grateful for the reprieve. 'What a fine gentleman you make, Jack.' Jack turns to the prince, his sinister smile dropped back into place. 'Oak and Wren, Wren and Oak. Delightful. Named for woodland creatures, but neither of you so simple.' He glances at Tiernan and Hyacinthe. 'Not nearly as simple as these two.

As Anne grew, so did her ambition to travel. Her dream destinations became further flung and more exotic. It did not satisfy her to leave England for a week or two; throughout her adult life she spent months at a time away from home, including periods of residence in Paris. Having also explored Italy, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in the summer of 1833 Scandinavia and the Baltics were in Anne’s sights. After months of indecision, she finally ‘determined to go north’ on 17th July that year, resolving to end her journey in Denmark.

What happened to your arm?" she asked me one night in the Gentleman Loser, the three of us drinking at a small table in a corner. Hang-gliding," I said, "accident." Hang-gliding over a wheatfield," said Bobby, "place called Kiev. Our Jack's just hanging there in the dark, under a Nightwing parafoil, with fifty kilos of radar jammed between his legs, and some Russian asshole accidentally burns his arm off with a laser." I don't remember how I changed the subject, but I did. I was still telling myself that it wasn't Rikki who getting to me, but what Bobby was doing with her. I'd known him for a long time, since the end of the war, and I knew he used women as counters in a game, Bobby Quine versus fortune, versus time and the night of cities. And Rikki had turned up just when he needed something to get him going, something to aim for. So he'd set her up as a symbol for everything he wanted and couldn't have, everything he'd had and couldn't keep. I didn't like having to listen to him tell me how much he loved her, and knowing he believed it only made it worse. He was a past master at the hard fall and the rapid recovery, and I'd seen it happen a dozen times before. He might as well have had next printed across his sunglasses in green Day-Glo capitals, ready to flash out at the first interesting face that flowed past the tables in the Gentleman Loser. I knew what he did to them. He turned them into emblems, sigils on the map of his hustler' s life, navigation beacons he could follow through a sea of bars and neon. What else did he have to steer by? He didn't love money, in and of itself , not enough to follow its lights. He wouldn't work for power over other people; he hated the responsibility it brings. He had some basic pride in his skill, but that was never enough to keep him pushing. So he made do with women. When Rikki showed up, he needed one in the worst way. He was fading fast, and smart money was already whispering that the edge was off his game. He needed that one big score, and soon, because he didn't know any other kind of life, and all his clocks were set for hustler's time, calibrated in risk and adrenaline and that supernal dawn calm that comes when every move's proved right and a sweet lump of someone else's credit clicks into your own account.

Capable, clever and with a natural gift for land and estate management, Anne had been the natural choice to take on the huge task of running Shibden. Not only had she impressed Uncle James with her abilities to deal with the renewal of leases and misbehaving tenants, he also knew that she would never marry and therefore the estate would not be broken up. In their conversations together, Anne had left him under no illusion that her emotional and sexual feelings for other women precluded the possibility of her ever entering into a marriage with a man, in which she stood to lose all that was hers. It was another four decades, on the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act in 1870 (thirty years after Anne’s death), before women would be able to keep hold of and inherit property following marriage. So, remarkable as it may seem to us now, it was Anne Lister’s lesbian sexuality (then with no name or legal recognition), which played a crucial role in helping her to keep control of her wealth at a time when it was thought that it was impossible for a woman to do so. That Uncle James, in 1826, seemed to understand and recognise this is even more extraordinary.

If you don’t, then I shall not depart from this place. I shall remain here, die here. I know you are a leper. You can’t tell me anything about that. There’s my hand. Are you going to take it? My heart is there in the palm of it, in the pulse in every finger-end of it. If you don’t take it, I warn you I’ll sit right down here in this chair and die. I want you to understand I am a man, sir, a gentleman. I am a friend, a comrade. I am no poltroon of the flesh. I live in my heart and in my head, sir—not in this feeble carcass I cursorily inhabit. Take that hand. I want to talk with you afterward.

Then immediately came Mrs Barlow to go out again. She jumped on the window seat to see if it rained. I locked the door as usual, then lifted her down and placed her on my knee. By & by she said, ‘Is the door fast?’ I, forgetting, got up to see, then took her again on my knee & there she sat till four & threequarters, when Mlle de Sans sent to ask if I could receive. [I] told the maid I was sorry, I could not, I had got so bad a headache. The fact was I was heated & in a state not fit to see anyone. I had kissed & pressed Mrs Barlow on my knee till I had had a complete fit of passion. My knees & thighs shook, my breathing & everything told her what was the matter. She said she did me no good.

For too long we have been the playthings of massive corporations, whose sole aim is to convert our world into a gargantuan shopping 'mall'. Pleasantry and civility are being discarded as the worthless ephemera of a bygone age; an age where men doffed their hats at ladies, and children could be counted on to mind your Jack Russell while you took a mild and bitter in the pub. The twinkly-eyed tobacconist, the ruddy-cheeked landlord and the bewhiskered teashop lady are being trampled under the mighty blandness of 'drive-thru' hamburger chains. Customers are herded in and out of such places with an alarming similarity to the way the cattle used to produce the burgers are herded to the slaughterhouse. The principal victim of this blandification is Youth, whose natural propensity to shun work, peacock around the town and aggravate the constabulary has been drummed out of them. Youth is left with a sad deficiency of joie de vivre, imagination and elegance. Instead, their lives are ruled by territorial one-upmanship based on brands of plimsoll, and Youth has become little more than a walking, barely talking advertising hoarding for global conglomerates. ... But now, a spectre is beginning to haunt the reigning vulgarioisie: the spectre of Chappism. A new breed of insurgent has begun to appear on the streets, in the taverns and in the offices of Britain: The Anarcho-Dandyist. Recognisable by his immaculate clothes, the rakish angle of his hat and his subtle rallying cry of "Good day to you sir/ madam!

I can make you happy,” said he to the back of her head, across the bush. “You shall have a piano in a year or two—farmers’ wives are getting to have pianos now—and I’ll practise up the flute right well to play with you in the evenings.” “Yes; I should like that.” “And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market—and nice flowers, and birds—cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful,” continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality. “I should like it very much.” “And a frame for cucumbers—like a gentleman and lady.” “Yes.” “And when the wedding was over, we’d have it put in the newspaper list of marriages.” “Dearly I should like that!” “And the babies in the births—every man jack of ‘em! And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up there will be you.

Stunned, I sat down on the bed, reading the message over and over again, convinced I had misunderstood it in some way. I couldn’t believe that Jack would have written something so cruel or been so cutting. He had never spoken to me in such a way before, he had never even raised his voice to me. I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face. Surely I deserved some explanation and, at the very least, an apology? I needed to talk to someone, badly, so it was sobering to realise there was no one I could call. My parents and I didn’t have the sort of relationship that would allow me to sob down the phone that he had left me by myself and for some reason I felt too ashamed to tell any of my friends. Where had the perfect gentleman I’d thought him to be gone? Had it all been a facade, had he covered his true self with a cloak of geniality and good humour to impress me?

You sent for me to lick me into shape, sir, because you couldn't stomach the thought that a regular rum 'un would step into your shoes, if naught was done to teach him how to support the character of a gentleman. Well, it may be that i'm not quite such a JackPudding as I let you think. I own, it was a ramshackle thing to do, but when I saw how there wasn't one amongst you that didn't believe I'd been reared in a hovel, I could no more resist trying how much I could make you swallow than I could stop drawing breath! But by what road you thought I came by a commission in such a regiment as mine, if I'd been an unlettered rustic, the lord only know! I was no more bookish than Richmond, but I got my schooling at Harrow, sir! However, when it comes to the management of large estates, I'm no better than a raw recruit - and that's what I'm hoping you mean to teach me.

Steward, Daughtry.  Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever I may name you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand.  This is real.  I have a heart.  That, sir”—here he waved his extended hand under Daughtry’s nose—“is my hand.  There is only one thing you may do, must do, right now.  You must take that hand in your hand, and shake it, with your heart in your hand as mine is in my hand.” “But . . . but. . . ” Daughtry faltered. “If you don’t, then I shall not depart from this place.  I shall remain here, die here.  I know you are a leper.  You can’t tell me anything about that.  There’s my hand.  Are you going to take it?  My heart is there in the palm of it, in the pulse in every finger-end of it.  If you don’t take it, I warn you I’ll sit right down here in this chair and die.  I want you to understand I am a man, sir, a gentleman.  I am a friend, a comrade.  I am no poltroon of the flesh.  I live in my heart and in my head, sir—not in this feeble carcass I cursorily inhabit.  Take that hand.  I want to talk with you afterward.

As Merripen gave the ribbons to a stableman at the mews, Amelia glanced toward the end of the alley. A pair of street youths crouched near a tiny fire, roasting something on sticks. Amelia did not want to speculate on the nature of the objects being heated. Her attention moved to a group—three men and a woman—illuminated in the uncertain blaze. It appeared two of the men were engaged in fisticuffs. However, they were so inebriated that their contest looked like a performance of dancing bears. The woman’s gown was made of gaudily colored fabric, the bodice gaping to reveal the plump hills of her breasts. She seemed amused by the spectacle of two men battling over her, while a third attempted to break up the fracas. “’Ere now, my fine jacks,” the woman called out in a Cockney accent, “I said I’d take ye both on—no need for a cockfight!” “Stay back,” Merripen murmured. Pretending not to hear, Amelia drew closer for a better view. It wasn’t the sight of the brawl that was so interesting—even their village, peaceful little Primrose Place, had its share of fistfights. All men, no matter what their situation, occasionally succumbed to their lower natures. What attracted Amelia’s notice was the third man, the would-be peacemaker, as he darted between the drunken fools and attempted to reason with them. He was every bit as well dressed as the gentlemen on either side … but it was obvious this man was no gentleman. He was black-haired and swarthy and exotic. And he moved with the swift grace of a cat, easily avoiding the swipes and lunges of his opponents. “My lords,” he was saying in a reasonable tone, sounding relaxed even as he blocked a heavy fist with his forearm. “I’m afraid you’ll both have to stop this now, or I’ll be forced to—” He broke off and dodged to the side just as the man behind him leaped. The prostitute cackled at the sight. “They got you on the ’op tonight, Rohan,” she exclaimed. Dodging back into the fray, Rohan attempted to break it up once more. “My lords, surely you must know”—he ducked beneath the swift arc of a fist—“that violence”—he blocked a right hook—“never solves anything.” “Bugger you!” one of the men said, and butted forward like a deranged goat. Rohan stepped aside and allowed him to charge straight into the side of the building. The attacker collapsed with a groan and lay gasping on the ground. His opponent’s reaction was singularly ungrateful. Instead of thanking the dark-haired man for putting a stop to the fight, he growled, “Curse you for interfering, Rohan! I would’ve knocked the stuffing from him!” He charged forth with his fists churning like windmill blades. Rohan evaded a left cross and deftly flipped him to the ground. He stood over the prone figure, blotting his forehead with his sleeve. “Had enough?” he asked pleasantly. “Yes? Good. Please allow me to help you to your feet, my lord.

His thick blond hair was silver-streaked, though it was tarnished silver, like some long forgotten heirloom. It came to rest just above the top of his shoulders as though it had somehow became exhausted and simply stoppe

Now, if I am not mistaken, I believe your aunt is about to announce supper. Pray agree to dine with me." "I am not sure I can, since the place cards may require otherwise." "Then we shall simply have to switch them so they're arranged to our liking," he said, adding a naughty wink that sent tingles whirling through her system like maddened fireflies. He stood and offered his arm. "You wouldn't really switch them, would you?" she asked as she gained her feet. "What do you think?" She studied him, his azure eyes unreadable. "I think," she said, "that you are the wickedest man I've ever met." He choked out a laugh, then leaned over so that his lips were a mere inch from her ear. "You had best take care to avoid me, then, else I cease being a gentleman and decide to lead you astray.

He might have kept himself together in life, and affected a certain degree of class, but in death he wears the same gormless idiocy that I saw many times during my time in the city's rougher parts. As it turns out, a dead gentleman looks very much like a dead thief. Perhaps all men, having suffered a violent death, ultimately look more or less like this. Perhaps death levels us all.

"For crushing your foot, please let me buy your drink." "That's not necessary, I'm buying for me and my friends." She pointed to a nearby table where three women laughed. "All the more reason for me to insist. Then you and your friends can talk about what a gentleman I am." "How can I refuse? Four hot chocolates, please." "Put it on my tab, Mr. Yu." Mr. Yu smiled at him. "Sure, Jack." The Julemarked residents didn't keep track of such things, but Jack was happy to take the credit. "Your tab?" the woman asked. "You work here?" "In the bakery, with my brothers." Jack pointed to Kringle All the Way. "You should stop in when you're ready for something sweet." "Brothers in a bakery? That's a romance series waiting to happen. I wouldn't be able to keep those books on the shelf." "Do you work in a bookstore?" "Better. I'm a librarian."

I hadn't noticed the tiles in the regular-size house. They were painted to look like flowers. I saw the dollhouse better than I'd seen the real room. That was because it was small and concentrated. Gentleman Jack had told me about distillation, how you take a liquid and boil it so that at the end there's less liquid but it's purer. It's more truly its own self.

It’s time to go. The board meets in an hour and we don’t want to be late.” Jack gave Cameron the once-over. “Did you two come to an agreement?” “We’re all set. Stop glaring at Cameron. He was a perfect gentleman. Don’t worry, Cameron, he’s jealous of his horse, too.” “I am not.” Jack’s smile said otherwise. “Are too. It’s cute though. Let’s go.” -Jack & Jenna

This gentleman is heading for Mineral County in West Virginia. Near a place called Keyser, not too far from the Maryland line.” Which all meant nothing to Reacher, except that West Virginia sounded one step better than regular Virginia.

Well, what are you going to do about it?” “Do about it?” “Well,” he said, looking over each shoulder to make sure they weren’t being overheard, then leaning close to whisper. Jack, of course, leaned down to not miss a word. “She’s pregnant. You’re the father. Anything come to mind there, bud? Like maybe marriage?” Cameron put down his drink impatiently. “Pay attention, Paul. I couldn’t even get her to go to Fortuna to eat at a restaurant with me. She hates me. I was a perfect gentleman, back then and tonight, but she hates me. She called me a sperm donor.” “Whew,” Paul said. “Whew,” said Jack. All three men lifted their glasses in misery. *

Celeste rejoined him. "How you ladies do love a bargain," he said. "You were listening!" "I left before you shared the secrets of your undergarments." Jack looked sheepish. "That didn't sound quite how I intended." Celeste blushed. "You should not have mentioned it at all. A lady's undergarments are not a fit topic for a gentleman to discuss at a military dinner." "Actually," he retorted, "you would be surprised at how often the subject comes up.

With all my faults, Heaven grant me still the virtue of sincerity; and though I walk through many a darksome shade of folly and remorse, still let there be one light, the light of truth to guide me right at last.

A pity it is so big,’ said Jack, turning it over. ‘I remember when I was a boy in Ajax, and the Apollon was blazing away at us like Guy Fawkes’s night, a spent eighteen-pound ball came in at our port. The lieutenant – it was Mr Horner: you remember him, Bonden?’ ‘Oh yes, sir. A very sprightly gentleman, that loved his laugh.’ ‘He picked it up, called for a piece of chalk, wrote Post Paid on the ball, rammed it down our gun, and so sent it back in double quick time.’ ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ went the gun-crew and their neighbours on either side.

You’d rather sleep on cold, hard, ceramic tile than sleep next to me?” “I bet you don’t get that a lot.” Jack smiled like he was impressed. “Absolutely never.” “It’s probably good for you.” Jack shrugged, like Maybe so. Then—and it’s possible a gentleman would have fought me a little harder—Jack said, “Suit yourself.

Suki laid out a deck of cards that had been included in the supplies they’d bought, running Grant through the different types of games he could expect to see. It didn’t take long for him to realize how much trouble he was in. “How do you keep all these rules straight in your head?” He pointed at the game they were practicing at the moment. “I am supposed to slap the Jacks and Jokers, but not the others? Then this one: the one where I have to count to twenty one… I don’t slap, I hit? What am I supposed to hit again? The dealer?” “No. No, don’t hit the dealer.” Suki massaged her left temple as her eyelid twitched. “You say the word ‘hit’ when you want another card.” “But in this game, I’m supposed to hit.” Grant pointed at the pile of cards in front of him. “Do I get to hit the dealer in this game, then?” “No! No hitting actual people!” Suki picked up the cards and shuffled them. “Let’s stop worrying about the games where you might get us kicked out, and focus on just one. The most important game to learn is poker. It’s known as the gentleman's game, and it focuses more on reading other people than the cards themselves.” “Poker. So, I… poke them with my sword?

There are halibut as big as doors in the ocean down below the town, flapskimming on the murky ocean floor with vast skates and rays and purple crabs and black cod large as logs, and sea lions slashing through the whip-forests of bull kelp and eelgrass and sugar wrack, and seals in the rockweed and giant perennial kelp and iridescent kelp and iridescent fish and luminous shrimp too small to see with the naked eye but billions of which feed the gray whales which slide hugely slowly by like rubbery zeppelins twice a year, north in spring and south in fall. Salmonberries, thimbleberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, bearberries, snowberries, salal berries, elderberries, blackberries along the road and by the seasonal salt marshes north and south. The ground squirrels burrow along the dirt banks of the back roads, their warren of mysterious holes, the thick scatter of fine brown soil before their doorsteps, the flash of silver-gray on their back fur as they rocket into the bushes; the bucks and does and fawns in the road in the morning, their springy step as they slip away from the gardens they have been eating; the bobcat seen once, at dusk, its haunches jacked up like a teenager's hot-rodding car; the rumor of cougar in the hills; the coyotes who use the old fire road in the hills; the tiny mice and bats one sometimes finds long dead and leathery like ancient brown paper; the little frenetic testy chittering skittering cheeky testy chickaree squirrels in the spruces and pines - Douglas squirrels, they are, their very name remembering that young gentleman botanist who wandered near these hills centuries ago. The herons in marshes and sinks and creeks and streams and on the beach sometimes at dusk; and the cormorants and pelicans and sea scoters and murres (poor things so often dead young on the beach after the late-spring fledging) and jays and crows and quorking haunted ravens (moaning Poe! Poe! at dusk) especially over the wooded hills, and the goldfinches mobbing thistles in the meadowed hills, and sometimes a falcon rocketing by like a gleeful murderous dream, and osprey of all sizes all along the Mink like an osprey police lineup, and the herring gulls and Caspian terns and arctic terns, and the varied thrushes in wet corners of thickets, and the ruffed grouse in the spruce by the road, and the quail sometimes, and red-tailed hawks floating floating floating; from below they look like kites soaring brownly against the piercing blue sky, which itself is a vast creature bluer by the month as summer deepens into crispy cold fall.

S—— and myself determined to keep as much together as possible, though we knew that it would not do to cut our shipmates; for, knowing our birth and education, they were a little suspicious that we would try to put on the gentleman when we got ashore, and would be ashamed of their company; and this won’t do with Jack.

S—— and myself determined to keep as much together as possible, though we knew that it would not do to cut our shipmates; for, knowing our birth and education, they were a little suspicious that we would try to put on the gentleman when we got ashore, and would be ashamed of their company; and this won’t do with Jack. When the voyage is at an end, you may do as you please, but so long as you belong to the same vessel, you must be a shipmate to him on shore, or he will not be a shipmate to you on board.

There is no reason to assume she was always entirely honest with herself. Embellishment and self-deception are among the pitfalls, if not the prerequisites, of every diary.

On Stage was a groundbreaking dramatic series capping the radio careers of Cathy and Elliott Lewis. It came in what might have been a watershed era but was instead radio’s last hurrah. The Lewises reached the crest as the ship began to sink, though in a strange way it was a time of peace. The war with television had been lost in a single season, and the big money had gone, as it always does, with the winner. What was left on radio fell into several broad categories, none ruled by money as they had been in the old days. Agencies and producers still had radio budgets, but the tide had irrevocably turned. The end of big-time radio had for its best artists a liberating effect. “I can do things now that I wouldn’t dare to do two or three years ago,” said Elliott Lewis in Newsweek in mid-1953. As producer-director of Suspense, he had just aired a two-part adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello, which would have been unthinkable for the thrill show in 1945. Network people paid less attention, and if money was tighter, there was no lack of talent to prove it. People still wanted to work in radio: they remained because it was a dear first love, terminally ill and soon to disappear. Jack Benny and Jack Webb were still on the air; Gunsmoke was in its first year, and just ahead were more frugal but extremely creative shows—X-Minus One, Frontier Gentleman, and The CBS Radio Workshop. These were produced and enacted by people who loved what they were doing: some would mourn its final loss so deeply that they spoke of it reluctantly even two decades later. It was in this time that the Lewises produced On Stage, by some accounts the best radio anthology ever heard.

Come here; let me look at you.” Mum gestured imperiously, and after a moment’s hesitation, Shinobu bent down so that she could cup his face in her small, delicate fingers. She stared up at him, dark gaze piercing. He stayed still, but behind his back I saw his hands find each other and his fingers lace together, as if it was an effort not to fidget. I didn’t blame him.   “Rachel also says that you helped save her and did a lot of other heroic things. I think you must have a great deal of character to have survived everything that’s happened to you, Shinobu, and I’m very grateful for all that you’ve done for my family. But I’m fully aware that you’ve been hanging out in my house with my underage daughter completely unsupervised the whole time I’ve been gone. I will be keeping my eye on you from now on.”   Shinobu nodded respectfully, not moving out of my mother’s grasp. I couldn’t stand it.   “Mum! Shinobu’s been a − a perfect gentleman!”   “And I was there at least some of the time,” my father put in.   “There is no such thing as a perfect gentleman, Mio. And you don’t count, Takashi. You can never tell when Mio’s lying about anything.” She fixed her eyes back on Shinobu. “I’m not saying that I don't approve. But if you’re the sort of young man that I want for my daughter – and I think you are – you won’t have a problem with me looking out for her. When this mess is sorted out, we can get to know each other properly.”   Shinobu nodded again. Mum smiled at him and slid her hands down to pat his shoulders, and he smiled back, his expression a little dazed. Damn. Dazzled by Mum Power.   “‘This mess’ being … the imminent apocalypse?” my dad asked, apparently unable to leave well enough alone.   Mum ignored his tone magnificently. “Yes, that. Now, could anyone else murder a sandwich and a cup of tea? Because I’ve had a heck of a day.”   Jack and Hikaru, who’d retreated to the till area with Ebisu during the family drama, crept out. Jack raised her hand. “I’m starving.”   “Me too,” Hikaru said.   “Ah, the appetites of the young,” Ebisu said, smiling serenely as he limped towards my mother and offered her his hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Yamato. You are almost exactly as I had imagined. Let’s go upstairs to my flat and see what we can find to eat, yes?”   “You might want to put me in charge of that,” my dad said, hurrying after them. “She’s a terrible cook.”   “Stuff it,” my mum retorted as Ebisu led her away. “I’m still not talking to you.”   And just like that, our motley crew had another member. My mum.   Sweet baby Jebus, how did this happen?

Thomas stated it was serendipity and to be thankful for his “gentlemanly company while parading around in front of pirates and ruffians.” He should be thankful I didn’t accidentally stab him with my hat pin.

From then on, their letters concerned only chemical gases and Armenian grammar.

Dieeee!” he shouted to the enemy. Some of the enemy were smart enough to stay out of his way, buuuut that didn’t work as Jack wasn’t here to be a gentleman. He came here to be a killing man. *

She stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s the truth. She even made him laugh.” Katherine put a hand to her throat dramatically. “The man laughed? It is a miracle. Jack, you must wed her at once.