P. G. Wodehouse

“ And then he reaches into his jeans and hauls out the sparkler. 'What's that?' I says to him. 'It's an engagement ring,' he says to me. 'For you, if you'll wear it!' I came over so weak, I could have fell! ”

“ The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang agley if one of the mice is a mental defective or if one of the men is a Jerry Mitchell. . . .
Celestine, Mrs. Pett's maid—she who was really Maggie O'Toole and whom Jerry loved with a strength which deprived him of even that small amount of intelligence which had been bestowed upon him by Nature—came into the house-keeper's room at about ten o'clock that night. The domestic staff had gone in a body to the moving-pictures, and the only occupant of the room was the new parlourmaid, who was sitting in a hard chair, reading Schopenhauer. ”