The broccoli test - for Del

[nny]

Mrs Winters naturally reacted with some alarm when Carstairs had what appeared to be some sort of apoplectic fit on the other side of the street. As useful as semaphore no doubt is, on occasion - on the high seas, of course, or perhaps between particularly large hills - it does have a tendency to make the user look somewhat ridiculous and my companion was no exception. Carstairs was, rather, a markedly unsettling communicator. With his high collar, dark garb and skeletal frame, he resembled a character from ghost stories of old, lacking both horse and head.

"Not to worry, Madam," I reassured our landlady - as is inevitably my role in these situations - "he is merely reminding me of his particular fondness for broccoli."

She expressed her relief at this, and theorized that it must be most useful to have an honoured sea captain for a brother, to teach one such useful things. (Try as I might I am never able to keep track of Carstairs' invented family - so far as I am aware, he has but one cousin and a shrewish dowager aunt.) I thought it best to agree that indeed it must, bypassing the broccoli entirely in favour of a pound of carrots. I shouldn't learn anything interesting at all if Carstairs knew how well I understood him.

Comments

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

*UNDIGNIFIED SHRIEK OF DELIGHT*

Also the word "collar" just jumped out and strangled me in the ovaries. :D

I shouldn't learn anything interesting at all if Carstairs knew how well I understood him.

... their entire relationship in a sentence, amirite? ;D

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

THEY TOTALLY PASS THE BROCCOLI TEST AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OMFG.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

BUT CHARLES WILL NEVER LET ON!

XD

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Hee I always love these snippets.