"My brother does get very violent," sighed Dolly. "I only hope he won't do you any injury."
Sergeant-Major Flannery twitched his banana-like fingers and inflated his powerful chest. He smiled a complacent smile.
"He won't do me an injury, miss. I've had experience with...." Again he stopped just in time, on the very verge of shocking his companion's ears with the ghastly noun "souses" ... "with these sort of nervous cases," he amended. "Besides, the doctor says he's going to give the gentleman a little sleeping draught, which'll keep him as you might say 'armless till he wakes up and finds himself under lock and key."
"I see. Yes, that's a very good idea."
"No sense in troubling trouble till trouble troubles you, as the saying is, miss," agreed the Sergeant-Major. "If you can do a thing in a nice, easy, tactful manner without verlence, then why use verlence? Has the gentleman been this way long, miss?"
"Four years."
"You ought to have had him in a home sooner."
"I have put him into dozens of homes. But he always gets out. That's why I'm so worried."
"He won't get out of Healthward Ho, miss."
"He's very clever."