Brown Books for Young Readers, Little

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, which was code for being sorry to hear that.

Theodora had an impressive vocabulary, which can be charming if it is used at a convenient time. But if you are in a great hurry and someone uses something like “skip tracer,” which you are unlikely to understand, then an impressive vocabulary is quite irritating.

We were in a town called Stain’d-by-the-Sea, which was no longer by the sea and was hardly a town anymore