LordPeter List Literary Contest

Harriet Vane, an Englishwoman, enters an English lounge in an English seaside resort, where English people listen to an English orchestra. They sit at English tables drinking English coffee and English liqueurs, as they watch some English exhibition dancing. Harriet sits beside an Englishman, who is reading an English newspaper and smoking an English pipe. The clock strikes seventeen English chimes.

Harriet: The orchestra plays very well this evening. That is because it is an English orchestra, playing at an English resort.

(Harriet's companion does not look up from his newspaper, but clicks his tongue.)

Harriet: I see that English girl dancing has on a lovely pink frock. She looks positively Victorian, does she not?

Companion: Hmmm?

Harriet: That Edwardian-looking girl in the purple dress.

Companion (still not looking up from his newspaper): I hear that, when she is not dancing in the evenings, she wears a short skirt and has a job.

Harriet: And what is this job?

Companion: She is an exhibition dancer.

Harriet: Indeed! And when does she work?

Companion: When she is not dancing.

Harriet: I see. Well, you know what they say. "Autres temps, autres moeurs."

-- a faint voice crying through the window about a footnote

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