He might have flinched altogether from speaking if at this moment he had not seen Ampleforth, the hairy-eared poet, wandering limply round the room with a tray, looking for a place to sit down.

“Eventually,” Maddie continued, “my dad did lose everything, including money that wasn't his to lose. […]

i bet Wacko Jacko was kind of wishing now that he beat it a long time ago ;-)

I peered through the peephole in the door to see who was out there. Standing outside my door was, what I was later to discover, a typical enginerd.