- [Guthrie Featherstone is leading Horace Rumpole in a case of safe-cracking]
- Guthrie Featherstone, QC MP: Of course I'll mitigate.
- Horace Rumpole: Mitigate? "My Lord, my client only went in to buy a seven-penny stamp. But as he was kept waiting by ten old ladies with pension books, he lost his patience and blew the safe."
- Guthrie Featherstone, QC MP: [ironically] Very good mitigation.
- Guthrie Featherstone, QC MP: If you ask me, this case is as dead as a doornail.
- Horace Rumpole: So are we all, eventually.
- Horace Rumpole: I'm not exactly doing your case.
- Charlie Wheeler: Oh, you're not?
- Horace Rumpole: No, your case is being handled by Mr. Guthrie Featherstone, QC, MP, whose name is constantly mentioned in the corridors of power.
- [last lines]
- Horace Rumpole: Here, I give you a toast. Here's to our future.
- Hilda Rumpole: The future!
- Horace Rumpole: [Laconically] Which now shows every sign of being exactly like our past.
- [Rumpole is ill in bed and Hilda is taking his temperature]
- Hilda Rumpole: [looking at the thermometer] Rumpole, you're not normal.
- Horace Rumpole: [groans weakly] I'm dying.
- Hilda Rumpole: Nonsense! What did Doctor Hanson say it was?
- Horace Rumpole: [ominously] Death. He says there's a lot of it about.
- [Rumpole is "dying" of flu when his clerk phones with news of a safe-blowing case that he wants Rumpole to defend. Rumpole is suddenly much better and gets up]
- Hilda Rumpole: I thought you were dying.
- Horace Rumpole: Dying will have to be postponed. Safe-blowing comes first.