Most of the French phrases Horne uses I'm able to figure out or type into Google Translate and get the gist of what he's saying. In this case I knew petit was small, but had no idea what creves was. Here's the results from this particular search.
Google Translate didn't help much since I don't know what the punches idiom means in French. Luckily there was a footnote on the phrase that said a petit creves was best described by the English phrase "A nice young man for a small tea-party"
Although I thought I knew what the phrase meant from the context, it was still pretty obscure. I did some searches for it and found the following from a book published in 1885.
What a great phrase! It's very interesting to see dialog from over one hundred years ago describing things I've personally discussed. It's also interesting to see that the human condition never really changes.
It also shows the richness that can be added to your reading by taking the effort to look things up you don't understand. I can't wait to use this phrase in a sentence.
