Jack grew very fond of him during his imprisonment, for the good youth ran in every evening to get commissions, amuse the boy with droll accounts of the day's adventures, or invent lifts, bed-tables, and foot-rests for the impatient invalid.

Jonathan Reynolds's droll account of English cooking (April 30) is a masterpiece.

Without raising his voice or flapping his arms for effect, he relates the technical procedures in such precise and authentic detail that his dry, even droll account of these macabre crimes makes them all the more terrible.

In the Hoover film, Mr. de Antonio offers a droll, almost tongue-in-cheek account of his relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which began keeping a file on him in 1961 after he joined the Young Communist League.

Gail Collins's smart, thorough, often droll and extremely readable account of women's recent history in America not only answers this question brilliantly, but also poses new ones about the past and the present, as she explicates moments that were widely recorded and illuminates scenes that were barely remarked upon at the time.

There is, for example, a droll account of the day when Mr. Cruz, then a Sandinista adviser, came to claim the plush Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington from Guillermo Sevilla-Sacasa, the dean of the capital's diplomatic corps and a Somoza in-law.

(Ages 5 to 9) A droll account of a mighty vegetable that grew in the king's yard, illustrated with collage images from well-known Italian Renaissance paintings.

Mr. Bernstein's son gave a droll account of his father's less illustrious abilities, as an actor, dancer and singer.

At a dinner last year, he gave a droll account of what happened after Mr. Rosenthal, then the paper's editor, told him about the highly classified documents that he intended to publish.