mind-your-own-business

This reporter knocked at the Wilkins home on Tuesday morning but received neither an answer nor the business end of a shotgun.

He remembered something—the cherished pose of being a man plunged fathoms-deep in business.

Other things being equal, the volume of voice used measures the value that the mind puts upon the thought.

He was too drowsy to hold the thought more than a moment in his mind, much less to reflect upon it.

"There's just one thing I'd like to ask, if you don't mind," said Cynthia, coming suddenly out of a brown study.

The vision—it had been an instantaneous flash after all and nothing more—had left his mind completely for the time.