"You haven't been invited to take it with us, yet."
"I don't have to be. Once, many a year ago, you said, 'Berk, drop in whenever you feel like it,' and I have piously enshrined that saying upon the tablets of my memory. Once invited, always invited, you see, so I repeat my anxious query: what's for supper?"
"I am sure I don't know. Linda did the ordering this morning for I wasn't here."
"Tell me, Linda." Berkley had dropped formalities since the evening of song.
Linda shook her head. "As if I could be expected to remember things that occurred this morning before breakfast; so many things have happened since then."
"Things have happened in this blessed sleepy old place? That is news. I didn't know anything could happen in Sandbridge."
"Oh, they might not be important to you, but they are to me."
"Then, of course, they are important to me."
"A very nice speech, sir. Well, in the first place, Miss Ri has returned, as you see. Then Grace and Lauretta were here and have just departed for the city."
"For good?"