But there was one thing which they lacked: they had no friends. Society displayed no wish to know them, and the young man was not asked to the houses of the “Upper Ten.”
It was Christmas Eve, a day of sadness for all those who once had a family. As he was sitting at breakfast, he received a letter. It was from his sister, who implored him to spend Christmas at home, with his parents. The letter touched upon the strings of old feelings and put him in a bad temper. Was he to leave his little friend alone on Christmas Eve? Certainly not! Should his place in the house of his parents remain vacant for the first time on a Christmas Eve? H’m! This was the position of affairs when he went to the Law Courts.
During the interval for lunch a colleague came up to him and asked him as discreetly as possible:
“Are you going to spend Christmas Eve with your family?”
He flared up at once. Was his friend aware of his position? Or what did he mean?
The other man saw that he had stepped on a corn, and added hastily, without waiting for a reply:
“Because if you are not, you might spend it with us. You know, perhaps, that I have a little friend, a dear little soul.”
It sounded all right and he accepted the invitation on condition that they should both be invited. Well, but of course, what else did he think? And this settled the problem of friends and Christmas Eve.
They met at six o’clock at the friend’s flat, and while the two “old men” had a glass of punch, the women went into the kitchen.
All four helped to lay the table. The two “old men” knelt on the floor and tried to lengthen the table by means of boards and wedges. The women were on the best of terms at once, for they felt bound together by that very obvious tie which bears the great name of “public opinion.” They respected one another and saved one another’s feelings. They avoided those innuendoes in which husbands and wives are so fond of indulging when their children are not listening, just as if they wanted to say: “We have a right to say these things now we are married.”