“Why?”
“There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn’t eat. If I said to her ‘What shall we have for supper, Grace?’ as sure as anything she’d answer ‘Oh, I shall take a bath when I go to bed—that will be my supper.’ She was one of these advanced vegetarian women, don’t you know.”
“How extraordinary!” said Alvina.
“Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on me. And she wouldn’t let me eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in a fury while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of champignons: oh, most beautiful champignons, beautiful—and I put them on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I’m hanged if she didn’t go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and pour a pint of old carrot-water into the pan. I was furious. Imagine!—beautiful fresh young champignons—”
“Fresh mushrooms,” said Alvina.
“Mushrooms—most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don’t you think so?” And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.
“They are good,” said Alvina.
“I should say so. And swamped—swamped with her dirty old carrot water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, ‘Well, I didn’t want to waste it!’ Didn’t want to waste her old carrot water, and so ruined my champignons. Can you imagine such a person?”
“It must have been trying.”
“I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don’t know how many pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was when she said: ‘I’ve looked round the larder,’ she said to me, ‘and seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: Now he can’t cook a supper! And then you did!’ There! What do you think of that? The spite of it! ‘And then you did!’”