Landry answered without great enthusiasm; he wasn’t much interested in food. And immediately the conversation languished, the animation fled from Lawrence’s face; he became again crumpled and dejected, until Rosaleen, who had been in the back room, returned and began asking him questions about the Galette. That started him; he talked and talked, and his talk was all of food—about methods of preparation—a subject upon which Landry was profoundly ignorant. The meals in his home were plain and not greatly varied, meat, poultry and game roasted or broiled, the more respectable vegetables, an unobtrusive salad, innocent milky puddings, and those peculiar and delectable Southern hot breads. When he ate in a restaurant he ordered very much the same things, and when he was the guest of someone very rich who set rare dishes before him, he didn’t quite know what he was eating and cared still less. Such an idea as stuffing an eggplant with chopped liver seemed to him fantastic and frivolous.
The lunch was undoubtedly a good one, but it was ruined by Lawrence’s interminable culinary talk. There was no chance for a word with Rosaleen; she seemed to have no other idea in her head but to “draw out” her tiresome husband, to encourage him to bore their guest beyond toleration. Landry felt that this was hardly hospitable.
At last he rose.
“I’ll have to be going,” he said. “It’s after three, and I have an engagement.”
Lawrence shook his hand with tremendous cordiality.
“Come again!” he said. “Take pity on a man who has very little left in life. Come often!”
He turned toward Rosaleen, and Landry distinctly saw a look of understanding pass between them which he didn’t like.
“I’ll walk as far as the corner with you,” said Rosaleen. “I have an errand.”
And just as she was, she went out of the door with him. He stopped her at the head of the stairs.
“You shouldn’t go out in those slippers, Rosaleen! You’ll catch cold....”