“Good!” said she. “Now we can talk like two reasonable human beings. Milk and sugar?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said he, as if in a dream. “I don’t want it, anyhow.”
“I don’t care much for tea myself,” she told him; “but it is refreshing. A sandwich? If you don’t like cheese, I’ll get you—”
“I do like cheese,” he admitted.
“Most men do,” said she. “My poor husband was so fond of it! He was a newspaper man, and when he came home late I would make him a nice little Welsh rarebit, and he’d have that and a glass of beer. That was years ago, of course, when you could get beer.”
She sighed, but Mr. Donalds understood that the sigh was only for her late husband, not for any other vanished joys.
“I do like to see a man comfortable!” she suddenly remarked.
He believed her. Extraordinary and preposterous as it was, he believed that she really wished him to be comfortable. She had prepared a cup of tea for him, and she watched him while he drank it and ate a sandwich—yes, two or three sandwiches—with the air of a solicitous hostess.
“Another cup?” she asked. “And now won’t you smoke?”
“Thank you,” said he.[Pg 254]