"Percivale, why will you pretend to be so stupid?"
"Perhaps I'm only pretending to be the other thing."
"Do you consider yourself under no obligation to people who ask you to dinner?"
"None in the least—if I accept the invitation. That is the natural acknowledgment of their kindness. Surely my company is worth my dinner. It is far more trouble to me to put on black clothes and a white choker and go to their house, than it is for them to ask me, or, in a house like theirs, to have the necessary preparations made for receiving me in a manner befitting their dignity. I do violence to my own feelings in going: is not that enough? You know how much I prefer a chop with my wife alone to the grandest dinner the grandest of her grand relations could give me."
"Now, don't you make game of my grand relations. I'm not sure that you haven't far grander relations yourself, only you say so little about them, they might all have been transported for housebreaking. Tell me honestly, don't you think it natural, if a friend asks you to dinner, that you should ask him again?"
"Yes, if it would give him any pleasure. But just imagine your Cousin
Morley dining at our table. Do you think he would enjoy it?"
"Of course we must have somebody in to help Jemima."
"And somebody to wait, I suppose?"
"Yes, of course, Percivale."
"And what Thackeray calls cold balls handed about?"