“Things going a little better this morning?” Mr. Preemby would try.
“Can’t I get rest from business even at my meals?” the poor lady would complain.
Or, “Looks like pleasant weather for the Derby.”
“Pity you can’t go there for all the help you are in the place. I suppose you haven’t heard what’s happened to van number two.”
“No!” said Mr. Preemby.
“You wouldn’t. Hind mudguard smashed. Been done for weeks. And nobody knows who did it. One would think that that was a man’s business anyhow. But it’s left for me to find out. And pay for. Like everything else in the place.”
“I’d better make inquiries.”
“I know those inquiries of yours. Better leave the whole thing alone now. Grin and bear it....”
The silence of the meal would be restored.
She seemed to set a high value upon these awful silences. She even complained that he ate his cheese biscuits audibly. But how else can one eat cheese biscuits? Christina Alberta was made of sterner stuff and became controversial. Then her mother would flare out at her insolence and declare that “one or the other of us” leaves the table. “I’ll read upstairs,” said Christina Albert. “It isn’t my wish to be lunching here.”