He waited until the meal was over and Royal Daylight had cleared the table, and had also cleared away herself, before he mentioned the taxi. And then very bluntly, and in a tone entirely new to her as well as to himself, he demanded an explanation.
Cora, it seemed, was in a rather chastened mood. For one thing, she was now sober, and when she was sober she was not exactly a fool. She was not really repentant. He was too poor a thing to make a self-respecting woman repent. But now she was again herself, she was both shrewd and wary; after all, this double-adjectival idiot was the goose that laid the golden eggs.
"I was a bit on last night," she said, with well-assumed humility.
"'I was a bit on last night,' she said, with well-assumed humility."
"Yes, I heard you was when you come home," he said, with the new note in his voice that she didn't like.
"Oh, so you did hear." She suddenly determined to carry the war into the enemy's country. "Why didn't you open it, then?"
The cold impudence stung.
"I'd rather have died than have opened it to a cow like you." He hardly knew the words he used. They had seemed to spring unbidden from the back of beyond.