“Yes, there’s mother,” said Herbert. “But when a man’s married he wants his wife.”
Clare was now busy looking over her letters.
“Can’t you go to the club?” she asked.
“I’m dead sick of the club. That boiled-shirt Bohemianism is the biggest rot in the world.”
“Take mother to the theatre,” said Clare cheerfully.
“The theatre bores me stiff. These modern plays set one’s nerves on edge.”
“Well, haven’t you got a decent novel or anything?” said Clare, reading one of her letters.
“A decent novel! There’s no such thing nowadays, and they give me the hump.”
Clare was reading another letter with absorbed interest, but she listened with half an ear, as it were, to her husband.
“Play mother a game of cribbage, then,” she said.