"Verbally trounced, admonished, and still smarting under the displeasure of the powers that reign. They seem to resent my Sunday out—yet even their other domestics have that. And it's the first I've taken in three years. I think I'll have to give notice to my Missus."
"The spectre of servitude still seems to obsess your humour," she observed indifferently.
"I am that spectre, Mrs. Leeds."
"You certainly look pallid enough for any disembodied rôle. You have not been ill, by any chance?"—carelessly.
"Not at all, thank you. Rude health and I continue to link arms."
"Then it is not by chance that you absent yourself from the various festivities where your part is usually supposed to be a leading one?"
"All cooks eventually develop a distaste for their own concoctions," he explained gravely.
She lifted her eyebrows: "Yet you are here this afternoon."
"Oh, yes. Charity has not yet palled on my palate—perhaps because I need so much myself."
"I have never considered you an object of charity."