"I don't chew gum either," he pointed out.
"I wonder how that very elaborate method of dealing with their food arose," Bee said.
"Perhaps knives were scarce in the early days," Eleanor suggested.
"Knives were far too useful to be scarce in a pioneer society," Simon said. "It's much more likely that they lived so long on hash that when they got things in slices their instinct was to make hash of it as soon as possible."
Brat thought, listening to them, how very English it all was. Here he was, back from the dead, and they were calmly discussing American table manners. There was no backslapping, congratulatory insistence on the situation as there would be in a transatlantic household. They avoided the do-you-remember theme as determinedly as Americans would have wallowed in it. Remembering his friends of the Lazy Y, he thought what a fine exhibition of Limey snootiness this would be from the point of view of Pete, and Hank, and Lefty.
But perhaps the happiness on Bee's face would have impressed even Lefty.
"Do you smoke?" Bee asked, when she had poured the coffee; and she pushed the cigarette box over to him. But Brat, who liked his own brand, took out his case and offered the contents to her.
"I've given them up," Bee said. "I have a bank balance instead."
So Brat offered the case to Eleanor.
Eleanor paused with her fingers touching the cigarettes, and bent forward to read something engraved on the inside of the case.