"Just ask Mrs. Steptoe again exactly what your mistress said," Challis takes a pleasure in rubbing in the obnoxious expression. Harmood's conduct has been detestable. But she is conscious, from Mr. Challis's manner, of her success. From Mrs. Challis's she had been able to form no opinion.
Mrs. Steptoe testified from the basement, and Harmood returned. No—Mrs. Challis had said nothing but what had been reported last night. She was taking the young ladies to their grandma's, and we was not to expect her back.
"Back to lunch, or what?" Challis raises his voice over the question, and Harmood refers to her authority, with an air of indifference to trifles of this sort. Bald confirmation comes of the wording of the message; no interpretation.
"Very well, then! Your mistress didn't say she wasn't coming to lunch. Of course she is coming to lunch." Challis repulsed an attempt of Mrs. Steptoe to entangle him in the problem of how some abhorrent remainders from the larder—which she offered to show—might be best utilized, and got away to that cigar in the garden, to think....
Damn interruptions!—no, he couldn't see anybody.... Stop! who was it? Miss Harmood, who had not been explicit enough, now testified to Mr. Eldridge; whereupon Challis asked her why she couldn't say so at first? This was unjust and irrational; but Miss Harmood had given warning, and felt partly disembodied. What did it matter to her?
It was John Eldridge, not very intelligible, but in much perturbation at something. "Well—you see!—it was Lotty's idea he should come round. Never would have entered his head himself! No sayin', though!" This was a favourite expression of his, presenting him as a sage prone to suspension of opinion, and open-minded.
After using it once or twice, he used his pocket-handkerchief, causing Harmood to inquire whether Mr. Challis had called. He then stood over the object of his visit, whatever it was, to ask, as an entirely new idea, "How are you yourself, Master Titus?"
"I'm all right, John. Won't you smoke?—that one at the end's very mild." But Mr. Eldridge wouldn't smoke; it was too early in the morning. Besides, he was late at the office. Challis avoided analysis and comparison, and made essays towards explanation of the visit. "Any more railway accidents?" said he.
"Wasn't that the day before yesterday?" Mr. Eldridge stopped polishing his nose to ask this. Challis explained that it was quite recent enough—he was in no hurry for more. He chose to suggest that the question, which had absolutely no meaning whatever, was intended to impute to him an unnatural lust for railway accidents. Mr. Eldridge seemed at a loss, saying: "Now you're poking fun, Master Titus! None of your larks!" Then he muttered to himself. "Thought so—thought so—day before yesterday!"
It was evidently going to be a matter of patience. Challis knew why his visitor had come, of course, but he was not going to supply him with guidance. Perhaps it would be quickest and simplest to leave him entirely alone. Then he would have to burst, or go. He chose the former, after some vague soliloquy about not having inquests on Sundays.