Yet
although I prepared scrambled eggs one hundred times in six months
(Henry said it was much oftener than that) I had to pore over the
instructions as earnestly when doing my 'century' as on the first
occasion.
The subsequent meal was taken in silence. The hay-fever from which I
am prone to suffer at all seasons of the year was particularly
persistent that evening. A rising irritability, engendered by leathery
eggs and fostered by Henry's expression, was taking possession of me.
Quite suddenly I discovered that the way he held his knife annoyed me.
Further, his manner of eating soup maddened me. But I restrained
myself. I merely remarked: 'You have finished your soup, I _hear_,
love.' We had not yet reached the stage of open rupture when I could
exclaim: 'For goodness' sake stop swilling down soup like a grampus!'
I have never heard a grampus take soup. But the expression seems
picturesque.
Henry, too, had not quite lost his fortitude. My hay-fever was
obviously annoying him, but he only commented: 'Don't you think you
ought to go to a doctor--a really reliable man--with that distressing
nasal complaint of yours, my dear?' I knew, however, that he was
longing to bark out: 'Can't you do something to stop that everlasting
sniffing? It's driving me mad, woman.'
How long would it be before we reached this stage of debacle? I
brooded. Then the front door bell rang.
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