Wilkins coming
back daily to his dinner and eating his fish in the silence of imagined
security.
Also things happened so awkwardly. It really is astonishing, how
awkwardly they happen. Mrs. Wilkins, who was very careful all this
month to give Mellersh only the food he liked, buying it and hovering
over its cooking with a zeal more than common, succeeded so well the
Mellersh was pleased; definitely pleased; so much pleased that he began
to think that he might, after all, have married the right wife instead
of, as he had frequently suspected, the wrong one. The result was that
on the third Sunday in the month--Mrs. Wilkins had made up her
trembling mind that on the fourth Sunday, there being five in that
March and it being on the fifth of them that she and Mrs. Arbuthnot
were to start, she would tell Mellersh of her invitation--on the third
Sunday, then, after a very well-cooked lunch in which the Yorkshire
pudding had melted in his mouth and the apricot tart had been so
perfect that he ate it all, Mellersh, smoking his cigar by the brightly
burning fire the while hail gusts banged on the window, said "I am
thinking of taking you to Italy for Easter." And paused for her
astounded and grateful ecstasy.
None came. The silence in the room, except for the hail hitting
the windows and the gay roar of the fire, was complete.
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