The main thought of a man less
infatuated than Albert Grapp would have been "This girl can't cook.
And she'll never learn to." The beef, instead of being red and brown,
was pink and white. Uneatable beef! And yet he relished it more than
anything he had ever tasted. This beef was her own handiwork. Thus
it was because she had made it so.... He warily refrained from
complimenting her, but the idea of a second helping obsessed him.
"Happen I could do with a bit more, like," he said.
Emily hacked off the bit more and jerked it on to the plate he had
held out to her.
"Thanks," he said; and then, as Emily's lip curled, and Jos gave him
a warning kick under the table, he tried to look as if he had said
nothing.
Only when the second course came on did he suspect that the meal was a
calculated protest against his presence. This a Christmas pudding? The
litter of fractured earthenware was hardly held together by the suet
and raisins. All his pride of manhood--and there was plenty of pride
mixed up with Albert Grapp's humility--dictated a refusal to touch
that pudding. Yet he soon found himself touching it, though gingerly,
with his spoon and fork.
In the matter of dealing with scruts there are two schools--the old
and the new. The old school pushes its head well over its plate and
drops the scrut straight from its mouth.
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