Anglo-Saxon Attitudes Read Online Free Page B

toothbrush moustache, 'then I must wash my hands of the whole matter.'
    Mrs Clun knew that she must listen carefully so that she might interpose a softening word at the right moment, but her mind kept travelling to her blue woolly upstairs in the bedroom. She smiled, a vague watery smile. Professor Clun noticed her red, frostbitten nose and resented it.
    'I'm sure,' he continued, 'that I've no wish to give my time to these household matters. I have, as you very well know, a great deal of work on my hands. It's bad enough that I have to go to this lecture. I don't relish the idea of spending an hour listening to Pforzheim, able though he is, let alone the prospect of hearing Rose Lorimer air her crazy theories afterwards. If Sir Edgar were a better chairman, or even if Middleton had some modicum of the sense of responsibility which his position ought to give him, we should not waste hours of precious, time on these pointless generalities. The whole concept of these Stokesay Annual Lectures is entirely out of date. If we want to know what Pforzheim or any other Continental authority has to say, we can perfectly well read it in the journals. Any sensible executors with a little more savoir-faire than Sir Edgar or Middleton would have had the terms of Stokesay's will annulled long ago. The money could be most conveniently used for research projects or publications. When I think that I shall have to pay my own fare to the Verona conference next summer ...'
    'Yes, Arthur,' said Mrs Clun.
    'What do you mean "yes"?'  said her husband sharply. 'You know nothing at all about it. This affirmation of statements of which you are entirely ignorant is among your most irritating habits, Ada. But, for heaven's sake, let us stick to the point we're discussing. If we are to entertain the Graysons this evening - and I've already said that it was necessary - we can at least do it competently. Why you should choose this moment to suggest South African Chablis, I cannot conceive. The Graysons will hardly wish to come out to Wimbledon to drink an Empire wine. What sort of story do you want them to carry back to Manchester?'
    'I was only thinking of what you said about economy ..."
    'That was on the occasion of the research students' party. Do have some sense of what is fitting. We're not rich people, but there is no need for contrivance. We haven't got large private means like Middleton, but we're not paupers.' Indeed, with his own salary and his wife's private income, they were really very comfortably provided for.
    'I shouldn't think that Muriel Grayson would know one wine from another,' said Mrs Clun, stung by the cold into contention. 'She's a very nice, homely Lancashire body, but not stylish at all.'
    'That's hardly a matter for you to judge, Ada,' said Professor Clun, beginning at last to feel the cold himself. 'You don't pretend to style, and I shouldn't wish you to do so.' Although, after long years of bullying, his wife had acquired a certain suburban gentility, she had brought him her private income from a distinctly plebeian source. Arthur Clun fully recognized the limits of her achievement and required no more of her. 'Well,' he added, 'I hope that the rest of this evening's entertainment can be left to your own judgement, unless you wish me to contract pneumonia. You may well feel pleased that you have not to travel in a draughty underground train, as I have.'
    'Do you really need to go, Arthur?'  Mrs Clun asked, hoping that a little cosseting would thaw his mood.
    'Has anything I have said suggested that I am making this journey on a frivolous impulse?'  he snapped. 'Of course I must be there. You seem to have no sense of my position, Ada. Besides, all sorts of things come up after the lecture. The editorship of the new Medieval History series is on the agenda. Heaven knows what silly suggestions may be made about that. Middleton's well aware that he's past that sort of thing, but if some of those disciples of his, some of his