too content to play a duet

Lucia's friends -- or, bridge-playing partners -- from her social circle are flooded out, so she and her friend Georgie invite the "refugees" to stay in their homes temporarily until the crisis is over, in E.F. Benson's novel, The Worshipful Lucia.

Of course, people like to be generous but then it becomes a pain....

------------------- [excerpt] -------------- "...Dear me, for the last fortnight I've hardly opened a book."

"I can imagine that," said he.  "Even I, who had only the Padre in the house, couldn't settle down to anything.  He was always coming in and out, wanting some ink in his bedroom, or a piece of string, or change for a shilling."

"Multiply it by three.  And she treated me all the time as if I was a hotelkeeper, and she wasn't pleased with her room or her food but made no formal complaint...." ---------------- [stop excerpt]

It's just so closely observed (or -- imagined), so mundane, silly, and true -- and tiny.  Tiny, tiny, like highly-skilled needlework. 

Delicate, like a soufflé.

Tart, like a lemon.

---------------------- [earlier excerpt] ----------- Lucia crunched a piece of coffee sugar in a meditative manner.

"An interesting study," she said.  "You know how devoted I am to psychological research, and I learned a great deal this last fortnight.  Major Benjy was not very clever when he wooed and won her, but I think marriage has sharpened his wits.  Little bits of foxiness, little evasions, nothing, of course, of a very high order, but some inkling of ingenuity and contrivance.  I can understand a man developing a certain acuteness if he knew Elizabeth was always just round the corner.  The instinct of self-protection.  There is a character in Theophrastus very like him; I must look it up.  Dear me, for the last fortnight I've hardly opened a book."

---------- [later excerpt] ----------- {Lucia:}  "...Let's go into the garden room.  My dear, how delicious to know that Benjy won't be there, smoking one of his rank cigars, or little Evie, running about like a mouse, so it always seemed to me, among the legs of chairs and tables."

"Hurrah for one of our quiet evenings again," said he.

It was with a sense of restored well-being that they sank into their chairs, too content in this relief from strain to play duets.  Georgie was sewing a border of lace onto some new doilies for finger bowls, and Lucia found the Characters of Theophrastus, and read to him in the English version the sketch of Benjy's prototype.

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{The Worshipful Lucia, by E.F. Benson.  Copyright 1935, Doubleday, Doran & Company.  Copyright 1977, Harper & Row.}

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