Greenwood is one of those intolerable men who always rise to an
occasion. He is the kind of man who rushes to sit on the head of a
horse when it is down. I can even picture him sitting on the bonnet of
an overturned motor-'bus and shouting, "Now all together!" to the men
who are readjusting it.
We were going down to business when Perkins introduced a new grievance
against the Censor.
"Whatever do they allow this rot about food prices in the paper for?"
he began. "It unsettles women awfully. Now my wife is insisting on
having her housekeeping allowance advanced twenty-five per cent. I tell
you she'd never have known anything about the advances if they hadn't
been put before her in flaring type."
The general opinion of the compartment seemed to be that the Censor had
gravely neglected his duty.
"I agreed with my wife," said Blair, who is a shrewd Scotchman,
"and told her that she must have an extra two pounds a month. Now a
twenty-five per cent. advance would have meant five pounds a month.
Luckily Providence fashioned women without an idea of arithmetic."
Most of us looked as if we wished we had thought of this admirable idea.
"My wife drew my attention to the paper," said Greenwood loftily. "I
did not argue the point with her. Finance is not woman's strong point.
I rang for the cook at once."
Everyone looked admiringly at the hero who had dared to face his cook.
"I said to her," continued Greenwood, "'Cook, get the Stores price-list
for to-day and serve for dinner precisely the things that have not
advanced. You understand? That will do.' So you see the matter was
settled."
"Er, what did your wife say?" asked Perkins.
"Say! What could she say? Here was the obvious solution. And I have
noticed that women always lose their heads in an emergency. They never
rise to the occasion."
The next morning I met Greenwood again.
"By the way," I asked, "did you have a good dinner yesterday?"
Greenwood looked me straight in the eyes. There is a saying that a liar
cannot look you straight in the eyes. Discredit it. "The dinner was
excellent," he replied. "I wish you had been there to try it. And every
single thing at pre-war prices."
But that night I came across Mrs. Greenwood as she emerged from a Red
Cross working party loaded with mufflers and mittens.
"Glad to hear these hard times don't affect your household," I began
diplomatically.