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eccentric.”
    â€œEccentric is it? I’m telling you it’s the English, they’ll do you every time. You run out and get them sheets, before she tells him off.”
    â€œHow much do sheets cost?”
    â€œThey cost a lot,” Mrs. Grail responded promptly. “Everything costs a lot in this benighted place. Oh, I’ve been here twenty-five years and I’ll never get used to it, never. This Hoover is broken,” she added, in a more conversational tone.
    â€œOh, what shall we do?” The thought of attempting to get anything repaired was almost too much for me. I had tried to buy a can opener and no one would sell it to me. They all said that you could get them free in pubs, but the pub people wouldn’t give us one.
    â€œDon’t worry about it,” Mrs. Grail said. “Blow it. Let her worry about it. I’ll use a broom. This old thing,” she said, kicking the vacuum cleaner. “It dates from the Ark. She hasn’t a penny. Oh, I’ll never get used to it, never.”
    â€œIf the phone book had yellow pages,” I said.
    â€œStanding looking in a store window,” Mrs. Grail said, bending over to puff up the sofa cushions in their chintz slip-cover, “and a woman edges up and bumps into me, ‘Pardon me,’ I says. ‘Ah, go back,’ she says, ‘go back where you come from.’ ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘if the English will give us back our six counties,’ I says, ‘I’ll go back where I come from.”’
    â€œThat woman was probably an eccentric,” I said.
    â€˜â€Go back where you come from,”’ Mrs. Grail said, punching the cushion vigorously. “That’s what they keep saying. Myhusband’s from the North, from Yorkshire, and the men he works with, they tell him to go back where he come from.”
    â€œMy goodness,” I said.
    â€œMy Pat, those girls she works with, they mimic the way she talks.” She straightened up and brushed some lint off the back of the sofa. “They hate Americans too,” she said. “They hate everybody. You’ll find out.” She paused dramatically in the doorway, clutching the defunct Hoover. “Go get them sheets,” she said. “I should hurry up if I was you.”
    Feeling rather shaken, I went down to the kitchen to calm myself with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Jordan had originally ordered the
London Times
for me, but I found it less than interesting, so he switched to the
Daily Telegraph.
I sipped my instant coffee and read a review of the television play that Mark and I had seen the night before.
    â€œI do not know where these elegant kitchens come from that one sees on these television dramas,” the reviewer wrote irascibly. “I certainly do not have one. I should like to make it very clear that I would under no circumstances have such a kitchen even if it were offered to me. We are being pervaded by a pernicious materialism, most probably from across the sea.”

8
Dr. Bott
    O N SATURDAY MORNING we were awakened about eight o’clock by a pounding on the door. I hurried down and, mindful of Mrs. Stackpole’s warnings, called, “Who is it?”
    â€œTelephone,” a voice said.
    I opened the door a crack and peered out into a sunny Baldridge Place.
    â€œWe have a telephone,” I said.
    â€œThis is for the attic,” the man said. “To be installed. I have to leave this cable here.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œI have to leave this cable here, to be installed at a later date.”
    I stood aside reluctantly, and he clomped down to the kitchen, dragging dirt and bits of fluff over Mrs. Stackpole’s impractical red hall carpeting.
    â€œWaking us up,” I said to Jordan. “Mrs. Stackpole never mentioned it. She said her lodger was going to bring some things to the attic one afternoon. Do you suppose that was a burglar?”
    â€œHe wouldn’t