THE QUEEN OF QUISINE AND THE PET OF THE SET

Hugtto! Pretty Cure
Episode 26 - My Own Review

THE QUEEN OF QUISINE AND THE PET OF THE SET
or,
WELL, I DON'T LIKE ONIONS EITHER...

Remember Saaya? She hasn’t really had a lot to do in recent episodes of Hugtto! PreCure, but episode 26 shines the spotlight on her – and it is well deserved. Saaya’s mother also plays a prominent role in this episode. And Saaya's father debuts as well!

Let’s all get fizzy with Saaya

An advert for Angel Fizzy Mineral Water starring Saaya airs in this episode, and she gains quite a following due to it.

Ah, the kind of refreshing advert that always makes me thirsty now around Thermidor (for cool liquid, NOT for Saaya)...

Totally NOT Toei. Well, Bland-Named as Ohei. All rights reserved.

As related to the source material as Guns 'N' Rodents or Farbucks Coffee.

Even Lulu wants to get fizzy with Saaya

With the popularity of the advert, Saaya finds herself mobbed by fans who want to shake her hand and get autographs.

Everyone gets together after that. 

However, Saaya is actually undecided on becoming an actress. She wants to hear what her mother thinks about it. When she says that, Lulu suggests, in her matter-of-fact tone, that they all go to Ohei Studios and ask her directly. 


Ohei Studios. Ut supra, no relation to the actual Toei Studios.


After the girls congrat Saaya's drink commercial, she has her doubts of whether to pursue a career in acting as she rarely sees her actress mother Reira at home for advice. 


Why is Lulu salivating? All right, she's from decades into the future. Guess robotics would develop into such an advanced state that such a gynoid would have nearly all human functions.

Saaya’s Dad, Shuji Yakushiji

Saaya and the others go to a TV studio, where they are greeted by Saaya’s dad. He has made lunch for Reira – Saaya’s mother – and he has some business at the studio as well. As such, he takes them into the studio to meet with Reira.

Heeeere's... Ranze! (The Shining impression)

Ranze Ichijou appears again

Inside the studio, Ranze appears when she hears the word "celebrity," and gives away multiple copies of her autograph. Ranze then goes on to upset Hugtan.

Hooo hoo hoo hoo... mama's girl is back, isn't she?
But this time I'm back with a vengeance.
Give it all for the Grrrreat and Powaaaaful Ranze Ichijo!!!


Oh, I'm so sorry for making the li'l one cry... I know we all Ichijos have a tendency to be loud talkers and all dat jazz...

So Lulu suggested to meet her in person during filming and the girls together with Saaya's father visited Ohei Studios on the set of her new show. They even met Ranze who was playing a minor part in the show. (She even accidentally startled Hug-tan!)

Saaya’s mother Reira, the One and Only Queen of Quisine

Reira arrives, and she is quickly able to calm Hugtan. Both Saaya and Ranze apologise for causing a disturbance, but Reira assures them that it’s fine. Harry decides to go for a walk with Hugtan so they don’t interrupt any more.

But Reira appeared and with her gentle demeanour, she was able to calm Hug-tan but remained cold and distant towards Saaya when they met.

Hana, Saaya, and Homare watch as Reira, Ranze, and the other actors film a scene. Reira eats a raw leek and manages to maintain her composure – until the scene is finished at least. 

Reira soon regrets biting into a leek

Eating the leek was an ad lib, simply because she felt that was what her character would do.



Reira was very professional in her acting and bit off a raw spring onion in style. Although she regretted it after that since it tastes terrible.

Saaya talks to Reira during her break

When the lunch break arrives, Saaya approaches Reira and asks if she has been causing any trouble for her. Reira responds with a rhetorical question: are you prepared to face the people who accuse you of getting roles because you are the daughter of Reira Yakushiji?

Saaya doesn’t have an answer for that.

Saaya meets some people who knew her as a baby

Following that, Saaya ends up meeting some old folks of the studio staff who know her. She spent a lot of time at the studio as a baby, and they helped to look after her.

Reira worked hard to balance both being parenthood and career

The old folks reminisce back to when Saaya was a baby, and how hard Reira worked. They helped out in order to support Reira’s family in any way they could. Back to the present, they suggest that Saaya’s stay-at-home dad take them to see just how hard Reira works.

Saaya approached Reira during break and asked about her drink commercial. Reira didn't comment much and claimed it was only adequate. Later Saaya was approached by some of Reira's colleagues and learned an interesting thing about her mother.
It seems that Reira was determined to be both a professional actress and a mother at the same time; however the director was reluctant since it would be hard for Reira to take care of a toddler Saaya. The director gave in and Saaya was brought along to the set and became the darling of the staff. Shuji took care of all the housework and the refreshments.


The Yakushijis: the media family that always sticks together, both on and off the set. Also, Reira is the breadwinner, while her hubby Shuji most frequently had the duty of sitting little Saaya...

Though still there was spare time allowed for mother-daughter cuddling, like in this adorable pastel-chalked memory...


Here, Saaya. Eat it all up!


Awwww... Really, these mother-daughter moments are full of fluff, especially in anime...

Saaya notices how busy her mum is cooking the dish for the show once more.
Saaya also peeked at Reira in the kitchen as she practiced her kitchen skills for the show, since the household chores are taken care of by Saaya's father. Saaya has more respect for her mother as she really gives her all (ganbare) for her career.

Reira puts in a lot of effort behind the scenes

Despite playing a character who is renowned for her cooking skill, Reira isn’t actually able to cook very well. It is Saaya’s dad Shuji who takes care of that, and the very reason he was at the TV studio. He basically fed and refreshed the whole crew of the shows his wife starred in!
Seeing Reira practicing her cookery behind the scenes reminds Saaya that her mother is awkward at times, but always did her best/gave her all (ganbare). She would always cheer her on when she was on television. Saaya has always wanted to see the world behind her.

Ranze is still bitter about her previous experience with leeks, and that generates enough toge-power for Gelos to bring forth a wild theender. The studio crew all fall unconscious, including Reira.

The Ranzecam attacking Reira at the set entrance. Yes, the source negative emotion for this theender was Ranze Ichijo having a traumatic past with leeks and onions, and embarrassing herself in front of the camera lens! Gelos could not have picked a better source material, right?

The girls transform to confront the enemy, but the Ranzecam is able to fight back, just leaving Cure Ange to confront it. The Ranzecam charges at Ange, but some support from Cure Ma Chérie gives her a chance to counter.



Cure Ange storms into the battleground to save her ailing mother, who is also being bled dry of negative emotions...

Gelos appeared and created a theender from Ranze (Again!?) and sucked all the energy from everyone including Reira. The girls went to battle and Cure Ange who had a new resolve gave all her strength and overthrew the Ranzecam in an epic smackdown.

Cure Ange slams the Ranzecam into the ground

That's one badass angel. No more Miss Nice Girl, eh, Saaya?

Ange is able to attack the Ranzecam, leaving it open for Cure Amour and Cure Ma Chérie to finish off.

With the enemy defeated and everyone regaining conscious, it is time to eat. Saaya has also reached a decision about something, which she tells her Mum.

Saaya wants to act alongside Reira

Though Saaya hasn’t made the decision to become an actress just yet, she does know that she wants to act alongside Reira at least once.

That brings this episode to an end, and I enjoyed it. It was a nice warm and fuzzy episode, which gave Saaya some much needed time in the spotlight. I think Cure Étoile said it best: ‘Ange is pretty cool too, isn’t she?’.
There isn’t much more for me to add here; Saaya has a good relationship with her parents, and this episode showed us that.

After the battle and the end of the filming, the girls joined the staff for a Spring Onion meal course (Why is Lulu eating non-stop?) Saaya finally told her mother that she is not really sure if acting is her choice, but for now, she hopes she can act alongside her mother in the future and her mother gave her blessings...

After last week's reveal of Harry's backstory, we had a subtle episode but some character development for Saaya. Saaya still had to content that she is the daughter of Famous Actress Reira Yakushiji and Ranze still claimed that Saaya is just that lucky due to her mother. 

Although Reira acted indifferent to Saaya but she does care about her, since the entertainment world / show-biz is a harsh place and she choose to be both an actress and mother at the same time, doing her best to juggle career and parenthood. But thanks to the support of her husband and understanding staff members, she persevered and got her status as a nationwide celebrity today.

Saaya knew it is not going to be easy if she chooses this acting path but seeing her mother on the TV screen makes her want to be next to her as an equal. Let's see how it goes in the 2nd half of the season. 

Hugtto! will be on a break next week, but it will be back the week after.

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
The "don't like" in the second title of this review is maybe too weak an expression. In fact, in my own case it happens to be a visceral aversion or loathing that, worst-case scenario, results in emetic reactions.
Ranze Ichijo, in other words, has a good reason for me to sympathise with her; furthermore, there are even fricking Facebook groups of onion loathers... which already speaks volumes.
Once more, Ranze's negative emotions fall into the targeting of the enemy. This time, Disgust is at the helm instead of Anger. But still she is prime Heartless material.

The whole leek incident reminded me of Flueflen's banter with Ensign Pistol about that Welsh leek, and, since I am translating Henry V at the moment, why not remember it (and, besides, picture ourselves Reira as Flueflen and Ranze as Pistol, in military uniforms and all)?

Act 5, Scene 1:

PISTOL

Ha! art thou bedlam? dost thou thirst, base Trojan,
To have me fold up Parca's fatal web?
Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.

FLUEFLEN

I peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my
desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat,
look you, this leek: because, look you, you do not
love it, nor your affections and your appetites and
your digestions doo's not agree with it, I would
desire you to eat it.

PISTOL

Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.

FLUEFLEN

There is one goat for you.
Strikes him
Will you be so good, scauld knave, as eat it?

PISTOL

Base Trojan, thou shalt die.

Furthermore, if we stick to our headcanon that Ranze is blood-related to the now celebrated Ranko Ichijo, the most likely scenario is that she has a strained relationship with her elders and envies the Yakushijis for sticking together in spite of their careers. Yes, let's invite the green-eyed monster to the mix as well!

I also adored and admired how the Yakushijis subverted the traditional gender roles of a married couple, with a breadwinner mum and a stay-at-home dad; which reminded me A LOT of Mrs. Fawcett and Charles Eastwood. I can completely relate to the scenario and, moreover, relate to how much it encouraged Saaya's freedom of thought, which has made her so bright.

Mrs. Fawcett, a soon-to-be divorcée who has left her first husband and their birthplace oop north, and her decades younger paramour Major Charles Eastwood, a war veteran, have taken up at a cottage in the southern English countryside.
There seems to be a parity in the Fawcett/Eastwood household that ought to be emulated, not scorned. It is noted that Eastwood’s “powerful athletic white arms… deftly and carefully washed the dishes while the woman wiped” and that “he went round attending to the stoves of the small house” (67).  The domestic chores, then, are split evenly among man and woman. 
The couple are outwardly friendly and progressive, just like the Yakushijis in this anime, but living in the UK one century before them.

It started out with how Saaya reveals she is worried about troubling her mother by following her footsteps. So she and the girls decide to visit her on set to help her get some clarity. There she meets the extended family who have known her since she was a little babe. The staff behind the “The Queen of Quisine" supported Reira when she passionately fought for the role. Despite being a young mother, the director hired her and he and the staff, alongside her husband, helped take care of Saaya so she could continue pursuing her dreams as an actress.
Initially Saaya misunderstood her mother when Reira asked her if she was prepared to face the peer pressure of those who would assume she is riding off her success. And to be fair, Reira did make a good point, but she certainly could have explained it better, especially when she finished off the conversation with how Saaya doesn’t have to follow her footsteps. Even I can see a misunderstanding coming out of that from a mile away! But she is that kind of mum who is a bit awkward when it comes to explaining her intentions. She is ready to support Saaya in whatever decision she chooses, and gave her fair advice of the challenges she will face should she decide to become an actress.


NEXT WEEK, THERE WILL BE NO NEW EPISODE! But when we come back the week after, it will be featuring the teacher and his pregnant wife we saw during the Pool Party episode. To add more sugar, I leave Spain for Sweden the next weekend...

Remember Mr. Uchufuji (Uchufuji-sensei)? 

Remember that his wife is expecting?

Well, the nine-month term is due this mid-August (will that make the little one a Leo or a Virgo, or cusp-born)?

Will things go smoothly for the delivery?

KEEPING UP WITH THE EASTWOODS

More on my favourite D.H. Lawrence characters, a couple who cross the limits of gender roles and social constraints without regretting it at all...

The Eastwoods. They are a couple who are not
married legally. The Jewish woman ran away from her husband and now loves a
younger poor man named Major Eastwood. They live together.

Major Eastwood has this tenderness.

Major Eastwood tells the importance of desire. He
thinks “that desire is the most wonderful thing in life. Anybody who can really feel
it, is a king, and I envy nobody else (GSNSL 1078).” He tells the difference between desire
and lust. Major Eastwood looks like Mellors in Lady Chatterley’s Lover in thought.

 Eastwoods who are dauntless to pursue their love life. 

 Lawrence's portrayal of Mrs. Eastwood, a woman whose positive flouting of conventional morality is countervened by her cosmopolitanism and materialism - qualities deemed antithetical to true Englishness...
"the little Jewess"... her own ironical alliance with society's prejudiced notions of race and class.
...she is blasted (Mrs. Eastwood) for being Jewish, for living in an unmarried state with a younger man, and for having left her children...
Mrs. Eastwood is a particularly unstable figure.
Although liberated sexually, economically, and socially,
she is implicitly faulted for her mobility: for buying the Major,
for moving out of her Jewish world, for taking control and exercising power.
Mrs. Eastwood is a sexually alluring and dangerous other.
Mrs. Eastwood, for example, is a very small woman with a rather large nose.

Characters like the Eastwoods are affected by social snobbery.

There is frozen water: Major Eastwood has been "resurrected" from being buried for
twenty hours under snow.

Un hombre y una mujer. Se acercan los dos al fuego (es febrero y amenaza nieve), y preguntan si se pueden calentar (su coche es descapotado). La mujer dice que están en su "luna de miel", mientras esperan la sentencia de divorcio de Mr. Fawcett, un conocido ingeniero de la localidad. Ella es hebrea, y madre de dos hijitos, cuya custodia se le concederá en cuanto "se case" con el hombre. Este es el comandante Charles Eastwood, rubio, atlético, y cinco o seis años más joven que ella, que tiene 37 años. 
Eastwood se entera que los dos sirvieron en el mismo regimiento en Flandes durante la guerra.

Se relata la animada y detallada descripción de los Eastwood.
El cottage de los Eastwood, donde viven juntos y hacen todas las faenas de la casa sin servidumbre. La hebrea se escandaliza. En cambio, el comandante muestra más comprensión.

 la medio divorciada Mrs. Fawcett y el maquereau Eastwood.
Son realmente muy agradables. Y se casarán dentro de un mes, más o menos.

Mrs. Fawcett (Honor Blackman) and Major Eastwood (Mark Burns), two people living in sin, much to the chagrin of the moralistic townsfolk. 

the sympathetic Eastwoods.

The subplot of the Eastwoods

Mrs Fawcett, who has left her rich husband to live with her boy-friend,
Major Eastwood, who is some years younger.
The Eastwoods are unusual and interesting people.

Major Eastwood, during the war.

The subplot of the Eastwoods will decisively help understanding
of love and sex. The Eastwoods represent an inversion of the rules of the society: 
she is a rich woman who has bribed a handsome, athletic man into becoming her husband. Recognition of Major Easwood as an object of female desire, and as a man economically dependant on a woman broadens our scope substantially and shows us an altemative to the conventional sexual behaviour, according to which women are only objects, and not subjects, of sexual desire.

the scandalously unmarried couple

the Eastwoods, a woman “in the coat of many dead little animals” whom the narrator decides is “probably a Jewess,” and a man she calls her husband, with fur gloves and a pipe (71).

Perhaps the othering of Mrs. Eastwood, and her alleged decadence, is meant to

contrast with or double the othering of the Gypsies; the Eastwoods exemplify

bourgeois materialism, and appear to be the embodiment of all that Lawrence disliked

about England in general and Eastwood, his home town, in particular.

the bourgeois decadence of the Eastwoods

the Eastwoods appear to emblematize the Modern - —with their open admission of adultery -

Oddly, their situation— in which “Mrs. Eastwood” admits to being a “Mrs. Fawcett” on the verge of

divorce, the “mother of two children,” on an adulterous “honeymoon” with the younger Major

Eastwood— parallels that of Lawrence and Frieda. Perhaps he saw their situation, mirrored by the Eastwoods,

as decadent and corrupt.

A couple who are very different; they are the Eastwoods. They aren’t married – yet – but plan to be as soon as the woman has completed her divorce. She is a wealthy Jewess, and he is a Nordic Adonis, and they are living together while the legal affairs are running their course. 

very interesting woman (whose situation is also partially autobiographical to the author and his wife), Jewess, who left her husband, well known engineer Simon Fawcett for young major Eastwood.
 this couple
 the couple 
 the Major Eastwood and her beloved Little Jewess

the shockingly living-in-sin pair Mrs Fawcett and Maj Eastwood 


Fawcett-Eastwood represent different aspects of the free, expressive life, and serve to increase the alternatives to conventional values concerning love and marriage.

Mrs. Fawcett (played delightfully by the fabulous Honor Blackman) enters with her charming and gorgeous boyfriend - Major Eastwood. (played by the late and extremely handsome Mark Burns).

CHARLES EASTWOOD

A tall and blond young officer, blue-eyed if possible.
Such is my Traumprinz.
Now D.H. Lawrence created a supporting character that fits astonishingly into this mold, over-used in my works of fiction.
Major Charles Eastwood.
So young, and yet, a veteran of the Great War (whose centennial is celebrated his year)!
He's married to an open-minded Jewish divorcée and the stepfather of her children... AND IT'S HE WHO DOES THE HOUSEWORK!


She advanced, dressed in a sleek but bulky coat of sable fur. A man followed, in a blue great-coat; pulling off his fur gloves and pulling out a pipe.
“It looked so tempting,” said the woman in the coat of many dead little animals, smiling a broad, half-condescending, half-hesitant simper, around the company.
No one said a word.
She advanced to the fire, shuddering a little inside her coat, with the cold. They had been driving in an open car.
She was a very small woman, with a rather large nose: probably a Jewess. Tiny almost as a child, in that sable coat she looked much more bulky than she should, and her wide, rather resentful brown eyes of a spoilt Jewess gazed oddly out of her expensive get-up.

She crouched over the low fire, spreading her little hands, on which diamonds and emeralds glittered.
“Ugh!” she shuddered. “Of course we ought not to have come in an open car! But my husband won’t even let me say I’m cold!” She looked round at him with her large, childish, reproachful eyes, that had still the canny shrewdness of a bourgeois Jewess: a rich one, probably.

Apparently she was in love, in a Jewess’s curious way, with the big, blond man. He looked back at her with his abstracted blue eyes, that seemed to have no lashes, and a small smile creased his smooth, curiously naked cheeks. The smile didn’t mean anything at all.
He was a man one connects instantly with winter sports, skiing and skating. Athletic, unconnected with life, he slowly filled his pipe, pressing in the tobacco with long, powerful reddened finger.
The Jewess looked at him to see if she got any response from him. Nothing at all, but that odd, blank smile. She turned again to the fire, tilting her eyebrows and looking at her small, white, spread hands.
He slipped off his heavily lined coat, and appeared in one of the handsome, sharp-patterned knitted jerseys, in yellow and grey and black, over well-cut trousers, rather wide. Yes, they were both expensive! And he had a magnificent figure, an athletic, prominent chest. Like an experienced camper, he began building the fire together, quietly: like a soldier on campaign.

“We’re on our honeymoon,” said the little Jewess.
She spoke in a rather high, defiant voice, like some bird, a jay, or a crook, calling.

“Yes! Before we’re married! Have you heard of Simon Fawcett?”— she named a wealthy and well-known engineer of the north country. “Well, I’m Mrs. Fawcett, and he’s just divorcing me!”

She was an honest little thing, but perhaps her honesty was TOO rational. Perhaps it partly explained the notorious unscrupulousness of the well-known Simon Fawcett.
“Yes! As soon as we get the divorce, I’m going to marry Major Eastwood.”
Her cards were now all on the table. She was not going to deceive anybody.

Behind her, the two men were talking briefly. She glanced round, and fixed the gipsy with her big brown eyes.
He was looking up, as if shyly, at the big fellow in the sparkling jersey, who was standing pipe in mouth, man to man, looking down.
“With the horses back of Arras,” said the gipsy, in a low voice.
They were talking war. The gipsy had served with the artillery teams, in the Major’s own regiment.
“Ein schöner Mensch! (A beautiful person!)” said the Jewess. “A handsome man, eh?”
For her, too, the gipsy was one of the common men, the Tommies.

The Major came back, and slung himself into his coat.
“Come!” called the Jewess to the peeping children, as the blond man wheeled away the bicycle. “Come! Come here!” and taking out her little purse, she held out a shilling.
“Come!” she cried. “Come and take it!”
 The old woman called hoarsely to the children, from the enclosure. The two elder children came stealing forward. The Jewess gave them the two bits of silver, a shilling and a florin, which she had in her purse, and again the hoarse voice of the unseen old woman was heard.
The gipsy descended from his caravan and strolled to the fire. The Jewess searched his face with the peculiar bourgeois boldness of her race.
“You were in the war, in Major Eastwood’s regiment!” she said.
“Yes, lady!”
“Imagine you both being here now!— It’s going to snow —” she looked up at the sky.
“Later on,” said the man, looking at the sky.

He too had gone inaccessible. His race was very old, in its peculiar battle with established society, and had no conception of winning. Only now and then it could score.
But since the war, even the old sporting chance of scoring now and then, was pretty well quenched. There was no question of yielding. The gipsy’s eyes still had their bold look: but it was hardened and directed far away, the touch of insolent intimacy was gone. He had been through the war.

The little Jewess, mother of two children, was taking her wealth away from the well-known engineer and transferring it to the penniless, sporting young Major Eastwood, who must be five or six years younger than she.
 
The blond man returned.
“A cigarette, Charles!” cried the little Jewess, plaintively.
He took out his case, slowly, with his slow, athletic movement. Something sensitive in him made him slow, cautious, as if he had hurt himself against people. He gave a cigarette to his wife.

“Well goodbye!” said the Jewess, with her odd bourgeois free-masonry. “Thank you for the warm fire.”

The little Jewess had only to wait three months now, for the final decree. She had boldly rented a small summer cottage, by the moors up at Scoresby, not far from the hills. Now it was dead winter, and she and the Major lived in comparative isolation, without any maid-servant. He had already resigned his commission in the regular army, and called himself Mr. Eastwood. In fact, they were already Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, to the common world.
The little Jewess was thirty-six, and her two children were both over twelve years of age. The husband had agreed that she should have the custody, as soon as she was married to Eastwood.
So there they were, this queer couple, the tiny, finely-formed little Jewess with her big, resentful, reproachful eyes, and her mop of carefully-barbered black, curly hair, an elegant little thing in her way, and the big, pale-eyed young man, powerful and wintry, the remnant surely of some old uncanny Danish stock: living together in a small modern house near the moors and the hills, and doing their own housework.
It was a funny household. The cottage was hired furnished, but the little Jewess had brought along her dearest pieces of furniture. She had an odd little taste for the rococco, strange curving cupboards inlaid with mother of pearl, tortoiseshell, ebony, heaven knows what; strange tall flamboyant chairs, from Italy, with sea-green brocade: astonishing saints with wind-blown, richly-coloured carven garments and pink faces: shelves of weird old Saxe and Capo di Monte figurines: and finally, a strange assortment of astonishing pictures painted on the back of glass, done, probably in the early years of the nineteenth century, or in the late eighteenth.
In this crowded and extraordinary interior, a whole system of stoves had been installed into the cottage, every corner was warm, almost hot. And there was the tiny rococo figurine of the Jewess herself, in a perfect little frock, and an apron, putting slices of ham on the dish, while the great snow-bird of a major, in a white sweater and grey trousers, cut bread, mixed mustard, prepared coffee, and did all the rest. He had even made the dish of jugged hare which followed the cold meats and caviare. The silver and the china were really valuable, part of the bride’s trousseau. The Major drank beer from a silver mug, the little Jewess had champagne in a lovely glass, the Major brought in coffee. They talked away. The little Jewess had a burning indignation against her first husband. She was intensely moral, so moral, that she was a divorcée. The Major too, strange wintry bird, so powerful, handsome, too, in his way, but pale round the eyes as if he had no eyelashes, like a bird, he too had a curious indignation against life, because of the false morality. That powerful, athletic chest hid a strange, snowy sort of anger. And his tenderness for the little Jewess was based on his sense of outraged justice, the abstract morality of the north blowing him, like a strange wind, into isolation.
As the afternoon drew on, they went to the kitchen, the Major pushed back his sleeves, showing his powerful athletic white arms, and carefully, deftly washed the dishes, while the woman wiped. It was not for nothing his muscles were trained. Then he went round attending to the stoves of the small house, which only needed a moment or two of care each day.
I am really amazed by this couple.
"The most extraordinary people!” And a detailed description.
“I think they sound rather nice!“I like the Major doing the housework, and looking so frightfully Bond-streety with it all. I should think, WHEN THEY’RE MARRIED, it would be rather fun knowing them.”

The very strangeness of the connection between the tiny Jewess and that pale-eyed, athletic young officer made me envy her.

Eastwood piqued my fancy. Such a smart young officer, awfully good class, so calm and amazing with a motor-car, and quite a champion swimmer, it was intriguing to see him quietly, calmly washing dishes, smoking his pipe, doing his job so alert and skilful. Or, with the same interested care with which he made his investigation into the mysterious inside of an automobile, concocting jugged hare in the cottage kitchen. Then going out in the icy weather and cleaning his car till it looked like a live thing, like a cat when she has licked herself. Then coming in to talk so unassumingly and responsively, if briefly, with the little Jewess. And apparently, never bored. Sitting at the window with his pipe, in bad weather, silent for hours, abstracted, musing, yet with his athletic body alert in its stillness.

"What about it?” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth, the unemotional point of a smile in his eyes.
“I’m perfectly all right today, and I shall be all right tomorrow,” he said, with a cold, decided look. “Why shouldn’t my future be continuous todays and tomorrows?”
His anger was of the soft, snowy sort, which comfortably muffles the soul.

“I!” bawled the tiny Jewess. “I! My goodness, don’t I!” She looked with reflective gloom at Eastwood, who was smoking his pipe, the dimples of his disconnected amusement showing on his smooth, scrupulous face. He had a very fine, smooth skin, which yet did not suffer from the weather, so that his face looked naked as a baby’s. But it was not a round face: it was characteristic enough, and took queer ironical dimples, like a mask which is comic but frozen. 

“Is there never any man that makes you feel quite, quite different?” said the Jewess, with another big-eyed look at Eastwood. He smoked, utterly unimplicated.

“A cat may look at a king,” calmly interposed the Major, and now his face had the smiles of a cat’s face.

“I think,” said the Major, taking his pipe from his mouth, “that desire is the most wonderful thing in life. Anybody who can really feel it, is a king, and I envy nobody else!” He put back his pipe.
The Jewess looked at him stupefied.
“But Charles!” she cried. “Every common low man in Halifax feels nothing else!”
He again took his pipe from his mouth.
“That’s merely appetite,” he said.

“I didn’t say marry him,” said Charles.

Charles smoked for some moments.
“That gipsy was the best man we had, with horses. Nearly died of pneumonia. I thought he WAS dead. He’s a resurrected man to me. I’m a resurrected man myself, as far as that goes. I was buried for twenty hours under snow,” he said. “And not much the worse for it, when they dug me out.”
There was a frozen pause in the conversation.
“They dug me out by accident,” he said.
 And he put back his pipe.

The half-divorced Mrs. Fawcett and the maquereau Eastwood...  “A young sponge going off with a woman older than himself, so that he can live on her money! The woman leaving her home and her children! I don’t know where you get your idea of honesty. — And you seem to be very well acquainted with them, considering you say you just know them. Where did you meet them?” Their detractors say this about them.


To me, he is neither a maquereau nor a young sponge.