Mrs Miniver

MRS. Miniver woke up one morning with a sense of doom, a knowledge that
the day contained something to be dreaded. It was not a crushing weight,
such as an operation, or seeing one's best friend off to live in
Tasmania; nor was it anything so light as a committee meeting, or a deaf
uncle to tea: it was a kind of welter-weight doom.

At first it puzzled her. So far as she knew, she had no appointments that
day, either pleasant or unpleasant, and that in itself was good. To be
entirely at leisure for one day is to be for one day an immortal:
according to the Chinese proverb she ought to have been feeling god-like.
But the small, dull weight continued to drag and nag.

Clem put his head in, dishevelled from a bath. Not for the first time,
she felt thankful that she had married a man whose face in the ensuing
sixteen years had tended to become sardonic rather than sleek. It was
difficult to tell, when people were young and their cheek-lines were
still pencilled and delible. Those beautiful long lean young men so often
filled out into stage churchwardens at forty-five. But she had been
lucky, or had a flair; Clem's good looks were wearing well. The great
thing, perhaps, was not to be too successful too young.

At the moment his expression was anything but sardonic.

"She ought to be here by nine," he said eagerly, and vanished.

Mrs. Miniver remembered with a bump, felt dismayed, knew that her dismay
was unreasonable, and tried to argue it out of existence. A new car was a
thing to be pleased over; it was high time they had one. The old
Leadbetter had got to the stage when nothing less than an expensive
overhaul would do any good; it had developed sinister fumes, elusive
noises, incurable draughts; it was tiring for Clem on his long drives.
And a week ago, when Clem, straight from the Motor Show, had spent the
whole evening musing happily over catalogues, she had realized that the
game was up. Her usual attitude--that they didn't really need a new car
--was plainly untenable, and this time she could not even fall back upon
a plea for economy. They could perfectly well afford it now. Clem's plans
for the new building estate had gone through; and there was the
Vanderhoops' country house as well--a plum. Besides, this scene had
been replayed, with variations, many times, and they both knew that the
basis of her invariable reluctance about new cars was not thrift but
sentiment. She simply could not endure the moment when the old one was
driven away.

Mrs. Miniver was a fool about inanimate objects. She had once bid
furiously at an auction for a lot described as "Twelve kitchen chairs;
also a small wicker knife-basket." Clem, knowing the size of their
kitchen, made urgent signals to her across the room. She stopped bidding,
and the lot was knocked down to someone else for more than its value by a
grateful but mystified auctioneer.

"You got mixed up in the lot numbers, didn't you?" Clem said afterwards.

"No," she said, guiltily. "I'm awfully sorry. It was that knife-basket. I
suddenly thought--so wretched not to be grand enough to be in a lot by
itself. Just tagged on to kitchen chairs like that. Clem--a small
wicker knife-basket..."