Status Updates From Jane and Prudence

'If it is true that men only want one thing, Jane asked herself, is it perhaps just to be left to themselves with their soap animals or some other harmless little trifle?'

'What a fine marrow, Mr Driver,' said Miss Doggett in a bright tone. 'It is the biggest one we have had so far, isn't it, Miss Morrow?'
Miss Morrow, who was scrabbling on the floor among the vegetables, mumbled something inaudible.
'It is magnificent,' said Mrs Mayhew reverently.
Mr Driver moved forward and presented the marrow to Miss Doggett with something of a flourish.

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things--enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.

Nicholas accepted his two eggs and bacon and the implication that his needs were more important than his wife's with a certain amount of complacency, Jane thought.