When Anthony hurt himself, Alice reached across the table, took the man's hand in hers and looked at the injury. "You should remove that splinter."

Now it was Tobias' turn to wince over his wife's the impropriety displayed right before his eyes.

Uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. But he didn't say anything about that. He didn't want things to become even worse. "I already did," Anthony frowned and flexed his hand.

The girl let go of his hand when he flexed it. "Are you sure?"

"Since you're not eating anyway, we're going," he ordered, but Alice turned her big brown eyes to him, blinked once or twice and then stated:

"I have to use the ladies." And she got up, glanced at Anthony once more and walked away.

Tobias put his hand over his face again.

"Yes, very sure," said Anthony, pulling his hand back to himself as soon as the girl let go of it. He glanced towards Tobias for a moment as he spoke, and then took his glass and took a sip from it. Or, rather, tried to take a sip from it. It was empty.

Tobias sat there, for a while, hand over his face, pitying himself for having married a harpy and having invited her entire clan into his life. Then he remembered the poor man beside him, whom he felt he had exposed to this farce. He lowered his hand and turned to him. "Look, I'm real sorry for all of this... Hope your hand is okay," he added, as if the that little bit of being nice could make up for the disaster that was this afternoon.

Anthony sat back in his chair and looked around the place, feeling a bit bored but also much better. There wasn't much to complain about. He flinched when Tobias spoke. He hadn't been expecting it. "Yeah, it's all good," he replied to both the sentences with one. He wasn't crying anymore, which meant that he was fine.

"Good..." said Tobias, not sure what else to say. He took a fresh handkerchief and started packing some bread and cheese in case Alice would be hungry on the way. She had barely touched her soup. Nor had the man beside him.

"Sure is," nodded Anthony. He looked at Tobias for a moment to see what he was doing, but upon seeing that it was nothing interesting, returned to his people-watching. He had nothing better to do.

"Yeah," he muttered for lack of anything better to say. The bread and cheese were packed. How long did it take someone to have a bloody wee?

Anthony was getting restless. He wanted to leave, but didn't want to be rude or impolite by actually doing that. So he stayed seated and, feeling very fidgety, tapped his foot non-stop.