“Not even my food was safe. She ate very little, in fact, but if some attractive morsel on my plate happened to catch her eye she would spear it and eat it in a flash without acknowledging that she had done anything out of the way. She knew I didn’t like that. I didn’t tamper with her plate and she knew I didn’t like her tampering with my plate. If the individual place setting means no more than that, then it is all a poor joke and you might as well have a trough and be done with it.”