Gideon Planish by Sinclair Lewis

The two of them sat down to dinner with Peony--the compulsory self that told him he must speak up and get it over, let her know that he was discharged, and the physical self that was so tired and timid it could scarcely lift this burden of confession. Peony and the half-handed maid had prepared a particularly elegant salad of avocado and hard-boiled egg and cherries and a few other trifles that must have been Peony's own idea, and the ridiculous salad became to him, brooding upon it, a tender symbol of her, like a glove still bearing the warmth and heart line of her hand.

When he spoke he dodged up a dozen alleys. He told her that he had gone out to Evanston, and that Dr. Kitto certainly wore a toupee. While she was giggling, "Let's throw him out of the Foundation, " he was sharply calculating that he had no notion whatever about a new job, that he must be about $850 in debt, with some $375 in assets (he felt in his pocket and concluded that maybe he could add another dollar), and that his father-in-law had been pretty nasty about that last touch.