The Saving Clause by H.C. McNeile — Read

John Marwood stirred irritably in his chair, and pulled the shawl tighter round his shoulders. On his face was the peevish, complaining look which of late years had become chronic: his whole bearing suggested the man who has a grievance against everything and everybody: the man who has decided that life has not given him a square deal. It makes no difference to such a man that in the game it is often he who deals the cards: and that it is up to him to make the best of the bad hands when they come. Far from not meeting trouble half-way, the particular breed to which John Marwood belonged anticipate it before it starts. They seize it, they canter back with it, and they then exclaim triumphantly, "I told you so." In fact, the only thing which seems to annoy them, and make them really aggrieved, is when they can find nothing to complain about. It is a very rare occurrence, and mercifully for John Marwood things were not as bad as that. One of those wretched pinpricks with which life delighted to buffet him had occurred: no one had come to give him his medicine.

Out of the whole houseful of lazy, incompetent servants, not one of them could take the trouble to remember his sufferings. He fumed angrily and muttered under his breath. Three o'clock was the time for his tonic: it was now nearly five past. And, of course, Grace was out--she would be. Just when he wanted her.And the fire wanted attention.Moreover, that symptom of his which he had described to her last night, that sharp stabbing pain near the right shoulder blade was becoming increasingly acute. He felt convinced it was something serious, though his wife had not seemed very impressed when he had told her. But then, she never was: she seemed to have absolutely no conception of how he suffered.