dialogue is not shaping so as to allow you to get in your joke you can wilfully misunderstand and drag it in any way.
But after all the highest use of these periods of waiting lies in their soul-training qualities. Patience, fortitude, self-restraint might vanish from among us if such constant opportunity for their use were not afforded. It's easy enough to be pleasant, when Central is not very long; but the person is rare who never will swear when every blamed number is wrong.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.