Quality Costs and Enterprise Size in the Manufacturing Industry. A Survey Research of American Society for Quality (ASQ) Members

Aunt Maria Natбґlia glowed with pride, while the cook and the outside maid looked at me as if a heavenly halo were encircling my head, as if hitherto unsuspected qualities had bloomed in the inside maid's otherwise insignificant nephew, qualities that the white, manicured hand of Senhor Formigal, when he lightly touched my cheek and my close-cropped hair, had finally caused to spring into life. The Senhores Formigais were about to go out, probably to Mass, but Dona Albertina returned to the kitchen in order to give me a little bag of chocolates: "Here, these are for you, to help your knee get better faster," she said and was gone, leaving behind her a whiff of face powder and having put that word "patella" firmly in its place. I don't know if it was then that my aunt took me to see their bedroom-I think not-but it was a magnificent, solemn, almost ecclesiastical room, all adorned with scarlet draperies, the canopy, the coverlet, the plump pillows, the bed curtains, the upholstery on the chairs: "It's all done in the very best, the very finest damask," my aunt told me, and when I asked her why they had that S-shaped sofa at the end of the bed, she replied: "That's a love seat, he sits on one side and she on the other, so that they can talk without having to turn their heads, it's very practical." Since we were there, I would have liked to try it out, but my aunt wouldn't even let me across the threshold ...»