Polite dinner calls for persiflage rather than in-depth possibly offensive discussion.

to salt fish, beef, or pork; to salt the city streets in the winter

It was a joy to snatch some brief respite, and find himself in the rectory drawing–room. Listening here was as pleasant as talking; just to watch was pleasant. The young priests who lived here wore cassocks and birettas; their faces were fine and mild, yet really strong, like the rector's face; and in their intercourse with him and his wife they seemed to be brothers.

On this account, mothers, fathers, men, and even youths, are their best companions; on the contrary, girls connected with other girls of a similar age, as in schools, provoke one another to an exchange of foibles, rather than of excellences, to a love of dress, admiration, and gossip, even to the forgetting of accismus.