Weekend Update: Home Together

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How was your weekend? Ours was very, very warm and loverly. Aside from an hour or so yesterday, Kathleen was at home all weekend — and so was I.

Ordinarily, Kathleen has her hair washed on Saturday afternoon, and, while she’s out, I tidy up the bedroom. Friday night, on our way home from Speed-the-Plow, it was decided that she ought to stay home this weekend, because she has been running fairly hard lately and needs a bit of rest cure. But how to change the sheets whilst she was still in bed.

After breakfast — a simple repast, but brought to her on a tray while she rested against a bank of pillows, I told Kathleen that she would have to go and sit in the living room for a while. All at once, she was Lillian Gish, defenceless in a cruel world. “Where will I go?” she asked, vacantly, staring at me with a pre-Raphaelite weirdness that, some time ago, but not anytime recently, would have taken me in. She came and sat on my lap, but she called me “Simon Legree, ogre.” Then she laughed at herself. “No one would believe this! You’ve just brought me breakfast in bed, and now you want to change the sheets and make the bed, and I’m…” There was no need to finish the thought.

By the time the bedroom had been dusted and plumped, Kathleen, ensconced in a wing chair, was too involved in something to move at once. I had to throw her out of the living room as well. This time, though, I was spared the saucer eyes.